HE is awake and HE is pissed

Far be it from me to give, or give a shit, about Star Trek XI rumors. My days of nerdy trials and Tribblations are long past. However, this...this is possibly the funniest thing I've read all week (it is only Tuesday.)

You'll remember that Moriarty at Ain't It Cool broke big news about the plot of Trek XI, especially about how the movie concerns a group of time traveling Romulans headed to the past to wipe out James T Kirk before he ever became a thorn in their side. One of the rumors IESB is running concerns how the Romulans get back in time - they use the time portal from the classic Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever"¹. You know, the one where Kirk lets his girlfriend get hit by a car. I usually just don't return their phone calls when I want to break up, but then I'm not half the man Kirk is.

See, I didn't know about that rumor before or I could have told them about the shit-storm that was coming.

HE is awake.

Dudes, he's got a solo title card on Terminator because he was able to convince a judge that it was based on his Outer Limits episodes "Demon with a Glass Hand"² and "Soldier". I've seen both of those multiple times, I have copies of both the short story "Soldier" and the screenplay, and I love HE. Hell, you can't know how very depressed I was that the rumored "Demon..." tie-in never happened on Babylon 5. All that said, and I've still never been completely convinced the similarities aren't coincidental.

But City? The single greatest episode of ST:TOS to be crafted? Even after Roddenberry's tweaks watered down the story, it was still good enough for HE not to give it the Cordwainer Bird. The lyrical quality of that episode would not be matched until "The Inner Light" 25 years later.

Iff³ Star Trek XI really does utilize the guardians, or the city, or anything of Ellison's, Paramount is fucked. There's no hedging on this one. No arguing that the sf tropes in use are common. That's blatant thievery. He'll kick their asses.

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1 WGA Award for Best Written Dramatic Episode, 1966.
2 WGA Award for TV Anthology, Any Length, 1963.
3 Yes, I'm a logic geek.