The City on the Edge of Forever Quotes

“Science fiction used to be a dangerous literature. Now, it is a very commercial genre, and whatever dangers might still lurk within seem to have been safely sanitized for the marketplace. The real crime is that the lobotomy has been self performed.

[David Gerrold - Afterword]”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“Of all liars, the smoothest and most convincing is memory”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“As one disillusioned ex-Trek official recently said, “You know why they cremated Gene? They were afraid people would come to piss on the grave.”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“David Gerrold never wrote an episode that Gene thought was shootable … then how do we account for something titled “The Trouble with Tribbles”?)”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“That was the first time I ever heard that miserable excuse for hackneyed formula writing. Our hero wouldn’t act that way. Our lead won’t allow her character to act that way. Our people wouldn’t act that way. No, indeed not. What they can do is act the same damned predictable way each and every week, in each and every new situation. Never mind that human beings are irrational and unpredictable and an amalgam of good and bad and smart and dumb, never mind that the most universal reason that most of us do anything, even if it gets us in trouble or messes us up, is that It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“when we lose our commitment to accuracy, honesty, and justice, we lose our ability to make a difference, because we also lose our vision of what is possible. Harlan”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“The solitary creator, dreaming his or her dream, unaided, seems to me to be the only artist we can trust.”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“(A TV producer is an ordinary human being who has made the mistake of falling asleep next to a big green pod filled with money. When he awakes again, he has been transformed into an alien thing that feeds on power, talent, and the blood of the innocent.”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay

“Science fiction used to be a dangerous literature. Now, it is a very commercial genre, and whatever dangers might still lurk within seem to have been safely sanitized for the marketplace. The real crime is that the lobotomy has been self performed. I”
― Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay