[Archive 2009-03-19] Harlan Ellison sues CBS-Paramount, WGA over Star Trek royalties

Historical archive — originally published 2009-03-19. This report records what was known on that date. It is not current news; subsequent events may have changed the situation. Wikinews closed in May 2026.

Science fiction author Harlan Ellison announced, in a press release dated March 13, 2009, that he is suing television company CBS Paramount Television for failure to pay residuals to Ellison for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever". Ellison is also suing writers' union the Writers Guild of America, west (WGA), of which he is a member, for failing to diligently pursue Ellison's royalties from Paramount.

In a strongly and colorfully worded press release, Ellison and his lawyer alleged that Paramount had failed to pay the author, who wrote the 1967 television episode under the pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird", royalties on derivative works such as tie-in novels based on the story as well as merchandise based on the episode such as a 2004 talking Christmas ornament which recited lines from the episode.

The suit comes two months before the release of a film, titled simply "Star Trek", which will re-launch the longstanding multimedia science-fiction franchise. The film will be the first original, official Star Trek video material since the series "Star Trek: Enterprise" was canceled in mid-2005. CBS Paramount is also gearing up for the April release of the first series of Star Trek, including "City on the Edge of Forever", on Blu-Ray high-definition disc.

Roddenberry, who died in 1991, stated in numerous interviews that Ellison's original script was unsuitable for reasons of content and budget, and rewrote it heavily; a dissatisfied Ellison chose to have a pseudonym appear on the final version. The episode as aired won the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, while Ellison's original script won a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Hour-Long Script.

Harlan Ellison became established in the science fiction community in the 1950s and won awards and acclaim for short work such as the 1969 novella "A Boy and his Dog" and the 1967 short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". He has also been the plaintiff in several high-profile lawsuits, suing a person who posted some of his copyrighted work on Usenet along with the ISPs hosting the work in 2000 and in 2006 suing Fantagraphics for defamation; Ellison won the first lawsuit and settled the second. Also in 2006, he controversially groped the breast of fellow author Connie Willis at the 64th World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles during the presentation of Willis's Hugo Award; Ellison later apologized for the incident.

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