From the TV Screen to the Page

Over the past several months, I've been re-reading the short story adaptations of the original Star Trek episodes written by James Blish, published in 12 volumes during and just after the show's network run. I'm really impressed by how effectively Blish catches the strengths of the good episodes and actually manages to turn the few abysmal episodes (such as "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden") into entertaining short stories.

One thing to keep in mind when reading this stories is that they were  often based on early versions of the script--not the final shooting script. That's why, for instance, Sulu replaces Chekov in the prose version of "The Trouble with Tribbles." In addition, Blish would often introduce some original elements into the stories to flesh out the back stories behind the plot-driven events and locations. It is always interesting to note the differences between the actual episodes and the prose stories.

Star Trek 3  included the stories based on "Friday's Child" and "The Doomsday Machine" (along with five other episodes) and these stories contain several interesting and important changes.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

In "Friday's Child," Kirk, Spock and McCoy end up more or less stranded on a planet, caught up in the machinations of a tribe whose culture is driven by a very strict sense of honor. They end up on the run with a very pregnant woman named Eleen. The current leader of the tribe needs to make sure both she and the baby are dead to firm up his own claim to being the leader.

In the aired episode, the character of Eleen proves herself to be fairly noble, attempting to sacrifice herself to save her baby and the Star Fleet officers. She lives at the end.

In the short story, she is a lot nastier and offers to sacrifice the baby to save herself. She ends up getting killed.

In "The Doomsday Machine," the starship Constellation is nearly destroyed by a giant planet-eating machine. Only Commodore Decker, the Contellation's captain, survives. Driven by guilt and the need for revenge, Commodore Decker sacrifices himself in a vain attempt to destroy the planet killer by flying a shuttle down its throat, though this does give Kirk the idea for how to actually kill it.

In the short story, Kirk comes up with the idea for how to destroy the planet killer on his own, with Decker larger disappearing from the story after he briefly took command of the Enterprise and was later relieved of command by Spock. At the end of the story, he chooses to resign his commission.

In both these cases, I honestly don't know if early versions of the script were different, or if Blish added this elements to the stories himself because he felt this worked better in prose. In either case, reading these stories brings you to the point of having complete confidence in his ability to tell Star Trek stories well, with respect towards the Star Trek universe and the characters we love.