How Star Trek Strange New Worlds’ “Valles Marineris” May Stir the Ghost of Harlan Ellison

There is a rule that all science fiction writers know, even if they don’t know it explicitly, they feel it in their bones. It’s instinctive.

The rule comes in two parts.

Part one is “Steal from everyone…” Science fiction is a kleptomaniac orgy, we are all out here stealing from Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein and Ursula Le Guin. Killjoys, Dark Matter, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Outer Worlds videogames and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Final Architecture trilogy have all drunk deep from the well of Firefly, which in turn stole wholesale from Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, and Gone with the Wind (Hence all those rather uncomfortable Confederate themes running through the whole thing). The trailer for the new Neuromancer series is now out, and watching it gives you the dissonance that comes from asking “Is this just rehashing a bunch of stuff I’ve seen before, or does it only feel that way because everyone else has been rehashing this?” Alan Moore loves to complain about how much modern comics is just remixing his riffs, but his biggest comics are a remix of the old Charlton comics heroes, and the heroes of 19th century science romance and gothic horror.

So “Steal from everyone…”

But it comes in two parts, and the second part is “…except Harlan Ellison.”

Oh, you know about The Terminator, whose credits now “Acknowledge the works of Harlan Ellison” because Ellison saw the film and recognised elements from his story, “Soldier from Tomorrow” and The Outer Limits episode “Soldier” (although some retell this story as referring to “Demon with a Glass Hand”, which also shares some plot similarities).

But he also (alongside Ben Bova) sued ABC and Paramount Pictures over their TV series Future Cop, saying it was based on their short story “Brillo.” He was more amicable when a writer at Marvel upped and stole “Soldier” again, this time for The Incredible Hulk. Ellison could have sued for hundreds of thousands, but settled for Marvel crediting him, matching the writer’s fee and giving him a lifetime subscription to everything they ever published. But he did sue to stop the release of the Justin Timberlake movie In Time, claiming it was based on his story “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman” (which if nothing else, had a far superior title).

And he has sued Star Trek over their use of plot elements from The City on the Edge of Forever in spin-off media and merchandising.

As Ellison himself has said (this time referring to book pirates online), “If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump.”

The fact that Harlan Ellison has been dead for eight years only means he has more tools at his disposal. You do not steal from Harlan Ellison.

So, last week’s Star Trek episode.

I’m going to assume most people click on this link have already seen the episode, and don’t want to pad this out with a plot summary, but just in case, here’s the quickest summary I can do:

Spoiler Alert/Boring Plot Recap Ahead

The Enterprise finds itself orbiting prehistoric Earth, in a star system with three (!) M-class (habitable) planets. It turns out the planets that don’t contain dinosaurs, are Mars, which has a spacefaring (but pre-warp) civilisation, and a race of arachnids that seem to be reaching out colonise other planets.

Pike tries to encourage the Martians to make peace with the arachnids, apparently not realising that this might change history. But then the Martians steal an anti-matter fuel cell from the Enterprise to throw it at the arachnid planet. Pike moves to prevent this, but then at the last moment, allows it. The fuel cell blows up the arachnid planet (to form the asteroid belt) causing Mars to drift into an outer orbit (so that it dies) and sending a chunk of rock flying into the Earth (killing the dinosaurs).

Pike then has to shoulder the weight of having wiped out two civilisations so that humanity might come to exist.

Boring Plot Recap Finishes

So, by halfway through this episode the story was feeling itchingly familiar, and afterwards I went over to my bookshelf and pulled out my copy of Dans Macabre, by Stephen King (which is a lovely, personal history of the horror genre, by the way). I flicked to the index, found the one reference to Star Trek in the entire book, and pulled up an epic footnote.

That footnote is where King recounts the anecdote Harlan Ellison told him about the time he pitched a plot for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I will repeat it here, with credit, so please, Ghost of Harlan Ellison, don’t haunt me:

“It involved going to the end of the known universe to slip back through time to the Pleistocene period when Man first emerged. I postulated a parallel development of reptile life that might have developed into the dominant species on Earth had not mammals prevailed. I postulated an alien intelligence from a far galaxy where snakes had become the dominant life form, and a snake-creature who had come to Earth in the Star Trek future, had seen its ancestors wiped out, and who had gone back into the far past of Earth to set up distortions in the time-flow to the reptiles could beat the humans. The Enterprise goes back to set time right, finds the snake-alien, and the human crew is confronted with the moral dilemma of whether it had the right to wipe out an entire life form just to insure its own territorial imperative in our present and future. The story, in short, spanned all of time and all of space, with a moral and ethical problem.”

Anyway, the producer listens to this, then tells Ellison to put Mayans in the script because he’d read an Ancient Aliens book recently. Ellison tells him that’s a dumb idea. The anecdote ends with Harlan Ellison saying “I’m a writer. I don’t know what the fuck you are,” and storming out. Classic Ellison.

So, the parallels are pretty clear – both stories feature the Enterprise going back to prehistoric times, and having to decide between allowing the extinction of one culture in the past to protect their own in the future.

I would not dream of asking Strange New Worlds’ writers invoke the wrath of Ellison’s phantoms by admitting they took inspiration from this anecdote, so let’s agree it’s a funny coincidence.

I mean, personally, I think I’m being incredibly chill about the Enterprise wiping out the population of an entire star system as it flies away at the end of an episode, even though that’s my thing.

Chris Farnell is the writer of the Star Trek Lower Decks U.S.S. Cerritos Crew Handbook, a complete in-universe guide to joining the crew of the Cerritos.

Chris Farnell is also the author of Fermi’s Progress and Fermi’s Wake, which chronicle the planet-of-the-week adventures of a spaceship whose FTL drive destroys every planet it encounters (a bit like the Enterprise wiped out those civilisations last week, or the XCV-100 from last season that blew up every planet it encountered while also being a metaphor for capitalism, but it’s okay,  I don’t mind, we’re all cool).

To read Fermi’s Progress, buy the season pass from Scarlet Ferret (which includes all four Fermi’s Progress novellas in one volume), or the paperback from Amazon.

To read Fermi’s Wake, buy the Fermi’s Wake season pass at Scarlet Ferret, buy the complete e-book at Amazon, or get all the individual novellas in the series from Amazon here.

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