Star Trek: IDW Brings Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever to Comics

Ask any Star Trek fan for a list of their favorite Original Series episodes, and "The City on the Edge of Forever" is bound to be high up on the list. The episode, based on a teleplay by sci-fi luminary Harlan Ellison, featured an emotionally charged love story and many of the sci-fi elements that Star Trek is well known for. However, the final product differed a fair bit from how Ellison originally conceived it. His original teleplay was considered too long, too expensive, and too controversial to successfully pull off as a one-hour TV episode.

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But thanks to IDW, fans will now get a taste of "The City on the Edge of Forever" as it might have been. Today the publisher announced a mini-series titled Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's City on the Edge of Forever - The Original Teleplay. This five-issue series will directly adapt that longer, more ambitious version of the story.

The series will reunite the creative team behind the recent Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who crossover series - writers Scott Tipton and David Tipton and artist J.K. Woodward. Juan Ortiz will provide covers, with variant covers being handled by Paul Shipper.

"Presenting Harlan Ellison's brilliant original script for 'City on the Edge...' has been a goal of ours since IDW first began publishing Star Trek comics in 2007," said Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall in IDW's press release. "The episode justifies its position atop 'best Star Trek episodes' lists but even it ain't nuthin' compared to what Ellison did in his original teleplay. This is truly going to be a Star Trek adventure unlike any other, even to fans who have that beloved episode memorized."

Ellison commented, "It was a superlative joy of my long life to have worked with Leonard Nimoy, who became my friend, and many others at Star Trek; and an equally heart-happy joy to be working with J.K. and the Tipton Bros. and Chris Ryall on this long-awaited visual of my (humbly, I say it) brilliant original 'City...'"

An image from the original "City on the Edge of Forever" episode.

This isn't the first time IDW has revisited a classic TOS episode. Last year's Star Trek Annual 2013 saw writer/artist John Byrne create a fumetti-style sequel to "Where No Man Has Gone Before." Click here to read our take on that issue.

Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's City on the Edge of Forever - The Original Teleplay #1 is scheduled to ship in June 2014.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

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