Screengrab contributor Faisal Qureshi reports on a brewing lawsuit. — ed.

I'm sure a lot of people have been enjoying the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek trailer with Kirk, Spock and the rest of the gang rebooting the franchise after Paramount sucked it dry so many years ago. Now comes news that Harlan Ellison is suing Paramount for money he says they owe him for writing the classic 1967 Star Trek episode, "City on the Edge of Forever." For those unfamilar, the episode follows the adventures of Kirk and Spock as they travel to 1930s Earth, after a deranged McCoy inadvertently changes the past and prevents the the Federation from ever existing. To complicate matters, Kirk falls for social worker Edith Keeler (played quite well by Joan Collins), but Spock discovers that Keeler needs to die to restore the timeline.

Fans generally consider the episode to be the best of the series, but the production wasn't a pleasant experience for Ellison. His account of the whole mess also claimed that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had consistently lied to the public about the author's contribution. Yesterday evening, Ellison announced that he was going to sue Paramount. This is no idle threat given this is also the man who took successful legal action against James Cameron, ABC (for plagarism) and more recently, AOL. To quote from the scathing press release:

"To quote Gandhi: 'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.' ...And please make sure to remember, at the moment some studio mouthpiece calls me a mooch, and says I'm only pursuing this legal retribution to get into their 'deep pockets,' tell'm Ellison snarled back, 'F---in'-A damn skippy!' I'm no hypocrite. It ain't about the 'principle,' friend, its about the MONEY! Pay me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie? Hell no! I'm doing it for the thirty-five-year-long disrespect and the money!

"The arrogance, the pompous dismissive imperial manner of those who 'have more important things to worry about,' who'll have their assistant get back to you, who don't actually read or create, who merely 'take' meetings, and shuffle papers — much of which is paper money denied to those who actually did the manual labor of creating those dreams — they refuse even to notice. . . until you jam a federal lawsuit in their eye. To hell with all that obfuscation and phony flag-waving: they got my money. Pay me and pay off all the other writers from whom you've made hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars. . . from OUR labors. . . just so you can float your fat asses in warm Bahamian waters."

Even more importantly, Ellison is suing his own labour union, the WGA, for failing to take his complaints seriously. Given the last high-profile case involving Paramount's accounting practices was 1990's Art Buchwald vs. Paramount (the book about the case, Fatal Subtraction, also gave the WGA a kicking for their perceived lack of support), one wonders how far this case will go before Paramount or Harlan throws in the towel. Given his history within the court room, Ellison probably won't be the one to fold.