Is There In Truth No JOANNA?

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Title:	Is There In Truth No JOANNA?
Creator:	Annette Bristol
Date(s):	May 1969
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
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Is There In Truth No JOANNA? is a 1969 essay by Annette Bristol.

It was printed in Triskelion #3.

The essay compares the unfilmed Star Trek: TOS script by D.C. Fontana called "Joanna" with the filmed episode "The Way to Eden."

Some Topics Discussed

• very, very detailed description of the Fontana script which is followed by the essay's author writing: "Well, that's approximately what happened in the first version " Apologies to Miss Fontana for an inadequate synopsis of her story which she was kind enough to lend to me so that I could make a comparison."

• failures of the third season
• the network's underestimation of the intelligence of viewers

From the Essay

Once upon a time there was a girl named Joanna, the daughter of the U.S.S. Enterprise's medical officer, Dr. Leonard McCoy. She was a nice girl, a proper girl, but she was the roving kind. She decided to thwart dear old dad, whom she hardly knew, leave medical school, join up with a band of 23rd-century type flower children and hunt a planet named Nirvana, "a supposedly mythical planet on which absolute perfection in all things is the norm of life." "Aha!" you say... "that sounds vaguely familiar. I saw a Star Trek episode something like that. Only I don't remember McCoy's daughter, and weren't they looking for a planet named Eden?"

Allow me to compliment you on your perceptiveness because any relationship between the first and final product is purely coincidental. In the first, and allow me to say "real" version, written by Miss Dorothy Fontana, there was indeed a Joanna. She and some friends built their own small ship, which was scantily equipped, and set out to find Nirvana -- hoping to establish a small colony and become a part of the perfect civilization that inhabits that planet. McCoy is quite upset with his daughter. She has given up her nurse's training to become one of the "Artist ... .She turned her back on Earth and everything that it stands for, and he cannot understand her decision .

However, what happened to her well-told and exciting story from there until the televised version is a much sadder story, I must surmise that the new producer, Fred Frieberger, and the new story consultant, Arthur Singer, thought they knew better how to write for Star Trek, This didn't please them. Oh, they liked it well enough to buy the original but, you see, it needed to be improved. We'll join them now already in progress.

First of all, let's get rid of McCoy's daughter. What we need is someone who will appeal to the teenyboppers.

Now, they like Chekov, so let's use him instead. But Chekov couldn't have a grown daughter. Right, so let's make it an old girl friend—we need to sex up the show anyway. Good, so that's settled. McCoy's out - Chekov's in. Now then, what about the ending? We can't have these future-day hippies not being punished for mutiny or whatever. So let's kill them off. That's much better, but remember it must be done non-violently. NaBisCo is watching, remember?

Hey, I've got a great idea for a subtle comment on hippy life. Let's kill them off with acid. Acid, get it? Let's allow them to land on Nirvana and all the plant life there will be highly aciduous have a lot of acid in it and they'll eat it and die.

I like it, I like it. And that way, we don't need the diamond and we can save the dollar and a quarter for the glass. But wait a minute. We can't call this place Nirvana. How about "Eden"? That way everyone will know what we're talking about. Remember the average mentality of the television viewer is that of about an eleven year old.

Last year this kind of Spock would have been startling, but this season it's just typical . Spock has become less and less Spock, and more and more Leonard Nimoy, However, I can't say that the blame truly rests on Mr. Nimoy. He's a fine actor and has been dedicated to maintaining Spock's image on and off the show. But the director and producer are supposed to maintain control of the show in all of its facets, and that includes the personalities of the characters, especially the continuing ones, Spock is an integral part of Star Trek, and his already established personality must be retained if the show is to be believable.

There was much more, but enough is sufficient. The really sad part of this is that it is not an isolated case It has happened so often that the real science-fiction writers have left the show, Dorothy Fontana no longer writes for Star Trek. In fact, her name did not appear on this episode which was eventually titled "The Way to Eden," at least, her real name did not. Certain legalities forced her to claim a part of it, but she used a pseudonym and hoped I guess that no one would recognize it. But she has allowed her name to be used for this article, and I thank her for that. Still, she had a beautiful story to start with, and although I realize that sometimes changes have to be made between the story outline and the final draft, there is no logic behind the changes that were made from "Joanna" to the pathetic final version of "The Way to Eden."