TVSquad

You have to admire the tenacity of writer Harlan Ellison. He filed a lawsuit against CBS Paramount accusing the company of not paying him for all the ancillary income the company earned from the episode of Star Trek he wrote in 1967, "City on the Edge of Forever." Yesterday, Ellison announced on his web site that he had settled with CBS Paramount and he was very, very pleased. He didn't reveal how much money he made, but he probably did quite well.

After all, CBS Paramount has done very, very well with that original Star Trek episode. It's regarded as -- and is -- the all-time best show in the entire original ST canon. Ironically, Ellison never liked what Roddenberry and company had done with his script.

Recently, TV Squad reported that NBC has added all kinds of classic TV shows to their online outlets. Now comes the announcement that CBS is also bringing a variety of well-loved TV dramas to the web. CBS Interactive is raiding the CBS Library, which is "one of the largest television programming libraries in the entertainment business," to present TV series online across the CBS Audience Network.

Like the NBC fodder, the CBS offering is gangbusters: full-length episodes of classic Star Trek, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place. CBS plans to add more programs and clips in the coming months, including sports and other kinds of entertainment.

Star Trek has been in the news quite a bit these last few weeks. There's the Comedy Central roast of William Shatner, the premiere of Star Trek:Enterprise on the Sci Fi Channel, and the announcement of a new Trek movie that will be directed by Lost creator J.J. Abrams. Now word comes that TV Land has acquired the rights to the original (and many say the best) Star Trek.

The show will join TV Land's regular rotation starting in November. However, in order to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary (feeling old yet anyone?) the classic-television network will air four episodes of Trek on September 8th; the date when it premiered way back in 1966 on NBC. The evening will start off with "The Man Trap", which was the episode that began the series, then follow with "City on the Edge of Forever" (with a young Joan Collins), "The Trouble With Tribbles" (one of my favorites), and "Plato's Stepchildren", which featured the very first interracial kiss shown on television (although some fans refute that statement).

After this initial four episode run the show will take a break and come back on November 17th in its normal time slot. Episodes will also be available online at TV Land's new broadband video channel.