Another Thought about Harlan Ellison

Discussing the late sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison a couple of weeks ago got me to thinking about one of the best known facts about his life, one which may not be true at all.

The fact, or factoid, is: The Schwarzenegger movie, Terminator, was plagiarized from a scenario that Ellison wrote for the television program Outer Limits.

If anyone ever tells you this, they'll probably tell it in the tone of someone retailing a deep dark secret. Something that was hushed up, but that the cognoscenti are aware of nonetheless.

If this ever happens to you, please answer: "Oh, really? Which episode was that?" The truth is that Ellison wrote two such scenarios, both variations of the same general idea but very different from each other. Terminator is generally described as a rip-off of one. Or the other. Or it doesn't really matter.

But it does matter. Because one is not entitled to a property interest in one's broad thematic ideas. Neither Ellison nor anyone else ever had a property interest in the idea of time travel, or the hypothesis that a time traveler might want to mess up with our present in order to secure a certain result in its (subsequent) present.

If anyone involved with Terminator had been inspired by such general themes while watching Outer Limits: good for them. They are entitled to get their ideas from any source available. If they stole specific lines ... that's a different matter. But if that were the case, the theft would be from one specific episode, and there'd be no confusion about which one it was.

So ... no offense to the departed Mr Ellison, but he had no grievance here.

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