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.

Harlan Ellison is a great writer and also one guy you don't want to piss off.

He wrote the classic Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever" (often called by best episode of the original series by fans and non-fans alike), and now he's suing CBS-Paramount over what they have done with the story since he got paid for writing it in 1967. He got paid for the script and got residuals, but in the years after the episode aired the studio has not only published a sequel trilogy with Pocket Books based on the episode, they even had a "Guardian of Forever" talking Hallmark Christmas ornament that said Ellison's lines from his script, so he wants his money.

It's not often that two people are so connected in these TV obituary roundup posts I do every week or so, but these two people are worth mentioning in the same post.

Alexander Courage, who composed the theme song for the original Star Trek series, died on May 15 at age 88. He also did music for episodes of many other series, including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Waltons, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, The Loner, Eight is Enough, Daniel Boone, Riverboat, and many others. He was also an orchestrator on several movies, including L.A. Confidential, The Haunting, The Mummy, First Knight, The Shadow, Rudy, Malice, Hook, Sleeping with the Enemy, The Poseidon Adventure, Hello Dolly, My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, and a ton of others.

But Courage wasn't the only Star Trek figure to pass away that week...

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.