Did The Terminator rip off an obscure 1960s TV show?

‘Soldier’ ​​stars Michael Ansara (best known to fans for playing Klingon commander Kang on three different Star Trek series) like exactly what the title says: a soldier, just one from a distant future, who is flung back to 1964 in a time vortex created by an energy weapon. He is soon captured, but his language sounds like gibberish, so the authorities call in linguist Tom Kagan (Lloyd Nolan) to decipher the one sentence the soldier keeps repeating: “Nims qarlo clobregnny prite arem aean teaan deao,” which is what Kagan translates to “Name’s Qarlo Clobregnny, private, RM EN TN DO:” name, rank and serial letters.

Qarlo is a clone, trained literally from birth to be a perfect killing machine in an unimaginable hellish landscape of endless war. But even as Kagan and his family take him in and earn his trust despite his violent tendencies, an enemy trooper eventually comes through the same rip in time and tracks him down to Kagan’s house, where they kill each other. The question of whether Qarlo was just doing his job or had developed feelings for the Kagans and wanted to protect them remains unanswered. Ellison based the script on his own 1957 short story, “Soldier from Tomorrow,” and it’s widely considered one of the better episodes from the show’s otherwise mediocre second season, with a great, compelling central performance from Ansara.

‘I’ll be back’

Two decades later, thus apocryphal reports and how Ellison told ita message reached the author that a new film was mentioned The terminator seemed to have some obvious similarities to ‘Soldier’, especially in the opening scenes where the T-800 arrives in the past, followed in short order by future soldier Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). The latter is determined to protect Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the expectant mother of the future human messiah John Connor, from the robot. Writer Tracy Torme, a friend of Ellison’s, even told the latter that Cameron said he had “ripped off a few Harlan Ellison stories” for his film.

Ellison apparently asked to see the script The terminator but was declined by Hemdale, and was also conspicuously not invited to press screenings for the film. Finally he snuck one in and that was it discouraged by what he saw. “If you watch the first three minutes of my ‘Soldier’ ​​episode and the first three minutes of The terminatorthey are not only comparable, but also exact,” he said at the time. “By the time I left the theater, I knew I had a case against someone who plagiarized my work.”

So Ellison, who had previously sued the publisher Fantagraphics for defamation and ABC TV for plagiarism and won against both, and who also threatened legal action against Marvel Comics (for a 1983 Incredible Hulk story which, coincidentally, came straight from ‘Soldier’ ​​had his lawyers contact Hemdale and Orion, seeking a financial settlement and additional damages or face suing. According to Ellison, the “smoking gun” in the case was an interview Cameron had given Starlog magazine in which he reportedly said the story for The terminator came from “a few External borders segments.”

That was reportedly all the incentive the two companies needed to reach a settlement. Ellison was paid a certain amount, somewhere between $75,000 and $400,000, the exact amount of which was never confirmed. And while it was too late to do anything about the film’s original theatrical release, all future releases of the film on home video included a credit at the end that read: “In recognition of the work of Harlan Ellison.”