Almost all films and tv-series that tell the viewers, that they are based on true events or real/historical characters, are predominantly fabrications of the screenwriters
It may be less so if the historical figure is still alive and actively contributing to the project. Though if they ever did a movie about William Shatner's life while he's still alive, I can guess what kind of treatment he'd give his former Star Trek co-workers. The only ones still alive to dispute his version are George Takei and Walter Koenig.
SF fandom can be a real mess when it comes to setting down things that really happened. People wonder why I dislike Orson Scott Card. There are reasons for that, some of which go back to the early '80s.
David Gerrold was one of the GoHs at a convention I attended. Some whispers went around the hotel that he'd been rude to someone. If so, I can think of a couple of reasons why. Either the person said something rude first, or Gerrold might have been upset about the latest Star Trek tell-all book that did
not show Gerrold in a good light, basically calling him a liar about some of the things he said in his own behind-the-scenes books and later when he helped to develop
Star Trek: The Next Generation. He may have been wondering just who, among all the people at the convention, had read the book and tool Herb Solow's word about everything.
All I know is that when it was my turn to speak to him when he was doing autographs, it was a pleasant conversation about writing in general, about series where huge time jumps happen from one book to the next, leaving the reader wondering what happened in the meantime. He wasn't rude to me at all.
So who knows?
My perspective of the guy who invented Tribbles is different from that of other people, some of whom knew him professionally (there are some people who post on TrekBBS who mention stuff now and then).
That all said, one of the worst-ever "historical" dramas is
Reign, that abominable mess that pretends to be about the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. The only thing it got right is that Mary Stuart was a real person. Queen Elizabeth I was a real person. Catherine d'Medici was a real person (and the only one worth watching on that show, thanks to Megan Follows, who portrayed her). The rest of it was absolute crap, both historically and aesthetically. The show is notorious for its ridiculous costuming, none of which even pretends to be historically accurate.
I couldn't even bring myself to watch the last two seasons, even for Mary's execution. Though it wouldn't surprise me if they did a GOTCHA! like the showrunners did in one of the series about the Borgias - we thought we were shown Cesare's death, but oops, GOTCHA! He survived being supposedly killed on a battlefield in Viana, Spain, and the last scene shows him wading ashore in the New World with a bunch of other Conquistadores. We were told that no, the guy who died wasn't Cesare, just someone who happened to be wearing his armor and riding his horse.
The actor who played Pullo in the Rome series died recently. I liked Pullo, but the storyline in which he was Caesarion's biological father was just utterly ridiculous. The series events had a frustrated Cleopatra trying to get Julius Caesar into bed, to father a son. Oops, he wasn't interested. Then she tried to order Vorenus to do it. Oops, he wasn't interested, either. So he ordered Pullo to do it, and Pullo was happy to comply.
Mission accomplished. Cleopatra got pregnant and gave birth to Caesarion, who she claimed was Julius Caesar's son, but was really Pullo's son. And at the end of Season 2, when everyone on Cleopatra's side other than her younger children with Mark Antony was supposed to die, Pullo and Caesarion escaped to wherever, and supposedly lived happily ever after (even Vorenus was dead by that point).
The show was canceled, and a good thing. They'd really written themselves into a corner by omitting Scribonia, who was Octavian's wife before he married Livia. Omit Scribonia, and you don't have Julia. Omit Julia, and you don't have Agrippina the Elder. No Agrippina means no Caligula or his sister, Agrippina the Younger. No Agrippina the Younger means no Nero. They really had nowhere to go with Season 3, unless they planned to make up a war between Caesarion and Augustus - which never happened, since Caesarion was executed in real history.
