D.C. Fontana

Dorothy Catherine Fontana is a writer and script editor who has the distinction of being one of the few people to have worked on, as well as , , and. Deep Space Nine is her favorite Star Trek spinoff. She especially liked the show's strong characters. When writing, Fontana has used pseudonyms, including Michael Richards and J. Michael Bingham.

Fontana worked as a writer for a few television series before Star Trek, then briefly worked as Gene Roddenberry's secretary, before she became a writer on the show. The first episode she penned was, based on a premise by Roddenberry entitled "The Day Charlie Became God". Fontana wrote several notable Original Series episodes, including and. Also, after the departure of Steven W. Carabatsos, she was promoted to story editor (after successfully re-writing ). At the age of 27, Fontana became the youngest story editor in Hollywood at the time, and also one of the few female staff writers. (Star Trek: The Original Series 365, introduction) She remained in this capacity until the end of the second season.

She left the story editor position before the third season went into production: "I had told Gene Roddenberry that I did not wish to continue on Star Trek as story editor because I wanted to freelance and write for other series. I did, however, want to continue to do scripts for Star Trek. Gene was agreeable to this, and I was given a contract in February of which called for a guarantee of three scripts, with an option for three more. Whenever anyone has asked why I chose to leave Star Trek's story editorship, I have always given this reply."

However, Fontana was very unhappy with the rewrites done on her third season scripts, including and  (originally submitted as "Joanna" by Fontana, featuring Doctor McCoy's daughter).

Fontana's other noticeable contribution to The Original Series was her discovery and introduction to Gene Roddenberry of costume designer William Ware Theiss. During her years on the Original Series she was an active contributor to the officially endorsed fanzine , for which she conducted interviews with several key production staffers, most notably the one with Theiss, the only published one on record.

Four years after the end of the Original Series, she became the associate producer and story editor of, for which she also wrote the episode.

In early October 1986, nearly two decades after leaving the original Star Trek, Fontana, together with her Original Series co-workers David Gerrold, Edward K. Milkis and Robert Justman, were brought back by Roddenberry to form the original production nucleus to help out with the pre-production of. (Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission, pp. 9-11) Serving as Associate Producer on the first thirteen episodes of the first season, Fontana was – along with Gerrold – mainly responsible for being a story editor and story consultant. She co-wrote the pilot, with Roddenberry, earning a Hugo Award nomination, co-invented the "LCARS" concept, and wrote four other episodes of the season, before departing (along with all the Original Series production staff veterans) due to the meddlings of Roddenberry's lawyer, Leonard Maizlish. Unlike her fellow writer Gerrold, Fontana had chosen not to elaborate on the conditions under which she had left the production; that was until 2014, when she unequivocally identified Maizlish as the malefactor for her decision to do so, in William Shatner's documentary, William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge. Then Research Consultant, Richard Arnold confirmed in the documentary, "I think he [Maizlish] thought he was speaking with Gene's voice, but I think Gene never heard the way he spoke to other people. Gene had these wonderful relationships with people who worked with him on the Original Series, like Dorothy Fontana, and Leonard was horrible to Dorothy."

Shortly returning to the live-action franchise later on, she also penned, her last involvement with Star Trek, in which a great deal of Jadzia Dax' backstory was fleshed out. In the DS9 episode, the character Kay Eaton, who had to pose as a male to get her science fiction stories published, was an homage to Fontana. The Enterprise episode also honored her work on the episode  by including her name (along with that of the episode's director, Michael O'Herlihy, on a mission patch for the Earth-Saturn probe (a copy of which was sent to Fontana by Michael Okuda).

In 2006, she gave an interview in in which she talked about writing for three Star Trek series. She notes how unhappy she was with the way Roddenberry re-wrote the episodes they wrote together. She used the pseudonym "J. Michael Bingham" for, as she was especially unhappy with the episode. She liked writing much more.

Outside of Trek, Fontana wrote scripts for dozens of shows, including Babylon 5 and Earth: Final Conflict. In a 1974 episode scripted for The Six Million Dollar Man, "The Rescue of Athena One", Fontana pays homage to Star Trek by having Lee Majors' character of Colonel Steve Austin speak the line "Space... it really is the final frontier, isn't it?"

Fontana wrote the stories of the video games Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (unreleased), Star Trek: Bridge Commander, Star Trek: Legacy and Star Trek: Tactical Assault all with Derek Chester, and an episode of the fan production Star Trek: New Voyages, the episode "To Serve All My Days" in 2006, on which she worked alongside Jack Treviño and Ethan H. Calk.

Star Trek credits

 * (teleplay) (Season 1)
 * (teleplay, story with Nathan Butler)
 * (Season 2)
 * (teleplay with Jerome Bixby)
 * (teleplay)
 * (Season 3)
 * (story, as Michael Richards)
 * (story with Arthur Heinemann, as Michael Richards)
 * (Season 1)
 * (with Gene Roddenberry) (Season 1)
 * (with John D.F. Black, as J. Michael Bingham)
 * (teleplay)
 * (teleplay with Michael Michaelian)
 * (story with Maurice Hurley and Herbert Wright)
 * (teleplay with Peter Allan Fields) (Season 1)
 * (teleplay)
 * (teleplay with Michael Michaelian)
 * (story with Maurice Hurley and Herbert Wright)
 * (teleplay with Peter Allan Fields) (Season 1)

Hugo Award nomination

 * Hugo Award nomination in the category Best Dramatic Presentation for, shared with Gene Roddenberry and Corey Allen

Outside Star Trek

 * The Questor Tapes (1974)
 * The ABC Afternoon Playbreak: Season 2, Episode 2: A Special Act of Love (starring Diana Muldaur) (1973)

Star Trek interviews

 * , "For the Love of Star Trek", interviewed by Edward Gross
 * William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge, 2014