D.C. Fontana

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D.C. Fontana

For the in-universe article on the Incredible Tales author, please see D.C. Fontana (author).

Dorothy Catherine Fontana (born 25 March 1939; age 85) is a writer and script editor who has the distinction of being one of the few people to have worked on Star Trek: The Original Series, as well as Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. 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 "Charlie X", based on a premise by Roddenberry entitled "The Day Charlie Became God". Fontana wrote several notable Original Series episodes, including "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Journey to Babel". Also, after the departure of Steven W. Carabatsos, she was promoted to story editor (after successfully re-writing "This Side of Paradise"). 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 1968 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." [1]

However, Fontana was very unhappy with the rewrites done on her third season scripts, including "The Enterprise Incident" and "The Way to Eden" (originally submitted as "Joanna" by Fontana, featuring Doctor McCoy's daughter). [2]

Fontana's other noticeable contribution to The Original Series was her discovery and introduction to Gene Roddenberry of costume designer William Ware Theiss. [3] During her years on the Original Series she was an active contributor to the officially endorsed fanzine Inside Star Trek, 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 Star Trek: The Animated Series, for which she also wrote the episode "Yesteryear".

She later co-wrote the Next Generation's "Encounter at Farpoint", earning a Hugo Award nomination, where she invented the "LCARS" concept, and four other episodes of TNG's first season beside being credited as Associate Producer on thirteen episodes of the first season. She also penned DS9: "Dax", her last involvement with Star Trek, in which a great deal of Jadzia Dax' backstory was fleshed out.

In the DS9 episode "Far Beyond the Stars", the character Kay Eaton, who had to pose as a male to get her science fiction stories published, was an homage to Fontana.

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

• TOS:
  • "Charlie X" (teleplay) (Season 1)
  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
  • "This Side of Paradise" (teleplay, story with Nathan Butler)
  • "Friday's Child" (Season 2)
  • "Journey to Babel"
  • "By Any Other Name" (teleplay with Jerome Bixby)
  • "The Ultimate Computer" (teleplay)
  • "The Enterprise Incident" (Season 3)
  • "That Which Survives" (story, as Michael Richards)
  • "The Way to Eden" (story with Arthur Heinemann, as Michael Richards)
• TAS: "Yesteryear" (Season 1)
• TNG:
  • "Encounter at Farpoint" (with Gene Roddenberry) (Season 1)
  • "The Naked Now" (with John D.F. Black, as J. Michael Bingham)
  • "Lonely Among Us" (teleplay)
  • "Too Short a Season" (teleplay with Michael Michaelian)
  • "Heart of Glory" (story with Maurice Hurley and Herbert Wright)
• DS9: "Dax" (teleplay with Peter Allan Fields) (Season 1)

Hugo Award nomination

• 1988 Hugo Award nomination in the category Best Dramatic Presentation for TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint", shared with Gene Roddenberry and Corey Allen

Bibliography

• Non-fiction
  • Inside Star Trek; a fanzine, published during the production of the Original Series, for which Fontana conducted several interviews with behind-the-scenes production staffers, including:
    • Behind the camera: John Dwyer - issue 1, July 1968, pp. 12-14
    • Behind the camera: William Ware Theiss - issue 6, December 1968, pp. 5-8 and issue 7, January 1969, pp. 4-8
    • Behind the camera: Charles Washburn - issue 9, March 1969, pp. 3-6
    • Behind the camera: Walter M. Jefferies - issue 12, June 1969, pp. 2-5
  • Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek (2006) - collaborator
  • Star Trek: The Original Series 365 (2010) - preface
• Fiction
  • Vulcan's Glory (1989)
• Comics
  • Star Trek: Year Four - The Enterprise Experiment (2008)

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

• The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine Vol. 2, p. 8, "For the Love of Star Trek", interviewed by Edward Gross

External links

• D. C. Fontana at Wikipedia
• Template:IMDb-link
• D.C. Fontana at SF-Encyclopedia.com
• Interview at the EmmyTVLegends.org