D.C. Fontana

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D.C. Fontana in 2003

Dorothy Catherine Fontana 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 rewritten, Fontana has used pseudonyms, including Michael Richards and J. Michael Bingham.

Fontana wrote several notable TOS episodes, including "Journey to Babel", and acted as script consultant in TOS's second season. She was 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", where she invented the "LCARS" concept and DS9's "Dax", her last involvement with Star Trek, where a great deal of Jadzia Dax's 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, is a 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 videogames 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, where she worked alongside Jack Treviño and Ethan H. Calk.

Writing Credits

• TOS:
  • "Charlie X" (teleplay)
  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
  • "This Side of Paradise" (teleplay, story with Nathan Butler)
  • "Friday's Child"
  • "Journey to Babel"
  • "By Any Other Name" (teleplay with Jerome Bixby)
  • "The Ultimate Computer" (teleplay)
  • "The Enterprise Incident"
  • "That Which Survives" (as Michael Richards)
  • "The Way to Eden" (story with Arthur Heinemann, as Michael Richards)
• TAS: "Yesteryear"
• TNG:
  • "Encounter at Farpoint" (with Gene Roddenberry)
  • "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)

Star Trek books

• Non-Fiction
  • Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek (2006) - Collaborator
• Fiction
  • Vulcan's Glory (1989)
  • Encounter at Farpoint (1991)
• Comics
  • Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment (2008)

Outside Star Trek

• The Questor Tapes (1974)

External links

• D.C. Fontana at Wikipedia
• Template:IMDb-link