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John D.F. Black began his writing career in the late 1950s with "The Unearthly". After that, he worked on several television shows. In 1964, he won a Writer's Guild award for an episode of the television series "Mr. Novak". Gene Roddenberry invited him to visit following the ceremony, a kind of impromptu audition that turned into a job offer. Black served as the first Executive Story Consultant, and was an Associate Editor (along with the more famous Robert Justman). He met his future wife, then Mary Stowell, while working there. His writing contribution to the Original Series was limited to a single episode, The Naked Time, that was later reprised as an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He once said the hardest part of his supervisory job was dealing evenhandedly with writers -- both those who intimidated him, folks like Theodore Sturgeon, and those he felt weren't living up to the show's standards. Following his tenure on Star Trek, he continued working as a writer and producer until about 1978, returing only once after that: to collaborate on two Next Generation episodes.

Writing Credits

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