NewsT. Rick JonesD.C. Fontana

The late Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana was a trailblazer in Hollywood, not just Star Trek

NewsT. Rick JonesD.C. Fontana
The late Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana was a trailblazer in Hollywood, not just Star Trek
“Written by D. C. Fontana”

“Written by D. C. Fontana”

Legendary Star Trek writer Dorothy Catherine (D.C.) Fontana passed away Monday evening after a brief illness. She was 80 years old. This story was written as part of a special episode of the podcast Daily Star Trek News, remembering her.

D.C. Fontana was a trailblazer, not just in Star Trek, but in broader Hollywood, as well.

Born in New Jersey in 1939, she knew from an early age that she wanted to be a writer. After graduating from college with an associate degree as an Executive Secretarial major, she worked for Screen Gems in New York City as junior secretary to the president of the studio. Later, she moved to Los Angeles, where she joined a typing pool and worked for writer Samuel A. Peeples, who at the time worked on the Western series Overland Trail. It would be Peeples who bought her first story, called “A Bounty for Billy” for the series The Tall Man. She was just 21 years old.

Fontana went on to write several more stories under Peeples, but when their professional association diverged, she returned to the typing pool. Fontana adopted the professional name “D.C.” around this time, in an aim to prevent her story pitches from being pre-judged based on her gender.

Fontana eventually went to work on a series called The Lieutenant, created by Gene Roddenberry. When Roddenberry’s secretary fell ill, she went to work for him directly, and he encouraged her writing. After The Lieutenant finished its run and Roddenberry began work on Star Trek, he tapped Fontana to write the teleplay for an idea he had, called “The Day Charlie Became God”. That teleplay would go on to become the script for the Original Series episode “Charlie X”, the second episode to air.

In 1966, Fontana became the story editor for Star Trek. She was just 27 years old, and one of the youngest story editors in Hollywood at the time. While on Star Trek, D.C. Fontana wrote such classic episodes as “Journey to Babel” and “This Side of Paradise”. She was later an associate producer and story editor on The Animated Series, and wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

But outside of Star Trek, Fontana’s career was just as illustrious. Fontana wrote for The Six Million Dollar Man, Logan’s Run, The Waltons, Dallas, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. She later moved on to novels, video games, and comic books, the most recent of which was IDW’s Star Trek Year Four series “The Enterprise Experiment”, in 2008.

In addition to writing her own work, Fontana was also a dedicated member of the Writers Guild of America, serving on its Board of Directors for two terms. In 1997 and 2002, she won the prestigious Morgan Cox Award for Guild service.

So after her extensive experience and remarkable career, what would D.C. Fontana want to pass on to younger generations? Since 1998, she has taught at the American Film Institute, including the recent courses, “History of Television Drama” and “Script Development for Producers and Directors”. In an article in FDU Magazine from Fairleigh Dickinson University (her alma mater), she said her advice to aspiring students is: “Just get your ideas on the page. Nobody writes a perfect first draft. Nobody. Not the most brilliant writers in this business. Not the most brilliant novelists. Know the story you want to tell, get it on the page, and then you make it better.”

For more on Dorothy Fontana’s Star Trek legacy, I highly recommend listening to Women at Warp episode 15, in which the crew talks about her start in Hollywood, her approach to writing, and her most notable Star Trek episodes.