TrekCore reports screenwriter and story editor D.C. Fontana died peacefully yesterday after a short illness. She was 80 years old. Best known for her contributions to the first four Star Trek TV series, Fontana also wrote the 1989 novel Vulcan’s Glory (set during Spock’s early service on the Enterprise), and with writer Derek Chester and artist Gordon Purcell, she created the 2008 comics series “Star Trek: Year Four – The Enterprise Experiment” (a sequel to her original series episode “The Enterprise Incident”).
Born in Sussex, New Jersey, on March 25, 1939, Dorothy Catherine Fontana attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, and initially worked as a secretary for the President of television company Screen Gems. After moving to Los Angeles, she worked as secretary to writer Samuel A. Peeples, whom she began working with on western television series like The Tall Man and Frontier Circus.
Fontana first collaborated with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry on the 1963 military series The Lieutenant. After its cancellation, Fontana went on to write ten episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, including “Journey to Babel,” which introduced Spock’s parents. She was also appointed story editor towards the end of the first season in 1967, a position that she left prior to production of the third season the subsequent year, because she wanted to start freelancing.
In 1973, she returned as associate producer and story editor on Star Trek: The Animated Series: she also wrote the episode “Yesteryear,” a time travel tale that delved into Spock’s childhood. In 1986, she and Roddenberry wrote the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint,” earning her a 1988 Hugo Award nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation. Like most of the first season’s writers, she departed due to interference from Roddenberry’s lawyer Leonard Maizlish. She eventually returned to Star Trek on TV one more time, co-writing the first season Deep Space Nine episode “Dax” with Peter Allan Fields.
Her other TV credits included episodes of ’70s classics like The Six Million Dollar Man, Land of the Lost, Kung Fu, The Waltons, and Dallas; serving as story editor on the short-lived Logan’s Run series; and cartoons like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ReBoot, Silver Surfer, and Beast Wars: Transformers. She also wrote three episodes of Babylon 5.
Outside of TV, Fontana was a regular contributor to the fanzine Inside Star Trek, for which she conducted interviews from the set of the original show. She was an active member of the Writers Guild of America West, serving on its board of directors for two separate terms, and in later life was a senior lecturer at the American Film Institute. She is survived by her husband, Oscar-winning visual effects cinematographer Dennis Skotak, whom she married in 1981. Her family have asked that memorial donations be sent to the Humane Society, the Best Friends Animal Society, or the AFI.
