Career
Zabel began his scriptwriting career with episodes for JAG and Star Trek: Voyager. He then became the story editor for the first season of Dark Angel in 2000 while continuing to write teleplays. In 2001 Zabel joined the crew of ER as an Executive Story Editor and was promoted to Co-executive Producer later that season. He was made Executive Producer part way through the eleventh season and took on the role of showrunner for the thirteenth season. Zabel has regularly written episodes throughout his time working on ER and had contributed to 38 scripts by the end of the fourteenth season.
Zabel and R. Scott Gemmill were awarded the Humanitas Prize in the 60 minutes category in 2007 for their script for the twelfth season episode "There Are No Angels Here" which followed doctors from the Chicago set series performing aid work in a refugee camp in Darfur. Humanitas stated that the prize was awarded for the episodes "unflinching look at the brutality inherent in civil wars and its belief that heroism is complex, complicated and multi-layered."
Zabel lead the show through the 2007 Writer's Guild of America Strike and picketed along with the rest of the writing team. Thirteen episodes were written prior to the strike and new episodes were written once the strike was resolved so Zabel was able to deliver a shortened 19 episode season.
Zabel was the showrunner/executive producer of "ER" through the end of its run, after 15 seasons, in 2009. He was nominated for a second Humanitas Prize for writing the episode "Heal Thyself," which he also directed. He has written numerous episodes of "Detroit 1-8-7" in 2010-2011, and also directed for that show.
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