D. C. Fontana - Work With Gene Roddenberry

Work With Gene Roddenberry

Originally Gene Roddenberry's secretary, she wrote for Star Trek from the outset, starting with Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) from 1966 through 1969. During that time she wrote such episodes as "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", "Friday's Child", "Journey to Babel", "This Side of Paradise", and "The Enterprise Incident".

Under the pen name Michael Richards, Fontana wrote "That Which Survives" and "The Way to Eden", both from the third season of TOS. Fontana also wrote under the name J. Michael Bingham. This pseudonym was used for the story and teleplay credits for "The Naked Now", an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The story credit was shared by John D. F. Black, who had written "The Naked Time", the TOS episode to which "Naked Now" was an homage.

She also wrote the episode "Yesteryear" for the Emmy Award winning Star Trek: The Animated Series, the only episode of that series which contained material considered canonical.

She wrote several episodes in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation starting with the 1987 pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", and the episode "Dax" of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1993.

Between Star Trek assignments, she wrote the novelization of another Roddenberry project, The Questor Tapes. In 1989, Pocket Books published her novel, Vulcan's Glory, which concerns Spock's struggle to reconcile his Vulcan heritage with his obligations to Starfleet and his duties to family — and his own heart's desires.