D C Fontana

Early life

Born in Sussex, New Jersey, Fontana was raised through her childhood in Totowa, New Jersey, graduating from Passaic Valley Regional High School in 1957.

Fontana decided at the age of 11 that she wanted to become a novel writer. During her youth, she wrote horror stories featuring herself and her friends. She attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she graduated with a Associate degree as an Executive Secretarial major. After she graduated college, she left New Jersey to go to New York City, where she got a job working at Screen Gems as the junior secretary to the President of the studio. After his death shortly afterwards, she returned to her home state briefly, then moved to Los Angeles. She gained employment in the typing pool at Revue Studios, working as the secretary to writer Samuel A. Peeples during his time on the western television series Overland Trail.

When that series was cancelled, they moved onto The Tall Man, and she sold him a story called "A Bounty for Billy". She was 21; it was her first story sale. She continued to work with Peeples on the western television series Frontier Circus. During the course of her work with Peeples, she sold six story ideas, including one on Shotgun Slade for Nat Holt. She was restricted in that particular episode, since the series only allowed for four main speaking roles per episode, including the main character. Another episode she worked on had to be re-written to remove any outside scenes as it was raining during the shoot, which couldn't be delayed for the weather to change. These were all created under the name of Dorothy C. Fontana. Peeples moved on from the company, but Fontana stayed and returned to the typing pool.

Story editing

She saw a position open working on a Marine Corps based series called The Lieutenant and applied; Fontana began working as a secretary for producer Del Reisman. Around this time she adopted the name "D.C Fontana" for her written works to prevent her pitches being prejudged on the basis of her gender. The Lieutenant was created by Gene Roddenberry, who she ended up working directly for after his secretary fell ill. So Fontana was drafted into the role, while someone else covered her post with Reisman. After finding out that she wanted to become a writer, Roddenberry encouraged her. In 1964, she published her first novel, a western called Brazos River, with Harry Sanford.

After that series was cancelled, Roddenberry began to work on Star Trek, and so Fontana was introduced into science fiction, which had not been an interest of hers. Following encouragement from producer Robert H. Justman, and as she had been working on the show from the start of the development, Roddenberry assigned her the task of writing a teleplay on an idea he had for an episode from the initial pitch called "The Day Charlie Became God". She worked the premise into the script for "Charlie X"; although gave Roddenberry the story credit despite re-working it and only took the teleplay credit for herself. It was broadcast as the second episode of the series. Although this was an adapted story, she also wrote "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" from her own initial idea. By the middle of the first season Steve Carabatsos, the story editor, had already left the production, and it seemed that the second editor, John D.F. Black was also looking to leave, so Roddenberry gave Fontana the task of rewriting the episode "This Side of Paradise". He and the network were satisfied with Fontana's work, and she became the new story editor instead of Roddenberry's secretary in September 1966.

She subsequently came up with the ideas for the episodes for "Journey to Babel" and "Friday's Child". There were other works which she was formally credited with based on the Writers Guild arbitration that were only re-writes of episodes. She later recalled completely re-writing "The Ultimate Computer" as the original writer was unwilling to make the recommended changes. She said that this was a common issue, "You either had to do a light polish, sometimes just on dialogue and then you took no credit for that of course because it would not be fair, but when you really do a total script overhaul, then it has to automatically go into the Writers Guild for arbitration." She was one of four writers to re-write Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever", alongside Roddenberry, Gene Coon and Carabatsos who had all made changes at different times to the displeasure of Ellison. Fontana's draft, submitted on January 23, 1967, was superseded by three further versions by Roddenberry. Some of her works on Star Trek were credited to the pseudonym Michael Richards.

She left the team prior to the third season, but continued to write scripts on a freelance basis. These included "The Enterprise Incident", "That Which Survives" and "The Way to Eden". She disliked some of the changes made in "The Enterprise Incident", such as the size of the cloaking device, and found working with her replacement difficult as the new story editor didn't understand the basics of the series such as what the transporter did and how old Leonard McCoy was meant to be. Her freelance status meant that she could write for several series, including westerns once again. In 1969 she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for an episode of Then Came Bronson entitled "Two Percent of Nothing".

Becoming a producer

During the early 1970s she acted as Roddenberry's assistant on The Questor Tapes, which didn't go to series, but was not involved in the writing; she did however write the novelization. Fontana wrote a script for Roddenberry's Genesis II, which also didn't go beyond pilots. She was hired as both story editor and associate producer on Star Trek: The Animated Series. Roddenberry himself was used as a consultant, and not the show runner. One of her tasks on the show was to receive pitches for episodes, which she would then relay to Roddenberry. The series was awarded the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Series in 1975.

After that project ended she became the story editor on The Fantastic Journey and, although this was cancelled after a handful of episodes, working with Leonard Katzman led to Fontana writing for the Logan's Run television series. She also sold stories to several more science fiction series including the Six Million Dollar Man, as well as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Automan, although the latter never became an episode due to the cancellation of the show. Fontana wrote scripts with her brother for The Waltons, and under her own name again for The Streets of San Francisco. One possibly apocryphal story involves Fontana's experience writing for Battlestar Galactica. She was reportedly so dissatisfied with revisions made to her script for "Gun on Ice Planet Zero" that she used a pseudonym, but the story spread resulting in other known science fiction writers refusing to work on the show.

When work on Star Trek: The Next Generation began, Roddenberry asked her to join the team and she offered to pitch some story ideas; after he suggested something involving an alien space station, she worked up the idea to become the pilot "Encounter at Farpoint". She was offered the position of story editor on the crew, but wanted to be an associate producer. Writer Robert Lewin found this difficult initially as, due to her not being registered with the Writers Guild of America, he could not contractually ask her to do certain tasks; as she had offered and Roddenberry was expecting him to, he did anyway. She was eventually given her associate producer position.

Lewin said that this fight caused some resentment between Fontana and Roddenberry, and she left during the first season. She had written a story which would have brought Nimoy onto the show as Spock, but was rejected by Roddenberry. When the actor and character later appeared in the fifth season episode "Unification", she felt that her original take on The Next Generation was the right one. Her work on Encounter at Farpoint was expanded by Roddenberry to add the character Q as when she wrote her draft, it was unclear whether it would be a single or double episode. She had her work on the episode "The Naked Now" credited to the pseudonym J Michael Bingham. Her relationship with Roddenberry became so strained prior to her departure that she began tape-recording their conversations. After she left, she put in a claim with the Writers Guild that she had also worked as a story editor on the series but was never paid for it. This was settled amicably with Paramount Television.

Later work

Pocket Books editor Dave Stern approached Fontana to write a Star Trek novel, and she proposed writing the story of Spock's first mission on the Enterprise, joining a crew led by Captain Christopher Pike. Vulcan's Glory also included Scotty's first mission and an exploration of the Number One. She described this as a pleasant experience, particularly working with Stern. She returned to Star Trek, with "Dax", an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Peter Allan Fields brought her onto the series after he had previously worked with her on The Six Million Dollar Man as he was looking for quality writers. She found the episode difficult to write due to the characters not yet being fully explored since it was early in the first season. The very nature of the character of Jadzia Dax's opinion of her previous symbionts had not yet been settled, and was only resolved when Fields re-wrote part of Fontana's work. The duo were jointly credited with the screenplay.

Fontana wrote the episode "The War Prayer" for the first season of Babylon 5, based on a premise by series creator J. Michael Straczynski. Only the pilot was available for research purposes, so she spent some time speaking with Straczynski to get a feel for the series. She went on to work on the episode "Legacies", which was the only instalment of the first season which was created by a freelancer but not based on one of Straczynski's ideas. He asked her to pitch after the work on "The War Prayer", and chose the idea for "Legacies" over a premise of his own. For her season two episode "A Distant Star", she wrote the script based on an idea by Straczynski.

Fontana went on to create the storyline for the Interplay Entertainment video game Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury. The script was directed by John Meredyth Lucas who she had collaborated with on the episodes "The Enterprise Incident" and "The Ultimate Computer". Together with Derek Chester, she also wrote the scripts for the Bethesda Softworks video games Star Trek: Legacy and Star Trek: Tactical Assault. Todd Vaughn, Bethesda Softworks' VP of Development, described her as "one of Star Trek's most prolific and distinguished writers".

Fontana wrote the episode "To Serve All My Days" for the fan-made production Star Trek: New Voyages. The episode also guest starred Walter Koenig reprising his role of Pavel Chekov from The Original Series. Her work on "The Enterprise Incident" in the third season of Star Trek led to IDW Publishing seeking to have her write a sequel in comic book form for Star Trek – Year Four, entitled "The Enterprise Experiment.

Legacy

Leonard Nimoy credited her for expanding Vulcan culture within Star Trek. He was unsure when "This Side of Paradise" was proposed, as Fontana had changed the romantic lead from Hikaru Sulu to Spock. But he enjoyed being able to act out emotions with the character, and also praised her work on "Journey to Babel" and "The Enterprise Incident". Nimoy also felt that unusually within Star Trek's writers, Fontana was able to write believable female characters who were fully developed in the screenplay.

After joining the Writers Guild of America in 1960, she went on to serve on the board between 1988 and 90, and between 1991 and 93. She was awarded the Morgan Cox Award for services to the guild in 2002. She was inducted into the American Screenwriters Association hall of fame twice, both in 1997 and again in 2002.