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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.
This month we're talking about women of science fiction.
These women inspire us to imagine impossible worlds, alien creatures, and fantastical inventions, revealing our deepest fears and hopes for the future.
In sci-fi television history, there are few programs as iconic as Star Trek,
or characters as iconic as Spock, the half-human, half-Vulcan officer on the Starship Enterprise.
Today we're talking about the first female writer on Star Trek, the woman behind Spock.
She helped shape the character and the series that so many still love today.
Please meet D.C. Fontana.
Dorothy Catherine Fontana was born on March 25, 1939. She and her two brothers were raised by their mother in Totawa, New Jersey.
By the age of 11, Dorothy wanted to become a novelist. She wrote horror and adventure stories, often featuring herself and her friends as the heroes.
After she graduated from high school, Dorothy studied to be a secretary.
She thought clerical work would be the perfect day job for a novelist by night. During the summer of 1959, Dorothy got a job in New York City as a junior secretary at the television arm of Columbia Pictures.
Television writing excited her.
It was so different from the novels and short stories she usually churned out.
She later said, I was seeing scripts come across our desk and I thought, I can write this, like so many fools before me. By the fall of 1959, Dorothy had moved to Hollywood and begun working as a production secretary on some TV westerns.
Her boss, producer Sam Peeples, found out that Dorothy was a writer.
So he told her, If you bring me a good story, I will buy it.
She accepted the challenge and Sam bought the story.
It was her first sale, at 21 years old.
The episode that developed from her first television story also happened to star Liz.
Leonard Nimoy, who would go on to originate the role of Spock. Dorothy kept selling stories.
But she got turned down a lot. Dorothy wondered if her rejections had something to do with her gender.
So she tried submitting a teleplay under a pseudonym.
It was bought and produced. And Dorothy officially became D.C. Fontana.
In 1963, D.C. met Gene Rodman, who was a director of the film The New York Times.
In 1963, D.C. met Gene Roddenberry, the future creator of Star Trek.
Eventually, D.C. started working for Gene and the two formed a strong professional relationship.
Gene knew D.C. was a writer and respected her talent.
When he was developing Star Trek, he handed D.C. 15 pages, his concept for the science fiction show.
Gene asked her to give him her honest opinion.
D.C. loved the pitch but wanted to know,
who would play Spock?
Gene slid Nimoy's headshot across the desk between them.
D.C. looked at the photo and declared, Hallelujah, we're good.
D.C. started work on the first Star Trek series in 1964, still officially serving as a secretary.
But she was also writing scripts for the new show.
So when Gene got frustrated with his story editor's lackluster performance, he gave D.C. a shot. He handed her a script and a challenge.
If she could rewrite the story to please him and the studio, she would become his new story editor.
D.C. rewrote the script, which became This Side of Paradise, the 24th episode of the first season of Star Trek.
I can't lose you now, Mr. Spock, I can't.
I have a responsibility.
To this ship.
To that man on the bridge. Her work impressed Gene, and she officially became his new story editor.
At 27 years old, she was one of the youngest story editors working in Hollywood and one of the only women writing sci-fi television.
D.C. wrote 10 episodes for the original series, in addition to serving as story editor for the first two seasons.
Her stories of the starship Enterprise and its crew contained elements like supercomputers and trailblazing female commanders. But she most loved to write about Spock.
D.C. said her greatest contribution to Star Trek was her work on his character development and personal history,
exploring how his logical Vulcan side conflicted with his emotional human side.
D.C. had a talent for grounding the thrilling and bizarre elements of science fiction in compelling, character-driven stories.
Of her writing approach, D.C. said, To me, it's always about people.
Yes, I care about characters and situations, but at the heart of it is people.
People who win, lose, and might die.
D.C. left Star Trek's original series during its third and final season on the air.
She went on to work on several reiterations of the franchise, writing for Star Trek The Animated Series and Star Trek Deep Space Nine. She worked with Jean again to write the pilot episode of the series reboot,
Star Trek The Next Generation.
That episode was nominated for a Hugo Award.
In addition to the teleplays, D.C. wrote a Star Trek novel, Vulcan's Glory, which followed Spock's first-ever mission on the starship Enterprise.
D.C. worked on several other science fiction series during her lifetime, including Logan's Run, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Babylon 5.
Her work outside the sci-fi genre included shows like The Waltons and Dallas.
In 1981, D.C. married Oscar-winning visual effects designer Dennis Skotak.
The couple were together for the remainder of her life.
D.C. died of cancer on December 2, 2019 at a hospital in Burbank, California.
She was 80 years old.
All month we're talking about women of science fiction. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram,
at Wamanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!
