Dorothy Catherine Fontana (March 25, 1939 – December 2, 2019)[1] was an American television script writer and story editor, best known for her work on the original Star Trek series.

She later worked with Roddenberry again on Genesis II and then as story editor and associate producer on Star Trek: The Animated Series.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, she worked on a number of television shows including The Streets of San Francisco, Bonanza, The Six Million Dollar Man, Logan's Run, The Waltons, and Dallas.

[1] Roddenberry hired Fontana to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but, while she was given an associate producer credit, the experience soured their relationship and resulted in a claim put to the Writers Guild of America.

[9] After she graduated from college, she went to New York City, where she got a job working at Screen Gems as the junior secretary to the president of the studio.

She gained employment in the typing pool at Revue Studios,[7] working as the secretary to writer Samuel A. Peeples during his time on the Western television series Overland Trail.

[citation needed] After the series was canceled, Roddenberry began work on Star Trek, and Fontana was introduced to science fiction, which had not been a previous interest of hers.

[7] Following encouragement from associate producer Robert H. Justman,[10] 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 called "The Day Charlie Became God".

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 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, Arthur H. Singer, did not understand the basics of the series, such as what the transporter did.

[23] He was unsure when "This Side of Paradise" was proposed, as Fontana had changed the romantic lead from Hikaru Sulu to Spock[24] but he enjoyed being able to act out emotions with the character,[25] and also praised her work on "Journey to Babel" and "The Enterprise Incident".

[23] Nimoy also felt that unusually among Star Trek's writers, Fontana was able to write believable female characters who were fully developed in the screenplay.

[28] She was hired as story editor, associate producer and de facto showrunner on Star Trek: The Animated Series.

[29] Roddenberry (credited for the first time on a Star Trek project as "executive consultant") retained nominal creative control but relinquished most of his authority to Fontana while focusing on other television endeavors and lecture tours.

She also sold stories to several other science fiction series, including The Six Million Dollar Man, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Automan (although the latter never became an episode due to the cancellation of the show).

She was reportedly so dissatisfied with revisions made to her script for "Gun on Ice Planet Zero" that she used a pseudonym; the story spread, resulting in other well-known science fiction writers refusing to work on the show.

[33] When work on Star Trek: The Next Generation began, Roddenberry asked Fontana to join the team, and she offered to pitch some story ideas.

[36] Her work on "Encounter at Farpoint" was expanded by Roddenberry to add the character Q, as when she wrote her draft[37] it was unclear whether it would be a single or double episode.

The 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.

[42] Fontana wrote the episode "The War Prayer" for the first season of Babylon 5, based on a premise by series creator J. Michael Straczynski.