Wednesday, December 4, 2019

A Small Part of her Katra is in All of Us - R.I.P. D.C. Fontana, 1939-2019

The news broke yesterday after I posted. Dorothy Catherine "D.C." Fontana passed away after a "brief illness" on Monday night.

Fontana was part of what shaped Star Trek. This remarkable woman was trusted by Gene Roddenberry with something very important: The planet Vulcan.

Her worldbuilding and writing skills, combined with the brilliance of Leonard Nimoy, brought the character of Spock alive. She created the characters of Sarek and Amanda, she was the one who established why Spock is half-Vulcan.

Roddenberry first hired Fontana to work on The Lieutenant - as his secretary. She already had writing credits at this point. He invited her to write Charlie X, the second episode of Star Trek. This was when Spock started to "speak to" her.

She proceeded to write eleven episodes of the original series including "Journey to Babel," and "The Enterprise Incident." She also wrote one episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series. She wrote or cowrote five episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

She was the "story editor" for Logan's Run and also wrote episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, War of the Worlds, The Legend of Prince Valiant, Babylon 5, Captain Simian & The Space Monkeys, ReBoot, Earth: Final Conflict, Silver Surfer and Beast Wars: Transformers.

She worked as a lecturer. And she may have completed one last work we haven't seen. According to IMDB she was working on the pilot for a TV show based off of Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang. (This is somehow the first I've heard of its existence. I really hope she finished it and the show goes forward as one last piece of her legacy).

It's no exaggeration to say that without D.C. Fontana, Star Trek would not be the cultural phenomenon it is. She was a major part of what makes it more than just a TV show.

And if Star Trek was not what it was I would not be who I am. Not only has Star Trek...and most especially Fontana's work on the Vulcans and the way it inspired Diane Duane's work on the Romulans...been a major influence on my writing.

It's also how I met my husband.

I am not exaggerating when I say that without Dorothy Catherine Fontana I would never have met the man with whom I have spent more than twenty years and whom I call by the Romulan endearment "sahe."

I have never met her, but she had an impact on my life that many people I have met could not understand.

The correct words are, I believe, "I grieve with thee."

But the voice I can hear in my head says "Live long and prosper."

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