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Women saved Trek in 60's & 70's

V

voggmo

Commodore
Small mention was made about this last page latest Star Trek mag.

Bjo Trimble's letter campaign, Shirley Maiewski welcomittee info/outreach. & Joan Winstons Making of Star Trek Conventions book, and Trek lives by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak, and Joan Winston.

I hadn't realized all that. Even most 70's Trek novels were by female authors.


Speaking of female Trek contributions, Lucille Ball & D.C Fontana as well deserve honorable mention.

Anyway, as I pondered all this I wondered why this wasn't on the cover or more widely known. Hardcore Trekkies perhaps know it, but methinks some sort of recognition is warranted. How bout an award for meritorious Trek achievement? given out at convention or something. Maybe a book.

Please feel free to add any other lesser known female accomplishments, or ideas on how to give credit to them & show our appreciation.
 
Fontana penned about a dozen adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise — including " Charlie X", the second episode ever aired —
 
Including Fontana, six different women were credited as writers on the original series. This was an extraordinary amount for the time, when screenwriting was still mainly considered a man's profession.
 
There's Jean Lisette Aroeste, a Star Trek fan, librarian, and first time writer who penned the "Is There No Truth in Beauty?", one of the gems of the third season, and sold the story that was the basis of "All Our Yesterdays".
 
TOS was incredibly sexist. They were always trying to find ways to get Kirk's shirt off. :lol:
 
voggmo said:
Fontana penned about a dozen adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise — including " Charlie X", the second episode ever aired —
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Not to mention a heck of a lot of rewrites and episode salvage operations before becoming strictly an author (I suspect her rewrite of City on the Edge of Forever" was probably the lion's share of the three known rewrites).
 
Lee said:
out of curiosity, do you happen to know why they didn't ultimately cast her?
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At a guess, it's probably asking for trouble to put the writer of the episode into centre stage as the featured guest artist on a TV series. Especially with Shatner's supposed reputation for tweaking scenes so that Kirk had more to do. With Mira being Scotty's love interest, this episode could have been the start of the Shatner/Doohan fued. Who knows? ;)

David Gerrold fancied himself playing Ensign Freeman in "The Trouble With Tribbles", too. The name is a play on Gerrold's real surname.

When "More Tribbles, More Troubles" came along, Gerrold cheekily joked in the script that a certain redshirted crewman had "an uncanny resemblance" to the scriptwriter - and Filmation's artists actually granted his wish. When Alan Dean Foster was writing up the TAS adaptation for "ST Logs" he punished Gerrold for his cheekiness by calling that unnamed crewman "Hacker". :lol:
 
Well, I knew it ended without it! *grin* I semi-recently read Justman's/Solow's Making Of and remembered reading the budget forced them to try and avoid the royalties in syndication.

As a "gee whiz" along the same lines, for the movie MASH, Altman's kid came up with the theme song (for the suicide funeral) and originally just wanted a free guitar out of the deal. I believe the producer forced him to 'do it right' and get credits, etc. As it turns out, the kid who composed the song ended up with more money than his dad who directed the movie, thanks to the TV series royalties.
 
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