The Unseen Women of Star Trek: WRITERS

This post is a bit of a departure from the standard AWL repertoire, but I'm a huge Trekkie, and after watching the first few episodes of the new Picard series, Star Trek has been taking up a lot of my mind space lately.
I have to admit though, as much as seeing Jean Luc embody and espouse Starfleet ideals again makes me warm and fuzzy inside, Discovery is the series that lifted the franchise to a new level for me. While I may not agree with some of the creative decisions that have been made (gruesome much?!), Discovery really raised the bar with all of the incredible women it features both on and off the screen -- which got me thinking: How involved have women been in the production of Star Trek throughout its 50+ years?
My cursory online survey of "the women of Star Trek" resulted in a bunch of articles, posts, and even books about the characters and actresses, but almost nothing about the ladies BEHIND the camera. So I did what any normal and totally non-obsessive person would do: scoured every single Star Trek entry on IMDB searching for women in the production credits. (Awesome Women of Star Trek Library?)
Happily I found that, although information about their specific contributions is often hard to come by, many women's names are attached to this beloved world. Therefore, in the interest of internet real estate and your attention span, I'm splitting this list into multiple posts, with the first dedicated to women who have written for the shows or movies (in alphabetical order). Enjoy!
P.​S. Most of the info below was drawn from imdb.com, memory-alpha.fandom.com, and linked interviews. While I've done my best to be thorough, I admit my fallibility and welcome corrections. The vast majority of women credited with working on Trek have little to no information available about them, and photos are even more scarce. Also, shorts, video games, books, comics, and fan-made media are not included.

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Unique among the handful of episodes for TOS and TAS that Margaret Armen wrote is "The Lorelei Signal" (TAS), which features the only time -- in either television or film -- that Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) gets to command the Enterprise. Roddenberry had wanted Uhura to take command at some point during TOS, but the idea of a female commander was apparently deemed too outrageous. During her 20+ years in the industry, Armen also wrote for several other shows, including Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman.
​Photo via IMDB

Jean Lisette Aroeste was a librarian (I love her already!) who, without any connections to the industry, decided to try her hand at writing an episode of Star Trek. She sent in her script for "Is There In Truth No Beauty," and the studio actually bought it! This was more common than you might think, as three other female TOS writers (who each wrote one episode) -- Joyce Muskat, Judy Burns, and Shari Lewis (from Lamb Chop's Play-Along!) -- did the same thing, although Burns and Lewis were already in the biz. Aroeste's "All Our Yesterdays," in which Kirk, Spock, and McCoy get trapped in different pasts on an alien world, was her second and final contribution to television. Fun fact: the name of one of the characters, Mr. Atoz (who's a librarian!), is a joke meant to reflect the best way to search a library (from "A to Z"). That's some solid library humor right there!
​Photo via IMDB

Bader wrote or came up with the story for eight episodes of Star Trek: three for TNG, one for Voyager, and four for DS9. Her stories are often bittersweet heartbreakers, like TNG's "Dark Page" (when Troi's mom is hiding a secret from her past), "Hero Worship" (when an orphaned boy starts emulating Data), and Voyager's "Eye of the Needle" (when the crew sends a message back to the Alpha Quadrant to a Romulan vessel).
​Photo via Memory Alpha

I know, right! She may have only came up with the story for a single episode of DS9 ("The Muse" in which she marries Odo), but Barrett is Star Trek royalty here so I'm including her. Barrett, of course, was Gene Roddenberry's wife, but she was so much more than that. Originally cast as Captain Pike's first officer for TOS's pilot, she was recast as Nurse Chapel because, as we've already seen, the studio wasn't comfortable with women in positions of power. She went on to provide the voice of the computer for the Enterprise-D and DS9, and star as the larger than life character of Lwaxana Troi, a role she reprised on DS9 three times.
​Photo via IMDB

A veteran Star Trek novelist, Beyer started writing for Discovery in 2016. She is also deeply involved with the Discovery comic series as both a writer and coordinator, and was executive story editor for the episode "Brother" in the second season of Discovery. And for all of us Jean Luc fans, we have Beyer to thank for Picard, as she was the one who came up with the concept for the series.
​Photo via Memory Alpha

Dorothy Catherine Fontana is the godmother of all female Star Trek writers. Roddenberry's former production secretary, her greatest contribution is undoubtedly infusing the character of Spock with humanity via his mother. Fontana wrote 11 episodes of TOS, creating several classic alien species in the process including the Andorians and Tellarites. The first woman to have a producer credit for any of the Trek series (as associate producer on TAS), Fontana continued to be involved through the first season of TNG, serving as script consultant (helping to provide series continuity), writing (she co-wrote TNG's pilot), and associate producer for 12 episodes. Surprisingly, however, she​ didn't work on any of the movies.
​Photo by Larry Nemecek [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

If you love Lieutenant Reginald Barclay (and why wouldn't you??), you have this woman to thank. Under the pen name Sally Caves, Higley wrote only two episodes for all of Trek: "Babel" for DS9 (when everyone speaks gibberish), and "Hollow Pursuits" for TNG. The latter introduces us to the sweet, stammering Barclay, who suffers from holo-addiction (a term Higley invented), avoiding his real world anxieties -- and duties -- by escaping to the holodeck. While Higley never wrote for him again, Barclay would go on to become a fan favorite, appearing in five TNG episodes, six Voyager episodes, and Star Trek: First Contact.
​Photo via Memory Alpha

This writing duo met in college and have been writing together ever since. They've been working on Discovery from the beginning, first as executive story editors (which is essentially a mid-level writer position), and then as co-producers for the second season, making Kim the first woman of color (alongside Jenny Lumet, whom we'll meet in the next post) to produce for Trek. Kim and Lippoldt also wrote three episodes of Discovery's second season. Known for bringing a fresh take to the half-century-old franchise, these two have been chosen as co-executive producers and showrunners for the anticipated Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) spinoff series.
​Photo via womenandhollywood.com (cropped)

Klink came up with the story for one episode of DS9 ("Hippocratic Oath"), but her most notable contribution was with Voyager, working on 41 episodes -- more than any other female writer for the entire franchise -- as either a writer or editor.
​Photo via Memory Alpha

Although her entire TV writing career only consists of six Star Trek episodes (four TNG and two Voyager), we're all happy that she did even that much, since her stories include some real gems, such as TNG's "Lower Decks" (pictured above), "Lessons" (where Picard falls for one of his crew), and Voyager's "Learning Curve" (when Tuvok has to train a group of rabble-rousing Maqui).
​Photo via Memory Alpha

Sackett's involvement with Star Trek started in 1979 as Gene Roddenberry's assistant on the first movie. She served in this capacity for the fourth and fifth movies as well, although by then she'd already started work on TNG as a production associate (managing the various logistics like transportation and equipment procurement), which she did for a total of 111 episodes (out of 178). Her writing career was limited to two TNG episodes, but one of them, "Menage a Troi" (the one where Picard has to profess his "love" for Troi's mom to save her from a Ferengi) is one of the best of the series and merits her inclusion on our list. Look for Sackett on the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone," in which she plays a science officer (wearing Marina Sirtis' uniform from "Encounter at Farpoint"!). And you know that dedication plaque on the bridge of the Enterprise-D? If you look closely you'll see the name Admiral Susan Sackett.
​Photo via Memory Alpha

Snodgrass worked on TNG as a story editor for 13 episodes, executive script consultant for 24 episodes, and writer for 4 episodes. One of those four, "Measure of A Man," is among the show's most powerful, confronting the issue of slavery by exploring whether or not Lieutenant Commander Data is property of Starfleet. For this episode, she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award. Snodgrass also wrote for other sci-fi classic TV during the 1990s, including SeaQuest, Sliders, and The Outer Limits.
​Photo via Memory Alpha

Wait a sec, what about the movies? There are 13 Star Trek movies -- surely ONE of them had a female writer...?
Nope. NONE of the movies have female writers listed.
I know.
Don't get your tricorder in a twist just yet though. The term "producer" is supposedly often used to refer to a mid-level or senior writer, and some of the movies DO have female producers listed. However, sources differ on whether writing is still the bulk of a producer's job, or if they generally focus more on broader, upper-level creative decisions. And to make things even more confusing, this can also change depending on the project. Either way, to keep things clean I'm giving producers their own post.
Also, you may have noticed that this list is very heavy on the white ladies. Unfortunately, I couldn't find photos or interviews for most of the women writers listed on IMDB, so I have no idea who among them, if any, were women of color. I'll keep digging and update the post when I find out.
I hope you found this info as interesting as I did. Tune in next time for part two of The Unseen Women of Star Trek: Producers!