50 years ago, I did the near-impossible . . .

How, at the tender age of 19, did I become the youngest person to sell a script to any of Star Trek’s twelve TV series (totaling over 900 episodes, and counting) when the first animated show bought my teleplay for “The Pirates of Orion” episode in 1974? Well, as you're about to see, it took a fluky convergence of intentional determination, unintentional timing, evolving skill—and a generous helping of dumb luck.

First, let’s face it—at 19, most of us are, well . . . we’re idiots. We think we know everything. We’re certain the rules that apply to other mortals don’t apply to us. And we’re blissfully ignorant of our own blissful ignorance. Which is how 19-year-olds occasionally accomplish the near-impossible.

When Star Trek debuted in 1966, I was 12. Not old enough to be a Certified Idiot just yet, but certainly impressionable—and Star Trek made a profound impression on me. Once I'd read The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Whitfield (above, one of the best behind-the-scenes books ever), not only did I know all about the creation and production of my favorite show—I also knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write TV scripts.

And I wanted to write for Star Trek.

Of course, I didn’t even know what a TV script looked like, much less how to write one. To teach myself, I bought a copy of the “I, Mudd” episode script from the Lincoln Enterprises Star Trek souvenir catalog to learn the format. And I borrowed this library book called Teleplay: An Introduction to Television Writing (the only screenwriting book I could find)—and sorta, kinda stole it. Well, I kept it, claimed I’d lost it—and paid the library five bucks for my crime. I still have it.

After NBC cancelled Star Trek in 1969, I and countless other devout fans watched the daily syndicated reruns over and over. I learned everything there was to know about flying a starship around the galaxy—and earned my "Master of Starfleet" degree. Unfortunately, at the time, there wasn’t any Star Trek to write for. The best I could do was writing 20 Star Trek short stories on 3-hole notebook paper for my high school friends to read. 

In 1971, my senior year, my friend Mark Greenstein and I were co-editors of East Meadow High’s annual science fiction magazine Probe, featuring student-created short stories, poems, artwork, and science articles. That year, I wrote and illustrated a new Star Trek story called . . . “The Pirates of Orion” (below). And then off I went to college at the University of Connecticut.

In January 1972, I was one of 3,000 eager fans invading the Statler Hilton Hotel in Manhattan for the very first official Star Trek convention. I had to be there—I mean, who knew if there’d ever be another one? (Editor's note: There were more. Many, many, many more!)

Among various Star Trek revival rumors, one finally came true when NBC announced a Saturday morning animated Star Trek show for the 1973-74 season, produced by Filmation Associates and series creator Gene Roddenberry. Peerless Star Trek writer Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana would be wrangling scripts, many to be written by veterans of the live-action show, with the original cast doing the voices of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew (except for poor Walter Koenig as Chekov, sidelined by budget constraints).

When the animated series premiered in September ’73, most fans liked what we saw. Each half-hour episode felt like real Star Trek, not some kiddie version—and resurrected my dream of writing for the show. But how could a teenage nobody possibly submit a script, let alone have it taken seriously?

Almost without exception, network shows only bought scripts submitted by agents. Fortunately, a couple of years before, I got a lucky break when the name of my father’s childhood friend Bill Cooper appeared on a Writers Guild list of agents I'd obtained from Paramount Pictures. My dad called him and he agreed to look at my writing. So I had an actual New York agent—who advised me to write something original, not episodes of Hollywood shows that typically employed West Coast writers they already knew.

But did the 19-year-old Idiot listen to that wise counsel? Of course not.

Instead, on October 25, 1973, I wrote to Filmation, praising the new series, pretending to be a real writer, and name-dropping my agent. But my favorite part is where I declared: “I have no doubts that my familiarity with the series will guarantee a submission ready for you to use.” Talk about chutzpah! Reminds me of this classic Peanuts strip in which Snoopy writes to a publisher:  

Two weeks later, I got a reply (below) from D.C. Fontana herself, saying she was leaving the show; they wouldn’t know until January or February if it had been renewed; and if it was, they’d only be doing 6 or 8 new episodes. She also noted that they hadn’t bought any unsolicited scripts from agents.

Still, as Admiral Kirk says in Star Trek IV, “May fortune favor the foolish.” Home from college for winter break, The Idiot converted “The Pirates of Orion” short story into a script (dated January 2, 1974) and mailed it to agent Bill Cooper. Despite his insistence that I had little chance of selling a series episode, he quickly sent it to Filmation—fatefully addressed to the by-then departed D.C. Fontana.

Filmation, in turn, forwarded the unopened envelope to Dorothy’s home. And since she was no longer working on Star Trek, on January 22 she sent the unopened script back to Bill Cooper—completing a warp-speed cross-country round trip, during which nobody read it. On February 19, Cooper returned the script to The Idiot, and recommended that if the show got renewed, I should resubmit it directly to Filmation president Norm Prescott, mentioning that Cooper represented me. Which is exactly what I did on March 7.

With the destiny of my much-traveled script now out of my hands, I found myself falling for a smart, cute girl who lived upstairs in my co-ed dorm—where (unbeknownst to me) in a classic tragical tale, Cute Girlfriend was also seeing her ex-boyfriend who lived on the same floor as me. Between schoolwork, looming junior year finals, and having my heart broken, I forgot all about those Orion pirates . . .

. . . Until, five weeks after I'd shipped “Pirates” back to Filmation, I got word from my agent via a phone call from my mother—they wanted to buy my script! Following Bill Cooper’s instructions, I called Filmation producer/partner Lou Scheimer. In our first conversation, he asked if I’d written for other shows and he just hadn’t seen my name before. I confessed to being a 19-year-old rookie and college junior talking to him from my UConn dorm room. He told me Gene Roddenberry had read “Pirates” and thought it was one of the better first-draft Star Trek scripts he’d seen. So . . . Yaaaay, me!

Then I had to step up and actually be the pro writer I'd claimed to be—which served as a good distraction from the Cute Girlfriend drama and final exams. Some writers for the animated series had to go through lots of grueling rewrites, but the only change Filmation wanted on “Pirates” was a revised ending. (Maybe my script was pretty good—or maybe they were just really in a hurry. Or both.)

Mainly, Lou told me to “get ’em off the ship”—taking advantage of the fact that animators could draw anything writers could imagine, without worrying about busting a live-action budget. That's how Kirk ended up fighting the Orion captain on a lethally-explosive asteroid (above). By mid-May, I was done with revisions—and received my check for $1,400.

“Pirates” kicked off season 2 on Saturday morning, September 7, 1974—nine days before my 20th birthday. I’d spent that first week back at school inviting friends (and a new Smart, Cute Girlfriend I'd just met) over to my dorm room to watch the show on my little black and white TV. My guests filled our top and bottom bunks, chairs and floor, and my thoughtful pals Lyn DellaMonica and Darlene Susco (accompanied by Darlene's little West Highland terrier) served up Cold Duck sparkling wine in surprisingly elegant plastic champagne glasses for a group toast.

“Pirates” made me a professional writer, and got me invited in 1976 to my first of many Star Trek conventions as a guest speaker. (That's me on the right, below, sharing a panel with "Trouble with Tribbles" writer David Gerrold, the previous record holder for youngest scriptwriter at 23). My Star Trek TV writing credit opened other doors, leading to my very first novel, The Covenant of the Crown, published in 1981—one of seven Star Trek novels I’d write for Simon & Schuster—not to mention scripting 65 Star Trek comic books for DC, Marvel, Malibu and WildStorm Comics.

In October 1984 (a decade after “Pirates” aired), I got a surprise summons to a Manhattan meeting with Leonard Nimoy to brainstorm possible story ideas for the movie that would become Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home—assistance that earned me an itty-bitty screen credit (below). I was also able to visit the Star Trek IV sets for a couple of days during production, which was great fun . . . but that’s another story for another day.

I didn’t invent devious Orions—Orion smugglers and spies had first bedeviled Kirk and Spock in “Journey to Babel,” written by Dorothy Fontana and one of Star Trek’s best episodes. But I was the first to call them “Orion pirates”—so I’ve enjoyed seeing more encounters with Orion buccaneers on Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds—and I’ve especially loved how the hilarious Star Trek: Lower Decks has developed an entire Orion pirate culture.

Lower Decks has even used the Orion ship design established in my episode (below, Lower Decks version on the right).

These days, I’m writing historical fiction, with the first 2 novels in my Galloway’s Gamble series, set in the 1870s. I have a few more Galloway’s Gamble stories in mind. Telling tales about the past instead of the future is a whole different challenge, but I hope readers who’ve enjoyed my Star Trek stories will give these a try. They’ve been fun to write, and they’re fun to read, too. Both are available in paperback and ebook from Amazon (see Bookstore section of this website).

A footnote: In 1992, during a rare stretch when Star Trek’s open-submissions policy meant fans could submit scripts without an agent, 17-year-old high school kid Matthew Corey took his best shot with a Star Trek: The Next Generation script titled “Q-me?” While they didn’t buy the script, they did use the central nugget of his story for the episode “True Q,” which makes Matthew the youngest person to earn a Star Trek “based upon material by” story credit. He wrote a 2021 book about his experience, called "Q-Me?" My Star Trek Story: The True Story Behind the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "True Q" (available at Amazon).

Like me, Matthew and David Gerrold boldly went where few young writers had gone before—or since. By having the brass to see where their talent could take them, David earned the lasting distinction of being the youngest writer to sell a live-action Star Trek script (and his achievement—writing one of Star Trek's most beloved episodes—required threading a much tougher needle than mine did), and Matthew the youngest to sell a story premise.

TV has changed a lot since then, and the unique circumstances which made our youthful accomplishments possible may never happen again. So you might say we were lucky—but as Roman philosopher Seneca (supposedly) said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Except he said it in Latin.