101 Best Written TV Series

Aired: NBC, 1966-1969

As creator Gene Roddenberry wrote to science fiction author Isaac Asmiov two months after the first Star Trek series premiered in 1966: "Star Trek almost did not get on the air because it refused to do a juvenile science fiction, because it refused to put a Lassie' aboard the space ship, and because it insisted on hiring Dick Matheson, Harlan Ellison, A.E. Van Vogt, Phil Farmer, and so on." Matheson and Vogt did write for the show extensively, and Ellison briefly. Months before his death and during the run of Star Trek: Next Generation, Roddenberry told the Los Angeles Times: "It has become a crusade of mine to demonstrate that TV need not be violent to be exciting. I'd often felt that no one was catching on. But if the Dalai Lama likes us, I suppose the message is getting out."

How Star Trek incubated generations of writers 

Credited Writers

Stanley Adams
Margaret Armen
Jean Losette Aroeste
S. Bar-David
Jerome Bixby
John D.F. Black
Robert Bloch
Judy Burns
Nathan Butler
Steven Carabatsos
Gene L. Coon
Oliver Crawford
Lee Cronin
Meyer Dolinsky
Max Ehrlich
Harlan Ellison
Lee Erwin
Dorothy C. Fontana
David Gerrold
Robert Hamner
David P. Harmon
Arthur Heinemann
Don Ingalls
George Calyton Johnson
Stephen Kandel
John Kingsbridge
Edward J. Lakso
Shari Lewis
John Meredyth Lucas
Don M. Mankiewicz
Richard Matheson
Joyce Muskat
Samuel A. Peeples
Gilbert Ralston
Michael Richards
Chet Richards
Gene Roddenberry
Robert Sabarof
Paul Schneider
Arthur H. Singer
George F. Slavin
Boris Sobelman
Jerry Sohl
Adrian Spies
Norman Spinrad
Theodore Sturgeon
Jeremy Tarcher
Barry Trivers
Rik Vollaerts
Art Wallace
Carey Wilber
Shimon Wincelberg
Laurence N. Wolfe