Gene L. Coon

His Wagon Train scripts contained strong moral lessons concerning personal redemption and opposing war, and he later repeated very similar themes in his Star Trek scripts. (The latter series, though it owed much to C. S. Forester's novels about Horatio Hornblower and Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels, was sold to the NBC television network using the unofficial nickname of "Wagon Train to the stars".) Coon joined the original Star Trek series during its first season; David Gerrold credited him with being a skilled showrunner before Coon left in the middle of the second season.[2] Coon was responsible for many rewrites of Star Trek scripts.

His credited creations for Star Trek include the Klingons and the Organian Peace Treaty (in "Errand of Mercy"), Khan Noonien Singh (in "Space Seed", where he adapted a Carey Wilber story), Zefram Cochrane (in "Metamorphosis"), the advancement and the definition of the Prime Directive in "The Return of the Archons" and "Bread and Circuses", respectively, the official naming of the United Federation of Planets itself in "Arena" (in which he inadvertently plagiarized a Fredric Brown story), and the official naming of Starfleet Command in "Court Martial". Since he also had the responsibility of revising scripts, he worked uncredited on many other episodes. He also mentored the young Gerrold and helped him polish the script for the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles".[2] Other popular Star Trek episodes that he wrote included "The Devil in the Dark" , "A Taste of Armageddon", and "A Piece of the Action". He is credited with much of the character development of Star Trek's characters, much of the humor of Star Trek, and the "bickersonesque" disagreements between Spock and McCoy.

Following arguments with Roddenberry over the tone of the installment "Bread and Circuses", partly a satire on the medium of television, Coon left the writing staff and designated John Meredyth Lucas as showrunner. After announcing to Lucas that he was leaving, Lucas, who had already written the installments "The Changeling" and "Patterns of Force" for the program, quoted Coon as saying, "Why the hell don't you take over? You produced The Fugitive and Ben Casey and that shit".[3] Lucas suspected Coon may have been secretly diagnosed with cancer, but he never definitely learned whether this was the case.

Coon contributed to four scripts for the third season under the pseudonym of Lee Cronin, as he was by then under contract to Universal Studios.

Following his period with Star Trek, Coon produced the Universal Studios series It Takes a Thief, starring Robert Wagner, during which he mentored Glen A. Larson. He also continued to write for Kung Fu and The Streets of San Francisco. In 1973, he served as co-writer with Gene Roddenberry on the NBC-TV movie The Questor Tapes. The movie was to serve as a pilot for a new series, but Roddenberry balked at a decision by NBC to eliminate the character of Jerry Robinson, Questor's human companion/mentor. (Coon died before the pilot aired in early 1974.)

Although Coon turned down the opportunity to work on Star Trek: The Animated Series, he continued to work with Roddenberry, co-writing Genesis II and the proposal for Spectre. He also founded UniTel Associates, one of the earliest production companies aimed at the home video market.

Coon was known as one of the fastest writers in Hollywood, and he often rewrote a script for shooting overnight or over a weekend.[4] He had a dry sense of humor, as reflected in his two novels. After years of separation, Coon again found his first love, model Jackie Mitchell. In 1967, he divorced his wife Joy so that he could be with Jackie, with whom he spent the last five years of his life.

He worked as a writer on Dragnet, Bonanza, Zorro, Peter Gunn, Mr Lucky, Have Gun – Will Travel, Wagon Train, The Wild Wild West, The Four Just Men, Combat!, and McHale's Navy. Later, his role was producer for The Wild Wild West.

• The Girl in the Kremlin (1957)
• Man in the Shadow (1957)
• No Name on the Bullet (1959)
• The Raiders (1963)
• The Killers (1964)
• First to Fight (1967)
• Journey to Shiloh (1968)
• The Questor Tapes (1974)

By Gene L. Coon

• Meanwhile Back at the Front (New York: Crown, 1961. 309 pp.) is a novel dealing with the improbable exploits of the Public Information Section of the 1st Marine Division during the Korean War.[5]
• The Short End of the Stick (published 1964) is a novel dealing with the lives and problems of American troops stationed along the DMZ in Korea after the war ended. It includes how they got along with and were treated by the native Koreans, focusing on sex and cultural clashes. It is also one of the earliest publications to discuss the drug problems of the bored occupation troops and how commanders dealt with them.