1924–1973 · Star Trek screenwriter, story editor & showrunner
Gene L. Coon (7 January 1924 – 8 July 1973) was the screenwriter, story editor and showrunner who ran Star Trek from the middle of its first season to the middle of its second — the stretch in which much of the show's enduring furniture was invented. He is credited with creating the Klingons, Khan Noonien Singh and Zefram Cochrane, with advancing the Prime Directive, and with formally naming the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet Command. He also wrote “The Devil in the Dark,” the episode that gave Leonard McCoy the complaint he would be quoted on — usually incorrectly — for the next sixty years.