Fred Freiberger (February 19, 1915March 2, 2003) was an American film and television writer and television producer, whose career spanned four decades and work on such films as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and TV series including Ben Casey (1963–64), The Wild Wild West (1965), Star Trek (1968–69) and Space: 1999 (1976–77). Freiberger was the producer of the third and final season of science-fiction series Star Trek, between 1968 and 1969. His screenwriting credits include 13 films made between 1946 and 1958. He appeared as himself in the short documentary Funny Old Guys, which aired as part of the HBO series Still Kicking, Still Laughing in 2003, a few months after his death in March. Freiberger died on March 2, 2003 at his Bel-Air home, according to his son, Ben. No cause of death was given. Early life and career Freiberger was born to a Jewish family in New York City. In the late 1930s, Freiberger worked in advertising in New York. During World War II, he was stationed in England with the United States Eighth Air Force, but was shot down over Germany and spent two years as a prisoner of war. After the war, he moved to Hollywood with the intention of working in film publicity, but a studio strike saw him move into screenwriting. He was associated with Buddy Rogers' Comet Productions and Columbia Pictures. He was one of the four credited writers on the monster movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Television career From 1958, Freiberger worked almost exclusively in television. As a writer, he contributed scripts for dozens of tv shows in the period 1952 through 1989. As a producer, his first assignment was in 1960 on the medical drama Ben Casey, followed by a brief stint as producer of The Wild Wild West during its first season (1965–66). In 1968, Freiberger was hired as producer for the third and final season of Star Trek. He then returned to writing, scripting episodes for a number of early-1970s TV series, including All in the Family, Emergency!, Starsky and Hutch and Ironside, and also worked as a story editor at Hanna-Barbera on the TV series The New Scooby-Doo Movies and Super Friends. Freiberger then moved on to produce the second (and last) season of the British sci-fi series Space: 1999 (1976–77), the final season of The Six Million Dollar Man (1977–78), and the short-lived Beyond