to The Tall Man, and Fontana sold Peeples a story called "A Bounty for Billy". She was 21; it was her first story sale. She continued to work with Peeples on the western television series Frontier Circus. During her work with Peeples, she sold six story ideas, including one on Shotgun Slade for Nat Holt. She was restricted in that particular episode, since the series only allowed for four main speaking roles including the main character. Another episode on which she worked had to be re-written to remove any outside scenes, as it was raining during the shoot, which could not be delayed for the weather to change. These were all created under the name of Dorothy C. Fontana. Peeples moved on from the company, but Fontana stayed and returned to the typing pool. Story editing Fontana saw a position on a Marine Corps-based series called The Lieutenant and applied; Fontana began working as a secretary for producer Del Reisman. Around this time, she adopted the gender-blind pen name D. C. Fontana for her writing, to prevent her pitches being prejudged on the basis of her gender, as she was one of the few female writers at NBC at the time. The Lieutenant was created by Gene Roddenberry, whom she ended up working directly for after his secretary fell ill. After finding out she wanted to become a writer, Roddenberry encouraged her. In 1964, she published her first novel, a Western called Brazos River, with Harry Sanford. The Lieutenant ran for one season. After the series was canceled, Roddenberry began work on Star Trek, and Fontana was introduced to science fiction, which had not been a previous interest of hers. Following encouragement from associate producer Robert H. Justman, and as she had been working on the show from the start of the development, Roddenberry assigned her the task of writing a teleplay on an idea he had for an episode called "The Day Charlie Became God". She worked the premise into the script for "Charlie X", although she gave Roddenberry the story credit and only took the teleplay credit for herself. It was broadcast as the second episode of the series. Although this was an adapted story, she also wrote "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" from her own idea. By the middle of the first season Steve Carabatsos, the story editor, had already left the production, and it seemed that the second