Melinda M. Snodgrass (born 27 November 1951; age 72) is a writer who worked on several stories and teleplays for Star Trek: The Next Generation. She was also a story editor for The Next Generation during the second season and an executive script consultant on the third season. Her script for "The Measure Of A Man" was offered to the show by George RR Martin's agent to be produced for The Next Generation. It was one of her first scripts. (Peter Lauritson, TNG Season 2 DVD special feature "Departmental Briefing Year Two: Memorable Mission – The Measure Of A Man")
While she got on well with Maurice Hurley, the head writer during the second season, Snodgrass had a much frostier relationship with his ultimate successor, Michael Piller. She, along with Hans Beimler and Richard Manning, made up her mind to leave at the end of the third season after Piller circulated a memo giving instructions on basic television writing practices, which Snodgrass considered an insult to her ability as a writer. (Ira Steven Behr, TNG Season 3 Blu-ray special feature "Technological Distinctiveness")
Captain Melinda Snodgrass, seen on okudagrams in the episode "Up The Long Ladder" was named after her, as well as one not seen, Snodgrass. Snodgrass was interviewed for Star Trek: The Official Fan Club Magazine issue 72. Also in 1990, Snodgrass received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination in the category Episodic Drama for her work on "The Measure Of A Man".
Snodgrass was born in Los Angeles, California, grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and studied voice at the Conservatorium in Vienna, Austria. She then studied law and worked as a lawyer for several years until she started to work as a writer and story editor for television projects. Beside her work on Star Trek, Snodgrass wrote the stories for episodes of L.A. Law (1991, episode directed by David Carson), Beyond Reality (1991, episode directed by Allan Kroeker), Reasonable Doubts (1992-1993), seaQuest DSV (1993, starring Marco Sanchez and Stephanie Beacham), Strange Luck (1995), Sliders (1996, starring Jerry O'Connell and John Rhys-Davies), Profiler (1998-1999), The Outer Limits (1995-2000), and Manny Coto's Odyssey 5 (2003, starring Peter Weller, Tamara Craig Thomas and Leslie Silva, with Kenneth Mitchell).
She also wrote the teleplay for the science fiction thriller Trapped in Space (1995) and the television pilot Star Command (1996) on which she also worked as Executive Producer. Between 1998 and 1999 Snodgrass was the consulting producer on the television series Profiler. In more recent years, she wrote several novels including the "Circuit" trilogy and the Edge series.
Star Trek credits[]
- TNG:
- "The Measure Of A Man" – "Shades of Gray" – Story Editor (Season 2)
- "The Ensigns of Command" – "Ménage à Troi" – Executive Script Consultant (Season 3)
- "The Measure Of A Man" – Writer
- "Pen Pals" – Teleplay
- "Up The Long Ladder" – Writer
- "The Ensigns of Command" – Writer
- "The High Ground" – Writer
- Star Trek novels
External links[]
- MelindaSnodgrass.com – official site
- Melinda offered a correction about 'Measure of a Man' script, 23 May 2019 – Twitter thread
- Melinda M. Snodgrass at the Internet Movie Database
- Melinda M. Snodgrass at Wikipedia
- Melinda M. Snodgrass at SF-Encyclopedia.com
- Melinda M. Snodgrass at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works