Joseph Stefano

Joseph William Stefano was a writer for film and television. He wrote the story for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, which featured the death of Natasha Yar. He also shared teleplay credit with Hannah Louise Shearer.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Stefano started out as a pop music composer in the 1940s before moving on to screenwriting in the late 1950s. After writing the 1958 drama The Black Dahlia, he was assigned by director to write the screenplay for his Psycho, which became a huge success and Stefano's best-known work. (His script was later followed in the 1998 remake by ). However, Stefano turned down an offer to write another screenplay for Hitchcock in order to become a writer and producer for the classic science fiction series The Outer Limits during the show's first season (1963-64). The Outer Limits featured numerous Trek alumni in its production crew and cast. Byron Haskin, Robert Justman, Fred Phillips and Wah Chang all worked on the series, just as directors Gerd Oswald, John Erman and writer Harlan Ellison.

Stefano also wrote screenplays for such films as The Naked Edge (1961), Eye of the Cat (1969), TV's Snowbeast (1977), The Kindred (1987), and Two Bits (1995, on which he also served as executive producer). Additionally, he became a writer and executive producer on the short-lived Swamp Thing series. He also returned to the Psycho fold in, writing the made-for-TV sequel Psycho IV: The Beginning.

Stefano died in 2006 after suffering injuries in a fall. He was 84 years old.