Memory Alpha
Register
Advertisement
Memory Alpha
Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

Kellam de Forest (11 November 192619 January 2021; age 94) was a researcher who worked on Star Trek: The Original Series, under the guise of de Forest Research. He was hired by Gene Roddenberry to verify facts and correct errors in stories, starting with the first pilot, "The Cage". He never received any screen credit for his work.

Apart his work on Star Trek, de Forest worked as researcher on other television projects, including The Untouchables, which was also produced by Desilu. He was also the researcher on the pilot of William Shatner's series Barbary Coast, which also featured Michael Ansara. He also wrote the story for an episode of The Adventures of Jim Bowie (which featured Whit Bissell) and two episodes of Yancy Derringer (one of them featured Roy Jenson, the other Bert Remsen and Willard Sage).

In 1998, de Forest was interviewed in the documentary Inside Star Trek - The Real Story.

In later years, de Forest lived in his birthplace of Santa Barbara, California, and had been mainly occupied with landscape preservation, maintaining the legacy of his father (landscape architect Lockwood de Forest). [1]

He passed away on 19 January 2021 from complications due to COVID-19 at the age of 94. [2]

External links[]

Advertisement