Michael DeMeritt

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference

Michael DeMeritt is an assistant director who worked on Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. He joined the staff of Voyager as a 2nd 2nd Assistant Director during its first season, having previously worked in that position for three years (1992–1995) on the drama series L.A. Law (starring Corbin Bernsen and Larry Drake). He became the Key 2nd Assistant Director on Voyager during its fourth season and ultimately rose to 1st Assistant Director of Voyager before the series ended in 2001.

DeMeritt moved on to Enterprise, where he rotated between Key 2nd Assistant Director and First Assistant Director with Jerry Fleck. After Fleck's death in 2003 DeMeritt continued working as the show's First Assistant Director until its cancellation in 2005.

A graduate of Michigan State University, DeMeritt was selected for the Director's Guild of America's (DGA) Producer Training Program in the early 1990s. As a DGA trainee, DeMeritt worked on such projects as the hit television series The Wonder Years (starring Olivia d'Abo) and Quantum Leap (starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell), the 1991 film All I Want for Christmas (starring Andrea Martin and featuring art direction-set decoration by Herman Zimmerman, Randy McIlvain, and John M. Dwyer), the 1992 films Newsies (starring Marc Lawrence and Kevin Tighe, with photography by Andrew Laszlo) and Jennifer Eight (featuring Kevin Conway and Bob Gunton) and the 1992 HBO movie Citizen Cohn (featuring Daniel Hugh Kelly, Jeffrey Nordling, and Fritz Weaver, with art direction by Gary Kosko).

After Enterprise, DeMeritt became a 2nd Assistant Director on the CBS series Las Vegas, starring Nikki Cox. He then moved on to another CBS series, Close to Home. Currently, he continues his association with CBS as 2nd Assistant Director of the vampire series Moonlight.

In addition to his work as an assistant director, DeMeritt is also a writer and a poet. In 1995, he wrote a comic book story based on an unused outline for Star Trek: The Next Generation for TNG Special 3 called "Pandora's Prodigy". During his time on Voyager and Enterprise, he would write humorous poems and recite them to the cast as well as the hair and makeup crews. Many of the poems were specifically about Star Trek, with titles such as "Changing Captains" (about Kate Mulgrew being cast as Kathryn Janeway), "Jeri Ryan" (for the actress of the same name), "Scott" (for actor Scott Bakula), and "Shran Rap." Jeri Ryan convinced DeMeritt to keep some of his poetry rather than discard them as he had been doing, and in 2006, he published a book of his work called Poetry and Prose Out the Director's Ass.

Two Star Trek characters have been named after DeMeritt: there was an Ensign Michael DeMerrit aboard USS Voyager, and an M. DeMeritt aboard the NX-01 Enterprise.

[edit] External links

• Michael DeMeritt at the Internet Movie Database
• MichaelDeMeritt.com - official site
• Michael DeMeritt at TheBiz.Variety.com