Marvin J. Chomsky, Emmy winner and director of 3 Star Trek episodes, dies at 92

Marvin J. Chomsky on the set of Inside the Third Reich Image: ABC/Everett Collection

MARCH 30, 2022 - Marvin J. Chomsky, director of three season 3 episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, passed away this past Monday, March 28, Variety reports. He was 92 years old.

Chomsky was born on May 23, 1929 in New York City and was the cousin of linguist Noam Chomsky. He began his career in film and television as an art decorator and a set decorator before settling on directing. From 1964-1965, he was an associate producer on several episodes of The Doctors and the Nurses, a television series which, as you might expect, revolved around doctors and nurses solving weekly moral dilemmas. He also cut his teeth directing three of those episodes.

In 1967, after a run of several movies and TV series as a producer, Chomsky directed a number of episodes of the short-lived TV series Maya, about a pair of teens traveling around India on the titular elephant and went from there to direct 11 episodes of The Wild, Wild West.

In the third season of Star Trek, he was hired to direct the episodes “And the Children Shall Lead,” “Day of the Dove", and the second-to-last episode, “All Our Yesterdays.” Chomsky was hired for “Children” to replace Vincent McEveety, who had gone over time on “Spectre of the Gun.”

…the idea of overtime or an extra day was blasphemy. I became a “fireman” very early on. It was the kind of thing where they would say, “if we don’t have much money and we don’t have much time, get Marvin to do it.”

- Marvin J. Chomsky, in an interview for “These Are the Voyages - TOS Season Three” by Marc Cushman

Star Trek never had the money or the time, and they probably wished they’d hired Chomsky sooner!

Chomsky went on to direct episodes of Gunsmoke, The Intern, Mission: Impossible, and Roots, starring LeVar Burton. He also directed many made-for-television movies and mini-series, including 1978’s Holocaust, 1980’s Attica, and 1982’s Inside the Third Reich, winning Emmy Awards for all three, noting when he accepted the third one that he seemed to win awards for projects about events that “never should have happened.”

Chomsky’s final credit is for the 1995 TV movie Catherine the Great, which he both produced and directed. He is survived by three sons, David, Eric, and Peter, who is a prolific TV producer in his own right, a daughter-in-law, Genelle, and a granddaughter, Liliana. Please join us here at Daily Star Trek News in offering condolences to his family.