In passing

Michael Piller, 57; Star Trek writer

Los Angeles Michael Piller, a writer and producer best known as one of the creative forces behind the “Star Trek” television franchise, whose scripts brought a human touch to the intergalactic saga, has died. He was 57.

Piller died Tuesday of cancer at his home in Los Angeles, his family said.

The first episode Piller wrote in 1989 for the syndicated “Star Trek: The Next Generation” revealed a love for baseball and a knack for creating morality plays set in the 24th century that resonated with viewers.

Eventually, Piller became the head writer and executive producer of “Star Trek: The Next Generation, ” which aired until 1994. He co-created and produced the syndicated “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” from 1992 to 1995 and UPN’s “Star Trek: Voyager” from 1994 to 1996. He also wrote the 1998 film “Star Trek: Insurrection.”

In 1999, Piller formed a production company with his son, Shawn, called Piller2. Their first project was the TV show “The Dead Zone,” based on the Stephen King novel, which debuted on the USA Network in 2002 and remains on the air.

R.C. Gorman; American Indian artist

Albuquerque, N.M. R.C. Gorman, a leading American-Indian artist whose archetypal portrayals of Navajo women in paintings, prints, ceramics and sculpture became enormously popular in homes and offices, died Thursday at University of New Mexico Hospital. He was believed to be 73 or 74.

According to a statement posted on his Web site, Gorman had been ill for more than a month with a “virulent blood infection and pneumonia, among other issues.”

Gorman was extremely popular in the 1970s and ‘80s, mass-producing prints, bronzes and ceramics that were snapped up by an eager public, including celebrities such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol.

Although his art was often dismissed by critics as repetitive and uninspired, two of his paintings were selected for the 1973 exhibition “Masterworks of the Museum of the American Indian,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city.

J. Edward Murray, 90; innovative newsman

Boulder, Colo. J. Edward Murray, a foreign correspondent who covered World War II and later helped found the now-defunct Los Angeles Mirror, has died. He was 90.

Murray, who was the Mirror’s managing editor from 1948 to 1960, died Wednesday of natural causes in Boulder, Colo.

Murray was among a trio of journalists from United Press International contacted by Norman Chandler, then the Los Angeles Times’ publisher, to start the tabloid afternoon daily in 1948, said Mel Deans, copy desk chief of the Mirror from 1953 to 1960.

The three were writers with little newspaper experience, unafraid to try new ideas, Deans said.

At first, the Mirror was printed sideways – with the fold at the top – but it was soon converted to a traditional magazine-style format. Murray called the news reporters, almost all men, the “Mirrormen,” and if a story was reported by telephone, he ran it with a tiny picture of a phone and the words “A Mirrorfone interview.”

“There were all sorts of nutty things like that,” Deans said.

In effect, Murray was editor of the paper because he held the top job in the newsroom, and his coverage of the sensational news the paper favored was aggressive, Deans said.

After leaving the Mirror, he became managing editor of the Arizona Republic and associate editor of the Detroit Free Press. His last newspaper stint was at the Daily Camera in Boulder, where he was president and publisher from 1976 until 1982.