American television writer who wrote the teleplay of Whom Gods Destroy, the third-season original Star Trek episode about the mad former starship captain Garth of Izar.
Lee Erwin wrote for American television from the 1950s to the 1970s, largely for westerns and crime dramas.
His Star Trek credit is Whom Gods Destroy, for which he wrote the teleplay from a story he shares with Jerry Sohl. Kirk and Spock bring a new medicine to the asylum on Elba II and find that its most celebrated inmate, the former fleet captain Garth of Izar, has used a shape-changing ability to take over. Styling himself Lord Garth, master of the universe, he tries to obtain the Enterprise with the help of the Orion Marta and other inmates, and finally confronts Spock in the guise of Kirk.
Garth, played by Steve Ihnat, has been referred to in later series and tie-in fiction as a hero of Kirk's youth.