Adrian Spies; Longtime Television Writer, Journalist

Adrian Spies, a New York journalist who moved west to write for television, including such series as “Climax,” “Dr. Kildare” and “Star Trek,” has died at the age of 78.

Spies died during heart surgery Oct. 2 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his family announced.

A native of Newark, N.J., who studied journalism at Columbia University, Spies wrote for the New York Mirror, PM and the Washington Post before switching to radio and then television in Chicago.

He came to Los Angeles in 1957 during a prolific output of television scripts for the dramatic series “Playhouse 90” and “Climax” for which he won the Robert E. Sherwood Award.

Spies wrote scripts for the popular series “Ironside,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” “The Defenders” and “Hawaii Five-0.”

He won a following among “Star Trek” fans for a script telecast Oct. 27, 1966, in which the Enterprise crew discovers children who are 300 years old with a disease that causes death in adolescence.

Spies drew on his newspaper background to create a one-season series, “Saints and Sinners,” starring Nick Adams and Barbara Rush as newspaper reporters.

Later, Spies concentrated on television movies and such miniseries as 1979’s “Hanging by a Thread.” In the 1980s, he wrote scripts for the series “Fortune Dane” and part of “In the Heat of the Night.”

He is survived by his wife, Martha, two daughters from an earlier marriage, Nancy Haberman and Amy Spies, and four grandchildren.