Darren Swimmer

A regular partner of the writer and producer Todd Slavkin, Darren Swimmer got his start in the business as the co-writer of 1994's "Natural Selection" (aka "Dark Reflection"), a made-for-TV horror mystery directed by the genre veteran Jack Sholder and centered on a happy software programmer who encounters his malicious doppelganger. While scripting the similarly grisly behavioral-modification thriller "Control" a decade later, Swimmer and Slavkin applied their penchant for science fiction to a decidedly more mainstream franchise in "Smallville," an action-adventure series chronicling the early, angst-filled years of Superman. Starting with the cataclysmic second-season premiere "Vortex," the duo jointly penned over two dozen episodes and served as the show's co-executive producers for most of its run. Swimmer and his partner shortly thereafter used their success as series nurturers to help launch the revamped 2009-2010 version of the prime-time soap "Melrose Place" before further exploring the superhero genre as writers on programs such as the action dramedy "No Ordinary Family."