Today in Star Trek history: Majel Barrett is born

The many Star Trek characters portrayed by Majel Barrett

FEBRUARY 23, 2022 - She was Star Trek’s first First Officer, a nurse and doctor, a telepathic ambassador, and even a computer. Today we remember the First Lady of Star Trek, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.

Barrett was born Majel Leigh Hudec in Cleveland, Ohio and began taking acting classes as a child. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Miami, studying to become a legal clerk. After failing a class in contract law, she decided the profession wasn’t for her, so she moved to New York City to try her hand at acting. She appeared in several plays, including The Solid Gold Cadillac, an Off-Broadway production that ended up touring the United States for nine months, with Barrett on board.

Barrett’s first film role was in a parody ad at the beginning of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957. Her film career continued in films like 1961’s Love in a Goldfish Bowl and 1965’s Sylvia. When she met Lucille Ball, who would later be christened the “First Lady of Television,” in an acting class, Lucy loved Majel so much that she signed the young actress to a contract with Desilu Studios. At Desilu, Barrett worked on such shows as Bonanza (in an episode also featuring James Doohan), The Untouchables, and The Lucy Show. But it was when she did a guest spot on The Lieutenant that her life would change forever.

Barrett was brought in to The Lieutenant for an episode entitled “In the Highest Tradition” and it was practically a “Who’s Who” of future Trek personnel. The headliner of the show was one Gary Lockwood as second lieutenant William Tiberius Rice, who would go on to play Gary Mitchell in the second Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” In addition to Barrett, the guest cast of the episode included Leonard Nimoy, without the pointed ears. And in the director’s chair sat Marc Daniels, director of fifteen Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, including the very first one to hit the airwaves, “The Man Trap.”

It’s apparent, though, that Barrett was most intrigued with The Lieutenant’s creator, a policeman-turned-writer named Gene Roddenberry. They had met a few years earlier, but now they really got to know each other. As they became friends, a mutual attraction developed. Roddenberry was married, though, and Barrett was cautious. She wasn’t sure he would ever leave his wife and she had no intention of being “the other woman.” “I felt I would spend the rest of my life loving him, but not necessarily with him,” she revealed in an interview for William Shatner’s 1993 book, Star Trek Memories.

Roddenberry, stifled from telling “important” stories by a Hollywood that wasn’t ready for them, began developing an idea that would grow to become his legacy: Star Trek. He pulled Leonard Nimoy in based on his performance in The Lieutenant as a pointy-eared, green-blooded Vulcan and he invited Barrett to come aboard as the First Officer, a mysterious woman simply called “Number One.”

The next part of the story is well-known and much-documented. Once the pilot was in the can, Roddenberry showed it to the suits. They had decidedly mixed feelings, citing a lack of action as a reason to turn it down. However, there were some aspects they liked very much, so they commissioned an unprecedented second pilot. There were a number of conditions, one of which was to axe two characters: the one that looked like Satan and the woman who had the gall to think she could be second-in-command of a starship. Roddenberry realized he could only save one of the characters and, putting his feelings aside, he cut Number One from the show.

When the series was picked up based on the second pilot, Roddenberry created a new, recurring character named Nurse Christine Chapel. Barrett thought the role should go to her, and to convince Roddenberry, the brunette bleached her hair blonde. Barrett picks up the story:

Next morning, I came into Gene’s outer office and waited for him. When he got in, he walked by me, sort of half-smiled and grunted a “hello.” But when he took a second look at me, he said, “Majel? Is that you?” I said, “Look, Gene, if I can fool you, I can certainly fool NBC.” He said, “Yeah, you’re right.”

- Star Trek Memories, 1993

Nobody was fooled, but nobody objected, either. And why would they? Barrett was great in the role of a Nurse who suffered from unrequited love with Spock, a Vulcan who could harbor no such emotion for her. After all, Barrett knew a thing or two about unrequited love. But that was soon to change. In 1968, as the first Star Trek was ending, so was Roddenberry’s marriage. He and Barrett married the following year in a Shinto ceremony in Tokyo, Japan.

Nurse Chapel wasn’t in every episode of Star Trek, but Barrett was in nearly every episode, thanks to an additional role: that of the ship’s computer. She performed that role for TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and every Trek film through the 2009 reboot. Her voice became so synonymous with the Trek computer that it was recorded phonetically before she died, in the event that companies such as Apple might want to offer it as a voice option in their products. None of them have released such an option yet, but Trek fans are waiting!

Barrett went on to voice numerous characters on Star Trek: The Animated Series, including the cat-like Caitian, M’Ress, and when TNG launched she became a recurring character, the flamboyant and troublesome Lwaxana Troi, telepathic mother of Deanna.

After Roddenberry’s death in 1991, Barrett took two of his undeveloped ideas and had them developed. Earth: The Final Conflict and Andromeda were both produced in Canada and while neither can claim the success Star Trek has had, neither of them was exactly a flop, running five seasons each.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry passed away a week before Christmas 2008, at the age of 76, after a brief battle with Leukemia. She left behind a son, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment, a legacy of many hours of Star Trek, and the admiration of hundreds, if not thousands, of fans. Her first Trek character, Number One, is now being played by Rebecca Romijn in the upcoming series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, proving what Gene and Majel knew all along: a woman does, absolutely, belong on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Please raise a glass with all of us here at Daily Star Trek News to Majel Barrett-Roddenberry on what would have been her 90th birthday.