Majel Barrett RIP

Majel Barrett Roddenberry died from leukaemia on 18 December. She was 76.


Majel Barrett was a part of Star Trek right from the very beginning: As Majel Hudec, she was cast in the role of Number One for the pilot episode “The Cage”. Unfortunately, the pilot was a failure – TV executives were not just ready for was a female in such a lofty role even if the programme was set in a more egalitarian future. When Star Trek was eventually made was recast as Nurse Christine Chapel.


From the start, she also supplied the voice of the Enterprise's computer (and Voyager and DS9) in all the television series and in six of the 10 Star Trek movies. But perhaps her finest Star Trek role was as Lwaxana Troi, the feisty mother of Deanna Troi in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.





Picard and Troi

She and Roddenberry married in Japan in 1969 and she stuck by him during the difficult years when it seemed that his creation was then doomed to fail. The television series started to go out in September 1966 and ran for three seasons before being cancelled because of low ratings. It was not until the early 70s that Star Trek gained its popularity. After Roddenberry’s death in 1991 Majel discovered an unused script he had drafted in the 1970s and launched herself on a new career as an executive producer of two series, Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict.

Before she died she had completed voice over work for the new Star Trek film due out next year.