Western Reserve Historical Society: Majel Barrett-Roddenberry: The First Lady Of Star Trek

Press release from the Western Reserve Historical Society:

February 22, 2022

By Robyn Marcs, Grants Manager at the Western Reserve Historical Society

Space, the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise…

Many of us heard these words in our living room while watching the original series of Star Trek and its subsequent spinoff series, The Next Generation.  Cleveland was actually the first place one could see the first episode of a new series called Star Trek two days before it aired on NBC in 1966 at the Tricon Convention!  In fact, one of Cleveland’s own played a pivotal role in the series on and off the set of Star Trek.

The daughter of a Cleveland policeman, Majel Lee Hudec was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 23, 1932.  She graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1950, during which time she began to act in plays at the Cleveland Play House.  After graduation, she moved to New York, changed her last name, started an acting career, and never looked back.  She soon moved to California when the New York theatre scene became too competitive for her liking, and garnered several guest appearances on shows ranging from Bonanza to Leave it to Beaver, but her real big break came in 1964 while filming a pilot called “The Cage” for a new show: Star Trek.

1950 Shaker Heights High School Yearbook photo of Majel Lee Hudec. Image courtesy of Local History Department of the Shaker Heights Public Library

What you may not know is that in the original pilot for Star Trek, there was Mr. Spock but no Captain Kirk or Lieutenant Uhura.  Instead, there was a Captain Pike and a woman known only as “Number One,” who was Pike’s second in command.  Majel played Number One, but the character failed among test audiences and network executives. It also didn’t look great for series creator Gene Roddenberry that he had cast his new girlfriend and relatively unknown actress (Majel) in one of the main roles.  Fortunately, the famed Lucille Ball stepped in and saved the show, and the second pilot episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” started the original series that we know today.  Majel played Dr. McCoy’s assistant, Nurse Christine Chapel, in the original Star Trek series.

Sir Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Majel Barrett as Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Image courtesy of Medium.com

Majel Barrett and Gene Roddenberry married in 1969, which was the final year of the original Star Trek’s run.  She lent her voice to the ship’s computer throughout every iteration of Star Trek, including: The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and even posthumously in the 2009 J. J. Abrams movie.  My favorite role of her is as the vivacious Lwaxana Troi on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.  After her husband’s death in 1991, Majel continued to appear at Star Trek fan conventions until shortly before her death from leukemia on December 18, 2008.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry is known among fans as the kindly wife of Gene Roddenberry and the actress who left her mark across the Star Trek series over nearly fifty years.  She lived long, and she prospered.  I’ll leave you with a piece of advice given to us by her character Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Life’s true gift is the capacity to enjoy enjoyment.”

Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and Majel Barrett as Number One in the “The Cage,” the first Star Trek pilot from 1964. Image courtesy of CBS via Getty Images

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This press release was produced by the Western Reserve Historical Society. The views expressed here are the author’s own.