How do you feel about Majel Barrett?

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She seems like a nice person but it bothers me when somebody gets a role because of a personal relationship and not because she auditioned. She took the role away from more talented, harder working actresses.

 

No doubt that this happens all of the time in Hollywood and has since the beginning; you just don't know about it in most cases.

 

As others have suggested, would the character of Nurse Chapel even have existed if not for Gene Roddenberry's wish to have his wife join the cast?

The part of the "Captain's Yeoman" was never recast after Grace Lee Whitney's departure; if Majel Barrett had left, would McCoy have gotten a new nurse? Somehow I doubt it, unless it was a one-time guest character.

 

It's sort of surprising Gene didn't create the Yeoman character (Colt) for Majel in the first place. If Number One was originally written to showcase Majel's strengths as an actress, it didn't seem to do so very well.

 

It seems clear from Lwaxana Troi that Barrett had talents. She just never got to showcase them as Nurse Christine Chapel. The problem was the character, not necessarily the actress. Although personally I too find the nepotism of her casting questionable.

 

She. Wasn't. His. Wife. He was still married to Eileen when he cast Majel as Number One and Chapel.

 

Indeed. It wasn't a very well kept secret that Majel was the already married Roddenberry's girlfriend-on-the-side, which is one of the major reasons they objected to his casting her in the first pilot, and requested her removal for the second one.

 

Oh. Dear. Please. Forgive. Me. For. Not. Knowing. This.



The point I was making was whether or not Nurse Chapel would have existed if Roddenberry hadn't wanted Majel Barrett to join the cast.

For anyone who is curious about her acting pre-Star Trek, I found a Bonanza episode she was in (James Doohan is also in this episode).

This is the 3rd season episode "Gift of Water."

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmAyVaZ_F58&list=PL6fJmjt84zZiWk6e8mBtjFUU2PCVcO_I6&index=86[/yt]

 

I never met Majel Barrett and she certainly never knew that I existed. But as others have said, her dedication to this franchise and to her husband was very admirable. Unfortunately, the parts she got to play in STAR TREK - outside of the voice of the computer(s) - weren't that great.

Lwaxana, in particular, is like some precursor to Jar-Jar Binks: a comic character that's manic, loud, inappropriate and unfunny. There are times, of course, when Lwaxana wasn't advertising her Mid-Life Crisis and acted more normal, but even a broken clock tells the right time, twice a day. I even remember in one episode where she was the laughing stock of the bridge crew, but Picard reminded them that (some-how) she had attained the rank of Ambassador. Nurse Chapel mooned over Spock to the point where she actually tried to feed him, like she was his wife and he threw the food back at her. And Number One just had a coldness which was canabalised to inform the Spock character, instead.

I can't tell you how many movies I've seen where on the commentaries I've heard some director/writer/producer say, "when I met so-and-so, this part did not exist. I wrote it specifically for them and they did a wonderful job," etc. So, I have nothing to say about Gene shoe-horning Majel into STAR TREK.

 

"The Cage" was something of an odd animal. A lot of the characters come across as types rather than realized characters. So it's hard to judge the quality of someone's performance because they've only done the role once. Then again feature films are loaded with actors performing a role only once and nailing it.

Majel's performance of Number One isn't bad, but it's nothing remarkable either. Yet I can say that about any of the other performances in "The Cage" including Jeffrey Hunter's and John Hoyt's. Some seemed a little more polished than others, but compare the performances in "The Cage" to those in WNMHGB and it becomes evident no one is "lighting up the screen" in "The Cage." Some of this might have been a result of direction as well.

Hunter is fine in "The Cage." but Shatner comes alive in WNMHGB. Nimoy is much more interesting the second time around. Mitchell, Dehner and Kelso feel more realized than any secondary characters in "The Cage."

The role of Number One would be a challenge just as Spock was a challenge for Nimoy as the series got started. It was a matter of nuance to really sell the character. Nimoy's Spock in "The Cage" isn't anything special (in terms of character), but comes alive in WNMHGB when the character is more defined. If Majel had continued as Number One then she might have gotten a better and more nuanced handle on the character. But that didn't happen so we'll never really know.

It might be seen as somewhat unfair for NBC to judge her on just the first effort, but we know there were other things at play. They weren't comfortable with GR's obvious nepotism and they rightly felt Majel wasn't coming across with much appeal so they felt they didn't think she could carry the role going forward. Mind you some of that mightn't be Majel's fault given the kind of character she was given to portray, but such is show business.

As Christine Chapel I thought Majel was fine, but then again it wasn't a demanding role so it likely wasn't pushing her talents as an actress. That said another actress might have put a little something extra into the role on a subtle level that might have garnered some attention and the character would have been viewed more favourably. It does happen with secondary characters that manage to get extra fan attention because the actor manages to put a little extra into their performance.

I never cared for the character of Llwaxana Troi, but I can't fault Majel's performance. Indeed I think she was able to put more into Llwaxana's role partly because the character was meant to be more expressive than Christine Chapel was. Majel looked like she enjoyed playing the part which could have helped her more fully realize the character.

Majel also played a semi-regular character on Earth: Final Conflict and like Christine Chapel I thought she was fine given the somewhat narrow scope of the role.

Onscreen Majel wasn't a raving beauty in the conventional sense and so to get noticed onscreen she would have had to bring something extra to her performance. There have been other actresses before her who have done that very thing--Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis are but two examples.

It works the same with men. Being exceptionally good looking can sometimes allow others to overlook your shortcomings, but an above average performance can often overshadow the fact you're not "hot" in the conventional sense. Jeffrey Hunter was good looking in the Hollywood sense, but William Shatner made the role come alive.

I think Majel was a competent actress, but perhaps nothing special in that she didn't seem to try bringing something extra to her performances to make her more noticeable. Excapt perhaps with the character of Llwaxana Troi and I attribute that partly to her perhaps identifying with the character more.

I don't know her, have never met her and I've never heard anything negative about her offscreen. As such I have nothing against her as a person. Indeed by all I've heard she seemed to be quite a nice person.

And, yeah, she likely deserved to have been treated better by GR.

 

I actually dig Number One, I think it was possibly Roddenberry's boldest move of all, but one thing I notice is how much she seems to let the men around her "lead" her thinking, in a very pre-women's lib kind of way. Sure, you could interpret it simply as her canvasing for options and then making a decision based upon it, but there's something about that one briefing room scene where it feels like Spock, Dr. Boyce and Tyler are dominating the conversation, while Number One just kind of sits there rather placidly. Unfortunate implications.
She MORE than makes up for it with the resolution of the episode though (lest we forget, its Number One's determination, in bluffing the Telosians by setting the phase pistol on overload, that ultimately serves to resolve the plot). I think more moments like that would have seen Number One as a very well regarded character.

Christine Chapel was a thankless role by comparison. Being a background character whose whole shtick was standing around making moon eyes at Spock, made her seem like a very shallow character. Certainly not on a level with Number One.

 

I liked her as Chapel, Number One and the computer voice, great that they were so different; she was uneven as Lwaxana Troi, with more bad than good but the writing being much more to blame.

 

^ The irony is I feel the opposite, I felt that Chapel and Number One straightjacketed her to those specific roles, very plain and boring, whereas Lawaxana allowed her the freedom to play all sorts of different emotions over the course of her appearances (and was the true measure of Majel's acting talent).

 

Lwaxana Troi was important to TNG because it helped get the show not to take itself so seriously. So how you feel about her really depends on whether you think she was funny. I thought she was annoying as hell, and yet that's exactly what made her funny, based on how much she unnerved the stuffed shirts on the ship, Picard in particular.

 

I was taken aback that my use of "dummy" was taken so seriously. But as I mentioned elsewhere, I guess sometimes it's hard to convey "voice inflection" or humor (dry or otherwise) and a friendly jibe can be misinterpreted as a full blown insult, so I'll have to be more careful. My bad, you guys.

Back to topic....

 

I'm not sure why you quoted me, since it doesn't refer to the 'dummy' business, and your reply doesn't relate to what I said.

 

I must've accidentally hit quote under your post. I fixed it.

 

True. In a way she was a bit like Q: a kind of 'trickster', in the theatrical sense of the word, whose purpose was to sweep into stories and act as a kind of deconstructive element. If we look at the stories that she appeared in, many of them (not all of them, but many of them) operate along those lines.

 

Whenever I read comics and there's a disembodied computer voice that isn't obviously male (like The Vision or JARVIS), I instantly imagine that voice being Majel's.

This right here. Whether we want to delve into private lives or not, there's still the context that needs to be taken into consideration; what seems off-topic often is actually at, if not pointing towards, the core of the matter. And with that, a lot of fans feel that she was the bedrock of Trek; some feel that way even moreso because of her personal life. And with that said, I love that she was such a strong matriarch of the franchise.

I only wish she could have recorded more lines for ST09. To me it wasn't the lipservice so much about alternate timelines that tied it back to the Prime universe for me, but it was a bunch of little things: the title of "Ambassador" Spock, the late 24th century, and Majel voicing the computer once again.