Did Majel Barrett have what it took?

[Ssosmcin]

She did perform one of the more convincing falls in the show outside the redshirt tumbling off the transporter in "CatsPaw". Remember in "The Immunity Symdrome" when the "void" surrounding the giant aeomeba made everyone black out? Majel walks into the exam room carrying a tray. Rather than "gracefully" folding her legs in a kind of "I've got the vapors" feint, she "crashes" to the floor, dropping the tray resulting in a jarring clatter! In fact, they used that sequence again in "Spock's Brain" when the brain-napper uses her wrist device to "stun" the entire crew.

It may be a small thing, but I've long appreciated that stunt.

Sincerely,

Bill

I always admired that fall, also because Magel's head bounces against the floor when she hit.

However, it was filmed for and used first in "Spock's Brain" and reused in "The Way to Eden." There were no shots of the crew passing out when the Enterprise pierced the Zone of Darkness. McCoy and Chapel were doing just fine giving out stimulants.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I always admired that fall, also because Magel's head bounces against the floor when she hit.

However, it was filmed for and used first in "Spock's Brain" and reused in "The Way to Eden." There were no shots of the crew passing out when the Enterprise pierced the Zone of Darkness. McCoy and Chapel were doing just fine giving out stimulants.

I thought it was in all three episodes.

How many times did Scotty hang on the grating in front of the engine pipes?

 

[CoveTom]

No, but it's circumstantial evidence that supports a broader picture. It's fine that you guys don't believe it. I do.

Fact: Roddenberry was a known womanizer who frequently made use of the "casting couch" when casting guest stars and earned quite the negative reputation as a result.

Fact: Neither Solow, Justman, nor Senesky have ever made a correlation between that and the fact that Diana Muldar was cast in a second role.

Ergo, your assertion is not based on evidence, even circumstantial evidence, but is just idle speculation.

 

[Commishsleer]

No, but it's circumstantial evidence that supports a broader picture. It's fine that you guys don't believe it. I do.

Fact: Roddenberry was a known womanizer who frequently made use of the "casting couch" when casting guest stars and earned quite the negative reputation as a result.

Fact: Neither Solow, Justman, nor Senesky have ever made a correlation between that and the fact that Diana Muldar was cast in a second role.

Ergo, your assertion is not based on evidence, even circumstantial evidence, but is just idle speculation.

Just another potentially unsubstantiated rumour. I heard that Shatner was known to umm how to put this delicately - 'mildly grope' some female guest stars. I've got to think its not all - just some because I've heard on interviews and at conventions that I've attended (not many), both good and bad things about Shatner from female guest stars.
So if this was the case and GR was trying to actually bed guest actresses as well then it must have been really awful for female actresses on the TOS set. Unless this was the same for every Hollywood TV series (excepts for I suppose Lucille Ball's show).
I never heard anyone mention GRs casting couch (for guest stars) until this thread. But maybe thats because everyone at conventions asks the guest stars about Shatner not GR.

 

[Corylea]

I heard that Shatner was known to umm how to put this delicately - 'mildly grope' some female guest stars.

Solow and Justman tell a story where Shatner was trying to grope one of the female guest stars during a costume fitting, and Roddenberry practically shoved him aside so that HE could grope the guest star.

I have to keep reminding myself that it was a very different era, because the behavior of both of them sounds barf worthy to modern sensibilities.

 

[Doug Otte]

And it seems clear that GR frequently did just that, which is why it got so hard to find good actresses who were even willing to come in and read for Star Trek during the third season. They had to find actresses who were unaware of GR's reputation (or on good personal terms with him), and were available that week.

Was Roddenberry even involved in the casting in the 3rd season? I've always read that he was pretty much never around during the 3rd season.

 

[plynch]

I do not deny these things happened. Gropings, highly likely; NBC not wanting a mistress as a lead, probable.

It's just that I do not trust the reliability of the sources who claimed they definitely happened. I'm no apologist for GR. But I am skeptical of reminiscences, especially by people in the entertainment industry. They are professional tale-spinners. Witness Ms. Nichols' expanding MLK story.

 

[ihno]

Witness Ms. Nichols' expanding MLK story.

What is that?

I do not deny these things happened. Gropings, highly likely; NBC not wanting a mistress as a lead, probable.

I also think both is likely at the same time, the company having a problem with her as GR's girl-friend and with her gender for a prominent role like 1st officer.

 

[Marsden]

She did perform one of the more convincing falls in the show outside the redshirt tumbling off the transporter in "CatsPaw". Remember in "The Immunity Symdrome" when the "void" surrounding the giant aeomeba made everyone black out? Majel walks into the exam room carrying a tray. Rather than "gracefully" folding her legs in a kind of "I've got the vapors" feint, she "crashes" to the floor, dropping the tray resulting in a jarring clatter! In fact, they used that sequence again in "Spock's Brain" when the brain-napper uses her wrist device to "stun" the entire crew.

It may be a small thing, but I've long appreciated that stunt.

Sincerely,

Bill

I always admired that fall, also because Magel's head bounces against the floor when she hit.

However, it was filmed for and used first in "Spock's Brain" and reused in "The Way to Eden." There were no shots of the crew passing out when the Enterprise pierced the Zone of Darkness. McCoy and Chapel were doing just fine giving out stimulants.

It probably sounds silly, but I was always worried she hurt herself with that one. Maybe she had some padding under her wig?

 

[BillJ]

And it seems clear that GR frequently did just that, which is why it got so hard to find good actresses who were even willing to come in and read for Star Trek during the third season. They had to find actresses who were unaware of GR's reputation (or on good personal terms with him), and were available that week.

Was Roddenberry even involved in the casting in the 3rd season? I've always read that he was pretty much never around during the 3rd season.

I thought the same thing.

 

[Zycho32]

May as well reintroduce the primary topic by adding my two pistoozias. (get THAT reference if you can)

Could Majel have made Number One work? It's possible. It's dang easy to compare Number One to Spock because both essentially shared the same unemotional facade. Of course, we got four decades of Spock to uncover and decipher. Number One only gets one pilot episode and whatever non-canon sources deem to use her. That and it's Leonard Nimoy versus Majel Barrett which is a pretty awful fight by any standards. The question really should be, could Majel uncover enough underlying emotion in subsequent episodes- had the pilot been accepted as it was- to keep the character from falling flat?

It also sounds easy to take Christine Chapel and use her as a template for Majel's acting ability. Problem is, it's really a lousy character to base that on. Let's sum up Chapel like this; in her first appearances, she promptly falls for Spock then has a long-lost husband who is uncovered and lost in the same episode. The pining for Spock does virtually NOTHING for her, if only because she's introduced like a Guest Star during Naked Time and subsequentially is reduced to a campy goof virtually anytime she interacts with Spock in later episodes. Dreary and uninspiring.

Compare her interactions with Spock to her interactions with virtually anyone and everyone else. Maybe a lot of it harkens back to Number One a little too much, but it's more believable. It's more along the lines of a professional who did give up a promising career to be a Nurse on an exploration vessel- long lost husband notwithstanding- and is trying to hold herself together by that sheer professionalism. When she's allowed to crack in subtle ways- not lovesickness- she works. I dare say her best interactions by far have been two testy exchanges with McCoy (Operation: Annhilate, and 'For the World is Hollow...') where she's allowed to get emotional and still be respectable as a character.

As for the episode with her husband (What Are Little Girls Made Of?), it's iffy at most. Her brief banter with Spock is lousy, mainly because she has to dial the overjoyed meter to 11. Her dialogue with Korby is somewhat stilted- probably doesn't help that the actor playing Korby can't exactly pull her in with some degree of magnetism, Android or not. And aside from one conversation with the secretly Duplicate Kirk, she really doesn't get to do too much. Like she's reduced to eye candy by the end in an episode that honestly should've included her more.

...so, could she have made Number One work? It's possible. It would involve some assurance that scripts would not reduce her to the typical female weaknesses as you saw in 50's and 60's television and movies. Ironically, it would involve writing her like Spock- which in itself had to deal with outside pressure trying to make him into a joke. But I do think Majel could have pulled it off to some degree. Not as memorable, sure, but you wouldn't go around talking about her as the predecessor to Wesley Crusher or any other Cast Member-turned-Cipher in later years on Trek.

 

[Pauln6]

Majel carried a decent amount of authority as Number One. I think the studio just wanted girly women and Number One was considered too charmless.

Miranda Jones is one of my favourite Trek women - a woman who knows her own mind and has zero intention of being anyone's love interest. Diana Muldaur is another great actress who carries an air of authority.

Chapel was hard done by all round. In her 'big' episode, she fails to use any scientific method or common sense apart from, as you say, in her conversation with robo-kirk. Chapel did have potential but all bio-research was carried out by McCoy and Spock while all she got to do was invent ice cream combinations. Mostly she was a drip. Big shame.

 

[FormerLurker]

Witness Ms. Nichols' expanding MLK story.

What is that?

plynch, among many others, asserts that Nichelle Nichols likely never actually met MLK, and fabricates the story of his being a fan of the show and asking her to stay on to inspire young girls of color to aspire to greater things after she tells him she intends to leave after the first season. Supposedly, she waxes ever more prosaic every time she tells the tale.

While I cannot say one way or the other whether they met as she described, I first heard her talk about it when she was a guest at Star Con Denver in the early '90s, and again the last time she was there (before this year) about three years ago. In the twenty or so years between the two events, her description of her meeting with MLK didn't change one bit. She didn't wax prosaic about a long conversation, nor did she describe some long-winded reasoning on MLK's part for her needing to stay on ST. Just that they met at a function, and when she told him her intention to get on with her career, he told her it would be better for her to keep the role of Uhura, and run with it as long as it would last. End of conversation.

 

[Maurice]

The telling of the particulars of the MLK story have changed a number of times as discussed in several threads on this board over the years.

Nichols recollects that during a promotional trip to Memphis, an assistant told her that a fan wanted to meet her.
Listverse: 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Star Trek

The chance encounter occurred at an NAACP fund-raiser held the day after Nichols…turned in her resignation.
Times Daily/Friday, Dec. 13, 1996

At one of her regular meetings with with civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- she helped at fund raisers and he was her mentor--she told him she was thinking of quitting.
Anchorage Daily News - Aug 17, 1989, p. 21

"[MLK] was a close friend, and he happened to be a big Star Trek fan," she says…
The Afro American, Dec. 8, 1979

Did some searching via Google News and Archives and hit the stories above. They're not consistent in their details ("chance encounter" vs. "regular meetings"), but they do all claim she met him, going back to at least 1979. If there are indeed printed stories in which she says it was a phone call or something else, I suspect it'd be pre-TMP.

But interviewers aren't above conflating facts or rephrasing things, so some of this fudginess in the details could be caused by that. But there are others who recall her story back in the day was different in significant ways from what we've gotten since the 90s.


And it bears repeating, once again, that Majel wasn't singled out as "bad" as Number One, rather (according to Solow) that NBC didn't like ANY of the cast, and basically said they were okay with Jeff Hunter and Nimoy, but that they could "do better" with the rest of the cast.

 

[ihno]

Aaaah, Martin Luther King. I didn't get this abbreviation.

Thanks, I will check for those threads, I'm sure they're fun to read.

But you have that with "normal" historical witnesses too. Stories change over time, that's totally normal. Especially if someone tells a story repeatedly. It doesn't mean that person would make up things voluntarily. (of course some people do it voluntarily too , I look forward to the threads).

 

[plynch]

plynch, among many others, asserts that Nichelle Nichols likely never actually met MLK, and fabricates the story. . . .

No, I merely assert it has expanded, as the links slightly upthread document.

Not that she's a horrible person! Just that these folks are entertainers and often sling the bull a bit as they tell stories to ... enterain us.

So 40-year-old recollections by people in entertainment don't convince me that something happened as reported. Even if it is plausible.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I always admired that fall, also because Magel's head bounces against the floor when she hit.

However, it was filmed for and used first in "Spock's Brain" and reused in "The Way to Eden." There were no shots of the crew passing out when the Enterprise pierced the Zone of Darkness. McCoy and Chapel were doing just fine giving out stimulants.

I thought it was in all three episodes.

Nope. Chapel's hair is totally different in Spock's Brain. It's down and short but in Immunity Syndrome, it's up. Again, there were no shots of the crew passing out throughout the ship with the lights flickering.

How many times did Scotty hang on the grating in front of the engine pipes?

Twice. Tomorrow is Yesterday, the episode the scene was shot for, and The Doomsday Machine, when it was resued.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Nope. Chapel's hair is totally different in Spock's Brain. It's down and short but in Immunity Syndrome, it's up. Again, there were no shots of the crew passing out throughout the ship with the lights flickering.

You know what threw me is the line "Half the people on the ship just fainted." So in my mind, I fill it in with that stock footage.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

I heard that Shatner was known to umm how to put this delicately - 'mildly grope' some female guest stars.

Solow and Justman tell a story where Shatner was trying to grope one of the female guest stars during a costume fitting, and Roddenberry practically shoved him aside so that HE could grope the guest star.

I have to keep reminding myself that it was a very different era, because the behavior of both of them sounds barf worthy to modern sensibilities.

According to guest star Julie Parrish, who played Miss Piper in "The Menagerie", she states that Majel Barret told her that Bill Shatner did this with all the women, he knocked on her trailer door and he asked if he could use her electricity to shave while she (Julie Parrish) was lying down taking a nap and suddenly he is on her, that was Bill's way and he got angry with her (for rejecting him).

Fellow trekbbs member potablog has uploaded the interview on Youtube, here is the link, move the cursor to 06:12 mark to hear her describe the incident.

Sadly, she died on October 01, 2003, of ovarian cancer, she was 62 years old. She would have turned 63 on October 21, 2003.

I don't know how much has really changed since the 1960s as far as male human behavior is concerned, it does not seem like it has changed too much. There is still sexual misconduct and rape going on today. Most recently there is 37 year old Delvin Barnes abducting 22 year old Carlesha Freeland-Gaithe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 02, 2014. He was caught by authorities in Maryland with her. There is a warrant for him, he is accused of abducting, sexually abusing and attempted murder of a 16 year old girl in Virginia. Here is a link.


Navigator NCC-2120, USS Entente
/\

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

I just remembered another good Chapel episode: Obsession.

Here, she takes the initiative to 'apply psychology' with Garrovick to get him to eat. She takes the initiative and plays a proactive role, and I usually, I think of her as stammering and hesitating, until McCoy yells at her.

But come to think of it, McCoy even yells at his patients sometimes, so I'm not sure what it all means!

I don't know how much has really changed since the 1960s as far as male human behavior is concerned, it does not seem like it has changed too much.

It's interesting to me (and telling) how workplace rules are phrased, regarding unwanted sexual advances. Unwanted, mind you. Apparently, if the woman (or man, for that matter) is okay with it, then all is hunky-dory. It seems that if anything, that makes matters worse, implying that if you've "got what it takes", a possible path to favoritism has been paved for you within the rules.