Spoilers Revealed! Number One's name is...

Then you've never read Charles Dickens 1837 classic "The Pickwick Papers" (where the word first appeared). I've also seen it used in westerns. I like it.

 

Same, although Jim is a dick for constantly reminding him of his divorce like that.

 

I never made the Una/Uno/Number One connection before. That's clever.

 

To be honest, as surly and nagging as McCoy was to Kirk and Spock in TOS, well, I'm not so sure Leonard was the injured party in the divorce and if his ex-wife got everything there was probably very good reason for that. Don't forget he also couldn't wait to pull the plug on his dad (ST V).

 

It always amuses me that in Gene Roddenberry's so-called enlightened future where humans are all lardy-dar with each other, that one of his major characters has been through a bitter divorce. And that was always back story for McCoy, even before 2009. Kinda takes the shine off all that 'future humans always get along' stuff eh.

 

It was never mentioned in TOS that McCoy was divorced so even though there may have been talk, it's not official (avoiding the "C" word here - tired of hearing it. )

I know that in "The Way to Eden" - the character of Chekov's girlfriend was rumored to initially have been written as McCoy's daughter. I think they lost a huge opportunity there when they changed it.

 

Yes, he's an admiral. He does have the extra gold on the shoulders but it's just not obvious given the lighting in that scene. Here's the pic of the flag officer doing the debriefing from a post in the main 2/14 episode thread:

The additional gold detailing is definitely there but it doesn't stand out. The give-away is that the quilt-lines on the admiral versions of the uniforms run parallel to the gold stripes over the shoulder, as can be seen here, whereas on the standard uniforms the quilting follows the curve at the bottom of the shoulder-cap.

It's worth another look at the episode; it's brief but you *can* also make out that he's wearing the disc of a flag officer's badge rather than just a standard Starfleet arrowhead badge.

 

With an interesting family tree:

https://www.geni.com/people/Raja-Katzenellenbogen-M-D/6000000002764553501

 

Back to the topic of the thread:

I completely missed that they actually gave her a name in a throw-away line in the midst of all the action-y stuff. I went back and watched it again before I saw the official confirmation quoted above -- and, sure enough, it's right there.

Given that they then pointedly *dodged* the opportunity to use it more clearly in the debrief scene, I'm not sure what the point was but unless there's a lot of pointless retcon at another time that it's a nickname or something like that (!) I guess we now have at least one of her names, presumably her first name...?

Let's face it, it's not the first time a character would have acquired a name / forename from beta-canon. I can think of worse...

When I hadn't spotted that Pike called her Una earlier in the episode, I guess I just assumed that any reveal of her actual name would be something they would prefer to keep for now and save for a reveal on a potential Pike / Enterprise series.

 

Ahh I see it now.

 

Oddly enough, the first time I heard of the term and its connection to medicine was when playing a futuristic video game. Don't recall the name of it now, but it was an MMO and it was a healing sub-class.

 

I think this is a great move. There are two possibilities that would be at issue:

1. Her last name is Chapel, and it is revealed she is Christine's sister. That would be a great homage to Majel, and an acknowledgement of the resemblance between the two characters.

2. They do something else, and it will be a let down. Other than Chapel, is there really any name that wouldn't be a let down? Maybe if they could say that they found GR's notes and she had a name, but if that existed, wouldn't we know by now?

 

TOS is non canon confirmed!!! How come Una never mentioned her sister Christine in the pilot!?

Must be a different time line!

 

It's obviously Una Numera.

Spoiler

please don't take this seriously...

 

While dealing with Talos IV, it never came up. Kirk never mentioned his brother until he died in an episode.

I like keeping it a mystery.

 

Basically, there was no way we were going to be able to write an entire trilogy about the character while dancing around what her name was, especially since the story featured her at different points in her Starfleet career. Just calling her "Number One" is maybe workable when she's Pike's first officer, but "Lieutenant Number One" and "Captain Number One" didn't really work.

Plus, to be honest, I had already written one book (Child of Two Worlds) in which I had struggled to avoid mentioning her name for 80,000 plus words. Couldn't imagine trying to pull that off for an entire trilogy!

 

I know it's not canon, but a novel I read stated that Pike called her Number One simply because her name is unpronounceable.

 

Honestly, I'd love for her real name to be 'Una Chapel' but that may be a minority opinion; on the other hand no matter what her given name is, she'll always be Number 1 and that's why we love her!