My thought was if it's her name, "Number One" would have be her last name. Pike doesn't call Tyler, "Jose Tyler" or Boyce "Philip Boyce". So Leigh Number-One, daughter of Steven Michael One and Nora Adele Number.
Why was Mabel Barret really dropped as Number One?
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Yep. It was in the same episode that explained why Sarek looked so much like the Romulan Commander from "Balance of Terror," why Stonn looked so much like Decius, and why Dr. Ann Mulhall looked so much like Dr. Miranda Jones.Yeah she was very familiar in looks to Nurse Chapel! Wonder how they explained that if ever?
I love that episode. Too bad William Campbell wasn't available.
But he was SO good in "Requiem for the Martians," I can't be mad.
Number One's name was Isadora Barrett. 
See (link)?
See (link)?
And why the alien blonde in "Taste of Armageddon" was a twin of the alien blonde in "Plato's Stepchildren."
(Yes, I'm too lazy to look up the characters' names, although they were both played by Barbara Babcock.)
I agree. And I never thought of her performance as in any way wooden or unemotional -- whatever the intent may have been. I took her to be a professional, and thought she behaved exactly as any competent XO might in the situation we saw. I'll never understand why her failing to scream like Uhura on several occasions, cower behind the captain like Rand, or melt over a man like McGivers was a detriment. Number One was a character ahead of her time.
Has anyone ever said it was?
She appeared in one episode...she hardly had time or occasion to do all of that if she wanted to.
Besides, we all know that the real reason that Mabel didn't get the part was because she was Dean Rockefeller's mistress.
Besides, we all know that the real reason that Mabel didn't get the part was because she was Dean Rockefeller's mistress.
I thought about including her, but then I thought, "Screw it... Three's enough."
Good point. Did Uhura scream in her first appearance? And she never melted over a man. And who knows what kind of plots or situations they might have thrown at Number One had she been retained as a character? (Heck, even Spock melted a few times over the course of three seasons.)
Honestly, to give Uhura (and TOS) their due, her infrequent "Captain, I'm scared" moments are far from the norm for her. Most of the time, she remains cool and professional under pressure and is no more tense or anxious than the rest of the bridge crew when the ship is in danger.
The writers let her down on occasion, but they got it right more often than not.
Mmmm. I was sure it was the other way around. Cobwebs! Sorry.
I do recall there was a weird situation in "The Captain's Table" novels whereby Jerry Oltion thought he was doing Peter David a favour by calling Number One "Lefler" in the Pike-era story - if I recall their online banter at the time, addressing fan questions, Oltion claimed that PAD knew he was doing this, as a previously-agreed favour, but PAD supposedly always preferred that Morgan Primus remain a running gag mystery (ie. simply a character who would have been played by Majel Barrett, had "New Frontier" been a live-action series, and thus often reminds people of either Number One, Nurse Chapel, the Enterprise computer voice or Lwaxana Troi). Of course, the setting of the Pike story predates 24th century "New Frontier", so it was seemingly way too early for Number One to have taken on Charles Lefler's surname. Unless he took her surname?
Majel Barrett had created her own (unpublished) background for Number One when preparing for the role (as many actors do) in the first pilot, and some of this material made it into "Vulcan's Glory", the Pocket novel by DC Fontana. It think being an Illyrian native was part of this.
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Whose that? You mean Majel?
It's threads like this that make me proud to be a Space Track fan.
"May You Not Die For A Long Time and Benefit!"
Good old Doctor Spock.
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