Friday, December 19, 2008

The First Lady Of Star Trek Has Passed

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, wife of the late Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek has died of leukemia aged 76.

She was also one of the most famous guest actors on many of the Star Trek series. She had been involved with Star Trek from it's very beginning playing the mysterious Number One, first officer of the USS Enterprise under Captain Pike in the unaired pilot "The Cage". Later she had a recurring role as Nurse Christine Chapel in the 3 year run of the original Star Trek series and the character later became a doctor for the migration to the Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

For the 24th century incarnations of Star Trek, Barrett would protray the endeeringly annoying Lwaxana Troi, mother of Enterprise-D councellor Deanna Troi. But perhaps she more famously provided the federation computer voice for the original Star Trek Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager as well as a number of episodes of Enterprise and some of the Star Trek movies.

She was a formidible woman; following Gene's death she took the reigns of two of his projects, Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda and brought them to fruition. She was very much a part of the Fan community for Star Trek and Sci-Fi in general and made countless convention appearences up to the point of her illness. I'm glad to say that I was able to meet her in person in Dublin at a Star Trek convention in 1995[?].

On December 9th 2008, Roddenberry Productions announced that Barrett would be providing the voice of the ship's computer once again, for the new Star Trek in 2009. It is not clear, however, whether she had already recorded the voiceover at the time of the announcement, or had been scheduled to do so. Nevertheless, her greatest legacy is that her voice is now heard all over the world every day in the from of the Federation computer voice, as episodes of the Star Trek shows she voiced are constantly rerun.

Rest in peace.

Barrett's Memory Alpha entry.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take away the question mark Colonel , you did meet Majel in 1995 ( Sigh , the Colonels seen so much action , he's losing track of where he was and when)...Her Death is sad However according to other forums and reports in trade papers she did complete her role as the Computer in the new Star Trek Movie!

Jigsaw said...

Hopefully she did complete her role in the new Star Trek film as Vaughan said.That would be a fitting tribute to her.Never watched Andromeda but Earth:Final Conflict was a great show.They kept killing the main characters and bringing in new ones!

Bruce Russell said...

From all accounts, she was a lady in the truest sense of the word. What a life! What a legacy!