What's new - Dec 2008

This week we're asking whether, assuming the new movie is a success, you would like to see a new TOS series along the lines of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.

Majel is a lady who is intimately connected with Star Trek. She was there right at the beginning, playing Number One in the very first episode ever filmed. Indeed she was in the very first scene of that episode. Of all the countless hours of Star Trek that exist, the seventh line ever spoken was one of hers.

Her involvement doesn't even come close to ending there, of course. Although her character of Number One was dropped, she returned as Nurse Chapel during TOS. She went on to provide voices for the animated series before returning to play Lwaxana Troi on TNG, along with providing the voice for the computer on the Enterprise-D. Lwaxana returned in Deep Space Nine several times, and Majel provided the computer's voice for Voyager as well. She was the First Lady of Star Trek, both literally and in terms of the sheer duration of her tenure.

With Enterprise it looked like there may be no place for Majel, but she did manage to make an appearance, as the Defiant's computer voice in the mirror universe episodes, and as the Enterprise-D's computer in the final episode, an amazing forty one years later. She thus became the only person to appear in all six Star Trek series plus the TOS and TNG movie franchises.

And then, just recently, it was announced that she would be providing the voice for the Enterprise computer in the upcoming Star Trek XI movie. It was a wonderful decision. I can only hope that she recorded her part before the end. If so, then her involvement in Trek will be extended to forty five years.

Her involvement in science fiction wasn't limited to Star Trek, of course. Majel has appeared in Babylon 5, was a co-producer on Andromeda, appeared in Earth : Final Conflict, The Questor Tapes, Westworld, and more.

Another part of her legacy in this world of Trek, of course, comes from her relationship with Gene Roddenberry. She was his wife for twenty two years, and in many ways carried on his legacy after his death. Majel helped to create Andromeda and Earth : Final Conflict based on ideas Gene created.

She died from complications stemming from leukemia at the age of 76. She will be missed. And I for one think it would be fitting to dedicate Trek XI to her memory.