• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
There's only one Capt Pike and that is Jeffrey Hunter.

I wish they'd stop rehashing stuff and just do something new, with Spock, etc,
 
The world just wasn't ready for a female Number One in the 1960s. Good to see the character being revived in Disco and the new series. (Yes, I know it wasn't just her being female that led to the character's rejection)
I had a vinyl record of an audience with Gene Roddenberry and various other members of the cast, where he says something along the lines of "Lose the moody broad and the guy with the ears." So he took Number One's lack of emotion and merged it with Spock. You can tell in The Menagerie that Spock isn't the cold, illogical Vulcan at that point.

Of course, this was Roddenberry telling his preferred version of events for a broad audience, so I don't expect it to be completely accurate. I expect the various versions above are closer to the truth.

I'm curious to see this. I did like Mount and Romijn in Disco. Peck had a bit more baggage to carry. It's not that he was bad, just that he wasn't Nimoy. His performance was fine, but there's no way not to compare them.
 
I had a vinyl record of an audience with Gene Roddenberry and various other members of the cast, where he says something along the lines of "Lose the moody broad and the guy with the ears." So he took Number One's lack of emotion and merged it with Spock. You can tell in The Menagerie that Spock isn't the cold, illogical Vulcan at that point.

Of course, this was Roddenberry telling his preferred version of events for a broad audience, so I don't expect it to be completely accurate. I expect the various versions above are closer to the truth.

I'm curious to see this. I did like Mount and Romijn in Disco. Peck had a bit more baggage to carry. It's not that he was bad, just that he wasn't Nimoy. His performance was fine, but there's no way not to compare them.
I believe he was quoting the studio that was financing the series.
 
I believe he was quoting the studio that was financing the series.
That's correct, perhaps I should have mentioned that. It was either DesiLu or NBC, just not entirely sure which.
 
Would Lucille Ball really have said lose the moody broad?
Possibly. She was a former variety entertainer and joke writer and apparently she was the business brains in the organization. Whoever said it was correct. And the costume didn't help any.

One of my pet peeves is that in movies and tv lead women in professional roles are carefully given long-hair do's that look like shampoo commercials. One of the first things they teach you in the work world is to cut it short or keep it firmly up. It's not a fashion show and long hair sheds constantly on everyone. In a military or production environment it's just cut it short. Long hair is dangerous around machinery - can you just see all that hair getting stuck while she's trying to fix a photon torpedo?
 
Last edited:
Would Lucille Ball really have said lose the moody broad?
It's possible she might have disliked the way the character was written, perhaps she felt #1 to be out of place? IRL people find that sort of behavior disconcerting at times since they don't relate to people like that well.
 
It's possible she might have disliked the way the character was written, perhaps she felt #1 to be out of place? IRL people find that sort of behavior disconcerting at times since they don't relate to people like that well.

The accounts I've found all point to network - not studio - executives as the ones who rejected that first pilot episode. Ball was the top-level authority at the studio, and she was the key decision maker who suggested and promoted the extraordinary measure of making a second pilot.

There are two reasons consistently given for resistance to the character of Number One:

(1) She was off-putting by being so cold and hyper-rational about everything, making her a problematic choice for a groundbreaking female dramatic lead.

(2) Majel Barrett's acting was heavily criticized, she was an unknown whose casting in so central a role nobody could explain, and the fact she was Roddenberry's significant other provided cause for criticism of Roddenberry himself.

On the second try the cold / logical attributes were shifted to the originally emotional Spock character. Barrett would re-surface as McCoy's nurse / aide and the voice of the computer.
 
The accounts I've found all point to network - not studio - executives as the ones who rejected that first pilot episode. Ball was the top-level authority at the studio, and she was the key decision maker who suggested and promoted the extraordinary measure of making a second pilot.

There are two reasons consistently given for resistance to the character of Number One:

(1) She was off-putting by being so cold and hyper-rational about everything, making her a problematic choice for a groundbreaking female dramatic lead.

(2) Majel Barrett's acting was heavily criticized, she was an unknown whose casting in so central a role nobody could explain, and the fact she was Roddenberry's significant other provided cause for criticism of Roddenberry himself.

On the second try the cold / logical attributes were shifted to the originally emotional Spock character. Barrett would re-surface as McCoy's nurse / aide and the voice of the computer.
Right, you can blame the period rejection of the concept of a logical woman as a lead on a TV show, but it's also true that Barrett was not a good actor (if that was all they would have just recast), and the part as written hovered around annoying. And of course the costume and the hair. Whoever said to lose it was correct. It's a mark of Roddenberry's professional strength that he accepted the note and did it.
 
Right, you can blame the period rejection of the concept of a logical woman as a lead on a TV show, but it's also true that Barrett was not a good actor (if that was all they would have just recast), and the part as written hovered around annoying. And of course the costume and the hair. Whoever said to lose it was correct. It's a mark of Roddenberry's professional strength that he accepted the note and did it.
Must have made for an awkward evening at Roddenberry Towers. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news about the new series...”
 
Majel got to be Nurse Chapel and Troi's mum AND the computer voice, so she didn't suffer too badly.
No the computer voice was a good ongoing gig. I do have to say that Troi's mum drove me crazy and I avoided the episodes but that wasn't the actor's fault.
 
No the computer voice was a good ongoing gig. I do have to say that Troi's mum drove me crazy and I avoided the episodes but that wasn't the actor's fault.
She was the only person to act/work all the series of trek because of the computer voice.

I’m the same I disliked the Lwaxana Troi episodes when they first aired but on the reruns I’ve come to appreciate them.
 
No the computer voice was a good ongoing gig. I do have to say that Troi's mum drove me crazy and I avoided the episodes but that wasn't the actor's fault.
I guess that the character was deliberately supposed to be annoying. You can see why Deanna Troi tried to avoid her!
 
One of the worst 45 minutes of TV of the 1980s was the one where Ferengi made Troi and her mum be naked. Because that's hilarious, apparently, and they're some weird alien culture of male television executives a backward patriarchy who live by strange rules...
 
Must have made for an awkward evening at Roddenberry Towers. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news about the new series...”

Maybe something deftly diplomatic along these lines ...

"Maje - dear, honey-bun ....

Lucy believes in the project, and she's managed to get us one more shot at a pilot. We've all got to scramble to make this second effort put us over the top, and we're already working on big changes to ensure success.

I apologize for putting so much stress on you in casting you for that cold Number One character. I know you're too sensitive and caring to want to be seen only as a hyper-cerebral ice queen and slave to logic. You could end up being type-cast as a robo-femme for the rest of your career. I'm sure you wouldn't want that.

That's why we're going to reconfigure the Spock character to be the coldly rational foil and let Nimoy worry about the long term type-casting.

Because we're operating in a rush we're going to drop the Number One character entirely, give you a rest during the second pilot's production, and brainstorm a different long-term role for you that'll be much more comfortable. Someone more caring; someone who acts from the heart instead of from an algorithm ...

It'll also give you a chance to experiment with that hairstyle change you've been wanting to try.

In the mean time, we know you'd like to stay involved with the project. We'd like you to provide the voice of the computer in the second pilot. Now, hear me out ... This would be easy work, and it will give you a long-term secondary role to supplement the great new character we'll be creating for you once the series is a "go." Multiple roles means you'll be racking up credits faster.

You know how tuned-in I am to the future. Trust me - there'll come a time when even big stars will make big money providing voices without having to deal with all the hassles of working in front of the camera. You'll be a trailblazer in a new form of acting.

Gotta run ... Too much to do ... I just wanted to let you know how much I'm thinking of you and your prospects as we work our way through this radical transition."
:reyes:
 
One of the worst 45 minutes of TV of the 1980s was the one where Ferengi made Troi and her mum be naked. Because that's hilarious, apparently, and they're some weird alien culture of male television executives a backward patriarchy who live by strange rules...
I think that episode was on Horror Channel recently.
 
One of the worst 45 minutes of TV of the 1980s was the one where Ferengi made Troi and her mum be naked. Because that's hilarious, apparently, and they're some weird alien culture of male television executives a backward patriarchy who live by strange rules...
That one was so much a farce that I was willing to go with it for the humor. It's interesting how inmost sci fi, a new alien is introduced and their really are alien - remember the whips and the gentle swaying - and as they become more a part of the plot they become more human. Is there any alien you can think of who stayed alien?
 
That one was so much a farce that I was willing to go with it for the humor. It's interesting how inmost sci fi, a new alien is introduced and their really are alien - remember the whips and the gentle swaying - and as they become more a part of the plot they become more human. Is there any alien you can think of who stayed alien?
The black blob that killed Tasha Yar? Edit: That was a big 'NO' moment for me when that happened. RIP, Tasha Yar.
The Crystalline Entity?
 
Last edited:
The black blob that killed Tasha Yar? Edit: That was a big 'NO' moment for me when that happened. RIP, Tasha Yar.
The Crystalline Entity?
True but neither was around for very long. We had Quark forever and although the actor was phoenomenal the character was transmuted for the most part into a short comic turn who had strange habits. I might add that wonderful alligator like alien from TOS and my absolute favorite the horta, but they were one-time appearances.
 
True but neither was around for very long. We had Quark forever and although the actor was phoenomenal the character was transmuted for the most part into a short comic turn who had strange habits. I might add that wonderful alligator like alien from TOS and my absolute favorite the horta, but they were one-time appearances.
Yes - the horta! I was struggling to think of the name. The alligator creature was called The Gorn.
 
That one was so much a farce that I was willing to go with it for the humor. It's interesting how inmost sci fi, a new alien is introduced and their really are alien - remember the whips and the gentle swaying - and as they become more a part of the plot they become more human. Is there any alien you can think of who stayed alien?

If there were any truly alien recurring aliens on ST, they wouldn't recur for very long because the completely unknowable are very hard to write for in series television. Babylon 5 had a go and were a bit more successful, but even they had human traits.
 
If there were any truly alien recurring aliens on ST, they wouldn't recur for very long because the completely unknowable are very hard to write for in series television. Babylon 5 had a go and were a bit more successful, but even they had human traits.
In B5 the truly weird aliens were the rarely seen ones.
 
One of the worst 45 minutes of TV of the 1980s was the one where Ferengi made Troi and her mum be naked. Because that's hilarious, apparently, and they're some weird alien culture of male television executives a backward patriarchy who live by strange rules...

Imagine the first read of the script.

tumblr_0edb87dff7c2216cf2f54803b034376c_a3f6b97f_400.gif


How about the punning title of the 'naked' episode. Can we agree that that was faintly droll?
 
Hey, Marina was in Death Wish 3, if she can survive that she can survive anything.
 
Back
Top