By Chris Snellgrove
| Revealed
In Star Trek: The Subsequent Era, no visitor character is extra memorable than Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s Lwaxana Troi, the prime donna mom to Counselor Troi. Typically, having her round labored out properly, and typically, it didn’t. In a single case, we all know for sure her presence ruined an episode.
Whereas Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was not a showrunner by season 2, he nonetheless wielded immense affect over The Subsequent Era. Understandably, that meant administrators and producers bent over backward to accommodate his spouse, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, on set.
That lodging even went so far as tweaking episodes to focus them extra on her. This had a very dangerous impact on a season 2 episode of Star Trek: The Subsequent Era referred to as “Manhunt.
How Majel Barrett Roddenberry Ruined Star Trek: The Subsequent Era’s Manhunt
The episode’s director, Rob Bowman, has since revealed that “Manhunt” had fascinating “noir nuances” deliberate for its Dixon Hill plot, and people had been dropped in favor of catering to “the boss’s spouse.”In keeping with Bowman, “the emphasis was shifted from the noir to Majel” particularly as a result of “that is the boss’s spouse, and she or he solely does it yearly, so it needs to be accommodating for her.”
So as a substitute of a Subsequent Era detective episode steeped closely in noir influences, “Manhunt” gave us a plot centered round Betazed menopause, which made Lwaxana insanely aroused in essentially the most cringe-worthy manner attainable.
We had been launched to Dixon Hill within the nice season one episode “The Massive Goodbye,” written by Tracy Tormé. Since he additionally wrote the season one episode which launched the character of Lwaxana Troi (“Haven”), he ought to have been the right option to pen this episode.
Sadly, Tormé’s script was modified a lot that he glided by a pseudonym (Terry Devereaux) within the credit. It’s simple to know his frustration. His authentic script was full of nice movie noir homages, together with Picard voiceovers in his jaded Dixon Hill persona.
Within the completed episode, a lot of the noir focus comes from Captain Picard working to the holodeck to flee a very amorous Lwaxana. He does so by coming into his Dixon Hill program, a sort of holonovel through which he performs the titular detective from a few of his favourite old-school books.
Extra Dixon Hill would have immediately improved this episode, and it will have been nice to have Patrick Stewart’s iconic voice narrating the story within the cynically lovely cadence of Raymond Chandler. Sadly, director Rob Bowman confirmed that the majority of those nice noir bits had been reduce to concentrate on Lwaxana Troi and that he was personally charged with “[making] certain that she did her finest, so day by day that’s what we labored on.”
It’s Not Actually Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s Fault
Now, earlier than anybody throws one thing at us, let’s make one factor clear: Majel Barrett Roddenberry is a nice actor and a real Star Trek icon. Her later appearances as Lwaxana Troi made for among the finest episodes of The Subsequent Era and likewise a fairly good episode of Star Trek: Deep House 9.
It’s not Majel’s fault that the script for “Manhunt” is so terrible and inexplicably turns her sensible and fiercely impartial character into an oversexed bimbo. The Subsequent Gen crew may have discovered one other option to focus the episode extra on her, however they didn’t. As longtime followers, we are able to sum the issue up like this: that Lwaxana story concept would have been painful in any episode, but it surely’s particularly painful understanding that its presence stored us from getting a correct noir episode.
Favoritism Was To Blame, However Lwaxana Is Nonetheless Nice
I really like Majel Barrett Roddenberry, however this appears to substantiate that certainly one of Trek’s worst episodes is the results of straight-up favoritism. “The boss’s spouse” acquired particular consideration, and the concentrate on her character’s terrible plot (that is objectively the worst Lwaxana Troi episode) got here on the expense of Trek’s most formidable concept.
To determine why anybody thought this is able to make for good tv, we’d in all probability have to rent a detective nearly as good as Dixon Hill. Supplied, after all, that he isn’t too busy hiding from the world’s horniest alien MILF.
