The Ladies of Star Trek

Majel Barrett Roddenberry as Nurse (Lieutenant)/Doctor (Commander) Christine Chapel

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Nurse (Lieutenant)/Doctor (Commander) Christine Chapel, Chief Nurse on the USS Enterprise NCC 1701, and Doctor Christine Chapel, staff physician, on the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-A.  She gave up a promising career in bioresearch to join the crew of a starship in the hope of finding Doctor Roger Corby, her missing fiancé.  Christine found him on Exo III when the USS Enterprise visited that planet in 2266 (What Are Little Girls Made Of?), but learned he had transferred his consciousness into an android body, and had become more of an android than a man.  Nurse Chapel admitted her love for Commander Spock, feelings he could not share (The Naked Time).  She later earned a medical degree, and Doctor Chapel directed emergency operations on Earth during the incident in 2286 with the alien space probe that devastated Earth, and the oceans in particular, in the probe's attempt to make contact with the extinct species, the hump-backed whale (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).

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Majel Barrett Roddenberry played the recurring role of Nurse Christine Chapel throughout the three-year run of Star Trek.   She was born Majel Lee Hudec in Columbus, Ohio, on 23 February 1939.  Majel studied drama at the University of Miami, and went on to perform in a number of regional theatre productions including All For Mary at the Pasadena Playhouse and The Skin of Our Teeth and Idiots Delight at the Santa Monica Playhouse, and starred in the Broadway production of Solid Gold Cadillac.  She soon began to earn roles in national television commercials, and this led to her being cast in various television programs and feature films.  Majel met Gene Roddenberry in the early 1960s.  She said of him, "I was in love. It's just that simple ... There's nothing more to say about it.  I would have followed him anywhere."  Majel and Gene Roddenberry lived together as lovers throughout most of the 1960s before he decided it was time to marry her.  He asked her to join him; he happened to be visiting Japan at the time. Gene did not adhere to any particular religion and since they were in Japan, they chose to have a Shinto-Buddhist wedding on 6 August 1969. They regarded this as their real wedding, but his divorce was not yet final and they made it legal with a civil ceremony on 29 December 1969.  Their son, Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, was born five years later.   Majel has appeared in person or in voice in most of the Star Trek universe; she played the recurring roles of Nurse (Lieutenant) Christine Chapel in Star Trek, as well as Doctor (Commander) Christine Chapel in the feature films, and Ambassador Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  She has also been the computer voice on most of the ships in the Star Trek universe, as well as the voice of The Companion (Metamorphosis).   Majel was cast in 1966 as the second in command "Number One" of the USS Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, in The Cage, the pilot for Star Trek.  The Executives at NBC were not as forward-thinking as Gene Roddenberry and were not yet prepared to have a woman in power.   They forced Gene to replace her for the second, unprecedented, pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before.  She became the voice of the Enterprise's computer and the pretty blue-eyed, mini-skirted blonde Nurse Christine Chapel, a recurring character throughout the entire three-year run of the series.  She appeared as Doctor (Lieutenant Commander) Christine Chapel in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, having by that time earned her M.D., and as Commander Chapel in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  Majel appeared on the award-winning series, Babylon 5, as Lady Morella in the episode, Point of No Return.    The world lost the Great Bird of the Galaxy In September 1991, during the filming of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Hero Worship.  Majel later told Biography "I'm not so sure he's gone yet ... there's so much that's going on, that's still happening."  Majel Barrett Roddenberry strives to keep her late husband, Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry's vision alive and continues to carry his legacy as Executive Producer of the Roddenberry/Kirschner Production, Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, in association with Tribune Entertainment and Atlantis Films.  Majel plays Doctor Belman on the show that Gene wrote in 1976 as Battleground: Earth.

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