from Chris Snelgrove
| Published
c Star Trek: The Next Generationno guest character is more memorable than Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s Lwaxana Troi, the mother of Councilor Troi’s first-rate don. Sometimes having her around worked out well and sometimes it didn’t. In one case, we know for sure that her presence ruined an episode.
Although Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was no longer a showrunner by season 2, he still had a huge influence on The next generation. Understandably, this meant directors and producers were bending over backwards to accommodate his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry on set.
This adaptation even went so far as to change the episodes to focus more on her. This had a particularly bad effect on a season 2 episode of Star Trek: The next generation called “Manhunt.
How Majel Barrett Roddenberry Ruined Star Trek: The Next Generation Pursuit
The episode’s director, Rob Bowman, has since revealed that “Manhunt” had interesting “noir undertones” planned for the Dixon Hill storyline, and they were scrapped in favor of “the boss’s wife.” According to Bowman, “the focus was moved from noir to Majel,” specifically because “this is the boss’s wife, and she only does it once a year, so he has to accommodate her.”
So instead of a Next generation detective episode heavily infused with noir influences, Manhunt gave us a plot centered around Betazed Menopause, which made Lwaxana insanely horny in the most dignified way possible.
We were introduced to Dixon Hill in the awesome first season episode “The Big Goodbye” written by Tracy Torme. Since he also wrote the season one episode that introduced Lwaxana’s character Troi (“Haven”), he should have been the perfect choice to write this episode.
Unfortunately, Tormé’s script was changed so much that he went by a pseudonym (Terry Devereaux) in the credits. His frustration is easy to understand. His original script was filled with great homages to film noir, including voices of Picard in his jaded Dixon Hill persona.
In the finished episode, most of the noir focus comes from Captain Picard running to the holodeck to escape the overly infatuated Lvaxana. He does this by entering his program Dixon Hill, a kind of holonovella in which he plays the titular detective from some of his favorite old-school books.
More Dixon Hill would have instantly improved this episode, and it would have been great to have Patrick Stewart’s iconic voice narrate the story in Raymond Chandler’s cynically beautiful cadence. Unfortunately, director Rob Bowman confirmed that most of these great noir pieces were cut to focus on Lwaxana Troi, and that he was personally tasked with “(to) make sure she gives it her all, so that every day we worked on it.”
Not really Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s fault
Now, before anyone throws anything at us, let’s get one thing straight: Majel Barrett Roddenberry is great an actor and a true Star Trek icon. Her later appearances as Lwaxana Troi made for some of the best episodes of The next generation and also a pretty good episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
It’s not Madgel’s fault that Manhunt’s script is so terrible and inexplicably turns her intelligent and fiercely independent character into an oversexed bimbo. The Next Gen they could have found another way to focus the episode more on her, but they didn’t. As long-time fans, we can sum up the problem like this: this Lwaxana story idea would be painful in the any kind episode, but it is especially painfully knowing that his presence prevented us from getting a proper noir episode.
Favoritism was to blame, but Lwaxana is still awesome
I love Majel Barrett Roddenberry, but this seems to confirm that one of Trek’s worst episodes was the result of outright favoritism. The Boss’s Wife received special attention and focus on her character’s terrible storyline (that’s objective the worst Lwaxana Troi episode) came at the expense of Trek’s most ambitious idea.
To understand why anyone thought this would make good television, we’d probably have to hire a detective as good as Dixon Hill. Provided, of course, he’s not too busy hiding from the world’s hottest extraterrestrial MILF.
