by Chris Snellgrove
| Published
in Star Trek: The Next Generationthere is no more memorable guest character than Majel Barrett Roddenberry's Lwaxana Troi, Counselor Troi's main mother, Donna. Sometimes, having her around worked 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 one of the show's leads by season two, he still had a huge influence on The next generation. Understandably, this means directors and producers are intent on accommodating his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry on set.
This adaptation even went so far as to edit the episodes to focus more on her. This had a particularly bad effect on the second season episode of Star Trek: The next generation It's called “hunting.”
How Majel Barrett Roddenberry ruined Star Trek: The Next Generation hunt
The episode's director, Rob Bowman, has since revealed that “Manhunt” had “interesting nuances” planned for the Dixon Hill plot, which were dropped in favor of catering to “the boss's wife.” According to Bowman, “the focus was ‘I went from Noir to Majel’ specifically because ‘this is the president’s wife, and she only does it once a year, so it has to be right for her’.”
So instead of a The next generation In a detective episode heavily steeped in noir influences, “Manhunt” gave us a plot centered around Betazed’s menopause, making Lwaxana madly horny in the most cringe-worthy ways.
We were introduced to Dixon Hill in the wonderful first season episode “The Big Goodbye” written by Tracy Torme. Since he also wrote the first season episode that introduced the character Lwaxana Troi (“Haven”), he should have been the perfect choice to write this episode.
Unfortunately, Tormé's script was changed so much that he used a pseudonym (Thierry Devereaux) in the credits. It's easy to understand his frustration. His original script was full of great film noir homages, including Picard's voiceovers as the tired Dixon Hill.
In the finale, most of the film noir focus comes from Captain Picard running into the holodeck to escape the overly amorous Lwaxana. He does this by delving into his own Dixon Hill show, a sort of sweeping novel 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 telling the story in Raymond Chandler's beautiful, sarcastic cadence. Sadly, director Rob Bowman confirmed that most of these wonderful noir sequences were cut to focus on Lwaxana Troy and that he was personally tasked with “[making]sure she did her best, so that’s what we worked on every day.”
It's not really Majill Barrett Roddenberry's fault
Now, before anyone throws something at us, let's get one thing straight: Majel Barrett Roddenberry is great A true Star Trek actor and icon. Her later appearance as Lwaxana Troi featured in some of the best episodes of the series The next generation And also a very good episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
It's not Majel's fault that the script for “Manhunt” is so terrible that it turns her smart, fiercely independent character into an inexplicably hypersexual bimbo. the Next gen The team could have found another way to focus the episode more on her, but they didn't. As longtime fans, we can sum up the problem as follows: the idea of a Lwaxana story would have been painful any Episode, but that especially It hurts to know that his presence prevented us from getting a proper noir episode.
Nepotism was to blame, but Lwaxana is still great
I love Majel Barrett Roddenberry, but this seems to confirm that one of Trek's worst episodes is the result of outright nepotism. “The President's Wife” received special attention, and the focus was on her character's terrible plot (which is the objective thing). worst The Lwaxana Troi episode) came at the expense of Trek's more ambitious premise.
To find out why anyone thinks this would make for TV, maybe we should hire a good detective like Dixon Hill. Provided, of course, that he's not too busy hiding from the horniest people in the world Alien Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
