By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, no guest character is more memorable than Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s Lwaxana Troi, the prime donna mother to Counselor Troi. Sometimes, having her around worked out well, and sometimes, it didn’t. In one case, we know for certain her presence ruined an episode.
While Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was no longer a showrunner by season 2, he still wielded immense influence over The Next Generation. Understandably, that meant directors and producers bent over backward to accommodate his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, on set.
That accommodation even went as far as tweaking episodes to focus them 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’s Manhunt
The episode’s director, Rob Bowman, has since revealed that “Manhunt” had interesting “noir nuances” planned for its Dixon Hill plot, and those were dropped in favor of catering to “the boss’s wife.”According to Bowman, “the emphasis was shifted from the noir to Majel” specifically because “this is the boss’s wife, and she only does it once a year, so it should be accommodating for her.”
So instead of a Next Generation detective episode steeped heavily in noir influences, “Manhunt” gave us a plot centered around Betazed menopause, which made Lwaxana insanely aroused in the most cringe-worthy way possible.
We were introduced to Dixon Hill in the great season one episode “The Big Goodbye,” written by Tracy Tormé. Since he also wrote the season one episode which introduced the character of Lwaxana Troi (“Haven”), he should have been the perfect choice to pen this episode.
Unfortunately, Tormé’s script was changed so much that he went by a pseudonym (Terry Devereaux) in the credits. It’s easy to understand his frustration. His original script was filled with great film noir homages, including Picard voiceovers 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 an overly amorous Lwaxana. He does so by entering his Dixon Hill program, a kind of holonovel 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 narrating the story in the cynically beautiful cadence of Raymond Chandler. Sadly, director Rob Bowman confirmed that most of these great noir bits were cut to focus on Lwaxana Troi and that he was personally charged with “[making] sure that she did her best, so every day that’s what we worked on.”
It’s Not Really Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s Fault
Now, before anyone throws something at us, let’s make one thing clear: Majel Barrett Roddenberry is a great 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 Majel’s fault that the script for “Manhunt” is so awful and inexplicably turns her smart and fiercely independent character into an oversexed bimbo. The Next Gen team could have found another way to focus the episode more on her, but they didn’t. As longtime fans, we can sum the problem up like this: that Lwaxana story idea would have been painful in any episode, but it’s especially painful knowing that its presence kept us from getting a proper noir episode.
Favoritism 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 straight-up favoritism. “The boss’s wife” got special consideration, and the focus on her character’s awful plot (this is objectively the worst Lwaxana Troi episode) came at the expense of Trek’s most ambitious idea.
To figure out why anyone thought this would make for good television, we’d probably have to hire a detective as good as Dixon Hill. Provided, of course, that he isn’t too busy hiding from the world’s horniest alien MILF.
