3 of the best Star Trek episodes to watch on Majel Barrett’s birthday

It’s Star Trek legend Majel Barrett’s birthday today!

Majel Barrett is a Star Trek icon, but you may not even know it. The wife of series creator Gene Roddenberry has a lot of firsts. She was the first woman to portray the first officer in Star Trek history, and she has appeared in more episodes than any other actor and had appeared in every series that Star Trek produced before her passing in 2008.

She’s portrayed the original Number One in the first Star Trek pilot, she played Christine Chapel in the original series, Lt. M’Ress in the animated series, she was the voice of the computer in every Star Trek series since the series had a talking computer and she portrayed Lwaxana Troi across the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

With so much Trek to her name, we had to look at three episodes she was in to help celebrate her birthday. Quick note, we’re only looking at episodes where she played a physical character and not just the voice of a starship.

Three episodes to watch on Majel Barrett’s birthday

Deep Space Nine – The Forsaken

This is a great episode if you like seeing the softer side of Odo. Lxwana arrives on Deep Space Nine like the spitfire she is, and immediately falls for Odo, though Odo is anything but receptive. Lwaxana has a rep of being a very unlikeable character at times and that’s fair, but this is a great episode if you want to see what she’s capable of being with better writers.

The Original Series – The Cage/The Menagerie

I’d recommend watching the Cage if you can find it. It’s a unique look at what could have been, with Barrett playing one of the main leads. It’s not a great episode, but it’s one of those bizarre pieces of history that just pulls you in and demands you pay attention to it.

Deep Space Nine – The Muse (episode)

It’s not often that Lwaxana Troi is made to look a bit helpless, but that was exactly the case in this Deep Space Nine episode. Arriving at Deep Space Nine, she needs Odo’s help. She’s pregnant with a Tavnian baby, a race known for not allowing the child to be raised by the opposite sex. With Lwaxana pregnant with a boy, she’s looking at not knowing the child for the next 16 years, a fate she just can’t bear. So she enlists Odo who decides to marry her. It only gets wilder from there. Plus the a-plot is Jake Sisko being manipulated by a psychic space vampire. So that’s a thing.