Bonus! Celebrate Mothers Day with the Lustiest Mom in the Galaxy

Learning that Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols were already good friends pre-Star Trek explains why their characters have such great chemistry on the show, despite their (sadly) limited shared screentime.

I've had to defend my love for Lwaxana daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx! Thank you for honoring one of the best Divas in the future galaxies.

Love this! 😃🖖 & Love Lwaxana Troi. 1 correction, Gene Roddenberry wasn’t just a writer on the show “The Lieutenant”, he was the creator of that show. He’d previously in his writing career sold like 6 different pilot scripts before finally getting one picked up to series: “The Lieutenant”—the first series he created. It aired for 1 season of 29 episodes. After it was cancelled, his next pilot script was Star Trek. Which seemed to be yet another one for him that didn’t get picked up, until the following year when NBC asked for a 2nd pilot to be made—I believe the first show in history ever to have had a 2nd pilot ordered. FYI, he also found Leonard Nimoy because he guest starred on an episode of The Lieutenant.

Dunno how I missed this last week but you knocked it out of the park. My gf is just getting into Star Trek and she's got some friends who tried to convince her not to watch TOS and slip straight to Next Gen out of what seems like maybe embarrassment over how campy it is? But it infuriates me because next gen was never a fraction as progressive as TOS. Nichelle Nichols alone! Anyway, we're ignoring them and we're allllmost to Amok Time.

I never knew about the Nicols affair, and I had forgotten that Majel was Luxanna. I just remember loving how she tripped up Picard who had brokered peace and fought battles. Just incredible performance.

OMG, thanks so much for this! I watched STNG religiously and loved her from her very first scene! I didn't make the Auntie Mame connection but now it seems obvious

Lwaxana was such a Diva. I was obsessed with her (and her outfits)

I remember not knowing what to make of Lwaxana when I was a kid. I started watching Star Trek: TNG when I was about 9, and I loved Picard, Worf and Riker in particular (in fact Riker was probably my first T.V. crush, although I didn't have the words for it at the time). Anyway, these were the guys who could handle pretty much anything. Be it agressive Ferengi with their weird energy whips, giant tar monsters, wisecracking omnipotent beings, and then all of a sudden, here comes this bigger than life, brassy lady who just cows all of them. I didn't fit into my brain, and it honestly knocked me off balance a bit when it came to enjoying the show (although I will admit that I laughed my ass off when she would call Mr. Worf "Mr. Woof" every single time she saw him). Later, I did come to appreciate the character, and the very unique energy she brought to the show as the only character who could ever consistently intimidate Picard. As much as I enjoy her early episodes like "Haven", "Manhut" and "Menege a Troi". It's her latter volley of episodes that I think were the best, as each one successful deepened her character. In "Half a Life", she falls in love with an older man whose culture put adults of a certain age to death, which causes her to face her own mortality. In "Cost of Living" this theme is continued as she is rushing into marrying the stiffist stiff in the Universe because she does not want to die alone. Finally, in Dark Page, the darkest of all her episodes, she is finally able to come to terms with the long ago death of her older daughter. There is almost no comedy in this episode at all, and Majel is really able to go to some dramatic places that the show had never allowed her to do before. Of the three episodes that she guested on Deep Space 9, the first, "Forsaken", is the only one really worth the time to sit though, and it's a good coda to all the man-hunting hijinks that she did in the early episodes of TNG. Here, she and Odo make an unlikely, but somehow workable pair, and again, Majel is able to find new deeps within what had become a well-worn character trope. She just has some really beautiful moments in that show, and I think it's my favorite work of hers in the Star Trek universe.

I can’t give you a primary source, but I had a friend in high school who was connected to the underground scene in Hollywood. He had stories about meeting guys who were….intimate with Roger Carmel. Although knowing that Alaska and Jackie Cox do Deanna Troi drag….

Me after seeing the title: Gotta be Lwaxana, please be Lwaxana! And it was 🤲

Ohmigosh you included my absolute favourite Lwaxana quote ever, including the "Who're you?" Also, was I the only one as a kid who memorized and then recited that line every time I got the chance?

You have both my nerd and camp receipters tingling...