Special to STARTREK.COM by Deborah Fisher

When we recently caught up with Majel Barrett Roddenberry for an early morning chat, she had to pull herself away from watching an interview about one of her favorite shows, Survivor. "They just voted someone off the island last night," Roddenberry said as she came to the phone. "The further along this goes, the more you find out about all the politics that have developed."

Roddenberry understands from experience what is required for survivorship. A veteran of Hollywood politics since she started acting, she has ridden the fortunes of not only her own career, but her famous husband's, Gene. Now, as she prepares to launch another futuristic Roddenberry vision in her upcoming syndicated show, Andromeda, it seems no coincidence that the theme of surviving appeals to her.

"Andromeda is set in the distant future," says Roddenberry. "An uprising has caused the destruction of the Commonwealth which was a good thing. Kevin Sorbo plays our lead, the guy who wakes up the future and decides to rebuild the Commonwealth." The show's title refers to the rag-tag crew's ship, part computer, part life-form. Based upon a Gene Roddenberry concept, Majel is executive producing the show, which will hit the airwaves in October 2000. Relating the story of a recent press conference about the production, Roddenberry reveals her characteristic humor. Apparently Kevin Sorbo -- most well-known for playing Hercules -- was asked if he'd have to take his shirt off much. Sorbo thought not, but Roddenberry said she leaned over and said "I'm speaking for all the women here. Any chance we get to take his shirt off, we will." At this Roddenberry has a good chuckle.

It was probably this kind of wicked humor that first attracted Lucille Ball's attention to Majel when, as a young woman, she enrolled in a comedy class given by Ball in 1958. Ball recruited just a few women, including Majel, into her school, eventually leading Roddenberry to a contract with Ball's company, Desilu. It was Desilu in its early days that actually shepherded the development of Star Trek.

Majel says she had known Gene for some time when he began developing the cast of characters that would inhabit Star Trek. "He wrote Number One first and then went back to other characters," recalls Roddenberry. "He kept in the second-in-command mainly because I wouldn't let him forget it." NBC would have none of it, unfortunately, in those days of rampant censorship. Ironically the network found a woman second-in-command too unbelievable in a futuristic science fiction show set on a starship and peopled with aliens.

Majel says Gene made it a secret quest to see how much he could slip past the network. "One of the purposes of doing Star Trek was to make people into symbols, put them into different costumes and put them on different planets. Then we could talk about things like war, peace, the black/white problem and mother love. Gene would chuckle from day-to-day when he got things past the network. Remember the Horta? She turns out to be nothing more than a mother. Gene got it right past the censors. The audience always got things like that which is one of the reasons the show was so powerful."

One of Roddenberry's greatest disappointments, however, was that she didn't get to play Number One. While many of the dispassionate characteristics that Gene and Majel had created for the character went to Spock, Majel believes that she could have taken the female commander to new places. "It was terribly difficult to not play Number One because I knew who she was. I had developed my own backstory for her. I felt she was born, bred and raised for her job. I think you would have found she would have showed her heart."

While Majel did eventually get herself beamed onto the Enterprise by taking on the role of nurse Christine Chapel, Roddenberry says it wasn't until she met Lwaxana Troi that she really had fun. "Gene was four or five episodes into The Next Generation when he came home one day and said 'I have a great part for you. You don't even have to act!' I didn't know she'd be the mother-from-hell."

Mother-from-hell she may have been, but she was an immediate hit with the fans. "There was something about Lwaxana that no matter how mean and nasty she was, everyone saw something familiar -- a mother, an aunt, a teacher. To this day I have no idea what it was."

Roddenberry and the writers had fun with Lwaxana. She was outrageous, she was tender, she was a grieving mother, she was naked. "I decided to play her big and I kept thinking the directors would bring me down but nobody ever did. I just opened up completely. She was so full of life and passion. She had her own devils going on inside her, but how much closer can you come to a real human being?"

Television has changed a lot since the days when the Roddenberrys had to sneak themes, ideas and strong women characters past the censors. "The networks finally grew up," observes Roddenberry. "Somebody in all their cleverness figured out that women do the shopping. People wanted women in stronger roles. If they did that, then more people would watch and they'd get more money."

Besides continuing to produce Earth: Final Conflict, and putting the finishing touches on Andromeda, Majel is developing another Roddenberry project called Starship. Clearly in charge of her own universe, she and Lwaxana don't seem so far apart in many ways. "I've had women shout at me across parking lots that my playing Lwaxana did more for women over 40 than any movement in America. I can see that now. She was out in space, an ambassador. She was obviously lonely but she's a survivor. She could have gotten by on that island."