The Significance of Marlena Moreau

I had done so many roles as the Seniorita, the Japanese girl, the Chinese girl, and the Hawaiian gal, that when I left New York, everyone told me I’d be typecast when I got to Hollywood. So I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be typed!’ 

But it was the sci-fi world where I wasn’t hired just for my ethnicity. In fact, when I read the script for ‘Mirror, Mirror’ and saw the part they had written for Marlena, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, why did they ask me to do this?’ There was nothing ethnic about it; there was no accent; she was just a female, and I thought that was so very interesting that they chose someone of my type to play her. 

It was very exciting that Gene Roddenberry had created a show that had those kind of roles – not only were we not hired based on our ethnicity, but the roles were powerful. I mean, in 1967, for a woman to have that kind of power, as with Marlena, where with just one little push of the button she could kill

BarBara Luna (Marlena Moreau in “Mirror, Mirror”), quoted in Marc Cushman’s These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season 2.

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