Christine Chapel- A Star Trek Bio
Christine Chapel Star Trek Personnel File
Nurse Christine Chapel of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 served the crew in the medical department from 2266 to 2270 under Doctor Leonard McCoy.
Early Life
Christine Chapel was born in 2237, in New Orleans to Lauren and Patterson Chapel. She had an early love of ballet that gave way to science as she grew up.
She graduated in the 98th percentile of her class, with degrees in bioresearch, medical archeology, and endocrinology. During this time, she meets, and falls in love with Dr. Roger Korby. She leaves scientific research to join Starfleet Medical when Korby disappears. It is her hope that by joining Starfleet she will get on a mission in deep space and maybe find him.
Starfleet and the Enterprise
She is assigned to the USS Enterprise, to serve as nurse and ensign under the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Leonard McCoy.
In 2266, she assists Dr. McCoy with Joe Tormolen’s surgery of a damaged intestine, which unfortunately is not successful.
The Enterprise, on Stardate 2712.4, does reach the planet Exo III, where Dr. Korby was conducting research and had disappeared. The crew of the Enterprise finds him exploring and exploiting for his own gain, advanced android technology of a long dead civilization.
Dr. Korby plans on replacing key personnel with androids. Even more shocking, the Crew finds out that he is an Android himself, as his body had been damaged by frostbite. He transplanted his consciousness into a new body replica as well as building himself a companion named Andrea. Christine is repelled by his actions.
As Dr. Korby’s plan progresses, Kirk is replaced, along with the security officers. Their replacements have been beamed back aboard but not without a trap laid by Kirk as the imprinting happened. Doing so to let Spock know that the android Kirk was not the real Kirk. Korby is destroyed thanks to Captain Kirk’s manipulations and Christine Chapel is left to decided what to do with her life.
She decides to stay with the Enterprise and continue her medical career.
In 2267, she is promoted to head nurse. She helps Lieutenant Uhura after the probe Nomad wiped her memories. She helps save several of the crew when they contract a rapid aging syndrome on the planet Gamma Hydra IV due to the radiation left by a comet. She was proven correct that Doctor McCoy would figure out the cure when the Enterprise couldn’t reach them.
In 2268, she made clever use of psychology and even a little deception when dealing with Ensign Garrovick’s refusal to eat after he had been confined to quarters after hesitating to shoot a hostile, which resulted in the death of a crewmember. She tells him that Doctor McCoy has ordered a prescription of him to eat and shows him a microfilm cassette. She also threatens to feed him intravenously if he refuses. The tape actually contained “A Survey on Cygnian Respiratory Diseases”.
Nurse Chapel: Hi. Everyone else is at alert station, so I brought you some dinner.
Ensign Garrovick: I'm not hungry.
Nurse Chapel: Doctor's orders.
Ensign Garrovick: [confined to his quarters] What's happening?
Nurse Chapel: Are we still chasing that thing halfway across the galaxy? Yes. Has the captain lost his sense of balance? Maybe. Is the entire crew about ready to explode? Positively. You're lucky you're out of it.
Ensign Garrovick: What do mean "out of it?" I caused it. You know that, too, don't you? If I'd fired my phaser quickly enough on Argus 10, this wouldn't have happened.
Nurse Chapel: Your self-pity's a terrible first course. Why don't you try the soup instead?
Nurse Chapel was in the Enterprise Sickbay when Kelvan Tomar brought in Spock from a landing party to meet the Kelvans. McCoy believed that Spock was close to dying, but she could tell this wasn’t true. It turned out to be a ruse by both Spock and McCoy. The Kelvans had a plan to take the ship to the Andromeda Galaxy. Spock had put himself in a Vulcan trance to trick the Kelvans into thinking he was on the verge of death. The Kelvans take control of the Enterprise and they neutralized. They reduced the medical crew to into dehydrated porous cuboctahedron solids, the size of a human fist, composed of their base minerals, which represented the "distilled" essences of their beings. The Kelvans considered them non-essential personnel, of which Doctor McCoy complained bitterly of.
The crew of the Enterprise, aside from the 4 not neutralized, were reconstituted after control of the ship was retaken.
The Starnes Exploration Party went to survey the planet Triacus. The Enterprise was dispatched due to a distress call and found all the adults dead and the children still living. While on board to be transported to Starbase 4, it was Chapel who was the first to notice that the children weren’t crying for their parents. Later it was discovered that the last surviving member of a race called the Gorgan had influenced the children and caused the parents to commit suicide.
She excelled in the laboratory, showing off her skills by developing a diluted theragen derivative to cure mental degradation effects caused by an interphase as the Enterprise was going through Tholian space. She helped administer the cure throughout the ship.
In 2269 she was promoted to lieutenant.
During the incident with Taurus II, the male crewmembers incapacitated by the siren song, Chapel became acting chief medical officer along with Uhura leading the mission, she was part of the landing party that saved the Enterprise male crew.
After completing her 5 year mission, she finished her medical degree. She was slated to become a Chief Medical Officer for the refitted USS Enterprise under Will Decker. She stepped down to allow Doctor McCoy to assist in the V’Ger crisis with Captain Kirk. She was part of the medical team that helped heal Spock after the mind meld. She was noted to have held his hand, and she noted that is what a good nurse does.
In 2286, she was now Commander Christine Chapel. During the events of the Probe, she was part of the command and heled coordinated relief efforts at Starfleet Headquarters.
Relationships with Enterprise Crew
Spock
Christine Chapel, while under the influence of Psi 2000, admitted her love for Spock. "I'm in love with you, Mr. Spock. You, the Human Mr. Spock... the Vulcan Mr. Spock.... I see things... how honest you are. I know how you feel. You hide it, but you do have feelings. Oh, how we must hurt you... torture you."
This of course shocked the Vulcan. He could not reciprocate the feelings. They did discuss feelings, his and hers during his bout of pon farr (Vulcan blood fever, it causes intense emotional outbursts), where she had made him plomeek soup, a traditional Vulcan broth. It was during this time that he called her by her first name, and not her title and last name, for the first time.
While her feelings were not returned, she still continued to care deeply for him, being caught holding his hand during his scrape with death on Neural.
She also protected his consciousness from being destroyed by Henoch.
The shared a kiss, but it was forced on them, and humiliating by the Platonians. This led her to comment that she wanted to "crawl away and die."
McCoy
She had a comfort level of standing up to his authority but never to the point of disrespect or informality, it was always in the name of a cause. She never called him by his first name, though he did call her by hers.
She made sure that Doctor McCoy was in sick bay before leaving, making sure he would inform the Captain about his health.
She questioned the use of stokaline in treating Spock.
When Doctor McCoy heard she would become a Doctor, he was annoyed and said, “would argue about every diagnosis he made, rather than take the orders he gave.”
Uhura
Christine Chapel has a close professional friendship with Nyota Uhura. Their friendship is shown in how they regard each other, relearning to read to regain memories, and an embrace before Chapel goes to see Korby.
Character Creation
Majel Barrett was born in Cleveland, Ohio (February 23, 1932 – December 18, 2008) , would later become Majel Roddenberry was cast as “Number One” in the original pilot, “The Cage”.
NBC wanted a different direction and didn’t like Barrett or her role. Gene Roddenberry wanted to keep her on (as he was romantically linked with her), so he dyed her hair blonde and created Nurse Chapel. This deception didn’t work but the Network allowed it rather than cause another fight with Roddenberry.