Dr. Helen Noel

#8 on my list of the Top Ten Badass Heroines of TOS.

Who she is: She's a psychiatrist who beams down to the planet with Kirk in "Dagger of the Mind." She made out with him one time at a party and obviously has a big crush on him, but he's just annoyed by her. (He's actually kind of a big jerk to her.) Later, the bad guy manipulates Kirk's brain to make him think that he is madly in love with her.

Why she's cool: Despite her big crush on him, she resists Kirk's brain-ray-induced advances and keeps firmly reminding him that his feelings for her aren't real. Then she climbs through the ventilation system to short circuit the brain ray. Kirk says that this could easily kill her, and she has no electrical engineering training, and, since she is a psychiatrist, presumably no combat training either. But, not only does she figure out how to shut off the machine, she also fights one of the bad guy's lackeys and ends up kicking him into the circuitry, killing him, destroying the machine for good, and saving the day. Yaay!

Noel, like most of the women in Star Trek, is also testament to the fact that you can be competent and sexy at the same time. Look at how sexy she is! A little lopsided in my rendition of her, but sexy!