Beverly Crusher Puns

Why was Dr. Crusher used so sparingly? Especially in the movies. Yar had some good stuff to do back in Season 1. Pulaski was used a lot in Season 2. Troi always had good stuff to do, even if it was blurting out the obvious. At least she had dialogue and screentime. Gates McFadden is phenomenally talented. I feel like the writers just didn't know what to do with her half the time. She did have some great episodes and she really shined in First Contact. I know it's been two decades, but I'm still bitter at how little screentime she had in Nemesis and that a lot of her scenes were cut.

https://youtu.be/mpYtyEU8gE4

I’m currently on season 4 of TNG and happened to come across the Jean-Luc autobiography on Amazon. Looking into the book more I saw that “Beverly Crusher” wrote the forward and is married to Picard.

I’ve watched the first few episodes of the Picard series before stopping and starting TNG from the beginning and saw on the Memory Alpha wiki that it shows Picard single.

(I like to do research as I’m watching a show and often google or go to the shows wikia page.)

So I’m wondering if Picard and Crusher being married is even canon. Because I saw online also that “pocket books” were released after TNG ended and talked about Them getting married and having a kid.

Gates McFadden, the iconic Star Trek actress (Dr. Beverly Crusher) director, and choreographer (Labyrinth) has just released her podcast debut, InvestiGates: Who Do You Think You Are? through geek culture, pop history powerhouse The Nacelle Company. (Netflix's The Toys That Made Us, Down to Earth with Zac Efron, Disney 's Behind the Attraction with The Rock) The limited series based out of NacelleCast Studios new state-of-the-art podcast studio features interviews with some of Trek's brightest characters and Gate's best friends including: Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Will Wheaton, Brent Spiner, Marina Sirtis, and more. The podcast will be available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Podbean, Amazon Music and more starting today, May 12th.

https://twitter.com/gates_mcfadden

Proof: https://i.redd.it/4p5d25d5oky61.jpg

Better than the candle or sub candle?

For instance, “I heard Gul Dukat ghosting your mom at least three times last night.”

Beverly learnt that Riker had picked up some eggs at Starbase 73 and immediately applied for a transfer, abandoning her son in the process. There was simply no time to take him. She had tried Riker's bloodshit-inducing cooking before and it nearly killed her, and she couldn't risk him ordering her to eat the gruel his "practiced hand" produced. Getting stationed at Starfleet Medical was a lucky break for her, she would have taken a position on a medical waste ship to get away from that slop as quick as a transporter could beam her.

Doctor Pulaski surmised that this might be the reason Doctor Crusher had fled the Enterprise and so, after being ordered to Riker's quarters to try his cooking, she brought with her a bottle of extra strength ale to try and get knocked out drunk before having to eat. However she did not anticipate how recklessly high a temperature Riker would cook the eggs at and that they'd be an instant burnt mess within mere seconds, robbing her of the chance to pound the large bottle of ale and get blackout drunk. One hour later she was in surgery getting her intestines replaced.

She loved getting ghosted

Lots of neat stuff going on in these two episodes in terms of the long-term narratives surrounding the Borg and Data/Lore, but what is now seared into my mind is that Dr. Beverly Crusher could probably have been a Janeway-tier captain if her career had worked out differently.

Given temporary command of the Enterprise during the brief period (two days or so?) in which the rest of the senior staff and most of the crew are searching a planet's surface for Data, she:

• Builds a working staff of her own from the dregs of newly assigned ensigns and C-list lieutenants left behind to keep the lights on, drawing extraordinary ingenuity and courage out of all of them

• Twice evades an immeasurably superior, faster, essentially undefeatable foe by the barest margins possible

• Evacuates an entire planet's worth of away teams in the space of a few minutes, dumping rematerializing officers into cargo holds and shuttle bays and broom closets for all we know

• When forced to leave 47 of those crew members behind to escape the Borg ship, figures out a way to send a message to Starfleet through a transwarp conduit they didn't even know was a physical possibility a week ago, develops a working rescue plan with her new staff, and returns immediately in spite of having nothing to match the Borg's firepower

• Shunt-stops a Galaxy-class starship out of high warp right on the edge of a planet's atmosphere so she can buy crucial seconds to beam up the rest of the teams, no margin of error whatsoever

• Is able to overclock the Enterprise's shields because she remembered something from one of Geordi's weirder science projects

• Flies the ship into the sun(!)

• Turns the sun into a fucking plasma cannon that she uses to destroy the Borg(!!), fully benefiting from the trust she had placed in the ensign who suggested it

I don't even know if there's another captain in this franchise who could boast a record like that over a 48-hour stretch. This is William Adama territory.

Jean Luc Picard is a cool captain and everything, but he had been sitting in command chairs (or just outside Starfleet) for a few decades before he was summoned. Even before that, he specialized in archeology and literature and stuff much more than any sort of snooping or invading. Surely there would be thousands of people in Starfleet more qualified for such a mission, many of whom would be less valuable tha the captain of the Federation's flagship.

Worf's presence more or less makes sense. He has all sorts of training, I'm sure much of which covers the situations he was likely to find down there. IDK if it was a smart move to risk having the only Klingon in Starfleeet caught performing a mission like that, though.

Bev is a doctor. If the mission involved like, repatriating a prisoner who had some obscure medical condition I could see why you would send a doctor down there, but it it didn't. There was noreal reason to send somebody with more than basic combat medic skills, nurse Ogawa would have been just as qualified.

Was this actally all just a ploy to get Picard away from the Enterprise while Jellico used it as his own diplomacy gunship? I kind of see that making sense, but nobody else not he show considers how stupid it is to send him down there.

I'm kind of hesitant to ask this question because, in my mind at least, it borders on production discrepancy to ask something like this. As in the only explanation for why they were selected is "because its a TV show"

But, then, people can discuss why Kirk is always going down on missions, so maybe I am missing some practical in-universe explanations. Nothing I can come up with makes any sense to me.

Is there a real conversation to be had here, about WHY those three were selected?

I know many trek-fans disliked Dr. Katherine Pulaski that appeared in season 2 of TNG.

I can imagine some of the dislike by some trekkies is because she is not as "pretty" as Dr. Crusher.

However, re-watching TNG again, I find Dr. Pulaski a much better character. First she is not just another "yes woman" like Beverly is, she continually challenges Picard and the other staff. She might not always be right, but at least she is strong-willed. Beverly, most of the time, is "just there", her only duty as a background healer, and nothing more.

Some people disliked her because she was "mean to Data", but overall I feel that in just one season she showed growth and towards the end of it she seems to show real friendship for him. Fans tend however to forget that Data was an oddity and Pulaski attitude was he norm, not the exception in Starfleet: remember they had to hold a trial to show Data was not merely "Starfleet property"!

Her banter with Data is strongly reminiscent of the Spock-McCoy conflict, and as a character Pulaski seems to grow in that respect, starting out as viewing Data as a mere machine but then realizing he's more than that

I think overall Pulaski raises good questions on what and who Data is. All the other members just assume he's "one of the guys"... but really is he? Are his responses real consciousness or just simulated. These could have been great questions to be explored and I think Pulaski personality and attitude could have made for some awesome Pulaski-Data episodes.

More importantly, Pulaski reminds me a lot of Dr. Coy. She is highly focused on ethics and her duty as a doctor above anything else. She addresses the ethical elephants in the room with no hair on her tongue, speaking her mind.

What made the TOS great was the conflict between Spock and Bones, with Kirk in the middle. In TNG everybody is mostly a yes-man. Sure Worf is often seen suggesting the aggressive approach, but he never *argues* for it when his opinion is rejected. Pulaski on the other hand did not let the bone go. Even when it came on the dreaded discussions of the Prime Directive, she was very much like a "directives be damned" like McCoy was, putting compassion first. Now I do not say she is always right (whatever your view on such issues are) but at least she provided grounds for discussion.

I’m on my second watch through, so I’m relatively new to the series. I’m sure I missed a lot the first time around. But I can’t figure out the relationship between Beverly Crusher and Jean-Luc Picard.. did they used to date? Is it just horrible sexual tension that never gets resolved? Can anyone give me any insight so that I may better understand?

It’s why Dr Crusher so awkwardly introduced Wesley to Picard in the first episode. It’s also why she could just run off to Starfleet Medical during the second season. She left Wesley with his biological father.

And Wesley Crusher was originally going to be a girl. Leslie Crusher. The early write up for Beverly was a slightly different take on the doctor we came to know on the show. The bolded section especially --

"BEVERLY CRUSHER – Leslie's 35-year-old mother. She serves as the chief medical officer on the Enterprise. If it were not for her intelligence, personality, beauty, and the fact that she has a natural walk of a striptease queen, Capt. Picard might not have agreed to her request that Leslie observe bridge activities; therefore letting her daughter's intelligence carry events further."

Maybe I missed the times where she had the natural walk of a striptease queen.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Beverly_Crusher (Appendices - Background information)