Even though she sometimes grated me, I liked Pulaski more simply because she was a more interesting character.
I much preferred Pulaski because she actually acted like a doctor, instead of a cheerleader with a medicine degree
“Why is Crusher gone? Who is this old Bones McCoy copy? Why didn’t Riker shave?”
One year later…
“Why is Pulaski gone? Why did the soccer mom come back? What did they do to the uniforms?”
Pulaski was the best TNG cast member and I will die on that hill. She’s the only one who showed real personal growth.
The only reason I didn’t like her was she was a Mary Sue.
All of Starfleet and she happens to be the foremost expert on Heart Transplants, Genetics, AND Klingon biology? It’s not that she knew medicine and struggled like McCoy in Spock’s Brain. Nor spend an episode learning from the actual expert like Geordie in Booby Trap. No it was "Oh we are so glad to see you Dr. Pulaski- the universe’s foremost expert on < whatever the episode’s problem was >.
At least Spock in TOS had the excuse of being a super intelligent alien.
I mean that’s just TNG in general. Everyone on the Enterprise was a top expert in multiple things.
Booby Trap was one of the few cases where Geordi needed outside help. The rest of the time, he was the greatest engineering genius in history. O’Brien is literally the most important man in Starfleet history (although I’m guessing that’s more due to his time on DS9).
Picard was not just one of the best starship captains in Starfleet history, he was also an expert in archaeology and could do science and engineering if he needed to and probably any other job on the ship. Certainly any job on the bridge. On top of that, he was a talented actor, he was an expert in hand-to-hand combat and he was able to hold his own against omnipotent beings multiple times and sometimes even get the better of them, as if that makes a lick of sense.
Every character on TNG was an expert in whatever they needed to be an expert in that episode. That doesn’t make them Mary Sues. You’re supposed to be able to identify with a Mary Sue. I don’t think the point of Pulaski was for audiences to identify with her. Especially with her relationship with Data. There was a Mary Sue character on TNG. That character was Wesley.
Am I the only one here who’s pretty much indifferent towards Crusher but couldn’t stand that bigot Pulaski?? 😬
I’m going to defend Pulaski here because I don’t think she was a bigot. Data was unique. There was no precedent there for how to relate to an android like Data. To the point that Starfleet literally had to have a legal case over whether or not he is sentient. She was a doctor. Her idea of sentience was biological. She did not have the framework to initially understand that an android can be sentient.
Look at it this way: let’s say tomorrow, someone develops an actual AI, a sentient computer program rather than just an LLM. And you told people, “I know all those other LLMs sound like they’re alive, but this one really is alive,” a lot of people would find that pretty hard to buy. She was in a world where computers sounded alive but were not alive.
There’s also a lot of bigotry in Star Trek that is a lot worse than that. I don’t just mean O’Brien and the “Cardis” stuff. McCoy was just a bigot. He talked about Vulcans the way his Southen ancestors would talk about N-s. And he never learned considering he was still at it when he was an old man at Farpoint Station. Kirk is such an anti-Klingon bigot that he almost starts a war over it. And he essentially gets proven right even while also being wrong. There’s even Federation-wide prejudices. All genetic augments are bad people even if their parents did it when they were babies. Romulans cannot be trusted. Ferengi are always trying to cheat you. Of course, these prejudices always get shown to be true in the show (or there’s the “one of the good ones” character), but that’s just justifying the bigotry.
So I would put Pulaski pretty damn low on the Star Trek bigotry level, especially compared to some more beloved characters.
Data was unique. There was no precedent there for how to relate to an android like Data. To the point that Starfleet literally had to have a legal case over whether or not he is sentient. She was a doctor. Her idea of sentience was biological. She did not have the framework to initially understand that an android can be sentient.
I see your point, but counterpoint: based on the fact that he was a Starfleet officer, which only people are allowed to be, and just interacting with him, it’s pretty clear on an instinctive level that he has personality quirks, preferences, self awareness etc.
What’s more, I could understand her initial doubts due to what you described, but even after getting to know him, she’d keep gainsaying his personhood for no apparent reason other than seemingly trying to convince HIM that he was nothing but a robot.
It’s that stubbornness and lack of rationale that makes it feel like bigotry rather than just confusion and inquisitiveness to me.
As for bigotry being rife in Star Trek, this sounds like a cop-out but it’s true: I haven’t seen much yet since I started with TNG and am only a few episodes into season 3 so far lol
she was obviously written like that so they could give her some character growth.
lot of the star trek characters didn’t exactly age well according to today’s standards, just take it with a grain of salt. i definitely liked her more than crusher, who was always so bland…
Good point. Seeing her for the first time a few months ago did her no favors lol. Tbf though, she was casually yet stubbornly bigoted even by late 80s standards in a show that was inherently xenophilic if anything.
Also, might just be me, but it very much felt like the bigotry was supposed to be a POSITIVE trait to show of her scientific skepticism or whatever compared to all those Pollyannas just going around treating other people as equals by default 🤦
Haha, yeah, so true bestie, wait what? … Oh. Star Trek, not Doctor Who.
And we didn’t even get a multi doctor episode
I so wanted them to attempt a connection between Diana Muldaur’s TOS & TNG characters. Alas…
Who?
Oh.
I’m kidding in the sense that I want everyone to be happy and wish they’d kept Pulaski/Muldaur for another role - maybe Worf’s personal physician.
But I’m not kidding in the sense that Bev Crusher.
The barrel incident really made me fucking hate Crusher.
Ok I admit I’m unfamiliar but intrigued.
Big spoiler.
A heavy barrel falls on Worf and damages his spinal chord, resulting in paralysis from the neck down. He wants to die because being paralyzed and being a burden brings him great mental agony. He asks Riker to kill him. Crusher can’t reconcile her own feelings with those of Worf and his values as a klingon and wants to force him to live as a cripple.
Other doctor (forgot the name) shows up later who proposes a risky procedure to artificially grow a spinal column and replace it completely, but which may end up killing Worf. Crusher once again bitches about how Worf could live a happy, fulfilling life as a quadriplegic (by her stupid humie standards), but is overruled and ordered to assist. The procedure is a close call, but ultimately successful.
Crusher then has the fucking audacity to call the other doctor dangerous.
Basically I wanted her to take a long walk out an open airlock then have Picard reverse course and later apologize to Geordi for causing an in-flight human ingestion. She is not fit to be a physician if she can’t reconcile her views with another culture for the benefit of her patient. Great episode overall, but as always, I wish there had been some fallout later.
Agreed. It was one of those Star Trek episodes that tried to make a point (in this case a point about disabilities not being stigmas) and doing it so badly that they make the opposite point instead. And it’s not the only one at all.
It’s in the aptly-named episode Ethics.
