Why Star Trek: TNG Season 3 Offended Dr. Beverly Crusher Actor Gates McFadden

To the delight of many Star Trek fans, the ending of "Star Trek: Picard" featured a near-complete reunion of the Enterprise-D flag officers from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," including the beloved ship's doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), who almost didn't make it past the first season of the 1987 series. Although McFadden had been warmly received by her fellow cast members and the "Star Trek" fandom, series writer Maurice Hurley disliked her performance so much he got her axed from the show. As producer Rick Berman recounted in "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The Next 25 Years from The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," Hurley, who ascended to head writer between seasons, leveraged his position to convince Gene Roddenberry to fire McFadden, replacing her with "Star Trek: The Original Series" actor Diana Muldaur as Dr. Katherine Pulaski.

But despite Muldaur's years in the industry and familiarity with "Star Trek," Pulaski's briny persona and oil-to-water chemistry with the crew weren't a good fit for the series. When Hurley left the series at the end of Season 2, Berman wasted no time hiring McFadden back the very same day. Crediting her fans for their role in getting her back, in 2023 McFadden told Australian broadcaster SBS, "[F]or me, that was terrific [...] It was very moving to me when I came back."

But as McFadden would recall in "The Fifty-Year Mission," the writing for her character was not what she'd hoped it would be. To McFadden, who had always envisioned Crusher as one of the top doctors of her era, seeing the Enterprise doc's persona distilled to that of an overworked single mom proved profoundly disappointing.

After returning, McFadden found Dr. Crusher seemingly aged up a decade and stripped of the qualities that made the character worth playing. Particularly frustrating was Crusher's relationship with her son Wesley (Wil Wheaton). "I felt like Donna Reed, worrying about his lunchbox," she lamented in "The Fifty-Year Mission." And when Wesley needed support, he never turned to his mom. "Every time Wesley was in trouble or needed guidance he went to a male figure, which I found a bit insulting, considering how many single parents there are in the world," McFadden added.

For the actor, the annoying space mom persona failed to live up to the potential of what she felt was one of the most capable figures on the starship, if not in the universe. As the head physician aboard Starfleet's flagship, a ship constantly encountering new life forms and worlds, McFadden envisioned Crusher at the leading edge of medical research. In "The Finest Crew in the Fleet: The Next Generation Cast On Screen and Off," McFadden emphasized, "I told them that if Beverly Crusher really was the equivalent of the Surgeon General of the galaxy, let's give her that respect."

Instead, she found her character reduced to a side player in a story centering men, a sign that the sexism McFadden felt was behind Beverly Crusher's original exit had not departed along with the problematic writer who got her fired. As McFadden concluded in "The Fifty-Year Mission," "The year I was away certain decisions were made and that was the season where the three men became the focus. I didn't know that had happened, and it was news to me. But that's the way it goes."