I’ve heard her and the other actresses talk about that first season at conventions and it’s hard to shake the feeling of how dire that show was for all of them during that season. McFadden fired, Crosby quits, and Sirtis thought she was being let go (the writers had stopped speaking to her/producers had stopped taking meetings with her) up until Crosby quit. She believes the only reason she was still on the show is because Crosby quit before they could fire her.
The show lost 2 out of 3 lead actresses going into the second season. Not a great look.
“The show lost 2 out of 3 lead actresses going into the second season. Not a great look.”
Excellent point. I’ve read the, “this is how a security officer would go out,” explanation for Yar’s demise, but I never bought it. News of Denise Crosby leaving TNG was out before “Skin of Evil” was first broadcast. When I saw the episode I thought that Yar’s death came across as being intentionally petty and meaningless. “We have women as main characters but we don’t know what to do with them,” is endlessly frustrating to me, with Star Trek and other shows. A ship’s doctor, a chief of security, and a ship’s counselor who can sense emotions – that is a pretty rich ground from which to grow stories, beyond the characters backstories.
That was such a bad situation. The whole, “how dare you question me, get out,” loss of Gates McFadden. Dr. Pulaski’s introduction as Bones 2.0 instead of as a distinct, unique character, and her first comments to Data. I think Diana Muldaur is very talented and a Star Trek icon – TOS and TNG. Pulaski is a strong character, but that first impression was hard for me to shake. I was happy when Dr. Crusher returned, but by then I was also also sad to see Dr. Pulaski go. I wish that PIC had made room for a Dr. Pulaski appearance.
I was glad to see that Pulaski at got a tribute with a ship named after her in PIC Season 3. That at least implies that she went on to do great things after leaving the Enterprise. I like to think that the USS Pulaski was one of the last to succumb on Frontier Day because its crew had the oldest combined age of any ship in the fleet.
You’re not alone in that. Pretty much everyone I’ve ever encountered who dislikes Pulaski as character… it’s because all they remember of her is that first scene.
She’s a great example of just how brutally important first-impressions are.
I definitely disagree that she wasn’t her own, distinct character – she was, I think you’re letting that bad first impression continue to color your perspective. It’s easy to misremember Pulaski as being abrasive and antagonistic because of that first scene, and hard to remember that she apologized very quickly after that, and very quickly became friends with Data (and remained very supportive of him throughout her time on the ship).
So it’s weird seeing so much of the “discourse” on Pulaski boiling down to fans being angry at her for being mean to Data that one time while conveniently forgetting that she was one of only two people on that whole ship who went out and befriended the Android.
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I hated her as a kid watching the show. But now I realize that I agree with her teleportation-is-murder-stance. I mean, it’s definitely murder.
That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how transporters function in the Trek universe. There is no destruction, duplication, and recreation of objects. Matter is simply converted into quantum information and then converted back.
@CeruleanRuin @cranstonapple i like that idea.
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This is one of the not so insignificant reasons I really like S3 of Picard, Gates McFadden and Beverly Crusher feel like they were validated on so many levels in a way TNG unfortunately never quite did directly.
Some people call S3 of Picard too fan servicey but idk, TNG as a whole has been meaningfully improved for me because now when I have to watch a TNG episode and some weird sexist, cringey scene comes up like this
I can just imagine Crusher
spoiler
carpet bombing the borg cube
until the cringey scene ends
No doubt cringe; but pales in comparison what they put Jolene Blalock through.
Got any specific examples? I’m about halfway through S2 of an ENT rewatch.
You mean for needlessly and overly sexualizing her? All the decontamination chamber rub downs come to mind of course.
Ah, yeah. Wasn’t sure what kind of cringe you were meaning. The decon chambers were 100% a fanservice device.
