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Gates McFadden had some standout episodes as Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, including “The High Ground,” “Attached,” and the extremely rewatchable “Remember Me,” where the ship’s doctor got trapped in one of her son’s shrinking warp bubbles and had to understand a world where everyone else had simply ceased to exist. There was also the sex candle ghost episode “Sub Rosa,” which… well, perhaps the less said about that one the better.
Still, Doctor Crusher nearly always smashed it, and why wouldn’t she? After all, she was the chief medical officer of the Enterprise-D and at the same level of command as Captain Picard’s number one, Will Riker, but scenes of her taking charge in dangerous situations were few and far between compared to Riker, and now we know why.
During a recent panel at Fan Expo Portland (via Collider), McFadden was on hand to discuss her tenure on The Next Generation, revealing that the powers that be were reticent to place Beverly Crusher in the chair too often, lest it get in the way of their future plans.
“They knew they were going to have a female captain fairly early on,” she explained. “They knew they were going to do Voyager. So, while I was put sometimes in the captain’s chair, since I had the same rank as [Will Riker], they were careful about how much they wanted to do that, because they were saving that for when Voyager happened.”
Kate Mulgrew would go on to be Trek’s first female lead on Voyager in 1995, playing Captain Kathryn Janeway for seven seasons. The actress told Star Trek Magazine that taking the role of the first female captain was both a privilege and a challenge, allowing her to transcend stereotypes she was well acquainted with. “I was able to do that in front of millions of viewers,” she said. “That was a remarkable experience—and it continues to resonate.”
Though Beverly Crusher never quite lived up to her potential in The Next Generation, the character did endure long after the series wrapped up, with McFadden returning to play the doctor in several big-budget movies and subsequent Trek shows like Prodigy and Picard, where she was ultimately promoted to the rank of Admiral.
The post Gates McFadden Says Star Trek Limited Crusher’s Command to Make Room for Voyager appeared first on Den of Geek.
