Commander Beverly Crusher, M.D., played by
Gates McFadden
A far cry from “Bones” on the original
Enterprise, Crusher is the first, to date, female doctor to appear in the Trekverse, and another strong character. Having her own son on the ship with her makes her maternally protective of him, though she tries not to smother him (wish she had though!). She has previous history with Picard, the captain having been a friend of the family, and the man who brought home the body of her husband Jack, who had been killed in action. There is a certain
frisson of sexual tension between Picard and Crusher, and you get the feeling that, had Jack not been in the picture, something might have happened. Now that he is out of the way, Picard is too much of a gentleman and too strictly formal to allow any such relationship to develop, although he does maintain a healthy friendship with Crusher, she being the only one on board who can call him by his first name.
She is Chief Medical Officer on the ship, and so the only one with the authority to remove Picard from duty should the criteria be fulfilled and he be unfit for the position. She has, as was mentioned in the entry on Deanna Troi, a strong friendship with the ship’s counsellor, and they are the two main strong female characters in the series. As a doctor, she has a strong sense of morals and ethics, and so is horrified when another doctor allows a paralysed Worf to undergo dangerous experimental surgery that does eventually lead to his walking again, but the ethical dilemma can’t be avoided and Crusher reports her, having her struck off for malpractice and reckless endangerment. She is one of the few female leads in the series who never has a proper onscreen relationship. She hooks up with a trill at one point but when the male host body dies and the symbiont is put into a female one, she can’t quite make the leap.
Her clinical thinking and refusal to buckle under pressure serves her well when she becomes entrapped in a bubble universe of her own in a rather silly episode, where she remarks to herself “If there’s nothing wrong with me, then maybe there’s something wrong with the universe!” Although it’s the right diagnosis, it’s not one anyone else would easily come to. On her original assignment to the
Enterprise Picard offers her a transfer, believing it would be difficult for her to serve under the man who reminded her so much of her late husband (though in reality he is probably hoping to remove the temptation if she was not onboard) but she tells him that she
requested the assignment. She is however reassigned for season two, due to internal problems with the actress and other commitments, and it is only through the intervention, even demands and threats of Patrick Stewart that she is reassigned for season three and remains onboard thereafter.