Was Beverly a waste of space?

A continuous cycle of new doctors, we'd all be guessing Doctor Who every season. Sounds like a good idea for a show in its own right to me.

 

So for Year 4, they could have gone back to TOS again and brought Barbara Luna on board as the new doctor. And Barbara is only a year older than Patrick Stewart, so she wouldn't have been too crusty.

 

Don't see why Beverly has to be liked more because she was prettier.. Everyone's fave char should be La'Forge if it was a beauty contest. And anyway, Troi was beautiful. She could wear a garbage bag and still look good.

 

^So this is a Beverly appreciation thread now?

 

EVERY TNG thread should be a Beverly appreciation thread!

 

I like this idea. Could have given Selar a crack at it for a season. Could have eventually promoted Ogawa as we saw a glimpse of in S7 Parallels. Definite possibilities

 

Seems rather restrained to me. I would much rather see a new doctor every -episode-.

Hey, it worked for Chief Engineer during S1.

 

I'm sensing great hostility.

 

She cut his off?! Wow, she doesn't fool around.

 

I wish we'd had Selar and not Pulaski for S2, in her single appearance she was far more enjoyable to watch that Pulaski ever was.

 

Pulaski may not have been very likable, but she did shake things up nicely. The perfect bubble the TNG command clique lived in needed to be burst every now and again.

 

Overall I liked Beverly but I have to agree she had plenty of moments where I wanted to just haul off and smack her and would wonder why she was in Starfleet.

Like it or not the "idea" is that in 24c humans are no longer petty, self-serving and are out there exploring the galaxy for the betterment of mankind and on a quest for knowledge. They also have some deal of experience in the "messing with other cultures" thing and know not do it. The idea is supposed to be a Starfleet officer would sooner lay down his/her life than to violated the Prime Directive.

Beverly apparently missed that day of class because she seems to be all about violating the Prime Directive more so than Kirk or Picard ever are. At least when THEY do it it's not without a lot of heavy thinking and soul-searching.

Take "Who Watches the Watchers" for example. In this episode the Away Team are in a duck-blind watching over a Bronze Age level of development group of proto-Vulcans. The duck-blind is damaged in the process of fixing it one of the proto-Vulcans accidentally gets electrocuted and falls off a rock-face. Like it or not in this situation the reaction should be to do nothing. In the long run the society of the planet would be better served by the man dying from his injuries. Instead Beverly goes down and administers some hypo-spray triage and then beams him up to the ship for more intensive medical care. This is just plain reckless and, of course, in the process the guy sees the futuristic sickbay, a memory-wipe doesn't take and he ends up back on the planet wanting to start a theology centered around Picard and the Enterprise believing he had died and been brought back to life by supreme beings. This of course causes a disaster that ends up with Picard having to expose himself and the ship to even more people and eventually the whole tribe.

Again, all because Beverly missed the day in school that talked about the Prime Directive.

In "Justice" she hand wrings and frets a LOT over Wesley's "death sentence" (which, granted, she's justified a bit) and questions the entire culture of a planet. In "When the Bough Breaks" she, again, damns and questions an entire planet's society all because her teenage son was kidnapped by them. She really did seem to get fretty and kind of a superiority complex going with her a lot.

My biggest "Jesus, what is WRONG WITH YOU?!" moment comes in "Evolution." The first episode of the third season where Beverly has returned to the ship after a year-long absence. At this point Wesley is an acting officer on the ship.

She actually seems to HARASSS her poor son over him doing his duty and job! She pages him when he's not in his quarters, frets over him taking on too much responsibility and wonders why he's not "acting more his age." And when he DOES "act his age" and dates a young woman she takes concern over her 16 or 17 year old son being with a girl taking a "keen interest" in him.

Jesus. Christ! Really?! Beverly? Your son is an older teenager I'm guessing it's sort of okay in your society for a girl his age to hold his hand and show interest in him. Cut the damn cord!

 

Beverly was not a well-developed or interesting character. They probably would've been better served making her a recurring character if they had no real plans to do good character work with her. Have her pop up when you need an MD, but otherwise don't use her. BSG did the same thing with their CMO, though Doc Cottle, in his handful of appearances, was a wonderfully cranky character.

 

I've been on the fence about this issue, until I watched the episode "Suddenly Human".

Wooooooow. It's one thing to be on the receiving end of matters your character has no control over, but it's entirely another when on the subject of gender, you are in complete agreement that women shouldn't be able to tackle an issue for no other reason outside of the fact that both of you are women. This isn't some alien kid either. This is a human kid who is about to be reunited with a "female" relative. Yet when Picard decides he doesn't want to do this assignment, Troi literally calls him out on it for being out of character. So if women say they can't do something because they're women, everyone is in complete agreement. But when Picard says he doesn't want to do it because he really doesn't want to do it, he's called out on it.

I am four episodes*into Season 4 and so far Crusher has done nothing but remove Borg bits from Picard, talk non-stop about Wesley and his father and spout bad jokes to sick children. You are definitely a waste of space.

 

Do mothers get that defensive when their teenage sons date?

 

Nope, sorry. Character moments don't get waved away as just trying to be a humorous sting to the end of an episode.