Pulaski gets more character development in one season than Crusher gets in six.
Poll Crusher or Pulaski?
- Thread starter Akiraprise
- Start date
Neither did I. All of the good will towards her in the other thread was surprising, hence why I started this one. Inquiring minds had to know!
I didn't even know it was that evenly split either in that I can't believe she made it as far as 50 percent. I would think it would have been 5 percent. I never heard anything good about her. Even the rest of the cast didn't like her.
Due to Gates' rather abrupt, and somewhat acrimonious departure, I'm sure the cast was predisposed to disliking Diana from the get go even if that was somewhat unfair. She was the unwanted outsider coming into an established cast. Have we ever gotten a really straight answer from anyone on her leaving in S2 and Gates coming back in S3? Everyone always seem to be coyly professionally courteous about it.
"Diana Muldaur came aboard as the Enterprise’s new chief medical officer, Dr. Katherine Pulaski, Diana is a fine actress who had been twice featured in the Original Series, but she never established much in the way of a rapport with me, and seemed to function at a remove from the rest of the cast." - Patrick Stewart in his memoir
"There was a reason for it that I don’t want to go into, but it had nothing to do with Gene or the cast. I left the show because the year was up, simple as that, under my own power. And if anything else happened, I would still be leaving under my own power. I would not have stayed, let’s put it that way."
"No, I was never unhappy. No. Never. I don’t even know why I said that. They were all good actors, they all worked very hard. I was a little disappointed in the people putting it together. I thought they were not creative as they might have been." - Diana Muldaur
Hurley did not care for Gates or the Crusher character and ousted her at the end of S1, chaos behind the scenes causes Hurley himself to get ousted at the end of S2, with Hurley gone Diana gets ousted, Rick Berman and Patrick Stewart woo Gates back, and she stays for the remainder of the series. Seems to be the sequence of events.
"Diana Muldaur came aboard as the Enterprise’s new chief medical officer, Dr. Katherine Pulaski, Diana is a fine actress who had been twice featured in the Original Series, but she never established much in the way of a rapport with me, and seemed to function at a remove from the rest of the cast." - Patrick Stewart in his memoir
"There was a reason for it that I don’t want to go into, but it had nothing to do with Gene or the cast. I left the show because the year was up, simple as that, under my own power. And if anything else happened, I would still be leaving under my own power. I would not have stayed, let’s put it that way."
"No, I was never unhappy. No. Never. I don’t even know why I said that. They were all good actors, they all worked very hard. I was a little disappointed in the people putting it together. I thought they were not creative as they might have been." - Diana Muldaur
Hurley did not care for Gates or the Crusher character and ousted her at the end of S1, chaos behind the scenes causes Hurley himself to get ousted at the end of S2, with Hurley gone Diana gets ousted, Rick Berman and Patrick Stewart woo Gates back, and she stays for the remainder of the series. Seems to be the sequence of events.
Thanks for what has to be one of the clearest and probably most even-handed summaries of the whole S1/S2/S3/Hurley/McFadden/Muldaur mix-up I've read yet.
I have to wonder where we'd be with some of these old folk tales from the 1960s-2000s era sets of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT if they'd been made with the kind of digital communications and behind-the-scenes access we have now in 2024!
And they don't care about you.
Well the forum asked.
I'm going with Pulaski by a mile, even with 1/6 of the screentime. I just found her to be a much more interesting character, which I would say is more of a writer problem. In my opinion the early issues with Data are way overblown, and in fact added a lot to the character when they came to an understanding. I am pretty surprised how close the poll is though!
Pulaski had the disadvantage of being too like McCoy. They were trying to set up a similar dynamic to Spock McCoy with Pulaski Data. And you can’t force that. That being said I did quite like Pulaski. I voted for Crusher but it was close for me.
Both had the rowr factor
Both are good but I'm glad Gates decided to come back.
Also, if the plan for Pulaski was she would stay for only season 2, what after that?
Also, if the plan for Pulaski was she would stay for only season 2, what after that?
I'm surprised the poll is as close as it is given Pulaski is only in one season and rather felt like Bones 2.0. I much prefer Crusher myself but still enjoyed Pulaski.
I guess they might have had a revolving door for doctors as they did for engineers at first. After all, Gates had to be persuaded to come back.
I'm not sure if it's smart to say this in this thread, I don't want to derail it....
I don't know the specifics about Gates' return, actually I don't remember reading anything about it except Stewart had something to do with it.
I'm not sure about that, since it seems they promoted Geordi in part to resolve the "Chief Engineer of the week problem"
So I think we would have gotten a new doctor. Maybe Selar would have become the doctor.
Could've been, yeah. Selar would make sense a lot of sense. That might have been really interesting to see.
I used to dislike Pulaski, but the character has really grown on me over time, though. Ultimately though, I prefer Crusher. A lot of that is to do with Gates McFadden who makes an art out of making a lot out of a little.
Considering that Pulaski would warm up and change her tune to Data, there's an arc in her season that McCoy/Spock never got. Which reminds, why aren't everyone also whining about Data being Spock? Because Data and Pulaski's comparisons to Spock and McCoy are superficial, but went in original and new directions. Riker was the Kirk trope, but definitely not Kirk... Picard seems like Pike but without the weary self-pity feel from "The Cage"... they didn't even want a chief engineer at the time because it'd be copying TOS too much. Then, after 5 or 600 guest chief engineers who all die or whatever, they change their mind, shove Geordi down there, and he's definitely no Scotty clone. Not even James Doohan could handle the amount of Treknobabble and all he did was hype up drinking as a character trait (when not reading the latest technical manual, of course... now there's a fun question in that somewhere...) The archetypes are all there but were used originally and in different ways that didn't feel like a retread. Except maybe Data, but not too often so. He wasn't spouting "Logic suggests" every third episode or line either...
But what is worse - having a partially similar yet superficial cranky-yet-dedicated demeanor, or constantly quipping "I'm a DOCtor NOT a ____" like what Voyager's EMH constantly did?
Data isn’t Spock. The characters couldn’t be more different. I’ve said it before, but the Spock analog in TNG is Worf IMO.
