I recall reading that behind the scenes, she didn't get along with Stewart, and as he was the series lead, that put the writing on the wall for her....
Was Pulaski not liked by the crew?
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Never liked Crusher. Too bad Pulaski got written out.
I've always been puzzled why the show never did anything with the backstory with Crusher and Picard. It's such a nice set up for potential stories, and the most of it we ever saw was in "All Good Things", which by the end was completely erased. Same thing with the story behind Riker and Troi, introduced but totally dropped right after with only a few episodes acknowledging it. It's the odd thing under Berman's leadership that carried over onto VOY where only a mismatched Paris and Torres were allowed, but he restricted the writers from building other relationships.
^ Sometimes I think this is what contributes a little to the 'early instalment weirdness' of TNG season one. The writing team apparently had a lot of "thought bubbles" about how these characters know each other, their histories and interactions, which were seeded into early scripts but were pretty much dropped by the end of the first season. At least Riker/Troi got lip service from time to time (for example the episode Menege A Troi in part explores their pre-series backstory a little), but regrettably apart from the brief flashback to Jack's body being brought back we never really got much meat for the Picard/Crusher storyline. Until All Good Things, anyway. I'm led to believe that "The Arsenal Of Freedom" was apparently supposed to explore it a little bit the writers had backed off from it by the final draft script.
That's not questionable taste, that's good taste.
If I want to see a Bones type character, I'll simply watch Bones himself.
He was better too.
Yeah...I've come to recognize that Diana Muldaur could have been an asset to the show if they'd given her an original character, but I can't appreciate that extra something that she was bringing because it was so blatantly and sloppily cloned from McCoy.
Of all the callbacks to the backstory, I did like "The Bonding" where Wesley finally got to tell Picard how he really felt, that he was angry at Picard for his father dying in his command.
As for Pulaski being Bones-like. Other than transporter-phobia thing, I never really got the sense that she was too similar. She is a very atypical but passionate Starfleet officer, but I felt that's what TNG needed for the dynamic as there wasn't someone like that. That's how I felt about Ro's introduction being a big plus for the show.
TNG's so episodic that I guess they didn't want to go into stuff like that, except for a few times - like Picard's artificial heart ( although they seemed to forget about that in Nemesis ) Hell, they don't even do a real Crusher/Picard romance do they?
They use the Crusher backstory more in the old novels, I've only read a couple.
They use the Crusher backstory more in the old novels, I've only read a couple.
I'd heard that Diana Muldaur did the series as a favour to Roddenberry, and never PLANNED to do more than one season, hence the "Special Guest Appearance" status rather than being listed as a regular. I don't think she made it public at the time that she only planned to do one season though.
Truthfully, I suspect 'the truth' fell somewhere between all these claims:
* The character was not being that well received by fans
* Maybe some of the cast/crew didn't get on too well with her (Marina Sirtis has been bitchy about her since at conventions, but then Sirtis is bitchy about pretty much everyone who isn't in her 'cool gang')
* With Maurice Hurley gone, Berman and others who were always fond of McFadden saw a chance to bring her back
* Muldaur didn't really want/plan to stay long-term anyway
It's really too bad Pulaski wasn't given a proper send off. They could have had her around for just the S3 premiere and then say her goodbyes. It was just as bad that she was written out abruptly like Crusher was previously.
I initially didn't like Pulaski, because I don't like when you spend an entire season with a character, especially when it's the first season, then that character is replaced the following season without a "goodbye episode." Couple that with Yar being killed off mid-season 1, and shaking up the command structure like making Geordi Cheif Engineer, Worf's uniform changing, Riker growing a beard, (some changes good, to be sure), etc, it just seemed to bee too much change to drop Crusher so suddenly.
At the time of the first run of TNG, I didn't realize Muldaur had played 2 other characters in TOS, until season 3, when they brought Crusher back, so the TOS connection wasn't made for me until too late. I found Pulaski about as abrasive as Crush could be at times, and it seemed to me they were trying too hard to make Pulaski the female version of Bones McCoy. So, I really didn't warm to the character.
However, in following years after TNG ended, and seeing reruns, I have warmed to Pulaski somewhat, though I still prefer Crusher. She is like the Jonas Quinn of TNG, as far as I am concerned. I think if Pulaski had remained a semi regular, it would have been cool, though.
At the time of the first run of TNG, I didn't realize Muldaur had played 2 other characters in TOS, until season 3, when they brought Crusher back, so the TOS connection wasn't made for me until too late. I found Pulaski about as abrasive as Crush could be at times, and it seemed to me they were trying too hard to make Pulaski the female version of Bones McCoy. So, I really didn't warm to the character.
However, in following years after TNG ended, and seeing reruns, I have warmed to Pulaski somewhat, though I still prefer Crusher. She is like the Jonas Quinn of TNG, as far as I am concerned. I think if Pulaski had remained a semi regular, it would have been cool, though.
I am of the view that having somebody come in as an 'outsider' to the clique of the Enterprise command crew was refreshing. She might have had certain broad similarities to Bones (Diana Muldaur herself acknowledges this was intentional), but the concept of a character who basically comes in from the outside and rubs everyone up the wrong way isn't necessarily a bad thing. I felt it created that sense of conflict that the writers were always kvetching TNG lacked. Your comparison with Ensign Ro is also very correct.
On the other hand, I think their trying to give her a blatant Bones/Spock thing with Data was a bad move. Data is essentially an innocent, and unlike Spock, where the dynamic was that ol' Pointy Ears would usually give as good as he got by throwing the odd bon mot back Bones' way, the nature of Data's character was such that he would always just sit there and take it while Pulaski verbally cuts him down..... and the audience natually empathized with him for that, making Pulaski look too harsh by comparison.
So the concept of the character had both pros and cons.
Totally agree with this. Good of you to articulate it!
The way they handled Pulaski/Data in the first two episodes, yeah I was really not too crazy about that. It wasn't really much of a dynamic, and it wasn't all that entertaining. That's why I dug "Elementary Dear Data" where it was more about her encouraging Data to become human, rather than the "oh, what is this machine doing here?". The kind of relationship you see all the way up to "Peak Performance" where she believes in Data both as a person and as a machine.
