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DOCTOR BEVERLY CRUSHER

Beverly Crusher worked long and hard to secure her posting aboard the Enterprise, where she is stationed along with her brilliant son, Wesley. Beverly’s husband, Jack Crusher, was killed while serving under Captain Picard aboard the USS Stargazer. Jack Crusher died saving Picard’s life, and to show his respect for the man, Picard accompanied the body back to Earth when it was returned for the funeral.

While Beverly knows that it is not logical to blame Picard, she associated him with her loss and was not, at first, certain how she would react to working with Picard. When Picard offered to have her transferred if she so desired, she declined, since she wouldn’t have been there if she hadn’t requested the position. Any initial misgivings have given way to mutual respect and understanding.

Dr. Crusher chose to sign aboard the starship commanded by Picard because she had an enviable Starfleet record that had earned her this prestigious assignment. As demonstrated by the position held by Dr. McCoy on the Enterprise commanded by James T. Kirk, a starship’s chief medical officer is in no way regarded as a rank inferior to that of Captain. In fact, outside of a court martial, the CMO is the only force capable of removing a starship captain from his or her post.

Beverly is an intelligent and strong-willed diagnostician. She has a profound sense of medicine, the kind of skill that takes years to develop. Often she uses her diagnostic skills to confirm what she has already seen and sensed about a patient’s condition. First and foremost she is a brilliant ship’s doctor.

THE TRUTH REVEALED

In “The Naked Now” there were many truths revealed about various crew members. In Crusher’s case it was revealed that she is interested in Picard, and certainly no longer harbors the suspicion and resentment she feared might affect her job performance. Being in her late thirties to early forties, the attractive Dr. Crusher has not escaped the notice of Captain Picard, but it is doubtful that this could develop into anything, as any good officer knows that complications arise when key personnel become involved.

Dr. Crusher’s most difficult moments on the Enterprise generally involve Wesley, as in “Justice,” when Wesley was sentenced to death for an inadvertent crime, only to be saved by Picard’s intervention. She has also been trapped in a false reality inside a static warp field, which she narrowly escaped from, and recently found romance only to have it shattered by the bizarre secrets of the alien humanoid she’d fallen for in “The Host.”

Her most difficult time with Wesley occurred in “The First Duty,” when Wesley narrowly escaped death in a training exercise off Saturn, in which another cadet did die. Her son admitted to participating in a coverup of the accident. While Wesley Crusher did the right thing at the end, he was humiliated in front of all of his Starfleet Academy peers and was forced to repeat his final year at the Academy.

GATES MCFADDEN

Dr. Crusher is the first regular role in a television series for actress Gates McFadden. Her character is presented with more background than most of the others, as she is the mother of Wesley Crusher, and the widow of the man who died while saving Picard’s life on an earlier mission.

Gates trained to be a dancer when quite young, while growing up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. “I had extraordinary teachers: one was primarily a ballerina and the other had been in a circus. I grew up thinking most ballerinas knew how to ride the unicycle, tap dance, and do handsprings. Consequently, I was an oddball to other dancers.”

Her interest in acting was sparked by community theater and a touring Shakespeare company. “When I was ten, my brother and I attended back-to-back Shakespeare for eight days in a musty, nearly empty theater. There were twelve actors who played all the parts. I couldn’t get over it—the same people in costumes every day, but playing new characters. It was like visiting somewhere but never wanting to leave.”

She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Theater from Brandeis University while continuing to study acting, dance, and mime. Just prior to graduation she met Jack LeCoq and credits the experience with changing her life.

“I attended his first workshop in the United States. His theatrical vision and the breadth of its scope were astonishing. I left for Paris as soon as possible to continue to study acting with LeCoq at his school. We worked constantly in juxtapositions. One explored immobility in order to better understand movement. One explored silence in order to better understand sound and language. It was theatrical research involving many mediums. Just living in a foreign country where you have to speak and think in another language cracks your head open. It was both terrifying and freeing. Suddenly I was taking more risks in my acting.”

A WOMAN OF MANY TALENTS

McFadden lives in New York City, where she has been involved in film and theater both as an actress and director-choreographer. Her acting credits include leads in the New York productions of Michael Brady’s To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, Mary Gallagher’s How to Say Goodbye, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, and, in California, in the La Jolla Playhouse production of The Matchmaker with Linda Hunt.

Gates was the director of choreography and puppet movement for the late Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and assisted Gavin Miller in the staging of the fantasy sequences for Dreamchild. “Those films were my baptism by fire into the world of special effects and computerized props,” Gates reveals.

Following the first season of Next Generation, Gates was inexplicably dropped from the cast and just as inexplicably returned in the third season, after her role as ship’s doctor had been played for one season by Diana Muldaur. During her absence from the series, among other work Gates had a small role in The Hunt for Red October as the wife of the main character. She did not repeat this role in Patriot Games, the second film to feature the Jack Ryan character, as a younger actress was chosen for the part in the 1992 sequel.