I’m with some of the other folks around here: Pulaski was a better character. Conflict between the ship doctor and the captain makes for more interesting narrative opportunities, and Pulaski was great specifically because she was willing to stand up to Picard and be a pain in the ass.
Fans just didn’t like her because she didn’t immediately see Data as a person, but even that was interesting because not everyone would, and giving voice to that again created interesting ways to explore the implications of Data’s existence.
Fans just didn’t like her because she didn’t immediately see Data as a person
It wasn’t just that she didn’t immediately see Data as a person; it’s that her first scene was so ham-fisted and poorly written. She made a specific effort to mock something she didn’t even think was alive.
It would be equivalent of someone saying “Oh does my car not like that I left my lights on? Could it be that I offended it in some way?” It’s an inanimate object, why would you even bother saying that? If you saw someone doing that you would think they are an idiot and an asshole, as they didn’t miss an opportunity to be a dick even if the subject is an object performing its function.
I agree, Pulaski was far more interesting than Crusher. Pulaski butting heads with Picard? Going to be a great episode. Pulaski paling around with Geordie and Data? Going to be a great episode. It’s just her first scene was so bad that it was memorable, which meant it took time to warm up to her and what she brought to the show.
which meant it took time to warm up to her and what she brought to the show.
And some of us never got there. Pulaski reminds me of some of the worst people I’ve known, even after she’s supposed to have warmed up to Data.
While i agree with all your points, the way she came across while not seeing Data as a person infuriated me. It’s one thing to have a good philosophical debate, as ST fans we love a good debate, but the way she acted with Data just drove me crazy. You can disagree with an idea and not be a bigot.
And yet we know in Measure of a Man that Pulaski was far from unique in her views, and was in fact a) quite tame about it and b) ended up changing her mind, showing on-screen how a person can change in a positive way. That’s a far more compelling (and realistic) message than everyone just unquestioningly accepting the one and only android in all of Starfleet holding a senior role on the Starfleet flagship.
Think of it like “The Devil in the Dark”. It would’ve been incredibly boring if everyone just immediately accepted the Horta right off the bat instead of seeing it as an unthinking monster. The journey is in the message that you can come to understand something different from you and accept it not just in spite of those differences but for them.
Everyone simply accepting Data on the Enterprise right off the bat without question was, frankly, lazy writing. And they figured that out eventually, hence episodes like Measure of a Man.
I always felt Pulaski was Bones character all over again. I’m ok with the conflict part but prefer soft spoken character, it blends better with TNG plots full of ethics and moral dilemmas. Bones/Pulaski fit better in an action based series, with no room for psychological introspection and deeper characters.
Swap Bashir and Pulaski between TNG and DS9.
Ooh that would be cool
Besides, they wasted a perfectly good plot twist that Pulaski is actually Thalassa secretly still in Ann Mulhall’s body, and that she changed names to hide the slower aging.
I disliked Pulaski because she was written as a Mary Sue.
Picard needs heart surgery? Pulaski is the best heart surgeon in the galaxy. Virus that ages people? Pulaski wrote the definitive paper on Viruses. Riker’s dad shows up? Oh Pulaski dated him. Geordi has problems with his visor? Pulaski had done several successful ocular implant surgeries.
It was ridiculous.
You can get away with giving a character one unique ability. But Federation’s top heart surgeon, virologist, opthalmologist, and dates Riker’s dad is the same person? That’s bad writing.
LOL you’ve described literally every doctor in Star Trek ever. I mean, Christ, they lampshaded this with McCoy when he exclaimed “By golly, Jim - I’m beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!” when he treated a fucking silicon rock monster.
Honestly at this point this is just making up reasons to be mad.
There is a huge difference between the Enterprise Doctor or Engineer overcoming odds and solving the problem and walking in saying, “I’m the Galaxy’s expert in this.” “Oh and I’m also the Galaxy’s expert in this and that too.”
You’re right. In the former case it’s utterly implausible that every ship doctor would not be an expert in a thing but still somehow be able to cure that thing. Every. Damn. Time.
At least with Pulaski they gave an excuse (well, assuming I buy your claims; frankly, I think you’re overstating things quite a bit).
Not being an expert, having a problem, learning, and overcoming the problem is the narrative circle.
Walking in as the foremost expert on everything is called a Mary Sue and is correctly derided as bad writing.
If we had been introduced to Pulaski being a virologist and then in later episodes her expertise is useful, that’s fine, narratively.
Edited:
Picard travels to the best heart surgeon in the Federation. Billions of humans. The best out of Billion:
"PHYSIOLOGIST: You’re unwilling to make the attempt??
SURGEON: I’m not qualified.
PHYSIOLOGIST: I know someone who is."
<Pulaski>
Best virologists in the Federation (again that means billions of people) doing cutting edge research:
"KINGSLEY [on viewscreen]: To whom am I speaking, please?
PULASKI: I’m Doctor Pulaski, Chief Medical Officer.
KINGSLEY [on viewscreen]: Katherine Pulaski, author of Linear Models of Viral Propagation?"
It’s hamfisted writing.
Dating Riker’s dad counts as a unique ability? XD
While I agree it is a bit much, I think I’m willing to lessen her sentence because Star Trek: TNG is full on hardcore competency porn. Everyone else on the show is an expert in exochemolinguistics, why shouldn’t the chief medical officer of the Federation flagship have six different medical degrees?
A lot of my issue with Pulaski is meta rather than in-universe; I’m not so happy with my understanding of what was going on behind the scenes in seasons 1 and 2, why McFadden and Crosby left among them. And something about trying to play it safer with Bones McCoy 2.0 feels slightly cynical?
The difference is overcoming odds and succeeding as compared to walking into the scene as the Galaxy’s foremost expert.
It’s the difference between Geordi having to learn about warp engines from Leah Brahms and instead Geordi tells the Captain, “I’m the Federation’s top expert on warp engines.”
Oh Data has a problem, “I’m also Federation’s top expert in cybernetics.”
Time travel problem? “Oh I solved that 3 times on my last assignment. Do you want me to fix it?”
Worf’s brother shows up. “I’m childhood friends with Worf’s brother.”
It’s bad writing.
I assume you hated Spock, then. Buddy was literally an expert in everything! McCoy needs help reinstalling Spock’s own brain? Spock is on it! Computer seems to show Kirk killed a guy by accident? Nbd, Spock is a computer expert, he’ll figure it out with chess (did I mention he’s a chess master?). Need to implode the engines to escape from a collapsing planet? Also warp engine specialist! Oh and he can play the piano, that Vulcan guitar thing, and also happens to be deeply knowledgeable in earth history and culture as the needs require (including being able to recognize Brahms handwriting by sight).
Again, being competent isn’t the same as being the Federation’s foremost expert in the field.
When the Enterprise computer was going to get refit, Dr Daystrom came on board. Daystrom didn’t say , “Oh Mr Spock is here! He wrote the book on duotronics that is still standard today!”
(This is what the virus researcher said about Pulaski about virus research.)
You are shown Spock overcoming the odds. With Pulaski, you are told she is the expert. It’s bad writing.
Edit: It’s also Spock is Vulcan with superior intelligence. Bashir could have pulled it off because he was genetically improved. Pulaski was human.
Now I’m certain you’re just making up reasons to be mad.
Spock is repeatedly depicted as being an established expert across a truly improbable range of topics (including, of all things, brain reattachment surgery). Spock is to basically everything else what Kirk is to “talking computers into killing themselves”.
If you can accept that you can accept Pulaski.
Would the episode have been better if McCoy announced beforehand, "The Mr. Spock! Author of Brain Reattachment Surgery, the standard book for brain surgery! I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be dealing with. "
And yes I hold TNG to higher standards than TOS. TOS’s contemporary TV writing was Gilligan’s Island.
Edit: Also it wasn’t Spock doing the surgery. He was only providing feedback to McCoy on the connections. This is the same as how today, brain surgery sometimes needs to be done with the patient conscious so the doctor knows what he’s touching and can get immediate feedback from the patient if their speech slurs for example.
What you don’t know is that those two were at it like animals every night and she transferred because even Riker was complaining about the sex noises.
It was making the ship list to the right on a regular basis. Navigation had to course correct every ten light years of travel to compensate.
they need an alt ending where she falls into an empty turbolift shaft
Unpopular opinion, but I liked Pulaski. She didn’t put up with bullshit, but she was also one of the only characters to actually have legitimate growth over the course of their time on the show, going from not respecting Data’s sovereignty as a person to understanding why he was one.
And she was Star Trek alum. The only regular on TNG that had also been on the Original Series.
Pulaski was indeed good. But Crusher was better. Especially the v1.5 character that came back to the show. Full Commander, command experience, clever as fuck (solving actual murders and conspiracies), not being a doe-eyed soccer mom all the time.
Apart from the infamous candle fucking, her episodes are among the best of the series.
“If there’s nothing wrong with me… maybe there’s something wrong with the universe.”
My conrade in Starfleet, this woman gonna bring spirits onto your ship if she can’t get the Captain’s attention… She is a liability on any space vessel.
Idk why, but I heard this in my head with a Jamaican accent.
she fucked herself with a candle?
Well… it was a ghost inside a candle… that was actually an alien… that looked like a guy out of a romance novel… that also fucked her grandmother… but always as a glowing cloud of gas instead of the handsome guy… on Planet Scotland…
Let’s just say it wasn’t the best episode.
I have always hated that episode but you kind of have to respect how far the writers took it. Like one of those things you listed would be an episode. They shoved them all into one episode and still had a B plot that was commitment.
And yet, it somehow wasn’t the worst episode.
+1 for Pulaski being a good chief medical officer. Personally, I would prefer her to Crusher, were I staffing a ship. (Nothing wrong with Crusher, I just like the cut of Pulaski’s jib a little more.)
Edit: note that in real life McFadden strikes me as an absolute badass in a way they never let her character be.
No nonsense and you dont have to worry about the captain porking the chief medical officer. But then again, romance between the Captain and chief medical officer is a proud Enterprise tradition.
We all really know how “bones” got that nickname.
100% agree. My issue was mostly that her character was too similar to Bones.
Fucked 0 ghosts though.
It’s just that the character didn’t have much going for it.
She didn’t like technology, seeing how she refused to use the transporter and the way she treated Data.
But it is a scifi show, technology is like the main thing.
So, just like Bones?
And that was really my gripe. She was basically just genderbent McCoy. At least to start. They did enough with her character that she was more than that by the end, but using that as a starting point just rubbed me the wrong way.
Yeah but most of the characters on TNG started out as two dimensional caricatures of what they actually became. I don’t think the Pulaski character is any more deserving of criticism than early Picard or Riker or, heck, Data himself (who I’d argue started off as Albino Spock).
McCoy didn’t like technology either.
Holy crap, originalucifer, I understood that reference. Muldaur’s character Roz Shays was killed off in LA Law that way…by inadvertently walking into an empty elevator shaft! The character was prickly and not well-liked, but it was shocking AF because it was in the middle of a scene and came out of nowhere. Shit, I haven’t thought about that for a while.
That’s it! That’s the one, hahaha
Then there would be another ghost to …
Gates McFadden actually choreographed that dance that JL performs.
I can hear the song in my head when I see that image.
