Gotta say as I am watching the second season of TNG I really like Dr. Pulaski.

I like how she is a thorn in Picard's side yet they both have a mutual respect for each other.

I would have preferred if she stayed on for the rest of the series.

Gotta say as I am watching the second season of TNG I really like Dr. Pulaski.

I like how she is a thorn in Picard's side yet they both have a mutual respect for each other.

I would have preferred if she stayed on for the rest of the series.


And Wesley Crusher had left with his mom..

I didn't really like her at all... but it's interesting that she showed up twice in ST-TOS :)

And Wesley Crusher had left with his mom..

I x2 that...really can't stand the character but I am sure it worked in the late 80's.

It was thought that she would be the new "Bones" and would banter with Data the way McCoy sparred with Spock, Unfortunately, it just looked like she was beating up on the poor guy.

it was a nice nod to TOS to have an actress who spanned both series. Kept expecting Picard to bring her a rose, tho:)

I x2 that...really can't stand the character but I am sure it worked in the late 80's.

Nope, it was annoying as heck then, too.

I x2 that...really can't stand the character but I am sure it worked in the late 80's.

Uh, no it didn't. I hated Wesley when the show was on. So did all of my friends at college who watched the show. We have been watching the shows again with our kids and even my 13 year-old-son thinks the character is annoying. I guess that's because we started watching TOS with them first and have been working our way through the shows. Dr. Pulaski was a great character.

Dr. Pulaski provided a challenge to the usual gooey, "everybody loves everybody in the future" mindset of the show's main characters--as if they had been stripped of their humanity or put on Prozac or something. Pulaski could have helped the show by providing some conflict and introspection that was lacking on the show for most of the episodes.

And, yeah, I was there when the series first aired, too, and Wesley was an embarrassment I was afraid Trekdom would never live down. He was the live action embodiment of the animated series' "cadets"--kid characters that at one point threatened to be put on the show in order to make it just another Saturday morning cartoon.

http://www.chekovsite.com/images/an1use.jpg

Wow, Crusher was gone by the second season? I thought she was around longer than that.

Rob

She left after one season to head Star Fleet Medical, then she came back in season 3 for the rest of the shows run.

gates mcfadden became pregnant and took a season off. i also am not a pulaski fan. a crusty old doctor played by a man is funny, from a woman it just seems annoying. i suppose that's a fairly sexist view, but it is what it is. interestingly enough, my wife's least favorite next-gen episodes are the ones that have one of the female cast members as the focus. guinan is the lone exception.

I guess Wesley was the Jar-Jar Binks of Trek...

Crusty female doctors can be done well, vis à vis Outland (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0827973/).

gates mcfadden became pregnant and took a season off.
??????????
According to IMDB her son was born in '91
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000533/bio
also according to imdb s2 ran from '88 to '89
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092455/episodes#season-2

The Pulaski character didn't quite work but at least she was a CHARACTER. Nothing against Gates McFadden as a person or even an actress--they just never did anything interesting for her character--the writing for women on that show was abysmal.

The Pulaski character didn't quite work but at least she was a CHARACTER. Nothing against Gates McFadden as a person or even an actress--they just never did anything interesting for her character--the writing for women on that show was abysmal.

agree completely. one only has to look at Ripley to see what good writing can do for a strong female character.

The reason Diane Mulduar (hope I'm spelling that right) showed up in TOS twice and also got the Pulaski role was that she was supposedly a favorite actress of Gene Roddenberry.

Gates Mcfadden left the show cause she thought her movie career was going to take off. Remember Hunt for Red October?

It didn't so she came back.

Diana Mulduar alwasy struck me as upity even when she played in McCloud as his girfreind. And she continued to do so on LA Law as well as ST. Never have realy liked her.

Never really cared for Polaski and actually thought most of the characters of Next Gen were pretty flat, perfect and dull. My favorites were Riker and Picard. One of the reasons I liked Riker was that most of the time he at least acted like a normal person instead of a stiff monument. Even more annoying than Polaski and Wesley combined (IMO) was the arrogant, smug holographic doctor on Voyager.

Gates Mcfadden left the show cause she thought her movie career was going to take off. Remember Hunt for Red October?

It didn't so she came back.

Direct from Wikipedia on Diana Muldaur......

Muldaur was noted for playing "dignified, sophisticated characters", and the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation, having fired Gates McFadden from the role of chief medical officer after the first season, wanted "someone older and with more bite", and Muldaur's Dr. Katherine Pulaski character did not share a romantic interest with Captain Picard, (Patrick Stewart), as her predecessor Dr. Crusher had, albeit in a "going-nowhere relationship". "We needed someone with a little more of an edge," Rick Berman explained. "Kate's a strong, confident woman with a crusty edge who can hold her own with Captain Picard. Their relationship is not all that unlike the one between Kirk and McCoy ... although from the onset we had no intention of trying to duplicate the original team."


I didn't see anything about Gates McFadden's movie career.

I prefer Pulaski to Crusher any day. I always though of Crusher as a whiny little brat. (And, yes, I'm talking about the mother. The less said about the son the better.)

Direct from Wikipedia on Diana Muldaur......

Muldaur was noted for playing "dignified, sophisticated characters", and the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation, having fired Gates McFadden from the role of chief medical officer after the first season, wanted "someone older and with more bite", and Muldaur's Dr. Katherine Pulaski character did not share a romantic interest with Captain Picard, (Patrick Stewart), as her predecessor Dr. Crusher had, albeit in a "going-nowhere relationship". "We needed someone with a little more of an edge," Rick Berman explained. "Kate's a strong, confident woman with a crusty edge who can hold her own with Captain Picard. Their relationship is not all that unlike the one between Kirk and McCoy ... although from the onset we had no intention of trying to duplicate the original team."


I didn't see anything about Gates McFadden's movie career.


Any fan can edit Wikipedia. Take the Trek stuff on wiki with a grain of salt. Use I can go in right now and add something how Pulaski slept with Picard in episode 35.

In the ongoing debate about the size of the new Enterprise the length has been changed numerous times by Trek fans who think they are right.


.

And yet again searching the web, I find that another site points out nothing about a movie career.

"McFadden left the series during the second season, replaced by Diana Muldaur as Doctor Katherine Pulaski. Officially, the producers felt that the character of Crusher had not developed as well as they had hoped. Unofficially, there were some disagreements between the show's producers and McFadden as to how the character should develop, which may have led to some bad blood between her and several executive producers, resulting in McFadden's being released from her contract before the second season."


http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Gates_McFadden

I didn't see anything about Gates McFadden's movie career.

Maybe 'cause the entry was about Diana Muldaur, not Gates McFadden?

Hated Pulaski character. Bad acting, boring/flat voice, not to mention hard on the eyes. Everything was so self rightous.

"So self rightous" Htat was the term I was looking for yesterday, thank you!!
And don't forget the wat Pulaski first treated Data, like he was just a piece of machinery to be told what to do and asking Picard if he was capable of doing do task when there were no results right away.

the thing about pulaski is that she was an imitation mccoy, plain and simple. her relationship with data copied that of mccoys with spock. in other words, we'd been there, seen that once before, and it was better the first time.
wesley was an indulgence on roddenberry's part that was wisely jettisoned as soon as r.g.'s physical condition meant he had to relinquish control of the show. the fans disliked pulaski, simply for being an imitation, almost as much as they hated wesley, so she was out and mcfadden was back.

The bit about Beverly Crusher being written out of the series for the second season is correct. I remember reading about it in the genre entertainment mags of the day. I was pretty bummed about it as I liked the character. Kate Pulaski was just a bit more interesting and I do enjoy Diana Muldaur in the role, but some of her characteristics were taken directly from that of Leonard McCoy (fear of the Transporter, etc.). By the end of season 2, it was determined that the Pulaski character didn't work either, so they wrote Bev Crusher back in and asked Gates McFadden to come back. She did get pregnant later on in the series, which is when they made her medical coat a bit longer and larger to hide the pregnancy - along with some very careful filming and editing.

Bryan

I think a more thorough and intellectual examination of Data's existence could have resulted from Pulaski's interaction. I don't think it was so much a Spock/McCoy relationship though it resembled it a little bit in dynamics.

Automatons, both the actual primitive, human-like, working mechanisms and the general concept of what we now call an android, have provoked reflections of what it means to be human in plays and literature since at least the days of ancient Greece. I think the possibilities were, despite the many episodes centering on Data, never really satisfactorily explored in depth. Such an exploration could have made the Spock/McCoy conflict seem shallow in comparison.

Maybe that's something most of the fans would not have appreciated. I don't know. I just know I would have liked to have seen that occur.

Even though I didn't get to see many of the TNG episodes when they were originally on (I didn't discover a lot of them until they hit DVD), the ones that I did see in the first season I was mostly unimpressed with. The second year fared much better - with the show finally "finding itself" in the third year.

I thought the Pulaski character added some nice contrast and helped the show dig itself out of the rut that was the first season. The second season is when the show started turning itself from the "Saturday morning" feel to the much better show it would become when it hit it's stride in the third year.

Pulaski also had a nice character arc during that season (really the only series character to do so, except perhaps Worf), when she went from being irascible and disapproving of Data to very warm-hearted and accepting - even befriending and defending him, during that year.

I had no problem with Gates' character returning in the third year, but I do admit that I did miss the Pulaski character, and I wish that they would have brought her back for some guest appearances later in the series.

The bit about Beverly Crusher being written out of the series for the second season is correct. I remember reading about it in the genre entertainment mags of the day. I was pretty bummed about it as I liked the character. Kate Pulaski was just a bit more interesting and I do enjoy Diana Muldaur in the role, but some of her characteristics were taken directly from that of Leonard McCoy (fear of the Transporter, etc.). By the end of season 2, it was determined that the Pulaski character didn't work either, so they wrote Bev Crusher back in and asked Gates McFadden to come back. She did get pregnant later on in the series, which is when they made her medical coat a bit longer and larger to hide the pregnancy - along with some very careful filming and editing.

Bryan

I agree with your recollections on what McFadden was written out. That's what I heard too.

I didn't have a problem with Pulaski as a character, but in the beginning she felt like a forced McCoy. Her character changed by the end and IMHO it was a better fit for Muldaur.

Hmmm? a guest spot or 2 for Pulaski, would that last one consist of her falling down a turbo lift shaft?

:p:p L.A. Law :p:p

I found Muldaur quite beautiful in her day. She's popped up in many of the 60s/70s TV series I've been watching on DVD - Kung Fu, Hawaii 5-0, etc. - and she could be quite breathtaking.

Gates did not take season off because she was pregnant. The pregnancy came later. Looking back on the episodes now that I catch on Monday nights on SCI-FI (yes I am still calling it that and I will now and for the rest of my life!) I actually like Pulaski because she had her own strong will and opinions but was open minded enough to change when the facts proved her wrong, ala Data. She had no respect for him in the beginning but that changed quickly when she saw that Data was far more than an automaton.

I had always hoped to see Diana Muldaur at a convention but she never came to one on the East Coast that I know of....maybe none at all anywhere.

I didn't see anything about Gates McFadden's movie career.

Apparently, neither did anyone else.

The Pulaski character didn't quite work but at least she was a CHARACTER. Nothing against Gates McFadden as a person or even an actress--they just never did anything interesting for her character--the writing for women on that show was abysmal.

Agreed. DS9 was far better with characters like Kira and Dax and Moogie, mother of Quark and Rom and even the female Klingon Grilka had two great episodes.

Agreed. DS9 was far better with characters like Kira and Dax and Moogie, mother of Quark and Rom and even the female Klingon Grilka had two great episodes.

What about the one the good old Rom married?:wave:

Apparently, neither did anyone else.

she did mostly TV but there have been some movie roles

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000533/

Since we're on the topic of Trek women, I Still never quite understood what they were doing with Marina Sirtis' accent either. Were they attempting to make it more un-English and try to make her do a semi American dialect or what. I always thought it came off as a bit unnatural either way. If you listen to someone like Jamie Bamber or Hugh Laurie, you'd never know they were not American, and whenever I heard Marina speaking out of character on talk shows and such, it was definitely English and IMO sounded far better than the accent she used as Troy.

I think she was just trying to come up with an "alien"-sounding accent.

gates mcfadden became pregnant and took a season off. i also am not a pulaski fan.

The story I heard was that, like so many people (myself included), McFadden became very disenchanted with the series by the end of season one, and quit. She was replaced, but the Dr. Pulaski character wasn't well liked and they asked Gates McFadden to return for seasons three on. The quality of the series had improved by then, and she decided to return.

Since we're on the topic of Trek women, I Still never quite understood what they were doing with Marina Sirtis' accent either. Were they attempting to make it more un-English and try to make her do a semi American dialect or what. I always thought it came off as a bit unnatural either way. If you listen to someone like Jamie Bamber or Hugh Laurie, you'd never know they were not American, and whenever I heard Marina speaking out of character on talk shows and such, it was definitely English and IMO sounded far better than the accent she used as Troy.
I think it was supposed to be Greek. In the first episode with her mother, Mrs. Troi remarked that she sounded like her father. However, when we later saw her father, he spoke with a standard American dialect.

Considering that every other character spoke with an American accent except for the French captain (who somehow had an English accent), I think it was an attempt to add a little international flavor to the crew. They then evidently forgot about it after the first season.

Since we're on the topic of Trek women, I Still never quite understood what they were doing with Marina Sirtis' accent either. Were they attempting to make it more un-English and try to make her do a semi American dialect or what. I always thought it came off as a bit unnatural either way. If you listen to someone like Jamie Bamber or Hugh Laurie, you'd never know they were not American, and whenever I heard Marina speaking out of character on talk shows and such, it was definitely English and IMO sounded far better than the accent she used as Troy.
honestly, i thought they were going for the "gypsy fortune teller" sort of accent to play on her telepathy...

I have never been able to stomach ANYTHING that Diana Muldaur has ever done. She stank as Dr. Pulaski and stank in the other Gene Roddenberry production: "Planet Earth".

Stank is a bit harsh, but I've always found her to be very dry, dull, monotone and just plane uninteresting with zero sex appeal in all her roles.

I think she was just trying to come up with an "alien"-sounding accent.
I think you're right, but it just came across as sounding like she had a cold! I think her English accent would have worked far better, but they already had one with the 'French' Picard...still trying to figure that one out!

I think you're right, but it just came across as sounding like she had a cold! I think her English accent would have worked far better, but they already had one with the 'French' Picard...still trying to figure that one out!

And his brother was German!