# the Crusher-Pulaski-Crusher switch



## theRogueRooster

I'm sitting here watching ST:TNG on "the New TNN" and it is an episode with Dr. Pulaski as Chief Medical Officer.  I never really cared much for the Pulaski character, and it appears most people felt the same, for she was only on the show for a season or two before Beverly Crusher returned.  That got me thinking -- was there some sort of juicy behind-the-scenes reason why Gates McFadden left the show and then returned?  Was there a real life reason, or is it just how the scripts played out?

Inquiring minds want to know!
-tRR


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## ColonelHardisson

It's been a while, but if I'm remembering correctly, McFadden was having a contract dispute.


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## Mark

Maybe I just thought this, or maybe I heard or read it somewhere, but wasn't she having a baby?


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## jdavis

contract dispute, baby aren't they the same thing. Wasn't she doing some movies at the time?


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## Tsyr

Now, granted, this is just taken from a fansite, but it seems to be fairly decent information (If for no other reason than I don't think a website just spreading little rumors would go to this much effort, plus it plays out with what I know of the 'way things worked' offstage during the TNG filming).



> _“There were those that believed at the end of the first season that they didn’t like the way the character was developing, vis-à-vis Gates’ performance and managed to convince Mr Roddenbury of that,” executive producer Rick Berman recounted.  He added, “I was not a fan of that decision.”  Patrick Stewart was puzzled by the move, even opposed to it, but was unwilling to propagate dissension.  “Gates was offered up somewhat sacrificially, to protect the rest of the show,” Stewart commented.  Although he liked McFadden’s replacement, Diana Mulder, who was created in the image of crusty Dr. Bones McCoy, Stewart was VERY glad when the actress returned.
> 
> The truths behind McFadden’s leave – and subsequent return a season later – are unclear.  Paramount officially announced that she had left “to pursue other career options.” Although McFadden has claimed that the news was a surprise to her.  “I got a call from my agent saying that they had decided to go in another direction with the character.  And that was literally all I heard.”
> 
> Another explanation arises from an April/May 1994 story published in Star Trek the Official Fan Club Magazine.  The story claims that McFadden attempted to renegotiate her contract at the end of The Next Generation’s first season.  Although this may be a reasonable ploy for an actor on a hit series, Paramount refused to meet her demands and removed her from the program.  The article also claims that when McFadden returned to Star Trek, it was at a lower salary than the rest of her co-stars.
> 
> Nonetheless, McFadden was gracious in returning.  Surprised to be asked back for the third season, she proclaimed, “I certainly missed working with my fellow cast members!”  Fans know that the explanation given for her characters absence was that she was off heading Starfleet Medical for the year, and McFadden was comfortable that the scriptwriters “are not making too much of a fuss in the storyline about my reappearance on board the Enterprise.  I think the decision has been made to just make it seem very normal that I’m coming back.”
> 
> Some avid fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation and particularly of Gates McFadden, have pointed to the enormous letter writing campaign as instrumental in reuniting Dr. Crusher with the rest of the crew of the Enterprise.  It is claimed that the flood of letters sent to Paramount protesting McFadden’s removal was surpassed only by the 1968 campaign that prolonged the run of Kirk and Spock’s Enterprise for a third season.
> 
> However, the impact of the fan letters was never acknowledged in the announcement of McFadden’s return.  “Diana Muldaur is a marvellous actress and it’s obvious I think so because I have used her so many times,” Gene Roddenberry exclaimed.  “It’s all just chemistry.  Beverly had that little something… Somehow the way the captain bounces off her works well.  It works with Muldaur, too, but it just seems to work a little more with Crusher… It was always out intention to leave the door open for her return to the show.”
> 
> McFadden, however openly acknowledges the “huge fan support – the hundreds of lovely letters” that clearly had an impact in her being asked back for the third season.  During Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season, McFadden refused to attend any of the popular Star Trek conventions held around the country, noting, “I just thought it was going to be a lot of strange people.”  However the flood of mail on her behalf changed McFadden’s tune.  “The fans wrote such amazing amounts of mail to the studio… It was instrumental in having them ask me back.  They suddenly realised that my character was really popular.  Since that time, I have felt that maybe I shouldn’t be so afraid of going to these conventions.  I don’t like people to know all about the ins and outs of my private life.  But, as I started to do it, I realised that nobody demanded that I share anything I didn’t feel like sharing.  I used to be a snob about it.  But everybody’s got their thing.  Some people go to rock concerts.  Some people do this.”
> 
> During her hiatus from Star Trek, McFadden kept very busy, appearing in The Hunt For Red October as Jack Ryan’s (Alec Baldwin’s) wife, a role that primarily wound up on the cutting room floor, especially, according to McFadden, quite a few hot “kissing scenes.”  She also had a significant role in Taking Care of Business, which featured, as her subordinate, actor and good friend John de Lancie, better known to Star Trek fans as Q.  She also spent tine reprising her role, again to critical acclaim, in the off-Broadway play To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday and also appeared in the play Emerald City.  Variety wrote of her performance in Emerald City, “McFadden creates a warmly attractive woman as she shows how the wife matures from lass to lady under the spell of achievement.”_


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## Umbran

Mark said:
			
		

> *Maybe I just thought this, or maybe I heard or read it somewhere, but wasn't she having a baby? *




IIRC, the baby was later.  You may recall a period in which Ms. McFadden was always wearing a blue "lab coat" - I'm pretty sure that's when she was pregnant.  The coat was to help hide her condition from the camera.


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## Viking Bastard

A ploy they reudid exactly later on in VOY when Torres was pregnant the first time (the later time they just made the character pregnant).


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## Mark

Thanks to all of you for straightening me out on that.  It appears my memory on this was blending two separate situations to explain things for me.


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## Darius101

good work tracking all that info down.  

From what I recall ....the above long quote was correct as I heard it at conventions at the time. 

Gates wanted to try to do some movie work but it didn't pan out at the time. 

I also seem to recall many many fans writing letters about the 'other' doctor not being liked too much. It was not handled well by the production staff either...

Good work guys, 
Darius


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## Umbran

Darius101 said:
			
		

> *....the above long quote was correct as I heard it at conventions at the time. *




*blink*.  As if conventions were the sources of Truth in the universe?  Might as well say it was correct because you heard it from the mouth of a government official


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## Mark

Umbran said:
			
		

> *Might as well say it was correct because you heard it from the mouth of a government official  *




_Here we go..._ 

Sides, the Federmuhration doesn't exist yet, so who would really know, huh?


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## Darius101

ok I should of said I heard it from the Guest speakers at the conventions at the time sheeesh....you guys are something. 

Darius


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## Mark

Darius101 said:
			
		

> *ok I should of said I heard it from the Guest speakers at the conventions at the time sheeesh....you guys are something.
> 
> Darius *




I was fine with your source (and assumed it was more than just info gotten while standing in line for an autograph.)  We're only going to get so much info from the franchise people and at some point you have to expand your sources or simply buy into the party line.  It's a matter of weighing the sources against one another and deciding what the stakes are for the person giving the information.  Even when a source is written in stone, I try to evaluate the man with the chisel.


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## Umbran

Well, Darius101, which would you prefer, I go with what you say, or I read into it whatever seems reasonable to me at the time?  

That being said, even guests of honor dont necessarily tell you the whole truth.  They are there in a public relations role, and you should expect them to act as such.  Sometimes you'll get truth, and sometimes not.

For example, we'll take _Witchblade_.  Officially, the show was cancelled because the network didn't feel it would hold onto ratings.  Officially, the fact that the show's star needed to go into rehab for alcoholism had nothing at all to do with it.  It doesn't get mentioned.  

That's a good, appropriate, and downright polite way to handle it.  I applaud the move.  Sometimes, having a little bit of class means you don't tell the 100% unvarnished, complete truth.


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## Mark

Umbran said:
			
		

> *That being said, even guests of honor dont necessarily tell you the whole truth.
> 
> -snip-
> 
> Sometimes, having a little bit of class means you don't tell the 100% unvarnished, complete truth. *




You never get the whole truth no matter who is speaking or listening.

How have you been, anyway, Umb.  You seem to be a little on edge the last couple of months.  Drop me an Email if you'd like to chat or anything.


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## Umbran

Also, in my own defense, I *did* put smilies in the posts.  I was trying to be a bit funny on the nature of information at conventions, and such.  

[edit: gotta keep tense and plural agreements straight.  Dratted grammar!]


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## Mark

Umbran said:
			
		

> *I was trying to be a bit funny on the nature of information at conventions, and such.  *




There is an enthusiasm similar to what is posted on the General Forum here, isn't there?


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