[JulesLuvsShinzon]

Terilynn, on Feb 1 2009, 09:07 PM, said:

I am bringing this thread back to life in order for Jules and I to have a conversation about this poorly (IMHO) character without having to bother the STXI threads.

TR: you must think me awfully remiss ~ I've only just seen this revived thread!!

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I've read through these old posts and have found myself laughing that there were people who feel the same way I did about how Crusher's character was so poorly served by the writers in this series that her character became my least favorite - and unlike Troi - she was never able to redeem herself.

Was it really so difficult for the writers to give Beverly a true sense of consistency with her character or were they so wrapped up in their episodic tendencies that they didn't know how to use here except as anything but the verbalization of the contradictory opinions of the moral of the show?

She's rarely right about her decisions and she moralizes to a degree of - to use Q's term - shrillness.

Maybe it's a measure of how underdeveloped her character was that I've never analysed any of her actions to that degree. She's never greated on me to the degree that Deanna in her early days did, but I still preferred Pulaski who did seem to come onboard with a complete character.

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Jules - when it came to Attached...I still have a hard time believing that Crusher would pine for Picard after her husband died under his command - But I never saw these two as a potential couple and wished that they could have just written a female character who didn't been to be defined by her desire for her crewmate.

We learned in the first episode that Troi and Riker had already been an item and had left that relationship hanging...and that was okay. So why did we have to have the only other female character pout over Picard?

Why did they have to create Crusher to be as weak in the knees for Picard? She just needed to be a regular crewmember...

I think they struggled with Crusher. They wanted some kind of dynamic between her and Picard from the get-go and it never really worked out ~ at least it didn't before McFadden's little sabbatical. I guess it was a kind of parrallel to having Riker and Troi know each other before serving together on the ship. I think Crusher and her son were supposed to represent a bad point in Picard's past ~ perhaps a time when he wasn't quite the expereinced man we saw in TNG.

I don't think Attached was supposed to show us a Beverly pining for Picard (although you could argue it that way in The Naked Now). My assumption is that the episode was to show how their friendship had grown over the time they had been serving together and deepened into something that could have gone places. My impression of that episode was that it was Picard who had been doing the pining ~ ever since Jack Crusher had married her in fact ~ and at the end if the epiode it was Crusher who had put the brakes on the relationship becoming more domestic.

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What was it about Attached that you liked so much? I could buy them as friends...just not as lovers.

That they didn't become lovers probably speaks to the quality of the episode. I think the epsiode was much more about their emerging friendship than anything else, it wasn't really about lust. I'll agree that, latterly, Crusher became too closely linked to Picard to the considerable detriment of her character.

In one way I couldn't agree with you more about female crewmembers being defined by the relationship, or lack of, with men. If you consider DS9 and VOY, every female character had at least one sexual relationship with another regular character, but then, people of both sexes tend to have relationships and the shows lasted for seven years! In the case of Dax and Kira, they had several dalliances, but they were strong enough characters in themselves that they weren't really defined by their liaisons.

I think it's about balance, which is why I think that characters need to develop outside of their [ersonal and sexual relationships first ~ just like real people in fact!

[Terilynn]

JulesLuvsShinzon, on Feb 13 2009, 10:14 AM, said:

That they didn't become lovers probably speaks to the quality of the episode. I think the epsiode was much more about their emerging friendship than anything else, it wasn't really about lust. I'll agree that, latterly, Crusher became too closely linked to Picard to the considerable detriment of her character.

In one way I couldn't agree with you more about female crewmembers being defined by the relationship, or lack of, with men. If you consider DS9 and VOY, every female character had at least one sexual relationship with another regular character, but then, people of both sexes tend to have relationships and the shows lasted for seven years! In the case of Dax and Kira, they had several dalliances, but they were strong enough characters in themselves that they weren't really defined by their liaisons.

I think it's about balance, which is why I think that characters need to develop outside of their [ersonal and sexual relationships first ~ just like real people in fact!

Ah HA! Yes - we do agree there. Having Crusher and Picard resolve NOT to enter into a relationship was utterly believable and appropriate and personally I really liked that about "Attached." Too many people however, saw that episode as the foudnation for what I deem to be a completely unbelievable relationship in the post-Nemesis books. Friendship? Hell yes. Making babies? Oh....ohhh no...soooooo wrong on so many levels.

Again - Having a strong female character in a relationship doesn't necessarily bother me - but like you've said - those characters that I seem to enjoy the most (especially in DS9 so far) aren't DEFINED by that relationship -

I had a feeling you and I agreed more than disagreed on this subject.

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

^^^Oh yes! I didn't think we could be so very far apart on this issue!

I think that we're looking at the difference between "love" and "lust" when we're looking at relationships between older characters. I think that's where Riker and Troi crossed the line in Nemesis because it's too easy for young people to compain about "granny porn", and it's also not necessary to see ever character in a show getting it on just for the sake of it.

I see the relationship between Picard and Crusher to be a kind of deepening friendship based on love and mutual respect, much like the very touching relationship between President Roslyn and Admiral Adama in Nu BSG. For many reasons these slow-burn and non-sexual alliances are much more satisfying in dramatic terms, because it's all under the surface and always makes conflict between these characters, when it happens, as all the more poignant. If anybody isn't squirting the odd tear when Adama reads to Laura when she's lying ill in bed, or any of the many subtle acts of friendship and compassion that they show each other, then they are made of stone.

I mean to say, really the sexual side of a relationship between characters is always dramatically the least interesting. While it's always quite amusing to witness the pumping rear end of Gaius Balthar as he makes yet another unsatisfactory conquest, when you compare him to Worf and Dax, and how their relationship was always so much more about her trying to make him chill out and him putting her on a pedestal as a Klingon ideal she-warrior and a much "older" more experinced woman tutoring a young man from the standpoint of having been both male and female, then there's simply so much more the audience to emotionally invest in. Kira and Odo try to reach across a great divide both culturally, politically...and physically...and so on. Even poor old Balthar has a deep love for Six.

That's why I kind of regret Troi and Riker getting it together, because their relationship was so much more interesting when they were apart and seeing different people. It's why I regret Muldur and Scully getting together, and why I was so glad that Commander Koenig and Dr Helena Russel never got it together in Space 1999.

[Terilynn]

It's always a "jump the shark moment" when the two love-tension characters get together. Personally - I was always more interested in a Worf - Troi relationship and how that affected all three of them.

While you know I was none too thrilled with the bed scene (and anything affiliated with it) in Nemesis - I wasn't overly upset about the marriage on the whole. Personally - I was getting pretty sick of a Starfleet Captains being shown as either being completely devoid of love or tragic victims of the loss of their partners.

But the one thing I always appreciated about the Riker-Troi relationship was that it WAS possible for two people - especially ex-lovers to remain very close friends.

The same way I feel about the Crusher - Picard relationship.

[Commander Lazar]

B, on 20 November 2006 - 09:53 PM, said:

There was an episode where she and Jean Luc would have breakfast. It turns out Jean luc just wanted Coffee and a Croissant. But for the entire episode Beverly kept trying (without much success) to pronounce it "Quassoin" like she could actually speak French. The whole damn episode she would butcher the French language, it was more annoying than her wunderkind offspring. Q was right. She DID get more shrill as time went on....ok, sorry for the rant...Now back to your regularly scheduled programming..

I didn't notice is.

[Greystone]

Compared to McCoy she is positively sane. I liked her.

This post has been edited by Greystone: 09 November 2011 - 12:30 PM