Everything That You Wanted To Know About Beverly Crusher:

This is an old article pending revision.

Beverly Crusher is a doctor on Star Trek, and is Chief Medical Officer for most of the service of The Enterprise 1701-D. She requests the posting and says that any unresolved issues with Captain Picard will not reflect her work. Before Picard knew this, he recommended and understood if she transferred. Her maiden name is Howard. She married Jack Crusher, and had a son named Wesley. Wesley is all that she has now because of her husband’s death when Wesley was 5. Picard knew Wesley then and was friends with Jack Crusher, but Jack ended up dieing under his command in a U.S.S. Stargazer away mission. In "Violations", One of Beverly's terrifying memories is partially revealed of right after she loses Jack. Picard and Beverly have had feelings for each other, but do not let anything get away from their positions. One time a fake Picard in “Allegiance” had used Picard’s memories and feelings of Beverly and began acting on them and invited her to dinner and a slow dance. Beverly is a very hard working medical officer and has a similar efficiency and even sternness of Seven Of Nine. Her co-workers are Alyssa Ogawa who is a young nurse, and several doctors. She also mentions Dr. Hill and Dr. Selar a lot. Dr. Selar is a Vulcan character that was portrayed by Suzie Plakson (which is one of 3 characters that she portrays). She also has a slight sense of empathy which leads Picard to say “Now that was an observation that I would expect to hear from Counselor Troi”, and Deanna herself saying “...and I thought that Iwas the empath.”. She also has given people advice, such as with Data. It seems that all 3 of the major female characters (Deanna, Beverly, and Guinan) have empathy and great advice. Because McFadden is an experienced choreographer, Beverly’s secret nickname is “The Dancing Doctor”. Beverly hopes that it remains a secret. She is also the director of many plays. She is a firm believer to stand up for what is right doesn’t even let rules get in her way. She has the authority to give anybody on the ship orders as long as they are for medical purposes. There are some episodes that show an irritability for nonsense, such as when she proved Riker’s innocence in the season 4 episode "First Contact", and when she was being interrogated in “The Drumhead”. This character trait is actually similar to Christine Chapel.



Having several Chief Engineers during the 1st season and none of them being regulars is one example of several of unresolved characters and which people to fill open positions. Because of this, Beverly was written out of the series as becoming in charge of Star Fleet Medical. Her shuttle is seen leaving in the first second season episode, and she is mentioned many times, but is only seen in stock footage of the last episode of the second season, which is the shortest season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dr. Pulaski is introduced and replaces Beverly, but is only to fill the medical position and she was not around as much resulting in SickBay in the 2nd season becoming as scarce as Engineering in the 1st season. Pulaski’s distrust of technology and not getting along with Data at first made her not that popular and eventually McFadden returned by the 3rd season. Pulaski was not directly written out of the series, but since she left The Justman because she admired Picard and was friends with Riker’s father and took the position as it opened, she could have returned after her former captain begged Pulaski to return to The Justman. Dr. Pulaski might have found a position at Star Fleet Medical several years later. Beverly seems to know about Dr. Pulaski’s methods and techniques meaning that Dr. Pulaski is well known.



Whenever Beverly isn’t giving advice to somebody, Guinan is giving advice to her. She resigns and explains everything to Guinan, which she unlawfully performed an autopsy to solve a mystery. She steals a shuttlecraft, and figures out what had really happened. It also turns out that Guinan’s claim of Tennis Elbow was false.


Beverly has the rank of Commander before the Enterprise was even built. She is a fully certified bridge officer that occasionally commands The Enterprise which influences Deanna to pass The Bridge officer’s test.


As seen in The Next Generation “The High Ground”, she was taken hostage by a group of terrorists that needed an expert medical doctor. When one of them grabbed her, she said “You don’t understand. I’m a…” and then disappears. Technically, they DID understand because they knew who she was in advance and the entire purpose for the raid was to cause a small explosion which injured some people so she could treat them even when she was advised not to. Then when she runs into their trap, they came and got her. She gets imprisoned in a cave and her wrists and ankles are tied together. She refuses to (and is obviously unable to) eat even when Kyril Finn worries about her not eating. She does not even speak to him until she is freed from being tied together. Finn then explains what is happening and also mentions that they use an undetectable technology called interdimmensional travel which is impossible to safely use with humanoid tissue. They do it anyways, and it severely weakens them. Finn begins to have a strong admiration for her that leads him to start drawing her. Before he shows her what he is drawing but Beverly still sees him sketching something, she says “You should be drawing, not killing people.”



Sometimes he lost his temper and says “You’ve finished eating, Get up!!” Beverly quietly states “I have a son”, and he replies “You’ll be with him again Doctor” (he did not even know her name). Later he says that he had a son once and implied that the cause of his death at the age of 14 was being killed while being a prisoner of war. Finn wants to destroy The Enterprise crew and attempts it. When it fails, he kidnaps Picard. Other times he pops up in front of Deanna Troi stating the demands of The Ansata. With Picard and Beverly kidnapped, Riker on the planet’s surface, and Data working a rescue plan with Wesley and Geordi, this left Deanna in charge of everything (despite the fact in “The Disaster” she at first acts like she has never been in command before). She outranks everybody mentioned except for Wesley.



Once Picard is led into the same room with Beverly, the two have arguments Beginning with Picard and then Beverly:

“I should have beamed you up.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, yes I would. …and Should!!”

“Without my permission?!”

“You don’t follow orders!!”

“If you’d give reasonable orders, I’d obey!!”

“Doctor, I will be the judge of what is reasonable!!”



Alexana Devos ends up killing Finn after he tries to kill Picard. She had pointed towards him the entire time and fired right before Finn would have fired which saved everybody’s life. Riker says “you didn’t have to kill him” and she wraps up her explanation by saying “It’s an imperfect solution, for an imperfect world.” A young boy that Beverly said “Thank you. You’re very helpful. You could learn to do this when you grow up--- IF you grow up…” appeared again with a weapon and Beverly was able to get through to him since they worked together to treat wounded people and said “No more killing.” Alexana thinks that The Ansata now have a young new leader, but Riker thinks that him not killing anybody is a step in the right direction.



Beverly has a very old friend named Dr. Quaice who recently retired from Starbase 133 because of his wife recently passing. He shivers at the idea of more of his friends and relatives dying when he gets older. As Beverly worries about this as she approaches Main Engineering, the experiment ended up trapping her and in reality she disappeared and appeared in an alternate dimension. Her worries about losing people resulted in that actually happening!! She thinks it is because of “a dynamic atmospheric disturbance of great intensity” vortex is the cause. She is the only one that remembers their existence. She eventually she figures everything out and says “if there is nothing wrong with me, maybe there is something wrong with the universe”. She then rescues herself before her own universe collapsed.



On “The Host”, she finds herself in the middle of an illegal relationship with Odan, a Trill species. The Federation is unaware of what exactly Odan is which is why Odan insisted on using a shuttle craft instead of beaming over to prevent the misunderstanding that Odan does not have a harmful parasite, but that Odan is the creature which happens to be one of many intelligent life forms. There are not very many of them, but they live for a very long time which means that they outlive the bodies that they inhabit. Most trill do not have a creature inside them since there are many more Trill than the creatures and only a few of them are selected for the irreversible procedure. The host dies unexpectedly, and Odan would have also died unless Riker volunteered. Riker would have been forced to live with Odan if a replacement had not been found soon enough. Beverly becomes very confused that Odan appears to be Riker and Riker is now acting like Odan’s former body. She is even more confused when the next selected person is a female Trill.



Beverly is concerned and outraged because of Kamala’s destiny of Peace. She tells Picard that she is being forced to her quarters against her will, and when Picard says he was not aware of this, she says “Well this IS your ship, maybe there are some things you should find about… LOVELY breakfast.” And then leaves. In “Conspiracy” she attacks a parasite infested Admiral Quinn who is knocked unconscious and defeated. Riker, Worf, and Geordi were unable to do this.

In “I, Borg”, they do not recognize a signal from The Borg, and instead respond to it. They find the crashed spaceship, and when they discover that it is Borg, 3rd of 5 is taken back and when he asks about a name, he is named “Hugh”. Beverly consistently fights for his rights even if he is from an enemy race. In another episode she cares for one of 2 Romulans that is being questioned. The Romulan dies before explaining his presence because Worf refuses to help save his life and The Vulcans are not compatable to be able to save injured and dying Romulans.

In "Transfigurations", she falls in love with an injured person that she has named John Doe, who is able to heal himself as well as others. He has the capability of transforming into a non-corporeal life form. Beverly almost acts like she wants to join him.

In an alternate future, her name is Beverly Picard and she is (or was) the captain of her own ship. She is the same age as Jean-Luc Picard and even in an alternate future when Picard ages tremendously, she does not appear to age at all.

After half of the Enterprise-D was destroyed and the other half crashed, Beverly continues to be Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise-E.