Gates McFadden played Doctor Beverly Crusher for six seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but her duties tended to keep her in the ship’s medical bay and off the bridge. There’s a reason for that, as Star Trek‘s first headlining female captain was being kept in reserve for Star Trek: Voyager. McFadden discussed why Beverly never took the Captain’s chair for long at a recent panel moderated by Collider’s Maggie Lovitt at Fan Expo Portland.
McFadden’s tenure on the series was often rocky: she was part of the show’s initial cast, but clashed with head writer and showrunner Maurice Hurley. Thus, her contract was not renewed after the show’s first season; her character was written out and replaced with Diana Muldaur‘s Doctor Katherine Pulaski. However, Pulaski did not connect with the audience, and McFadden returned to the series for its final five seasons and four theatrical films. Despite this, the show’s creatives were reluctant to put her in command, unlike Jonathan Frakes‘ Will Riker, as McFadden told audiences:
“They knew they were going to have a female captain fairly early on. They knew they were going to do Voyager. So, while I was put sometimes in the captain’s chair, since I had the same rank as [Will Riker], they were careful about how much they wanted to do that, because they were saving that for when Voyager happened.”
Star Trek: Voyager launched in 1995, and made headlines for featuring Kate Mulgrew‘s Kathryn Janeway in the center seat. However, her path to the captain’s chair was also an eventful one: film star Geneviève Bujold was initially cast in the lead role, but dropped out after a few days of filming, prompting a frantic search for a new lead. Eventually, one was found in the form of TV veteran Mulgrew, who skillfully captained the series for seven seasons.
Are There More Female Captains in Star Trek?
For years, the fanbase commonly believed that there were no female captains in Star Trek, owing to the much-maligned final episode of The Original Series. In that episode, “Turnabout Intruder,” Dr. Janice Lester (Sandra Smith), who was once the lover of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), swaps bodies with him to achieve her ambitions, claiming, “Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women.” Whether that was meant literally or figuratively was a matter of debate for some decades, although subsequent series set a century later, including The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, would depict several women in command positions, although Voyager was the first Trek series with a female lead.
The whole idea would later be retconned out by Star Trek: Enterprise, which was a prequel series set a century before the events of The Original Series. In that show’s fourth season, the Enterprise‘s sister ship, the Columbia, was captained by Erika Hernandez (Ada Maris). Many subsequent Trek series have prominently featured female captains, including Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Starfleet Academy.
Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager are streaming on Paramount+. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
- Release Date
-
January 16, 1995
- Network
-
UPN
- Showrunner
-
Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga, Kenneth Biller
- Directors
-
David Livingston, Winrich Kolbe, Allan Kroeker, Michael Vejar
- Writers
-
Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor
-
-
-
Roxann Dawson
B’Elanna Torres
-
Robert Duncan McNeill
Tom Paris