You know, I actually think Dr. Pulaski was one of the highlights of the second season. I didn’t like her when I watched the series as a kid, but when I rewatch it now, I think she’s one of the more realistic and nuanced characters on the show - certainly more so than Dr. Crusher. She has flaws (like her reluctance to recognize Data as a person), she’s disagreeable and brusque, she doesn’t really have friends on the crew. She’s a professional doing a job, and I think it was a good (and unusual) choice for TNG.
Really? I saw it as an attempt by the producers and writers to cash in on the old franchise with nostalgia by proxy…Doctor Pulaski’s character always struck me as a lady McCoy.
Agreed, of course.
Pulaski blows. Her only partially redeeming moments was drinking tea with Worf.
And eating crumpets with Moriarty. She looked pretty good in a corset…
I see your point, but I don’t agree. McCoy’s crotchetiness was used fairly often as a comic device - Pulaski’s was more toned-down, and I don’t recall it ever being used in that way. More importantly, the dynamic between these characters and the rest of the crew was very different - McCoy, Spock, and Kirk were very close friends, and entirely willing to muck their lives about to stay together. Pulaski wasn’t really friends with anyone - she was a professional doing a job. She was also willing to put herself in real danger for her crew - but that was, well, part of the job.
While Pulaski was certainly similar to McCoy in some ways, I think that the character was sufficiently different and realistic to be genuinely interesting. I don’t know whether this was a call made by the producers, the writers, or the actress, but it worked.
That doesn’t bother me. Given that the weapons system killed its own makers, it was obviously buggy. Also I think (but am not sure) that LaForge was firing on it at the time, and it may have had a “do not allow yourself to be destroyed” feature.
I also liked the fact that she realized that she was wrong about Data’s personhood. In her first episode she thought he was a toaster; by the war games episode clearly regretted ever treating him as such.
And she’s the only one in “Pen Pals” who realizes (or at least says out loud) that Data is entirely right to want to save the little girl and her world, and the rest of the officers have their heads up their asses.
Incidentally, if it were not for the character bits in that episode, “Pen Pals” would be the single worst. It’s so horrid that I prefer to think it was a holodeck program Tom Paris was running.
Maybe LaForge should have just agreed to buy it as well?
OK, unrelated thought, and I feel ashamed for only thinking of this maybe 20 years after I first recall watching the show: The Chief Engineer’s name is Geordi LaForge.
LaForge. The Forge? They named the Chief Engineer for a place where tools are created? 
No, they named him for a Fan who would go to conventions in a wheelchair. George LaForge IIRC.
(But on a related note, the early scripts for the Galaxy Quest series had the character of the Chief Engineer defined before he was named, so the drafts had 'Ch. Eng." at his lines. Later, the actor hired to read the parts believed that the character’s name was “Cheng,” and so it was.
True fact.)
Gene Roddenberry created the character in honour of George La Forge, a quadriplegic fan of the original Star Trek series who died in 1975. - wiki
The character was named after George La Forge, a fan of the original series who became friends with Gene Roddenberry, and who died in 1975. Online cites say he was a quadriplegic and had muscular dystrophy; but I don’t know if that’s specifically what killed him.
Certainly he should have, but he didn’t have the information to do so. I’m sure if Picard had called during a lull in the fight he would have instructed LaForge to do just that, and that LaForge would have obeyed; but as it played out there simply wasn’t time.
One thing I liked about that episode was a very-subtle reference to TOS. When the chief engineer tried to pull rank on LaForge and force him to relinquish the conn, and LaForge confidently asserted that he could only be relieved by the ship’s commander or XO, I couldn’t help but think, “Well, well, well. Starfleet actually learned from something that happened to Kirk & Spock!”
I always liked that bit. But he wasn’t chief engineer when the show started, and I’m not convinced they had thought that far ahead. If they had, they’d nto have made him a lieutenant junior grade, for instance. I can understand why he hopscotched to full lieutenant in the second year and lieutenant commander in the third, but it seeemd unreasonably swift.
I knew that was going to get me into trouble. :rolleyes:
I liked “Arsenal of Freedom”. It guest-starred Vincent Schiavelli, who was always worth watching. Sadly, he is no more.
“Oh, you jewel!” :rolleyes:
Just think about how unappealing Data would be (sorry, Mr. Spiner): his body wouldn’t feel, smell, or, erm, taste (ahem) like a living man’s; his hair and skin are some kind of plastic; he’s too heavy for his build and his body wouldn’t “give” like human musculature, and I imagine his torso is too hot while his extremities would be creepily close to room temperature.
Oh, but he’s got a penis and he knows a thing or two about sex (I honestly forget what his line is). Bleurgh!
While Mr. Spiner himself looks like he smells like greasepaint. Again, bleurgh! (Sorry, Mr. Spiner!)
Bill Campbell, mmm!
I don’t think we know that, except perhaps for the weight issue. I think Tasha has already been thinking about screwing him, and the Jenna D’Sora – the blonde security officer from “In Theory” he had the brief affair with – clearly found him appealing on a physical level. Her problem with him was his emotional inadequacy, not his physicality. And if the Soongs programmed in the sexuality routines (which is kind of ookie when you think about it, given that Joanna in particular thought of both him and Lore as her sons), I imagine they made his musculature responsive enough to give in the appropriate ways.
I enjoyed the bit between Worf and Data in that episode, when the former quietly warned Data that, if he hurt the lieutenant, he would be displeased, by which of course he meant murderous.
*Lt. Cmdr. Data: In every way, of course. I am programed in multiple techniques. A broad variety of pleasuring. *
One wonders exactly why Dr. Soong included that in Data’s programming.
And they shot first!
Bakhesh, your link doesn’t work, but I’m sure you mean the (fortunately) seldom-seen Starfleet “skants”:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2109/2474005973_46d0b8dc5c.jpg?v=0
I think by the end of her one season she considered Data a friend. As I noted upthread, she went out of her way in “Pen Pals” to tell him he was in the right while Picard & the rest were full of shit, and her interactions with him got warmer as the year progressed. And she clearly thought Worf was hot.
That said I think you have a point that she wasn’t generally friendly with her shipmates, and I can imagine that that was a conscious choice on her part. Her job is easier on her, emotionally, if she’s not wrapped up in everybody’s lives. If I were ship’s surgeon, I’d resist getting emotionally involved with anybody who regularly goes on away missions. And, yes, the main cast generally have plot invulnerability, but THEY don’t know that.