Dr Crusher And The Curious Case of the Pen

March 18, 2013 5:51 PM

Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, has a Tumblr where she posts pictures of a Dr. Crusher action figure in darkly comic situations.
posted by Effigy2000 (77 comments total)

Bev, you glorious bastard.
posted by cortex at 6:08 PM on March 18, 2013 [13 favorites]

She does love her puppets. Was blown away when I saw her in the Labyrinth Making Of docu.
posted by cthuljew at 6:17 PM on March 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

I AM WEEPING WITH JOY
posted by bewilderbeast at 6:17 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

I heard on Twitter that these were awesome, but, you know what? They are awesome.
posted by mollweide at 6:23 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Seeing these made me realize that Gates McFadden is a cooler, stranger person than I ever knew, and that makes me happy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:25 PM on March 18, 2013 [19 favorites]

Henceforth, the rest is "Second Best of the Web."
posted by 256 at 6:45 PM on March 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

Call me "Tapestry" because I'm on my way to sick bay with a burst heart.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:54 PM on March 18, 2013 [17 favorites]

I see she refers to the figure as "1/8th Gates". Now I want a 1/8th replica of myself to pose in various...no wait. I want a full-size replica of myself that would go to work and I would be converted to a 1/8th scale real human being. I would live on crackers like a mouse.
posted by DU at 6:55 PM on March 18, 2013 [17 favorites]

These are delightful.

But unless Gates McFadden is 4 feet tall, I can't see how a 6-inch action figure is "1/8 Gates."

And if she is 4 feet tall, Next Gen was pretty crafty with the forced perspective.
posted by Peevish at 7:02 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

GATES
posted by roger ackroyd at 7:20 PM on March 18, 2013 [8 favorites]

Wait, how do we know it's really her? I don't understand Tumblr. Kids, lawn, etc.
posted by librarina at 7:22 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

She posts the same images on Twitter, so it's pretty likely to be her. When I was 7 I intensely wanted to be Dr. Crusher when I grew up. Not intensely enough to.. get good enough grades though. Boo.
posted by bleep at 7:28 PM on March 18, 2013

Google says she's 5'8", so it's more like 1/11 Gates.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:01 PM on March 18, 2013

This is too good to be true. This is too good to not to be true.
posted by Skwirl at 8:12 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is the coolest thing.
posted by brennen at 8:24 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh man, here's where I get into my Dr. Beverly Crusher thing isn't it?

Okay when you grow up in a non traditional household you're always kind of aware of it, like yea none of the kids in Keasby,NJ had Leave It To Beaver houses but I knew just having a mom and an aunt who lived downstairs was not what we all saw on TV as normal and even not what what all my friends and neighbors had. But I really liked TV and we didn't really have one that played anything but tapes but he did have relatives and well wishers ( thank you Adam and Amir ) who would drop off tapes for us and our TV could play them and for some reason TNG was like, basic why not kid programming so I saw lot of it.

And yeah Wesley is annoying, but sometimes you have him with his Mom and he's a super smart, and older than you, and a freakin Starfleet Kinda Officer who has a single Mom that he relates to. Beverley Crusher became my ideal Mom. She's single, like my mom, she's smart, like my mom, but she LIVES IN A SPACESHIP and she's IN STARFLEET and she's KINDA GOT A THING WITH THE CAPTAIN.

Seriously, Beverley Crusher totally normalized for me having a single Mom cause I could say Wesley has it so it's fine. It made it so less werid.

And I totally forgive the Scottish ghost episode.
posted by The Whelk at 8:28 PM on March 18, 2013 [52 favorites]

The Whelk: And I totally forgive the Scottish ghost episode.

Y'had me ... right up until that last line there.
posted by Seeba at 8:32 PM on March 18, 2013 [4 favorites]

It's her. A lot of these photos are taken at the Ensemble Studio Theater (which has the tumblr), which she is artistic director of. This is the part where I gloat about kinda knowing her through my girlfriend- She's super nice and has given a lot of herself to that theater.
posted by kingv at 8:43 PM on March 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Surely this is the only sane response to the existence of a tiny action figure version of yourself.
posted by straight at 8:48 PM on March 18, 2013 [21 favorites]

The Scottish Ghost episode?
posted by Effigy2000 at 8:53 PM on March 18, 2013

Well there's a childhood crush justified.
posted by greenland at 8:54 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Seeba, a recurring theme in star trek is that, while Sci Fi, everyone can at any time find themselves mind-controlled, haunted,brain-swapped, amnesiac, hallucinatory, dead, undead, a ghost, alternate-universed, or Even Something Crazy. One of these is when Bev gets haunted, but nobody cares. That's just what ghosts do, they say.
posted by rebent at 8:56 PM on March 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Dude seriously if we're going there, Riker, a thousand times in a thousand places.
posted by The Whelk at 8:57 PM on March 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

In the end she focuses some warp nacelles on the ion flux particles with a phase modulated variance of 9.2 etc, nobody cares Bev, congrats on your unhaunting
posted by rebent at 8:58 PM on March 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

"A Thousand Times In A Thousand Places" will probably end up being the title of one of the continuing adventures of Bill Striker, Erotic Pioneer.
posted by cortex at 9:00 PM on March 18, 2013 [9 favorites]

The Scottish Ghost episode?

"Sub Rosa", from the last season. One of the legendarily bad Trek episodes, up there with the Voyager where Paris turns into a lizard.
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:05 PM on March 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Sub Rosa is a good test to see just how much you actually enjoy TNG. All the other "bad" TNG episodes have a cheese-factor that can somewhat mitigate their awfulness, or at least some really kickin' space fashion, or maybe a quotable line. But Sub Rosa is just bad bad bad. Not even beautiful Gates' sunset cloud of scarlet hair is saved from its badness. I've watched it like ten times, at least.
posted by Mizu at 9:15 PM on March 18, 2013 [13 favorites]

Holy crap: She is so damn smart and clever. Also, how did I not ever register what a stone fox she is?! Those uniforms were hideous.
posted by latkes at 9:18 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well there's a childhood crush justified.
posted by greenland
ditto... *sigh*
posted by Golem XIV at 9:24 PM on March 18, 2013

But she made up for Sub Rosa by macking on Riker while he had a Trill inside him while way pregnant.

Actually, never mind...I need memory bleach after being reminded of that damn Scottish ghost.
posted by dry white toast at 9:25 PM on March 18, 2013

#teambev
posted by Sara C. at 9:56 PM on March 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oh, this is freakin' awesome. :)
posted by zarq at 9:56 PM on March 18, 2013

Okay, okay, am I just a crazy person, or what uniform is this supposed to be? It has the rectangular design behind the combadge, which they didn't have on the Enterprise during the TNG run, rank pips, and rank stripes along the cuffs like the TOS uniforms. Also the weird two-tone collar. Am I completely forgetting one of the alternate timeline/quantum slipstream/whatever uniform designs or something?

PLEASE HELP ME I'M SO CONFUSED
posted by maqsarian at 10:05 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

She's awesome, and this is really awesome. Go Christina!
posted by Sphinx at 10:08 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

maqsarian - That's the original design for Star Trek: Generations. Apparently, the choice to use the mix of TNG/DS9-style uniforms was made late enough in production that the action figures for the movie were still using the original design.

Found a picture of a sketch here:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=116991

Also, here's a part of an old AOL chat transcript with Ronald D. Moore that talks a bit about the change.

There was a full uniform redesign planned for "Generations" but at the last
minute the new uniforms were scrapped and all that remained were the new
combadges.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron012.txt

(I, too, was like... "wtf??")
posted by juliebug at 10:31 PM on March 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Sub Rosa is one of my very favorite TNG episodes and all of you are making me very sad.
posted by milk white peacock at 10:34 PM on March 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Everyone jokes now and then about some weird sentence they write: "Haha, I never thought I'd ever write THAT!" or some weird sentence they read: "Haha, who would ever expect to see THAT weird collection of words?"

Sub Rosa is one of my very favorite TNG episodes

This is the weird collection of words I never expected to see on the internet.

I'm glad it's something you're able to enjoy, milk white peacock... But the Sub Rosa Fan Club has got to be terribly small.
posted by meese at 10:48 PM on March 18, 2013 [5 favorites]

Thanks, juliebug! For a while there I thought all this Romulan ale had killed my brain.
posted by maqsarian at 11:49 PM on March 18, 2013

Mizu is quite right; "Sub Rosa" is very much a test of one's devotion to Star Trek. It is truly awful. Last year, as I was watching it for what must have been the eighth or ninth time, I groaned all the way through. I have a feeling it'll be pretty much the same my ten and eleventh times.

But for you, milk white peacock, I will try, on my next viewing, to catch the right vibe. Knowing how awesomely quirky Gates McFadden is certainly will help; maybe I can just dive into the surrealism of the whole thing.
posted by koeselitz at 11:55 PM on March 18, 2013

But unless Gates McFadden is 4 feet tall, I can't see how a 6-inch action figure is "1/8 Gates."

Kinda weird, but I think she's just mistaken. These ST:TNG action figures are described here as

technically in the 7" scale, but [not] fully 8" either. The Bev's are about 7 1/2" tall.... They fit in pretty well scale-wise with the rest of the series

If they're technically 7" models, then they're technically in the 1:10 scale; if they're technically 8" models, which is a better fit IMO, then they're technically in the 1:9 scale.

Funny, I'd have considered her puppetry background sufficient to have her schooled in these matters, but it sure ain't the first time that an actor has turned out to have only a small fraction of the fan knowledge-base.
posted by dhartung at 11:57 PM on March 18, 2013

also please ignore my misuse of "quantum slipstream" up there, I didn't mean the slipstream drive, I was referring to Worf's different quantum realities from "Parallels", OBIVOUSLY
posted by maqsarian at 11:57 PM on March 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

"I was basically in love with a lamp! This woman is a doctor and falls in love with a lamp! How the hell does that work?" - Gates McFadden on "Sub Rosa," 2012.
posted by koeselitz at 12:01 AM on March 19, 2013 [4 favorites]

Apparently "Sub Rosa" had the working title "Passions".

It probably would have fit in more as an episode of that show.
posted by maqsarian at 12:04 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

I see from her bio on the theatre's website, in addition to the puppetry she's also into clowning. I had no idea about any of this.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:28 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

Kinda weird, but I think she's just mistaken.

I think she's just going with the one that rhymes
posted by junco at 2:00 AM on March 19, 2013 [9 favorites]

I see from her bio on the theatre's website, in addition to the puppetry she's also into clowning. I had no idea

I don't know if that's the proper terminology or not but "into clowning" sounds like its some kind of weird fetish.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:25 AM on March 19, 2013 [5 favorites]

Milk white peacock- we all have our favorite Star Trek episodes that no one else likes.

Perhaps you have heard of mine- Let that be Your Last Battlefield featuring The Riddler?
posted by wittgenstein at 2:33 AM on March 19, 2013

This is killing me with the adorableness.

I mean seriously. Seriously.
posted by Katemonkey at 3:08 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is great. I thought she was pretty rad before I knew about all her puppetry stuff and action figure wackiness, and so this just makes her even more super-rad to me.

(augh koeselitz linked to Memory Alpha nooooooo that's like a TV Tropes -level timesink oh god here I go ....)
posted by barnacles at 3:39 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

I love her so much.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:16 AM on March 19, 2013

But Sub Rosa is just bad bad bad.

First line of the Wiki plot summary:
The Enterprise visits Caldos IV which has been terraformed to look like Scotland.

Oh come on, "Caldos IV"? If you're going to terraform the entire planet to "look like Scotland" (? Is it just a scale replica of Scotland in an otherwise featureless ocean? A giant, planet-encompassing Scotland? Hundreds of identical Scotlands spread out over the surface? Either way someone has too much time on their hands) at least go full-on Futurama and call it like "Scotulon IV: The Scottish Planet".
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:22 AM on March 19, 2013 [9 favorites]

Geordi, too, was also basically in love with a lamp. It's a common theme, but statistically happens more frequently with engineers than MDs.
posted by steef at 5:53 AM on March 19, 2013 [5 favorites]

Sub Rosa = Scotland in space, but a strangely 19th Century Scotland, Crusher in utter adoration with a ghost who lived in a lamp, and the closest Trek got to showing actual sex until that Voyager episode where Harry has sex with an alien and starts glowing as result.
posted by Atreides at 6:16 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

Geordi, too, was also basically in love with a lamp.

To be fair, he originally just needed the lamp around to shed figurative light on an engineering puzzle. But then he was like "me and this lamp just aren't clicking" so he told the computer to try and give the lamp a little more personality. And then the lamp gave him a backrub, and he and the lamp saved the day, and he kissed the lamp and then turned the lamp off.

Earlier in that episode, he had a really bad date with an actual woman inside of the lamp factory. Geordi has problems.
posted by cortex at 6:21 AM on March 19, 2013 [14 favorites]

And in a followup episode, a woman had to deal with the fact that Geordi had mistaken her for a lamp.
posted by cortex at 6:22 AM on March 19, 2013 [8 favorites]

In a later episode, of course, Lieutenant Barclay developed crushes on the entirety of the female command staff who were actually lamps.
posted by Atreides at 7:14 AM on March 19, 2013

"Sub Rosa" = the cruel reply to young MCMikeNamara's declaration "I'd love any episode focusing on Dr. Crusher."

(And bad as it is, I'd still rather have it then one fewer Crusher episode.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:28 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

In another episode, Data outsmarts a lamp.

Good for you, Data. Good for you.
posted by meese at 7:36 AM on March 19, 2013

Wasn't there one where Picard's conciousness was transferred into a lamp, and he had to live out an entire lifetime amongst a long-extinct civilisation of intelligent lamps?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:54 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

On the upside, he learned to play the lampflute.
posted by cortex at 7:57 AM on March 19, 2013 [5 favorites]

And then after he came back, a while later, the flute fell in love with a flat piano in a Jefferies tube.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:58 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

And of course there was that episode of Voyager where Dr. Lamp woke up in the future to realize he was the only lamp in the galaxy that could explain to a bunch of revisionist alien jerks that their laser lamp show about how the Voyager crew were evil oppressors was a bunch of bullshit.
posted by cortex at 7:59 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

(which all sounds much dirtier now that I read it)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:59 AM on March 19, 2013

One time, Data tried to learn about humor from a famous lamp comedian, but because the lamp comedian was Joe Piscopo, it was about as funny and entertaining as an actual fucking lamp.
posted by maqsarian at 9:40 AM on March 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

the Sub Rosa Fan Club has got to be terribly small.

I was one of the founding members at age 13, when it first aired.

Let's just say I'm not looking forward to revisiting it in a few weeks as I wrap up my TNG marathon.
posted by Sara C. at 9:44 AM on March 19, 2013

Speaking of TNG rewatches, "The Best of Both Worlds" is slated for a theatrical "event" in late April. We're on season three right now, so this means we can finish in style!
posted by mwhybark at 9:53 AM on March 19, 2013 [6 favorites]

DecemberBoy: The Scottish Ghost episode?

"Sub Rosa", from the last season. One of the legendarily bad Trek episodes, up there with the Voyager where Paris turns into a lizard series.

posted by IAmBroom at 11:31 AM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

The irk with Sub Rosa was typical with most female character centric plots.

"Hey Marina Sirtis's agent is bitching Troi doesn't have much to do."
"Should we send her on an adventure full of intrique and aliens?"
"Nah, lets hook her up with an alien and let her wrestle with the morality of dating a guy who can't have sex because he's from an oceanic world and has to breathe water through his dick."


Rogue pilot/deaf ambassador/worm-infested negotiator/sexy lamp joins the crew for a bit and a female officer goes ga-ga. Just goes to show why Troi and Beverly were treated so badly, TNG writers rarely write a women-focused story without including a scene with crew cabin full of candles. I like the mini-arc of Troi training for a command position, but I think it was in Season 7.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:51 PM on March 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

There's also "Face of the Enemy" though, which is precisely Troi in an adventure full of intrigue and aliens, and it's by far the best thing Marina Sirtis ever did in the whole seven years. She's fantastic in it. It's a pity it's one of the only episodes in the series where she gets to really shine.
posted by maqsarian at 4:44 PM on March 19, 2013

"I've got to move on."

Yes, I'm afraid you do. He's getting married, after all.
posted by homunculus at 5:08 PM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

MiltonRandKalman, it could be worse. In the first season, in the first "woman-centric" episode the show ever did ("Haven", a Troi story), it is revealed that Troi is going to quit her job in order to get married to a guy she's never met. I mean the arranged marriage thing, meh, probably not inherently misogynist depending on how it's handled, but it's just sorta taken for granted that a woman can't have a professional job on a starship and be married at the same time.

"Face Of The Enemy" is lightyears ahead of where the show started, in terms of gender. Even an episode like "The Price" or "The Host" is a step up compared to the retrograde attitudes about women present in the first couple of seasons. I mean, at least in those episodes Crusher and Troi get to have egalitarian sexual relationships on their own terms without anyone getting pregnant, or raped, or held hostage for the dudes to rescue. Which is pretty much par for the course in any given TNG episode, when it comes to Troi at least (Crusher somewhat gets a break and occasionally gets to kick ass without it being A Thing).
posted by Sara C. at 5:32 PM on March 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is the first thing I thought of when I heard the phrase Scottish ghost.
posted by dtungsten at 9:39 PM on March 19, 2013

I love lamp.
posted by ooga_booga at 10:57 AM on March 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Lamp into Darkness.
posted by Atreides at 2:20 PM on March 20, 2013

You've heard how the Universal Reader is getting the axe right? Happily, Starfleet has a PADD app for you: LCARSS.
posted by mwhybark at 6:12 PM on March 20, 2013 [2 favorites]

Okay, I just saw all responses here, and this is the Wikipedia overview for Sub Rosa: "Dr. Crusher attends her grandmother's funeral, and spends time in her grandmother's haunted house, romanced by her grandmother's non-corporeal lover." I just don't understand how you can not love that.
posted by milk white peacock at 7:05 PM on March 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Wil Wheaton has also linked to these, just in time for me to catch the sequence of 1/8 Gates' conversation with a Captian Picard Pez Dispenser. Which is somehow even more awesome.

Surely this is the only sane response to the existence of a tiny action figure version of yourself.

Ian McKellan said once in an interview that he sometimes takes his Gandalf action figure and his Magneto action figure and stages battles between them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:03 AM on March 22, 2013 [2 favorites]