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According to Chris Snellgrove
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The third season Star Trek: The Next Generation was a functionally fresh start for the series: under the watch of new showrunner Michael Piller, the series got sleek new uniforms, improved writing, and memorable new characters. However, fans of the character were most concerned about the return of Beverly Crusher, the ship’s doctor who had previously been replaced by the less popular Katherine Pulaski. Crusher returned to support her son, the generally hated character Wesley Crusher, and Piller later revealed that Wesley’s annoying character arc in the Season 3 premiere “Evolution” is what led to the “re-entry of Dr. Crusher to the series”.
This A new generation In the episode Enterprise, she accompanied the eccentric doctor to a cosmic phenomenon…some kind of interstellar Old Faithful that erupts every 196 years. Plans to study this historical event fall by the wayside as more of the ship’s systems begin to act erratically, and it is revealed that Wesley Crusher accidentally released several nanites that replicated, evolved, and lodged in the Enterprise’s computer core. Tensions escalate when a visiting scientist kills some of the tiny creatures, but after realizing the nanites have become sentient beings, Captain Picard does what he does best: negotiate peace without further bloodshed.
Where does Beverly Crusher fit into the story of “Evolution?” She’s happy to be back on the Enterprise, and even happier to see her son again (she spent a year running Starfleet Medical), but she’s starting to worry that Wesley Crusher is too focused on his studies and not enjoying life enough. young. The two plots intersect when her parenting of a grumpy Wesley is what finally gets him to come clean about accidentally releasing nanites aboard the ship.
According to the writer of “Evolution” a LPG showrunner Michael Piller, Wesley Crusher’s arc in this episode called for the return of Beverly Crusher. Piller eventually comes to the realization that the episode’s lonely, obsessed scientist “is Wesley in forty years, if he stays on the path of being the smart kid who goes about his job and doesn’t seem to have much else going on in him. life.” Piller famously mandated that episodes must help our favorite characters evolve in some way, and he took his own advice in “Evolution,” realizing it was an opportunity to “help Wesley grow” and bring Beverly Crusher back.
Part of Piller’s genius was his innate understanding that TNG episodes had to have the same appeal science fiction nerds and general audiences. So while sci-fi fans were going wild over an A-plot involving nanites, he had a more “human-level” B-plot about Beverly Crusher dealing with a very real parental fear: “My son doesn’t have a normal childhood.” Piller said that “we know a lot of such children’ and after seeing this unpleasant situation so commonly played out in real life, he ‘had the sense that is needed’ for ‘Evolution’.
“Evolution” ended up being a great episode A new generationbut it’s morbidly amusing to note that the beloved character Beverly Crusher might not have returned to the show if it weren’t for Wesley Crusher, arguably the most hated character. Ironically, actor Wesley Crusher Wil Wheaton left the show (except for a few later cameos) after season 3, but actor Beverly Crusher Gates McFadden stayed on for the rest of TNG and later became a central character in Picard season 3
He felt her return in the later show perfect because it is difficult to imagine a A new generation story without her, but just think: we would never have gotten any more Beverly Crusher stories if Michael Piller hadn’t realized that Wesley Crusher needed to “grow up” and “move into a relationship with a girlfriend.” Soon LPG episodes were all about Wesley inexplicably saving the day, but this time he did more than that: he saved Gates McFadden’s career by simply being the weirdest and loneliest childhood sidekick in sci-fi history.
