Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Beverly Crusher

If you're looking for notorious episodes of Star Trek, nothing holds a candle to Sub Rosa quite like the one it holds to itself. It's Ronin the unfriendly sex ghost! To quote Seán on the episode: "Everybody gets a thought orgasm."

Gates McFadden has gone through quite the journey with "The Beverly Crusher sex episode". As she commented to Kate Mulgrew on her podcast Gates McFadden Investigates: Who do you think you are?,

This is the seventh season, and I thought [upon seeing the script] 'are you f**king kidding me?' You're telling me this woman, who is so smart, has come from a family where they've all been having sex with a lamp ghost? […] Now, I am so happy I did this episode because it's become a cult with younger people, and everyone laughs at it […]. It's funny! You have to just laugh.

Where family is concerned, the Howard surname — first seen on Beverly's personnel file in Conundrum — was a nod to Next Generation line producer Merri Howard, and Felisa was the first name of Sub Rosa teleplay writer Brannon Braga's grandmother. 'Felisa' without the Howard was first mentioned in The Arsenal of Freedom, an episode which, according to The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, was initially meant to be its own love story between Picard and Doctor Crusher (more than the hint at it we got, anyway).

Now, as Mulgrew said at the end of the podcast, "We really must have that martini and talk about that lamp. Long may it shine!"