10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: The Next Generation

As progressive as Star Trek was in depicting women as officers and crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, its handling of them in the original and animated series still suffered from rampant sexism. You’d think with two decades of hindsight the producers of TNG would have finally gotten it right, but the show’s treatment of its female leads was, in a word, bad. The two caregiver roles were given to Dr. Crusher and Counselor Troi, and the only non-stereotypical job given to a woman was Tasha Yar’s.

But the writers clearly had no idea how to write these characters. Tough as nails Tasha quickly turned into Uhura, saying “Hailing frequencies open,” and only occasionally hitting the button to fire the phasers. Famously, it was such a nothing part that actor Denise Crosby asked to be written out of the show before the first season had even wrapped. Her duties were assumed by manly-man Worf for the remainder of the series.

Troi fared little better. She’s often treated as little more than an ambulatory lie detector, so they have to get her off the bridge to drive the plot forward (or come up with arbitrary reasons why her abilities don’t work). Despite being a Starfleet academy grad, she frequently knows nothing about the ship. She’s part of the crew yet not permitted to wear a uniform for most of the show’s run. In the first season she was left out of several episodes because the writers had no idea what to do with her character (the Yeoman Rand problem). What personality she got was frequently superficial, defined by her relationships and frivolous nonsense like a love of chocolate.

And finally, poor Dr. Crusher, given nowhere near as much personality or emphasis as a Dr. McCoy or even her single-season stand-in, Dr. Pulaski. The writers rarely found much for her to do, and even her motherhood was undermined by the men on the show. As actor Gates McFadden complained in an interview: “Why is it that I’ve raised this genius kid... Wesley Crusher... [has] saved the ship so many times, right? … Clearly, I had something to do with it. It wasn’t just this dead husband. And yet every time there’s anything even possibly serious, it’s only the male characters that talk to him. And I know he doesn’t have a dad, but all you ever have Beverly Crusher doing is, ‘Oh, Wesley!’”

Crusher's problems began with the writer/director’s guide description of her: “The romantic Picard can not help noticing that Beverly's natural walk resembles that of a striptease queen — and he found it increasingly difficult to refuse the mother's request to let her son observe bridge activities.” Worse, the Traveller says to Picard about Wesley in “Where No One Has Gone Before,” before telling the Captain that Wesley is a genius on the level of Mozart, “It's best you do not repeat this to the others, especially not to the mother.” Because of course Beverly, the most important person in her son’s life, is not included.

And, speaking of which...