Star Trek: Every Medical Officer Ranked

Hot take: Doctor Katherine Pulaski is one of Trek's very best doctors, one of the franchise's biggest missed opportunities and most controversial characters simply because she wasn't Beverly Crusher.

A pinch hitter after Gates McFadden left Star Trek: The Next Generation during the show's second season, TOS-veteran Diana Muldaur's Doctor Pulaski is a blatant stand-in for the crusty, McCoy-type doctor, and also her own woman. She came into conflict with nearly all of her fellow shipmates, forging an especially tempestuous relationship with Picard and an awkward, adversarial relationship with Data owing to her opinion that Data wasn't as sentient as everyone else seemed to think (which in hindsight was kind of racist).

Nevertheless, those relationships evolved over the course of Pulaski's single year aboard the Enterprise-D and she and Picard formed a grudging mutual respect, she came to accept Data for the man he was, and, most interestingly, she developed an almost flirtatious dynamic with Lieutenant Worf.

Pulaski's age also set her apart from the rest of the crew, she was far less willing to put up any pretense and was a bit rougher around the edges than the (let's face it) occasionally milquetoast crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She was also more seasoned, prescribing chicken soup over tricordrazine and able to use a splint rather than relying on bone-knitting lasers.

Beverly Crusher returned for season three and Pulaski's presence aboard the Enterprise was more or less erased (she was referenced only twice thereafter), but she'll forever be an interesting what-if – a character that introduced interpersonal conflict in a way no one else did in TNG and perhaps better suited to a show like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Pulaski was a necessary disruption of the status quo aboard the sometimes far too cozy Enterprise-D.