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Originally Posted by Locke
O'Brien should have beamed Pulaski into space. I dont think I could spend and evening playing Poker with her without poisoning her drink.
Star Trek has had some bad characters...but she's up there.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Blaster86
I think Diana Mulduar did when she took the job. I think the rest of the cast resented her and she realized that it wasn't the place for her. It's the same story as Jeri Ryan coming in to Voyager at the expense of a cast mate. In the 80s the public was told McFadden had quit over story lines. But now it's known she was fired and the cast would have known that. It also explains why Stewart was so adamant she come back in season 3.
That being said, Pulaski was a #### character. If I wanted Bones, by the time she appeared I had three seasons of ToS, two seasons of animated and four movies. I didn't need a poor, unlikable facsimile to keep me sated. Bones and Spock's relationship was unique and combative but I would never describe it as overtly disrespectful. I think everyone has a close friendship like that one in their life. Pulaski was just a see you next tuesday to Data and just unbelievably disrespectful.
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I think your guys' opinion of Muldaur as an actress and Pulaski as a character are coloured by the background knowledge of McFadden getting fired by Maurice Hurley rather than her having "quit" as was reported at the time. And the opinion of Pulaski as a character is also strongly affected by the "cee-you-next-Tuesday" behaviour toward fan-favourite Data.
I think it's fair to say Dr. Kate Pulaski was not a particularly good character, but honestly circa the end of season 2 you could say that about pretty much all of the characters on the show. The leap forward in quality of... I was going to write "storytelling", but it was an improvement in
everything, really... from season 2 to season 3 is one of the most remarkable in TV history, I think. What we think of as likeable, "classic" characters today were boring cardboard cutouts, mostly, as of the summer of 1989. Pulaski was a cheap McCoy knockoff, Data was a cheap Spock knock-off, Riker was a Kirk knock-off, Worf just looked menacingly at people and whenever anything went awry would suggest going in phasers-a-blazin', Crusher was almost a background character whose only traits were being a widow and mother to Wesley, LaForge was "token blind guy", Troi just every once in a while winced because she "felt" ####, Wesley was an annoying wunderkind, and Picard was a grumpy ######.
Pulaski being standoff-ish and disrespectful to Data was, in retrospect, very off-putting but at least she showed some growth in that she came to respect Data as time went on. In the grand Star Trek legacy of morality plays, her character was one which showed the audience, "See? There's no good reason to be discriminatory to people because they're different." Usually they used villains to make those sorts of allegories, not a member of the hero crew.
But yeah, Locke: if you think any character was more reviled than Wesley Crusher, you've got to lay off the Romulan Ale.
