By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was functionally a fresh start for the series: under the supervision of new showrunner Michael Piller, the series got snazzy new uniforms, improved writing, and memorable new characters. However, the character fans mostly cared about was the returning Beverly Crusher, the ship’s doctor who had previously been replaced by the less popular Katherine Pulaski. Crusher came back 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 Dr. Crusher’s “re-entry into the series.”
This Next Generation episode had the Enterprise escorting an eccentric doctor to a cosmic phenomenon…a kind of interstellar Old Faithful that erupts every 196 years. Plans to study this historic event go sideways as more of the ship’s systems begin acting erratically, and it turns out that Wesley Crusher had accidentally loosed some nanites that replicated, evolved, and took up residence in the Enterprise computer core. Tensions escalate when the visiting scientist kills some of the tiny creatures, but after realizing that 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 is happy to return to the Enterprise and even happier to see her son again (she had spent a year in charge of Starfleet Medical), but she begins to worry that Wesley Crusher is focusing too much on his studies and not enough on enjoying being young. The two plots intersect when her nurturing of a petulant Wesley is what finally gets him to come clean about accidentally setting nanites loose aboard the ship.
According to “Evolution” writer and TNG showrunner Michael Piller, Wesley Crusher’s arc in this episode demanded the return of Beverly Crusher. Piller eventually comes to the realization that the lonely and obsessive scientist in this episode “is Wesley in forty years, if he stays on the course of being the smart kid who is dedicated to his work and seems not to have much else going on in his life.” Famously, Piller mandated that episodes had to help our favorite characters evolve in some way and took his own advice in “Evolution,” realizing that this 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 an equal appeal to sci-fi nerds and general audiences. So while science fiction lovers geeked out over the A plot involving nanites, he had a B plot on a more “human level” about Beverly Crusher dealing with a very real parental fear: “My son is not having a normal childhood.” Piller said that “we know a lot of kids like that,” and after seeing this plight so commonly playing out in real life, he “had a sense that was needed” for “Evolution.”
“Evolution” ended up being a great episode of The Next Generation, but it’s morbidly amusing to note that fan-favorite character Beverly Crusher might not have come back to the show if not for Wesley Crusher, arguably the most hated character. Ironically enough, Wesley Crusher actor Wil Wheaton left the show (save for a few later cameos) after season 3, but Beverly Crusher actor Gates McFadden remained for the rest of TNG and later became a central character in Picard season 3.
Her return in the later show felt perfect because it’s difficult to imagine a Next Generation story without her, but just think: we never would have gotten any more Beverly Crusher stories at all if Michael Piller hadn’t realized that Wesley Crusher needed to “grow” and “move into a relationship with a girlfriend.” Early TNG 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 kid sidekick in sci-fi history.