Star Trek: Picard really paints Beverly Crusher in a terrible light

Star Trek: Picard is not painting Beverly Crusher in a great light.

Star Trek: Picard is wrapping up its final season and in doing so, they’re taking some big swings on the way out. The producers and writers have decided that they’re going to do anything and everything they can to change the way you think of certain characters, regardless if it’s for the better or not. One of those characters that look absolutely awful recently is the beloved doctor herself, Beverly Crusher.

Crusher came into the last season of Picard having been isolated from the Federation and her friends for over 20 years for an unknown reason. That unknown reason has to do with the fact that she and Picard created a baby boy some 20-odd years prior to the events of Picard season three.

Not the worst thing, right? Except, man, they really made Crusher look awful with this revelation. Due to the circumstances, we don’t know enough about yet, Crusher decided to do the following things;

• Ran away without telling Picard she was pregnant with his child.
• Gave birth to Picard’s son without ever telling Picard.
• Named Picard’s son Jack after her previous ex-husband, also named Jack.
• Denied Jack Jr. his rightful surname, and named him after a man he has no relation to.
• Presumably lied to Jack about who his father was.
• Actively kept their son from Picard as he grew up.
• Purposefully put her son in harm’s way for decades visiting war-torn and disease-riddled planets.
• Let him become a con man of sorts.

All the while, her other son Wesley, is nowhere to be seen and she seems totally fine with his absence. If Beverly isn’t the worst mom in Star Trek, I don’t know who is, because even the Borg Queen wanted her drones back.

Naming her son after her dead ex-husband is a full-on insult to Jean-Luc Picard

Let’s be clear, ScreenRant asked this very same question and they beat around the bush. I won’t. It is a slap in the face for Beverly Crusher to name Jean-Luc Picard’s son after a different man entirely. There is no defense for this. There is no defense for any of this, actually. There is no cosmetic event that justifies never telling Picard he has the one thing he’s always wanted; a child. It doesn’t matter if Crusher was trying to protect Picard, herself, or whomever. We can literally beam a hologram across the galaxy in this universe, she could’ve sent an email via a subspace frequency. Let’s not kid ourselves.

You can’t argue that her naming Jack after her ex-husband is for Picard’s or Jack Jr’s sake either. If being linked to Picard is so dangerous, why even tell anyone he’s the son of Beverly Crusher? If the evildoers know anything about Picard, they probably know how he feels about the Crushers. I would understand that argument if Jack Jr’s name was John Smith, but she put Jack Jr. in just as much danger by naming him Crusher as he would’ve been as a Picard. It’s not like the Picard/Crusher relationship wasn’t well known.

Lastly, the whole “she was protecting him” argument doesn’t work when she was dragging him around to warn-torn planets, filled with diseases and whatnot. If she and Jack were quiet farmers on a planet on the outsets of the system, living in anonymity, ok, that works. Instead, she took him to all sorts of awful places and even allowed him to become a con man of sorts.

Crusher looks downright evil for keeping Picard’s son away from him. There isn’t going to be a defense good enough for this either. There can’t be.

Crusher clearly did this intentionally, clearly named him after a renowned and known Starfleet officer, who wasn’t his father and didn’t do nearly enough to protect him from anything. So what is the thing that saves Crusher from being an abusive partner who committed decades of parental alienation against Picard?

I would love to know how they save Crusher’s reputation.