Beverly Crusher remains unequivocally wrong for hiding a son from Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Picard
A lot of fans want to just accept anything that Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas gave them and digest it as is. I’m not that person. This show had some glaring problems and we’re going to address the biggest one. Star Trek: Picard had a fine third season, but man, the fact that people just nod and go “Yeah, Beverly Crusher was right to hide Jean-Luc Picard’s son from him” blows my mind. She wasn’t right. She was never right. And she even proved she wasn’t right.
So, some backstory.
Essentially, Beverly Crusher was seeing Jean-Luc Picard off and on for a while and she got pregnant. While knowing she was pregnant, she broke things off with Picard but didn’t tell him she was pregnant. She didn’t have a mature, rational conversation with a man who is often times pragmatic and even-keel. No, she made a unilateral decision that she did not have the right to make on her own, to deny the father of her child the right to know he was such.
This is a real-life issue that often gets very little discussion and causes serious emotional turmoil for not only the father but their children. Playing it off as an “oh she had her reasons” minimizes the grossness of the act of denying a fit parent the right to be involved with their children.
Because of that, we’re going to be breaking down the three core reasons why Beverly Crusher has become irredeemable.
Beverly Crusher made decisions based on what she believed, not what was true
One of the reasons why Beverly kept Jean-Luc’s son from him is because she believed that Jean-Luc wouldn’t love his son as much as he loved Star Fleet. That’s a bad argument to start with, but ok, let’s explore it.
The idea that he would love Star Fleet more is a flat-out lie. We know this for a fact, thanks to Star Trek Generations. In the film, we see Picard enter the Nexus, a place in between time and space that operates more like heaven. You can have whatever life you truly wanted in the Nexus and for Picard, that was a life with children.
But, he knew his children in the Nexus weren’t real. Yet, the thought of having children was so tempting, that he almost left his entire life behind. If the kids he had in the Nexus were real and really needed him, we all know he wouldn’t have gone back to stop the film’s villain. But the kids weren’t real and the galactic threat was. So there was no reason to stay.
But his vision of a perfect life was a house filled with love and joy, and most notably of all; kids. Surely, he and Beverly had a conversation about Jean-Luc’s time in the Nexus. Surely she knew how much he wanted those children to be real.
She had to know how he felt. We all saw it play out, so surely she was kept in the loop.
And yes, Picard would go on to say that Starfleet was all the family he needed, but we’ve seen the show. We’ve seen the films. We know, we don’t think, we know that’s not true. Picard has always yearned for a family. He just never got the chance.
Even Jack Crusher’s actor, Ed Speleers, said that Picard didn’t mean it, telling Star Trek.com.
"Right at the base of all of this is it’s coming from a place of miscommunication…"
So of course, when he was in his 80s or 90s, he would say that Starfleet was all the family he needed. Why wish for something you know couldn’t be true? Especially at that age?
Beverly Crusher used “protecting” their son as an excuse
Beverly Crusher would also argue that due to Jean-Luc Picard’s time as a Starfleet captain, anyone with his last name would be a target. So their son would be a target. Except, no one else in his family was targeted or hunted down at any point prior to or after Picard’s time on the Enterprise. Are we to forget that the Picards lived in relative peace for decades while Picard made enemies in space? If it wasn’t for a house fire that killed his brother and nephew, there’d be more members of the Picard clan out there.
So protecting Jack wasn’t the reason she hid their son from Picard. After all, no one targeted his very much, still-alive, sister-in-law after the events of the shows or films. Clearly, the bad guys weren’t looking for Picards to capture or kill. So Beverly’s concern seems extremely unfounded. Dare I say, paranoid in fact.
Moreover, Beverly would actually let Jack go and meet Jean-Luc. Clearly, the whole excuse of wanting to protect Jack from what is out in the universe was bupkiss. What, because he’s no longer little he doesn’t need to be protected from the horrors of being a Picard? Maybe if she had kept him in the dark the entire time, that argument would make more sense.
But you don’t stop needing protection just because you reach a certain age. Just because the crime goes from a kidnapping to an abduction doesn’t mean that Jack still wouldn’t have been a target at 20 years old, as opposed to 20 weeks old.
He’s either a perpetual target or he’s not.
Either Jack needed to be protected from his lineage, or he didn’t. You don’t get to change your mind on that one mid-way through and then still get to act like you’ve made the right decision.
Which, by the way, Beverly clearly didn’t. And yet, that’s still not the worst sin she committed in her decades-long subterfuge of their child’s parentage.
She named Jean-Luc’s son after another man.
She named Jean-Luc Picard’s son after another man she was in love with
If Jean-Luc was onboard with Jack being raised away from him, with no say in his upbringing and no say over his name, then ok. That’s not the case here. Beverly made every decision in the world about their son, and that’s not right. Not in any situation. Important people have children every day, and their children are protected greatly. So there is no logic behind keeping their son away from him that would work.
Yet, still, that’s not the worst thing she did. The thing that will make her irredeemable for all time is the fact she chose to name Jean-Luc’s son after another man. The audacity to think that’s ok. Lying for decades about having a child is gross, lying for decades about having a son, denying him his heritage, and then naming him after someone he has no relation to is damn-near sociopathic.
You’d have to be a real creep to think that’s ok.
But it gets even worse, when Gates McFadden, the actress behind Beverly Crusher explained the methodology behind naming Jack Crusher after Beverly’s first husband.
"I can understand that if she had named him John, Luke, or Picard, everyone would have made the connection. Everyone was saying why? You know, so obviously, again, I think it’s about protection. And it’s also in its own way, a signal. Picard would know, [because] Jack was their commonality as well as their own feelings for each other. So it kind of seems very appropriate."
So, let’s look at every reason why her comment makes no sense.
Firstly, she argues that if she had named him after Jean-Luc, everyone would put two and two together. That’s fair. But, where does it say a child has to be named after anyone specific? Call him Asher, or Dasher, or Vixen. Comet. Cupid, Donner, or Blitzen. Tim, Steve, Cheeze Boy, Karlak, Neptune, or Bob. There is a near-infinite number of names that could’ve been picked. None of them had to be John, Luke, Jack, Paul, Ringo, or whatever. That’s a lazy excuse and bad writing.
You don’t need to name him Jean-Luc, but naming him Jack is just gross.
But here comes the contradiction. Beverly named him Jack to protect their son, but also, somehow to signal to Jean-Luc that Jack is his son. What? This is where the “she wanted to protect him” argument dies a death. She named him Jack to signal to Jean-Luc that the child is his, and then decided to let him meet his father.
It makes no sense and it’s such a gross thing to do to a man. I gotta say it again, it’s not that she didn’t name Jack after his father that’s the issue, it’s the fact that she named him after the only other man she truly loved. A romantic rival to Jean-Luc in a lot of ways. And a move that could be seen as a slight against Picard.
Even Jack thinks he was named so by his mother to slight Jean-Luc. Just because Jean-Luc doesn’t see it that way, doesn’t mean she didn’t mean for it to go that way.
Yes, Picard admits that the late-Jack Crusher was his best friend and may have named Jack Crusher the Second the same name Beverly did. That’s fine. That’s great. He would’ve had a say in that. Beverly took away that say. Beverly didn’t give Jean-Luc any say in anything involving his own son.
Fathers are not second-class citizens folks. Jean-Luc had the right to help name his son something he agreed with.