This is Dr. Beverly Crusher's best season of The Next Generation, according to Gates McFadden

Gates McFadden wasn't always happy with the way her character, Dr. Beverly Crusher, was written on Star Trek: The Next Generation. She's gone on record as saying she thought she came across as matronly. But she did have one favorite season, according to "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross [via Screenrant].

"This last season was my best season, which was nice to end on a positive note. The high point was directing “Genesis,” but “All Good Things” was great. Jeri Taylor was always in agreement that we should do more with Crusher and Picard and pick up that thread. I liked that they were married and divorced. I thought I should have his fish in my ready room skewered or the Shakespeare text ripped in the settlement."

- Gates McFadden

While the writers of The Next Generation didn't give McFadden a lot to work with on the series, she did have some standout moments that didn't happen in the final season. One episode, in particular, where she shined was season three's "The High Ground" where Dr. Crusher is taken captive. Though she was being held against her will, Dr. Crusher stood up to her captors, but she also quietly left Finn know that she had a son. It wasn't begging; it was just a soft acknowledgment that she was a mother and had a son who needed her. Her performance in this episode was the highlight of the entire sixty minutes.

Of course, McFadden might change her opinion after her appearance on the final season of Star Trek: Picard. Not only was Dr. Crusher given more to do, she played a pivotal role in setting a sequence of events in motion that would end with the former crew of Enterprise and friends of Admiral Picard saving Starfleet and the Federation overall. Everything she did on seven seasons and in four The Next Generation movies couldn't measure up to her work in one season of Picard. In one word, her work was phenomenal, and it gave her the opportunity to shine that The Next Generation never did.