The romance of Star Trek has thrived since Captain Kirk romanced everyone from androids to aliens, and it’s stayed a core component of the decades-old fandom. ‘Shipping’ is a popular fan activity that sees viewers pairing up their favorite characters, and there’s always a few ships that become more popular than the rest. For Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, the slow burn romance between Captain Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher is the ultimate one-true-pairing. And before the series ended in its epic two-parter, “All Good Things,” that ship sailed the canon seas.
“All Good Things” sees the omnipotent being Q return to continue the trial he started way back in the series premiere, “Encounter at Farpoint.” But that fact isn’t immediately clear to Captain Picard, who at first only knows that his consciousness seems to be traveling to various points in time. Though all of these possible moments of Picard’s life are connected to the future fate of humanity, one possible thread of his future is the most poignant. In it, Picard is an old man tending to the family vineyard, and it’s the riddle of his memories that pushes him back into space. Needing a ship, Data’s suggestion puts them in contact with the USS Pasteur.
When Jean-Luc enters the ship’s bridge to greet Beverly, a random helmsman calls out for Captain Picard’s attention. As both Beverly and Jean-Luc respond, it’s a cue to fans that, after seven seasons, their clear and loving admiration for each other finally became something more. But it’s bittersweet, too, as Jean-Luc wryly points out that Beverly kept their last name. The divorce is implied, as is whatever life they had together. It’s a painful acknowledgement that sometimes love isn’t enough to overcome big differences in personality and philosophy. But at the same time, it’s clear through Beverly’s actions that they do still love each other, after all.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only canon acknowledgment of what the fandom saw in the pair. “Attached” aired earlier in the season, and a telepathic link between the alien-abducted Picard and Crusher leaves no secrets between them. Picard, it’s confirmed, has loved Beverly since before her husband, Jack, passed away. He kept those feelings buried deep, transforming them into the rich friendship the pair shared since the series launch. But the episode ends with a kiss, the possibility of future exploration and their alternate future as a loving, if imperfect, couple.
Any fan might engage in shipping by creating and sharing artwork, reading or writing fanfiction based on the characters in question and such, but there’s often a few people that do the crucial work of tracking statistics or creating platforms for those experiences to be shared. A Tumblr user known as phantomstatistician uses their biostatics PhD to scrape fanfiction.net to chart shipping statistics. Still an active user, their 2018 chart reveals that, when it comes to shipping Picard, it’s not even close. Picard/Crusher blows every other pairing out of the water, with 95 percent of romantic Star Trek: The Next Generation works on fanfiction.net dedicated to them.
Archive of Our Own, another popular fanfiction site, has its own statistics to examine, proving how popular the romance between these two is. With 6100+ Next Generation works in its database to date, 13.9 percent of them are Crusher/Picard, dwarfing every other popular ship. The second closest, Data/LaForge, has nearly 300 fewer works exploring the topic. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, but a lot of people have loved the idea of Beverly and Jean-Luc together for a long time. In fact, that love even pre-dates modern fandom sites. Fanzines were still the go-to source for content up until the late ’90s, and fanlore organizations detail dozens of known mini-mags dedicated to the pair.
With how enduring the relationship between Picard and Beverly has been to fans new and old, it’s a surprise that it hasn’t been acknowledged much in Picard. The Next Generation cast remains tightly knit, often appearing together in new projects or podcasts. Gates McFadden, who plays Dr. Crusher, has her own new podcast, where she chats with former co-stars or members of the broader Star Trek family, and she has yet to say no to rekindling her character’s spark on the new series.
In an interview with IGN, McFadden also made it clear that she’d like Crusher to have a little more depth to her than the original series explored, although the last season’s emotional journey of her relationship with Picard was a highlight. Hopefully, Beverly Crusher will get to smile fondly at her Jean-Luc one more time.
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