Diana Muldaur Says Star Trek: The Next Generation Is Like Off-Broadway
She spent one-season as Dr. Polaski and also appeared on the original Star Trek series, but Diana Muldaur isn't singing Star Trek's praises.
To many of us, Diana Muldaur is most well known for her recurring role as Rosalind Shays in L.A. Law, but for a moment, she was living in the Star Trek universe with her portrayal of Dr. Katherine Pulaski during the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Despite the success she saw from her 20-episode tenure with the series, it doesn’t seem that she really enjoyed her time on-set, according to Redshirts Always Die.
“The directors were all kids, who had just come over from the old country and didn’t know what they were doing. It was not a great creative mix of people and directors.”
Diana Muldaur
In fact, Muldaur referred to the production of TNG as an off-Broadway kind of experience compared to the brief two-episode stint she had on The Original Series, which she has spoken about more favorably in the past.
Though Diana Muldaur was considered by many to be a series regular during the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, she declined to appear in the credits as one of the top-billed talents, but rather have her role as Doctor Pulaski be listed as a “special appearance.”
It certainly seems as if Muldaur doesn’t think highly about her her time on TNG. But despite the less than warm sentiments she’s expressed about the series, she allegedly submitted her performance from an episode entitled “Unnatural Selection” as part of the audition process for L.A. Law because she felt that the performance in this particular episode highlighted her acting chops.
Diana Muldaur likened both the cast and crew to kids who didn’t know what they were doing, but also asserts that she had no regrets for her participation in the series.
Diana Muldaur’s Dr. Katherine Pulaski character was cast in place of Gates McFadden, who played Doctor Beverly Crusher in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Pulaski was most well known for being cold and calculating, which was was stark contrast to Crusher, who had a more maternal and emotionally available countenance.
Though Dr. Katherine Pulaski was a somewhat well-received character, fans of the series would still take issue with her treatment of Data before eventually warming up to the artificial life form.
One of the grievances that Diana Muldaur expressed about Star Trek: The Next Generation was that unlike The Original Series, it was a more technology-driven series rather than a character-driven series.
“There was no humanity in it [The Next Generation], there was nothing to get my creative juices going whatsoever, and that was a waste of time to me, so my leaving the show was very mutual.”
Diana Muldaur
And though it probably wasn’t intentional, this apprehension translated well on screen, especially when it comes to Pulaski’s distrust of overly-logical members of the crew, like Lieutenant Commander Data. But as time passed, Pulaski grew to appreciate Data as a sentient being, and was more apt to treat him as an equal.
In The Fifty-Year Mission, Diana Muldaur elaborated on her departure from the world of Star Trek, stating “there was no humanity in it, there was nothing to get my creative juices going whatsoever, and that was a waste of time to me, so my leaving the show was very mutual.”
In the same excerpt, she likened both the cast and crew to kids who didn’t know what they were doing, but also asserts that she had no regrets for her participation in the series.
After working on the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Diana Muldaur focused her attention to her portrayal of Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law, a role that earned her two Emmy nominations.
At the end of the day, maybe Diana Muldaur wasn’t cut out for the long haul in The Next Generation, but still, her portrayal of Dr. Katherine Pulaski was memorable, and critical to the storytelling whether she’s a fan of her own work on the series or not.
