Gates McFadden may have boldly gone where no-one had ever gone before during her time on Star Trek: The Next Generation but now the actress is reconnecting with fans with a new sweet Instagram series.
The 76-year-old had been posting on Instagram in recent weeks, teasing out song lyrics and asking her fans to guess the album. After spending some time with her record collection – "albums that changed my life or excited me," – she revealed that she "wondered if I read you some of the lyrics you could guess the band." You can watch her first video above.
© Getty ImagesShooting the handheld selfie video inside her home, the first song was a track by The Clash, a band she said she first saw live at the iconic New York City punk club CBGBs, and she returned to the site two days later to confirm the answer. She has since gone on to share three more videos, with lyrics from Tom Waits, The Beatles, and The Pretenders, offering insight into her musical tastes.
Gates rose to fame as Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and now lives in Los Angeles. Fans may recall that the actress was abruptly fired after the first season over disputes with the head writer at the time, Maurice Hurley, with her exit written in by revealing that the character had moved to Starfleet Medical for the year.
© Getty ImagesDana Muldaur replaced her in season two as (Dr. Pulaski but the decision was unpopular with fans and the cast, in particular, lead actor Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard), who was instrumental in getting Gates to return for season three after Maurice left the show.
Gates and Patrick became close friends, as did the whole cast (Brent Spiner was named Gates' son's godfather) and in the series Crusher and Picard fell in love but their romance always remained unresolved.
In an alternate future shown in the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, the pair married but later divorced, however in the main timeline they never married but did welcome a son, Jack; Crusher was also a mother to son Wesley (Wil Wheaton).
© Getty ImagesIn 2022 she and Patrick returned to the franchise in the animated spin-off series Star Trek: Prodigy for three episodes, lending her voice to a hologram of Dr Crusher, and in 2023 she appeared in the final season of Star Trek: Picard, which saw Picard and Jack reconcile their relationship.
She told TrekCentral in 2024 that she would love to keep returning to the world of Star Trek, and would be keen to see more of the mother-son relationships on screen.
"Especially with two very different sons, I think it would be really interesting. And I still feel that the character was not… we never saw enough of how she actually deals with her sons," she said. "How you actually have to mentor your sons. She was a single parent and I know from single parents that they really are involved in the major decisions that someone goes through in their lives."
