SXSW Grand Jury Winner Slanted Is The Substance for Prom Season

No event is more synonymous with the teenage American experience than prom. And the film industry, Satan bless it, has never lost sight of that fact. Prom movies are dime a dozen in the high school subgenre, ranging from the sweet (Never Been Kissed) to the spirited (Footloose) to the downright Shakespearean (10 Things I […]

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Given its mission to seek out new life and new civilizations, Star Trek doesn’t give its physicians the most glamorous jobs. Captain Kirk and Commander Riker get to go on adventures, Picard and Spock wrestle with complex questions. The doctors just clean up the mess.

And yet, the doctors remain some of the most intriguing characters in all of Trek. The advice they offer the captains, the moral dilemmas foisted upon them by the patients sent to their sick bays, even their romantic entanglements. All of these make for compelling stories, which might be why all of the Trek doctors are pretty great. There’s honestly not a bad one on this list, even if the shows around them are sometimes lacking.

Still, there are a few caveats we need to put in place, which means some of the docs get left out. This list ranks only the main doctors, not other types of healers (sorry Nurses Chapel and Ogawa, sorry Counselor Troi) nor doctors who only show up for a bit. That means not only that we’re skipping over Dr. April from The Animated Series or Dr. Royce from “The Cage,” but also The Original Series version of M’Benga played by Booker Bradshaw and the Kelvin universe McCoy played by Karl Urban. Finally, we’re just looking at the movies and TV shows here, so the friendly dinosaur Dr. Shenti Yisec Eres Ree from the Star Trek: Titan novels will not appear.

Still, that leaves us with plenty of great physicians to look at, each of whom any Trekkie would be happy to visit.

9. Catherine Pulaski (TNG)

Perhaps the easiest decision on this list, Dr. Pulaski takes the bottom spot. Yet, even that makes her sound worse than she is. Pulaski already has the odds stacked against her, coming in only for The Next Generation‘s still-shaky second season and briefly replacing a fan-favorite in Beverly Crusher, when Diana Muldaur joined the cast after Gates McFadden’s season one departure. Worse, she makes a terrible impression in her early appearances by bullying Data over the pronunciation of her name.

However, the 24-episode seasons we used to have back then really worked in Pulaski’s favor, giving her time to grow beyond those first impressions. By the time we get to the 15th episode, “Pen Pals,” Pulaski is showing remarkable compassion for a scared child, and even bonding with Data. Had Pulaski got to stick around through season three and longer, when TNG matured into the great show it would become, then perhaps she would be at the top of this list. As it is, she doesn’t quite rank as high as the others.

8. T’ana (