To “Thine Own Self” Be True

Originally published in Spring 2020

In late February or early March of 1994, I had a sleepover. A Star Trek sleepover. With three friends! I think my parents were just happy – or possibly relieved – that I had found some friends my own age who shared my interests (or, at least, would willingly indulge me in my obsession). We wore our best homemade uniforms, talked about characters, and put on a “fashion show.” At one point, I insisted that we attempt to improvise an episode which we could then write and submit to the show. But really, I just thought I could impress my friends by “improvising” (quoting) my favorite character in a scene I had already memorized, despite it airing just a week or two prior: Dr. Beverly Crusher in the teaser for “Thine Own Self.” Did they call me out? You bet. But why did a group of pre-teen girls all know this scene so well?

You know the one: It’s late during the ship’s night and Troi’s just returned from her class reunion to find that Crusher had volunteered for Bridge Duty. Apparently, she does this from time to time because she likes to stay on top of ship operations and new tactical procedures. They get to chatting and Deanna asks Beverly why she decided to become a Commander – she “didn’t need the rank in order to be Chief Medical Officer.” Beverly answers that, for a long time, her rank wasn’t a concern, but that “about eight years ago, I started to feel like I wanted to stretch myself a little.” Meanwhile, Crusher’s trying to get a message to Data, who’s on an away mission, without much luck. Roll theme song.

What did I see in that when I was eleven years old?

Despite holding the rank of Commander for the entire length of the series, Crusher had only been shown in the Center Seat twice before: During an emergency (“Descent”) and when there was literally no one else on board (“Remember Me”). But this? This was just a normal day, and no explanation of her presence in command was needed. She just wanted to be there, and she’s completely qualified for and comfortable with the role. Not just “comfortable” – She liked it. My little heart soared.

Girls are socialized to be risk-averse, accommodating, submissive… and here’s a woman on television defying those expectations. I’m sure I didn’t know the word “aspirational” back then, but that’s what I would use today. To make it even better: She’s sharing this with Deanna, the one other woman in the main cast, who is clearly experiencing some of the same feelings of professional stagnation, and admits later in the episode that she also enjoys being the one in command. The actual exchange about any professional development is barely four lines long, but it made quite the impact.

If we look at TNG by the numbers, Crusher and Troi don’t really interact all that much as friends. All of The Next Generation only has a 44.9% Bechdel-Wallace Test Pass Rate (Hat Tip to my co-host Jarrah and her research on this – detailed data can be found on her TrekkieFeminist tumblr). The Bechdel-Wallace Test has three main criteria: 1) There are two named women characters, 2) who speak to each other, 3) about something other than a man. For this project, an episode is considered to pass if just one scene meets these criteria. (The Bechdel-Wallace test has its flaws, but it does give a pretty accurate picture of how often women characters interact.) Of all of the TNG episodes that pass, only twenty-one do so with a conversation between Troi and Crusher, and two of those episodes aired after “Thine Own Self,” late in the seventh season. Most of the interactions between them were about their male coworkers, partners, or patients; Many of their conversations that do pass are about their own mental or physical health. So the conversation that opens this episode really is a rarity
during the run of Next Gen.

Though, to be fair to Star Trek, we didn’t see this type of interaction often on other television shows of the 1980s and 90s, either. I honestly cannot remember the specifics of any similar scene – women talking about decisions they’ve made in their careers, how they wanted to grow, all without bringing up any romantic entanglements – on any television show before this. So, as I often do when I start down the rabbit hole of thinking-too-much-about-pop-culture, I turned to the hivemind that is social media and I asked my friends to tell me about their earliest memories of such a scene.

Several of them, unprompted by me, brought up the teaser for “Thine Own Self.” Several others mentioned contemporary shows like Golden Girls (1985-1992), Designing Women (1986-1993), Murphy Brown (1988-1998, 2019), and M*A*S*H (1972-1983) – but no one was able to recall the specific scene that they “probably” saw, and certainly not one that was so impactful for them. It’s also worth noting that of these four shows, three of them are women-lead, telling women-centric stories. Star Trek and other genre television were decidedly not in that category – Deep Space Nine was just half-way through it’s season in Spring 1994 and Xena: Warrior Princess was still a year and a half away. All of which serves to make this scene stand out all the more.

Looking back on this episode, over 25 years later, I see a lot more in these four lines than I ever could have unpacked as a child: I see two women discussing their careers in a non-competitive way, asking questions and sharing experiences. Both are already serving as the heads of their departments, at the tops of their fields on the Federation Flagship, having accomplished their goals; yet they openly admit that they weren’t fully satisfied. They wanted to push themselves, and do something more, take on more responsibilities – for themselves and those around them. I see them unashamedly state that they enjoy being in a command.

This exchange is not long enough for me to claim that Crusher takes on a mentor role, and Troi seeks that out from Riker for the rest of the episode, as she struggles first with her decision to pursue a promotion and then with the Bridge Officers’ Test itself. Crusher doesn’t even congratulate her at the end of the episode. But this simple, quick, innocuous interaction – these four lines of dialogue that exist just to set up the episode’s B plot – showed me the benefits of sharing knowledge and experiences, the importance of support, and that professional ambition is a good thing, regardless of gender. In retrospect, it gave me a blueprint for how to navigate these relationships as an adult.

Eleven-year-old me did not explicitly know what she was seeing – she couldn’t have. But she knew how it made her feel. She knew that it was something different. Something special. Something important. And that’s why thirty-six-year-old me still gets the feels when she watches it. Also, Data becomes a radioactive monster… so that’s fun.