Some, however, go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Certain characters, such as Neelix and Wesley, annoyed a large portion of fans. Worse, though, are the ones that had the potential to be great, and get unceremoniously swept under the rug and forgotten about. Of these cases, none is so prominent as The Next Generation’s head of security Lieutenant Tasha Yar, and her pointless demise.
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Lt. Yar was played by Denise Crosby, and first appeared during season one of The Next Generation. She lasted 22 episodes in the pivotal role of head of security, until she met her untimely demise at the globby hands of a tar monster. The episode, named “Skin of Evil,” was groundbreaking in many ways. The show’s decision to kill of one of its main characters after so long could have been a refreshing take on the semi-immortal cast of protagonists that TV shows had pioneered up until this point. The problem, however, was how they did it. Yar’s demise was brutally underwhelming and pointless death that came out of nowhere, and ended up feeling like a throwaway.
The reasons behind this mainly lie, unfortunately, out of the Star Trek universe and in the uncomfortable realm of behind-the-scenes politics. Crosby was disheartened and disappointed with her character on the show. She felt that she had been sold on the false promise that she would play a kick-ass female security officer with an engaging backstory, but when it came to shooting, things were different. Yar had a rough outline of a backstory, having grown up on a lawless and abandoned Earth colony called Turkana IV, but other than that there was nothing concrete or compelling. What made things worse was that, rather than playing a powerful woman in a genre so often dominated by men, she was placed more as an object of desire. Tasha Yar served as candy for the viewers, partnering with the purposefully low cut and nonsensical uniform worn by Dianna Troi to be the bridge’s sex appeal.
This was not just down to her having a rather limited role on the show, but also due to the two other notable episodes prior to “Skin of Evil” in which she played a large role. These include the horribly-aged “Code of Honor,” and “The Naked Now.” These two episodes featured Yar as an object of desire. In the former, she is captured by an authoritarian alien ruler, so she can fight for the right to be his wife against his first wife. In the latter, where she seduces and sleeps with Commander Data under the influence of an alien virus. Both episodes were prime examples of how, instead of displaying empowerment, Crosby was playing a role designed purely for its feminine appeal.
All of these reasons made Crosby fall out of love with the show very quickly, and while this was most likely due to the issues in the first season of the show, she could not keep it up, and decided to put in a request to terminate her contract. Gene Roddenberry granted this, but seemed to do so begrudgingly, and thus formulated a pointless and underwhelming death akin to a throwaway red-shirt character.
Thankfully, things started to get better for TNG. After Roddenberry distanced himself from the show due to health issues, and after a complete upheaval of writers, Yar got the send-off she deserved. She appeared again during the season 3 episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” During this episode, a temporal rift changes the prime timeline, resulting in a Federation that was still at war with the mighty Klingons, and a Yar that never died. Upon hearing about how her timeline alternate died, she summed up the entire situation perfectly:
The alternate timeline Yar continued and eventually sacrificed herself in order to return the timeline to normal. She died in a way that finally, after all those years, gave the character the death that she deserved. Crosby would return later, in a rather convoluted and unfinished plot centered around Yar’s half Romulan daughter Commander Sela, but this final act of defiance and bravery in the face of great danger was the end of Yar’s story. It righted the wrongs done to her character by the first season.
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