Star Trek: TNG’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Finally Allowed Denise Crosby To Play The Tasha Yar She Auditioned For

The classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” gave Lt. Tasha Yar actress Denise Crosby the chance to play the version of the character she had been presented with in her original audition. Denise Crosby’s Lt. Tasha Yar was a member of TNG’s original cast, but she was unhappy with her limited role and left the series. Tasha was abruptly killed off in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, episode 23, “Skin of Evil.” In 2023, Denise Crosby joined The 7th Rule podcast to review Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1.

Tasha Yar was a fascinating character with a tragic backstory who never reached her full potential. Yar rarely took center stage in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, and the lone episode in which she did, TNG season 1, episode 4, “Code of Honor”, is widely regarded as one of the series worst outings. Nearly two seasons after Denise Crosby left the show, she returned to play an alternate universe version of Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3, episode 15, “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” Not only does this episode fill in some important elements of Star Trek canon, but it’s also a phenomenal episode of television.

Tasha Yar Got More Depth In “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Than All Of TNG Season 1

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” is widely regarded as one of TNG’s finest hours.

Denise Crosby returned to The 7th Rule podcast co-hosted by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Cirroc Lofton and producer Ryan T. Husk to discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” When speaking about Yar’s characterization in the episode, Crosby said the following:

You see a depth to her that is… you’re able to share in. You know, there’s not a lot of episodes in the show in the first season where Tasha’s contemplating those kind of deep ideas – the self-worth, the self-purpose. She’s reactionary, she’s doing her job, she’s taking care of business, but in this episode, it gives her time to be reflective and ask the deep questions of herself. And the writers allow those answers to come out and for us to touch upon that.

In “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” the USS Enterprise-D encounters a rift in spacetime from which the heavily damaged USS Enterprise-C emerges. Suddenly, everything on the Enterprise-D changes — the ship becomes a warship involved in a conflict with the Klingons and Tasha Yar is back as the ship’s tactical officer. Only Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), the enigmatic Ten Forward bartender, notices anything amiss. Guinan tells Captain Picard that the Enterprise-C must return to its own time period to restore the proper future. In the end, Tasha goes back in time with the Enterprise-C and the future rights itself.

Denise Crosby’s Original Audition Presented A More Complex Tasha Yar

Crosby read a scene during her audition that never made it into a TNG episode.

Denise Crosby also spoke about her audition process for Star Trek: The Next Generation, during which she read a “beautiful” scene that never appeared in the show. Read her quote below:

You know, I’ve mentioned before that my audition piece was a very, very beautiful piece written for the Troi and Tasha characters that was never – It’s almost like they lured me in, you know? That was the carrot they dangled and said this is what this is going to be, and then the show wasn’t that. They never had a scene anywhere near that.

Crosby did the best with the material she was given in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, but that material didn’t always live up to the character she had originally been promised. Crosby mentions a scene between Tasha Yar and Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), and it’s true that TNG failed its female characters in some ways, especially when it came to friendships between them. Most of the stories that centered on TNG‘s women focused on their relationships with men or featured weaker storylines. Thankfully, modern Star Trek shows like Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have remedied this oversight, and Star Trek: Picard season 3 even allowed some of the women of Star Trek: The Next Generation to play more complex versions of their characters.

Source: The 7th Rule

Star Trek: The Next Generation is available to stream on Paramount+.