The Surprising Reason Star Trek Killed A Beloved Character For A Second Time 

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 1 hour ago

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” isn’t just a great episode of The Next Generation; it’s arguably in the running for the best Star Trek episode ever made. The story takes our characters to a much darker place than they have ever been before, all while emphasizing the need to fight for a better universe. As the cherry on top, the writers used the timey-wimey nature of this episode to bring back a beloved character who had died back in Season 1: Tasha Yar, who lost her life fighting an evil oil slick named Armus. In the altered reality of “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” that never happened, and Yar was very much alive.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last very long. The Tasha of this universe decides to travel back in time, leading the crew of the Enterprise-C on a suicide mission into the past. She succeeds in restoring reality, but this ultimately comes at the expense of her own life. At the time, it seemed shocking that Star Trek: The Next Generation had brought a popular character back just to kill her off again. Why did they do that? According to one of the show’s greatest writers, they wanted to give Tasha Yar a “heroic sacrifice” and make up for the crappy way she died in the first season.

Yar Trek: The Next Generation

The plot of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is that when the Enterprise-C travels forward in time instead of getting destroyed, it alters history for the worse. The Federation is now losing a bitter war with the Klingons. Thanks to information from Guinan, Captain Picard authorizes a risky plan to send the Enterprise-C back in time, where it was destined to be destroyed while defending a Klingon outpost. He hopes that this will restore the timeline, saving countless lives from pointless slaughter. Ironically, this plan involves sacrificing someone who should already be dead: Tasha Yar, who leads the Enterprise-C back into the past after its captain is killed.

For audiences watching this Star Trek: The Next Generation episode at home, seeing Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar on the screen again was a very pleasant surprise. This character had died in the Season 1 episode “Skin of Evil,” fighting a living oil slick named Armus. It was sudden and unexpected, and she died the same ignominious kind of death as the various redshirts of The Original Series. Her death added tension to the show, of course; if a main character could suddenly be killed off, then nobody was safe. Still, many thought it would have been better if Tasha Yar’s death had a bit more meaning to it.

“A Chance To Kill Her Right“

Interestingly, this included the TNG writers who were hired after Season 1. Ronald D. Moore, the veteran Trek writer who went on to create the Battlestar Galactica reboot, described the writing staff’s motivation for bringing Yar back in “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” On the Season 4 DVD special features, he claimed, “We brought Denise back to kill off Tasha Yar a second time. It was a great opportunity to send the character off in a big heroic sacrifice because nobody was really happy with the way she left the series in the first season.” Continuing, he said, “Nobody on the show really liked it, the fans didn’t like it, I’m not sure even she really liked it. So ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ was a chance to kill her right.” 

Fortunately, Moore and the other writers succeeded in this task. Tasha Yar died to save billions of lives throughout the galaxy by restoring reality and ending a pointless war. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” implied that the Enterprise-C would be destroyed as soon as it returned to the past, killing everyone on board. Later, the two-part episode “Redemption” clarified that the attacking Romulans took a handful of prisoners, including Tasha Yar. Later, she was betrayed by her own half-Romulan child and killed. That child was Sela, who grew up to be one of the scariest threats Picard and the Enterprise-D crew would ever face.

Arguably, “Redemption” ruined Tasha Yar’s act of self-sacrifice. Sure, she still saved an entire reality, but instead of dying in battle, she died at the hands of the evil aliens who captured and violated her. However, one person who had no problem with this retcon was Denise Crosby, who now had another reason to return to the show that she had left back in Season 1. Of course, it’s fair to say her character was having more fun in that first season. Instead of saving the galaxy or forcibly bearing Romulan kids, she was cozying up to a drunken android and performing a job much more rewarding than security chief: Data entry.