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Summary

  • Lt. Natasha Yar's death in Star Trek: The Next Generation was a surprise and a sign of the show's struggles in its first season.
  • Denise Crosby left the show because she felt her character had limited room to grow.
  • Yar's death brought depth and nuance to the series and left a lasting impression on her crewmates.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation began airing on first-run syndication in 1987, it was a rarity for the franchise to permanently kill off any leading characters. So it came as a huge surprise when Lt. Natasha Yar met her untimely death in Season 1, Episode 23, "Skin of Evil," in which the USS Enterprise-D attempted to rescue Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) from a crashed shuttlecraft held hostage by an evil entity called Armus. In a demonstration of his power, Armus killed Yar while she was investigating the crash site. Yar's death weighed heavily on the crew, who gathered shortly afterward and held a memorial service for the fallen Chief of Security in the ship's holodeck. Lt. Worf stepped up to become the Enterprise's Security Chief, a position he held for the remainder of the series' run.

The arbitrary nature of the character's passing came as a shock to fans and remains perhaps the biggest sign of the way The Next Generation struggled during its inaugural season. It also raises the question of why actress Denise Crosby left after the first of many TNG seasons and why her eventual return was strictly limited. After all, Gates McFadden left the series after Season 1 as well, only to return in Season 3 and become a key protagonist in the series' now-classic later seasons. McFadden's character, Dr. Beverly Crusher, wasn't killed the way Yar was. Simply put, Crosby left because she didn't feel the character had sufficient room to grow, though the details are a little more nuanced than that.

Updated by Robert Vaux on December 30, 2023: The article has been expanded with more details about Crosby's post-Star Trek career, as well as the impact her departure had on the in-universe narrative of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In addition, it has been reformatted to fit with current CBR guidelines.

The History of Tasha Yar on Star Trek

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Tasha Yar served on the USS Enterprise-D as Chief of Security. She had a traumatic childhood growing up in the crime-ridden Federation colony on the planet Turkana IV, and when her parents died, she was forced to care for herself and her younger sister, Ishara. Eventually, she escaped the colony and enrolled in Starfleet, majoring in Security and impressing Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart), who recruited her to serve on the Enterprise. She took pride in her job, but she was also impatient, impulsive, and unafraid of throwing herself right into danger, especially if it meant protecting her fellow crew. While this sometimes led her to step out of line, she tried to learn from her mistakes. Yar was well respected by the crew, particularly Worf (Michael Dorn), who admired her courage and warrior-like mentality. His status as her successor can be viewed as an effort to honor her legacy.

Yar's death in "Skin of Evil" came at the end of a very difficult inaugural season, marred by poor scripts and an overall lack of purpose. Things improved dramatically in the second season, and The Next Generation hit its stride in Season 3, going on to become one of the best and most beloved entries in the entire franchise. That makes Crosby's departure stand out all the more, as well as helping explain why the actor may have felt dissatisfied with the work. At the time, the show simply didn't look very promising, and while that eventually changed, she had no way of knowing that when she left. Yar's death became a reflection of Season 1's difficulties — a potentially strong character stuck in neutral while the series looked for a stronger sense of purpose.

Why Denise Crosby Left the Role of Tasha Yar

Riker, Data and Tasha Yar confront a shadowy figure on a rocky planet

Title

Crosby's Character

Number of Appearances

First Episode

Premiere Date

Pet Sematary

Rachel Creed

N/A

N/A

April 21, 1989

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

Sheriff Jenny Taylor

1

S1, E3, "No Man's Land"

September 10, 1993

The X-Files

Dr. Mary Speake

2

S8, E18, "Empedocles"

April 22, 2001

The Walking Dead

Mary

3

S4, E16, "Us"

March 13, 2014

Ray Donovan

Deb Goldman

15

S1, E1, "The Bag or the Bat"

June 30, 2013

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Crosby claimed that she left the series because she was unhappy with the role, even though she loved the character of Tasha Yar. "I wanted to leave the show," she explained in an interview with StarTrek.com. "Although it was Gene's idea to have the character die. He thought it would be so shocking. I was struggling with not being able to do much with the character. I had all these ideas and couldn't do them. I was just stage dressing. I chose to leave instead of just being satisfied with that." The actor continued to work steadily for decades after her departure from the series, largely in genre television whose audiences would likely know her best as Tasha. That included one-shot appearances in the likes of The X-Files, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Dexter, Castle, and Creepshow. She earned praise for a three-episode stint straddling Seasons 4 and 5 of The Walking Dead as the leader of a human community that had turned to cannibalism, as well as an extended appearance on the hit series Ray Donovan in the mid-2010s. Her most prominent role on the big screen was probably Rachel Creed, the female lead in the original adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, which she made shortly after her departure from The Next Generation. The film has aged well and remains one of the more underrated versions of the horror author's work.

While Crosby never regretted her decision to leave the show, she'd return to the Star Trek universe to play an alternate version of her character in Season 3's "Yesterday's Enterprise." She also played Yar's half-Romulan daughter, Sela, who'd appear throughout the series to cause trouble for Picard and the crew — most notably in aiding the House of Duras in their attempts to plunge the Klingon Empire into a civil war. There would later be an indirect reference to Tasha Yar in Star Trek: Picard Season 3. She made a final appearance in the role during a flashback sequence in the series finale, Season 7, Episode 25-26, "All Good Things..." They helped punctuate her earlier concerns about the character's direction, as well as showing the kind of potential in Yar that was largely going to waste. Yet, ultimately, her reasons for leaving were probably the right ones. The Next Generation had a bumper crop of strong characters, all competing for attention amid a very crowded schedule. And with her successor, Worf, acting as a gateway to the Klingons, one of Star Trek's most important species saw proper development with the screen time he was given. Had Crosby remained, her character would have likely developed into a more interesting figure the same way the other protagonists did, and yet that would have come at an untold cost to some of the series' other groundbreaking developments.

As it stands, Yar becomes a haunting figure for her surviving crewmates, reminding them of the dangers they face as members of Starfleet and adding depth to such moments as Data's loss of virginity at her hands and Picard's startled response to her in "All Good Things..." The character's death brought depth and nuance to the series in ways that wouldn't have happened had she remained aboard. She was noticeably absent during Season 3 of Picard, which served as a reunion for the rest of the Next Generation crew. While it would have been difficult to restore Yar to life — especially for such an arbitrary reason — it still felt like they were one crew member down, very much as it did during the series itself. It's a testament to Crosby's talent and presence in the role that she could leave such an impression behind.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is now streaming on Paramount+.

Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, and Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: TNG (1987)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
TV-PG
Sci-Fi
Action
Adventure
Drama

Set almost 100 years after Captain Kirk's 5-year mission, a new generation of Starfleet officers sets off in the U.S.S. Enterprise-D on its own mission to go where no one has gone before.

Release Date
September 26, 1987
Cast
Patrick Stewart , Brent Spiner , Jonathan Frakes , LeVar Burton , Marina Sirtis , Michael Dorn , Gates McFadden , Majel Barrett
Main Genre
Sci-Fi
Seasons
7