If Denise Crosby stayed on what direction would Tasha go? Would worf of developed?
If tasha had stayed
- Thread starter lordsofelsewhen
- Start date
It would have been interesting to see what could have happened to the Yar character, but yes Worf and indeed the rest of the cast would have seen a little less time as minutes and lines of dialogue and maybe even whole plotlines from episodes would have been used by the Yar character rather than themselves. We may have even seen the whole K'Ehleyr/Alexander plotline never come to fruition.
As to Yar, I think Crosby realised that there wasn't much of a direction they could take her character into. Certainly the episode "Legacy" would have been a completely different affair, with Yar possibly encountering hostility from the sister she abandoned, but other than that, she had no family to draw from for drama unlike the other characters.
As to Yar, I think Crosby realised that there wasn't much of a direction they could take her character into. Certainly the episode "Legacy" would have been a completely different affair, with Yar possibly encountering hostility from the sister she abandoned, but other than that, she had no family to draw from for drama unlike the other characters.
I dunno. Tasha brought up her background quite alot. It's therefore intuitive they would've gotten around to explore that background at some point. Most of the bridge crew got that treatment.
Ensign Ro is the answer to this question of "what if Tasha had stayed?" Michelle Forbes was the sexiest woman to ever grace TNG and she was very talented, but ... shoehorning the Tough Cookie bit into the TNG format was forced and unnecessary. Resultantly, Michelle felt the need to leave the show, just as Denise had felt compelled to. The only difference being that Michelle actually had a future in Hollywood.
Take Tasha's past away and what has she to talk of? What's she about, besides her job? Ask her for directions to the arboretum, or request a security attachment and expect to learn ALL about her having come from the planet of rape gangs. The only other bit fleshing her character out was that she did Data. Take the planet and Data out of the equation and you've just got a beautiful, statuesque extra on the show. This is what happens when a show forces its Politically Correct agenda, instead of trying to find a way to play it, organically. It was but so much shallow pretense.
Take Tasha's past away and what has she to talk of? What's she about, besides her job? Ask her for directions to the arboretum, or request a security attachment and expect to learn ALL about her having come from the planet of rape gangs. The only other bit fleshing her character out was that she did Data. Take the planet and Data out of the equation and you've just got a beautiful, statuesque extra on the show. This is what happens when a show forces its Politically Correct agenda, instead of trying to find a way to play it, organically. It was but so much shallow pretense.
So much the better to raise the emotional and dramatic stakes for her if some mission required the Enterprise to be there. She'd be front and back of that mission given that she'd be the resident expert for the planet.
Denise is still working in Hollywood.
I remember her on a few The Walking Dead and a one shot last year on on Scandal.
Yikes...
Two things that occurred to me the last time I watched TNG:
1) You can actually see Tasha's character get sidelined again and again throughout the first season. She maybe had a couple of good scenes in early episodes then became almost a background. While she essentially remained the 'police chief' aboard ship, a lot of the actual action scenes were given to Worf. One suspects the late addition of Bob Justman's "Klingon Marine" saw a lot of the writers realize quite early that he basically made Tasha redundant.
2) In "Yesterday's Enterprise", Denise Crosby's acting is a little behind the others. The rest of the cast were comfortable by that point, and even playing alternative versions of their characters you can tell these are people who've had three and a half years to establish chemistry with each other. Crosby steps back into that pretty awkwardly. It's like she's still flailing around with her season one characterization and trying to figure out how to fit that back into the ensemble.
I suspect had Tasha stayed they'd have made her and Worf even more of a team (witness scenes like those in "01001001" or "Skin of Evil" where they write them as something of a double-team, or even in the past scenes in "All Good Things" when Worf asks what a Q is), and it would've benefitted both characters. But very early on, in season one, it seems obvious in hindsight that the writers had no clear idea how to write both of them into scenes without one stepping on the toes of the other. It's little wonder Crosby left, but I do think she "jumped" too soon.....
1) You can actually see Tasha's character get sidelined again and again throughout the first season. She maybe had a couple of good scenes in early episodes then became almost a background. While she essentially remained the 'police chief' aboard ship, a lot of the actual action scenes were given to Worf. One suspects the late addition of Bob Justman's "Klingon Marine" saw a lot of the writers realize quite early that he basically made Tasha redundant.
2) In "Yesterday's Enterprise", Denise Crosby's acting is a little behind the others. The rest of the cast were comfortable by that point, and even playing alternative versions of their characters you can tell these are people who've had three and a half years to establish chemistry with each other. Crosby steps back into that pretty awkwardly. It's like she's still flailing around with her season one characterization and trying to figure out how to fit that back into the ensemble.
I suspect had Tasha stayed they'd have made her and Worf even more of a team (witness scenes like those in "01001001" or "Skin of Evil" where they write them as something of a double-team, or even in the past scenes in "All Good Things" when Worf asks what a Q is), and it would've benefitted both characters. But very early on, in season one, it seems obvious in hindsight that the writers had no clear idea how to write both of them into scenes without one stepping on the toes of the other. It's little wonder Crosby left, but I do think she "jumped" too soon.....
I *love* her hair in "Haven". Perfectly 80s and a little bit 'punk'!
http://retrobacklore.net/yar3.png
This happens a lot in Star Trek. I love how in Star Trek IV all the characters had an assignment with mini-plots. It's so much better than using characters for exposition, for a reason to say something aloud to communicate it to the viewer.
Worf complained in Encounter at Farpoint about being ordered to stay with the saucer. They could have made that a recurrent thing, where Worf is torn between his desire for warrior role as navigator or whatever he did in Season I.
It felt like that was their telegraphing that she wasn't "meant" to be there, so it worked for me. It was probably what you say, not on purpose as I imagined.
Maybe if they'd made one of them the SCIS (Starfleet NCIS) agent aflight and the other the security chief, it would have worked better. The former gets to specialize in investigating the murders and thefts, while the latter leads the teams in pursuit of the culprit(s), but they do collaborate together in both aspects often.
In my alternate reality where Denise didn't leave, she becomes the senior Conn Officer when Geordi is made Chief Engineer. With Worf and Geordie both going to yellow shirts, she would have been the command officer in training. Wesley would still be around, but utilized more like Seven of Nine was - helpful with scientific issues but not really assigned a bridge position (except occasionally mission ops and the like.)
Yar's story would be learning diplomacy and expanding her scientific knowledge to become a starship captain.
Yar's story would be learning diplomacy and expanding her scientific knowledge to become a starship captain.
Denise Crosby was a part of something very Historic in this entirely new breed of STAR TREK. And in some small way, she helped establish it. For that, I am eternally grateful, because TNG has its own flavour. My favourite bit with her was when she met Quark for the first time. He and his comrades were giving her shit about being a clothed female and she stood there ... defiant against them! Haha ... it still makes me laugh. "Back off, shorty!" She wasn't unlikeable, she was just superfluous as a bridge character.
Had Yar been a sort of Regular Guest Star, like O'Brien, Pulaski and Guinan were, then she probably would've had a much more secure future on the show. Outside of Yesterday's Enterprise, I felt that Denise Crosby's attempts at returning to TNG were a come down. Sela is alright, as Romulans go, but outside of her origins, she's got nothing. It would've been better to just burn her TNG bridges, but OH WELL ...
Had Yar been a sort of Regular Guest Star, like O'Brien, Pulaski and Guinan were, then she probably would've had a much more secure future on the show. Outside of Yesterday's Enterprise, I felt that Denise Crosby's attempts at returning to TNG were a come down. Sela is alright, as Romulans go, but outside of her origins, she's got nothing. It would've been better to just burn her TNG bridges, but OH WELL ...
The irony is that she did leave a big legacy on Star Trek.... by being the first regular character to be permanently killed off, as well as that momentous event becoming something of a continuity point for the characters in-universe. Nobody aboard the Enterprise ever simply forgets Tasha, and her memory haunts them on numerous occasions in the years afterwards.
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