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Could they have gotten rid of Tasha Yar without killing her off?

I seem to remember an itnerview from the DVDs where she said she went to talk to Roddenberry whether her character could get more focus in the future, and he told her that the show was really going to be about Picard, Data and Riker, which caused her to become disillusioned with the role.

Looking it from that point of view it makes (some) sense she made the decision to leave but making that decision after only about 20 episodes makes it feel rushed.
I still don't know if she ever commented that she had regrets at some point for leaving the show so soon.
Fortunately she came back couple of times.
Something like 'Yesterday's Enterprise' with Tasha is really nice.
 
I vaguely remember when I first created an account on this site well over a decade ago, without going back to look it up, my first thread was asking why they killed off Tasha Yar, according to one of the users who replied it was because Denise Crosby didn't feel her character was being used sufficiently so apparently she asked to be written off the show, and so they killed her off in "Skin of Evil." Is this information accurate?

Interestingly they didn't kill off Beverly Crusher (and I'm glad they didn't because I preferred her over Pulaski) when they'd fired Gates McFadden... they killed off Tasha Yar when Denise Crosby asked to be written off, assuming that was the case.

It was a treat seeing Denise reprise her role as Tasha for "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the two-hour "All Good Things..." finale but I still can't help wishing that they'd just sent Tasha away somewhere or reassign her to another ship rather than killing her off in such a horrible way.

"Skin of Evil" is such a sad and hard-to-watch episode, not just because of Armus killing Tasha but also because of the emotional effect Armus' story and the episode itself in its entirety has on me. I especially can't bring myself to watch the part toward the end where Picard kept emotionally triggering Armus telling him he's not taking him anywhere and will just leave him there forever to be alone and forgotten. Is it wrong that I sympathize with a villain?
I vaguely remember when I first created an account on this site well over a decade ago, without going back to look it up, my first thread was asking why they killed off Tasha Yar, according to one of the users who replied it was because Denise Crosby didn't feel her character was being used sufficiently so apparently she asked to be written off the show, and so they killed her off in "Skin of Evil." Is this information accurate?

Interestingly they didn't kill off Beverly Crusher (and I'm glad they didn't because I preferred her over Pulaski) when they'd fired Gates McFadden... they killed off Tasha Yar when Denise Crosby asked to be written off, assuming that was the case.

It was a treat seeing Denise reprise her role as Tasha for "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the two-hour "All Good Things..." finale but I still can't help wishing that they'd just sent Tasha away somewhere or reassign her to another ship rather than killing her off in such a horrible way.

"Skin of Evil" is such a sad and hard-to-watch episode, not just because of Armus killing Tasha but also because of the emotional effect Armus' story and the episode itself in its entirety has on me. I especially can't bring myself to watch the part toward the end where Picard kept emotionally triggering Armus telling him he's not taking him anywhere and will just leave him there forever to be alone and forgotten. Is it wrong that I sympathize with a villain?


I think Tasha Yar could have left the show without being killed off. Frankly, I wish she had, since I'm not a fan of the episode in which she was killed.
 
I think Tasha Yar could have left the show without being killed off. Frankly, I wish she had, since I'm not a fan of the episode in which she was killed.

Fortunately there's 'Legacy' in season 4 where Data explains how Tasha was lost so if you skip 'Skin of Evil' Tasha doesn't just disappear forever without any clue what happened.
 
Could they have gotten rid of Tasha Yar without killing her off?

Of course. There were so many options to let the character go from the series. She could have gotten a transfer (+promotion) to another ship. She could have left Starfleet. She could have been forced to take an indeterminate leave of absence due to matters requiring her personal attention. She could have ascended to a higher dimension (though that would have been a particularly mundane fate, given that this is Trek). Her death was unnecessary, though it also made a point showing exactly that: some deaths are unnecessary and meaningless, which made it all the more tragic.
 
Killing off Tasha was probably the best way, and in the way it happened for several reasons.

1. It showed the audience no one is safe.
2. As Chief of Security, if any away team member would be killed, that was the likely person.
3. She died doing her job... safeguarding the lives of the crew. Like a firefighter, cop, paramedic, etc.
4. Not every death is going to be meaningful, and this showed that. That's how life is.
5. The funeral scene.
 
Neelix was the only character to even GET a proper ending. Everyone else just got a future that was shown to us that was immediately deleted.

Story of Voyager's life: destroy everything with the Big Red Reset button. Even at the end.

Arguably, most of them were better off left in limbo...

The ones we've seen are Ok...
Janeway: Starfleet admiral as of 2383
Chakotay: Pardoned and reinstated, Starfleet captain as of 2383.
Seven: Starfleet captain as of 2401. Went through some stuff to get there.
Tuvok: Starfleet captain as of 2401.
Paris: Full lieutenant as of 2380, which is about right since he was promoted back to JG in 2377.
Torres: It's mentioned that she helped design the Dauntless, suggesting that she remains a Starfleet engineer. Whether Janeway's admiral logs are canon is unknown.
EMH: No information. Given Robert Picardo's age, it might be difficult for a non-animated version of him to appear, though of course Lewis Zimmerman could show up.
Harry Kim: No information. His character is revealed to "belong" to a show that has ceased to exist.
 
I love Tasha Yar. I do wish she'd wanted to stay.

As for Armus, I imagine him like a giant amalgamation of those toxic versions of Rick and Morty when they went into the detoxifier chamber. He's the toxic residue of some civilisation. But what is defined as bad/toxic can change from generation to generation, so perhaps he could have been redeemed. The question of his sentience and redeemability is interesting.
 
Killing off Tasha was probably the best way, and in the way it happened for several reasons.

1. It showed the audience no one is safe.
2. As Chief of Security, if any away team member would be killed, that was the likely person.
3. She died doing her job... safeguarding the lives of the crew. Like a firefighter, cop, paramedic, etc.
4. Not every death is going to be meaningful, and this showed that. That's how life is.
5. The funeral scene.
I think they only did it out of spite. "You want to abandon us? Well YOU'LL REGRET IT!"
 
In the end however, didn't Crosby herself say that her character had to be killed off so Denise could appear in the best episodes?
If you have lemons...

I doubt that someone had told her "Don't worry, we'll kill you so you'll come back as the half-Romulian daughter of an alternate timeline Tasha Yar!"

It is evident that she had been killed to prevent her from returning with the same character. They could safely say that she had been transferred as would later happen to Beverly and instead ...
 
I doubt that someone had told her "Don't worry, we'll kill you so you'll come back as the half-Romulian daughter of an alternate timeline Tasha Yar!"

I'm guessing there was no plan to bring her back at the time the character left the series.
I wonder, after the show got more popular and 'Yesterday's Enterprise' happened, did Denise ask if she could make more appearances?
Well, Ronald D. Moore made that happen with Sela.
Fortunately she came back in one way or the other.
 
Yes, they could have.

If Denise Crosby had waited, she could have been transferred to DS9, and if that wasn’t working out, be transferred to Voyager. Both could have come with promotions for the character. At the same time, the Tasha Yar character could have left the Enterprise to do something else with hr life and then join DS9 or VOY.

But the way the character was written out was fine. A security officer dying in the line of duty doing what she loved make sense.
 
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