Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar'?

[crouteru]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

While I respect the intention to show that people can have meaningless deaths, in retrospect it felt more like a rushed exit for Crosby. I'm glad they gave her a more graceful/heroic exit in 'Yesterday's Enterprise'.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I've never really understood all of the hate this episode gets. I guess I'm in the minority, but I always thought Armus was pretty interesting and looked pretty cool as well.

 

[Timo]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

Agreed on both points.

And compared with another "cheap but innovatively done monster puts the crew in jeopardy in a very static plot done with minimal sets" story, for example "Where Silence Has Lease", this one has nice pacing, a good rhythm to the slowly intensifying tension. And a satisfactory balance for the resolution: part technobabble, part moralizing speech, part personal sacrifice, and part brutally efficient use of direct force. It almost feels as if it could have happened that way in reality, were reality to involve starships and crashed shuttles and oil slick monsters of pure evil.

Yet it might have been interesting if Yar's demise was downplayed one further step. Perhaps it could have been shown that not all the bridge crew cared for this incidental yellowshirt, but that perhaps Picard and Riker would attend the holo-wake out of duty, while Data would be there in a poignant gesture of actual friendship. (How's that for a tear-jerker - her only real friend was a machine?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[flightmech73]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I would've liked to see more of Yar. I'm not sure if meaningless is the right word. I guess the best thing to say is should she have gone out fighting instead of just boom your dead. But I think it was done right. She was a warrior and to go out so quick before she could even fight realy makes her death more tragic. I was realy glad to see her back in Yesterdays Enterprise. I felt that it redeamed her death in skin of evil becuase she knowingly was going into a battle she know they couldnt win. Of cource then later on we meet up with her duaghter.........

 

[EnsignRicky]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

It wasn't meaningless, it meant no more Tasha Yar; Yeah, she wasn't one of my favorites.

 

[Vonstadt]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I've never really understood all of the hate this episode gets. I guess I'm in the minority, but I always thought Armus was pretty interesting and looked pretty cool as well.

I completely agree, I thought Armus was a really decent concept as well. Creative and imaginative, especially for that budget at he time.

I also liked how the death, was so abrupt and basically meanless but well within the nature of her job.

Added a degree of realisim for me at the time, I had no issue with it at all, ,still dont :

It gave us more Worf.

 

[Jean-Luc Picard]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

The meaningnessless of her death, while deliberately, was unintentionally enhanced by the fact that Yar was so two-dimensional that it was hard to muster up the energy to care.

 

[Herbert1]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I believe that Tasha Yar's death and "Skin of Evil" is indicative of how bad the first season was of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was an undignified/meaningless death because the writers had poor imaginations.

I can't blame Denise Crosby for wanting to leave. Weren't other cast members unhappy during the first season? I want to say Marina Sirtis IIRC.

I don't know why they found it necessary to kill off Yar and why they just couldn't transfer the character some place else. They didn't kill off Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) when they made cast changes or Dr. Pulaski (Diana Muldaur). They didn't kill Wesley Crusher off.

But I felt that there were too many characters in the first season of TNG and they changed things in Season 2. Tasha had to die so that more could be done with Michael Dorn's Worf character. Geordi or Data needed to leave the bridge to replace the Chief Engineer guest star of the week.

 

[Trevacious]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

A meaningless end to what had become a meaningless role. It's no wonder Denise wanted to leave, after being reduced to less than Uhura status. "Hailing frequencies open." Gah! Such a waste.

 

[Lt.Cmdr.LaForge]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I posted this thread quite some time ago now, I must say I’m pleased that is it still generating replies =] However I would just like to clear up that through my thread I was not in fact accusing this episode of being bad. I just wanted to know what other people thought =]

 

[Captrek]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

the actress wished to leave the series.

Just before it got good. D’oh!

I've never really understood all of the hate this episode gets. I guess I'm in the minority, but I always thought Armus was pretty interesting and looked pretty cool as well.

I’m in the minority too. I consider “Skin of Evil” one of the classics, and easily the high point of the first season.

 

[Lt.Cmdr.LaForge]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I’m in the minority too. I consider “Skin of Evil” one of the classics, and easily the high point of the first season.

I agree with u 'captrek'. This episode stould out for me too as one of the best from S1. S1 was generally quite poor, but not all the episodes were nessersarily bad.

 

[JustKate]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I have never understood why people (including characters in the show) considered her death "meaningless." As others have noted, she was trying to save her crewmates, and it doesn't get a lot more meaningful than that.

I suspect that what some people might mean by "meaningless" is that it wasn't (as one of the earlier posters said) a cinematic death. Aside from the evil alien angle, it was really the kind of thing that actually happens - it was the scifi equivalent of a cop getting shot while responding to a robbery. And that's not meaningless either.

By the way, doesn't Guinan actually describe it to Tasha in "Yesterday's Enterprise" as "an empty death"? That's what I seem to recall, though I could be wrong. I'd say that was even less accurate than "meaningless."

 

[WillsBabe]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I have never understood why people (including characters in the show) considered her death "meaningless." As others have noted, she was trying to save her crewmates, and it doesn't get a lot more meaningful than that.

I agree. Tasha died in the service of a uniform that obviously meant a lot to her and doing a job that she loved. She was trying to save the lives of other people (Deanna and the shuttle pilot), so I don't see how it was a meaningless death. Surely it was far more meaningful than had she perished at the hands of the rape gangs on Turkana IV.

At the time, Tasha's death was quite a moment for TNG. I like the fact that they killed off a character so blatently and with so little fanfare. To me it works better that her death was low-key than had it been all guns blazing and sfx because for me that made it more poignant and gave it greater impact. That's often how people die "in real life" - one moment they're there, the next they're gone. Big, showy deaths give the audience an opportunity to console themselves while low-key, off the cuff deaths don't. That's how Tasha's death felt, and I think that's why some people describe it as meaningless. There is nothing to console about it. (Although later we get the funeral scene which kind of compensates for that).

 

[Nightdiamond]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I always was interested in Tasha, simply because she was the female chief of security.

The more her character was kept on the sidelines, the more I became curious about her character.

The parts of her character that were revealed were her friendship with Worf, how she wondered about combining being feminine with being a tough security officer, even when she cried out of frustration because of what Q did to her.

In my opinion, in the first season, I think almost all the characters got at least one episode that helped flesh out their characters a bit. Some more than others, but they were enough to make the characters

At the time, Tasha's death was quite a moment for TNG. I like the fact that they killed off a character so blatently and with so little fanfare. To me it works better that her death was low-key than had it been all guns blazing and sfx because for me that made it more poignant and gave it greater impact.

I have to agree with Willsbabe, it was so sudden and not overdone, it was almost, dramatic. They tried the same thing on DS9 with Dax, but I don't think it had the same impact because of the fanfare and dramatics.


All in all, even Tasha said she probably went the way she wanted. On the other hand Guinan is very intuitive, so it's hard to say, unless we want to just take Guinan's word for it....

 

[djsubzro]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

After watching Tasha's return as well as a screen kiss, I'm looking forward to more cameos in TNG.

 

[Destructor]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I have to agree with Christopher's assessment, but at the same time it's hard to disagree with Guinan's statement: "But I do know it was an empty death. A death without purpose."

That much is true, which goes further to support the idea that, in space and in the line of duty, sometimes bad shit just goes down and there's no rhyme or reason to it.

 

[Destructor]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

Or Data's:

DATA: Lieutenant Yar was killed on Vagra Two by a malevolent entity.
ISHARA: In battle?
DATA: No. She was killed as a demonstration of the creature's power, without provocation.

 

[EnsignRicky]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

ZOMBIE TASHA!!!

 

[Christopher]

Re: Was 'Skin of Evil' an undignified/meaningless death for 'Tasha Yar

I have to agree with Christopher's assessment, but at the same time it's hard to disagree with Guinan's statement: "But I do know it was an empty death. A death without purpose."

That much is true, which goes further to support the idea that, in space and in the line of duty, sometimes bad shit just goes down and there's no rhyme or reason to it.

It was a killing without purpose. That doesn't mean it was a death without purpose. If Tasha had died trying to save Deanna and another crewperson from a flood or a fire, then the thing that tried to kill them and succeeded in killing her would've done so without purpose, but she still would've been a hero for giving her life in the attempt to save lives. The fact that Armus didn't have a reason for what he did shouldn't be seen as invalidating Tasha's reasons for putting her life on the line.

Okay, so maybe she didn't succeed in saving their lives (her crewmates did that later), but does that mean we should only honor the firefighters or police officers who died while successfully saving lives, and treat the ones who died while merely making the attempt as somehow undeserving of recognition? Of course not. That would be unjust and offensive to those heroic individuals and their families. Heroism is in the willingness to sacrifice, the determination to try. And it's petty and awful to say it doesn't count if the attempt is unsuccessful. I'm deeply offended by the notion that Tasha's death was "meaningless" or needed to be "improved."