What was the point of Sela?

[Lance]

Apparently the Romulans had both a double of Picard and a virtual double of Yar for years.

To take us down a path bordered by wild Epileptic Trees for a moment...

Might I suggest that it was capturing/interrogating this alt!Tasha from the future which led to the Romulans taking an interest in this apparently unimportant Starfleet officer named Jean-Luc Picard and deciding to clone him in the first place? Baring in mind that Picard was hardly anyone special at the time the Romulans were supposed to have stolen his DNA. If they had some forward knowledge that Picard would be the captain of the flagship sometime in the future, however... that would actually make their decision to clone him plausible.

(Sure, the alt!Tasha was from another universe entirely, but maybe the Romulans weren't to know that. Maybe they captured this woman claiming to be from the future, and simply assumed that she was from the future of our universe, with the full truth only coming out later.)

 

[Mytran]

In the universe of silly plots that the crew of the Enterprise-D sometimes found themselves in (especially in the movies!) I think this ties the two events together rather well.

As for Sela, after rewatching her stories recently I have to say that I also find her (as a character) pretty pointless. Aside from the shock value (to the audience) of seeing Crosby again, her character does very little. She doesn't use her half-human instincts to any advantage and anyway she's too young to have gained any useful military experience (this is where her being an older Tasha would have been really handy). She's a competent commander in Redemption (not falling for the tricky maneuver) and devolves to a moustache-twirling villain in Unification. As mentioned upthread, this could have been any character.

As for the impact Sela has on our Enterprise crew, it is also extemely limited. Worf when he meets her doesn't even bat an eyelid!

Picard has a couple of scenes but since he doesn't (cannot) recall the scenes of YE and nobody really explains the convoluted timey-whimey mess to him, he is left wondering who on earth this woman is who just happens to look like his former tactical officer.

Troi senses that Sela honestly believes herself to be Tasha's daughter, but since Picard knows that this is impossible (he knows nothing of alt!Tasha, remember) the natural conclusion from his POV is that this is the result of years of brainwashing on a clone or surgically altered child. It's just that he can't explain the motivation behind such a ridiculuously complex scheme.

If only he knew about the ratings sweeps...

 

[Dukhat]

Might I suggest that it was capturing/interrogating this alt!Tasha from the future which led to the Romulans taking an interest in this apparently unimportant Starfleet officer named Jean-Luc Picard and deciding to clone him in the first place? Baring in mind that Picard was hardly anyone special at the time the Romulans were supposed to have stolen his DNA. If they had some forward knowledge that Picard would be the captain of the flagship sometime in the future, however... that would actually make their decision to clone him plausible.

And if Nemesis had even given an inkling that this was the case, then perhaps it would have made more sense. But they never mentioned that at all.

 

[Mytran]

Nemesis didn't say a lot of things it should have done. And said a lot of things it shouldn't!

 

[RoJoHen]

Apparently the Romulans had both a double of Picard and a virtual double of Yar for years.

To take us down a path bordered by wild Epileptic Trees for a moment...

Might I suggest that it was capturing/interrogating this alt!Tasha from the future which led to the Romulans taking an interest in this apparently unimportant Starfleet officer named Jean-Luc Picard and deciding to clone him in the first place? Baring in mind that Picard was hardly anyone special at the time the Romulans were supposed to have stolen his DNA. If they had some forward knowledge that Picard would be the captain of the flagship sometime in the future, however... that would actually make their decision to clone him plausible.

At the very least, it works out well enough with the timeline, given Shinzon's apparent age.

 

[Hober Mallow]

If only he knew about the ratings sweeps...

Data at least should have figured it out.

"Captain."

"Yes, Mr. Data."

"I've been going over the Enterprise's records cross-referenced with the ship's log entries and have noticed a curious pattern."

"Hmm. I see. According to this chart, there's been a spike in galactic activity in the proximity of the Enterprise at the same times every year since the the Farpoint mission, in November, February, and May. What do you make of this pattern Mr. Data?"

"I've insufficient information at this time, sir, however, we all well into mid-May."

"Mm. Go to yellow alert."

 

[Mudd]

To be clear, the exchange I described took place in the early weeks of production on season four - no more was said, and there's no reason to think that at so early a point they had conceived yet of Sela or of using Nimoy in a TNG episode.

 

[Melakon]

To be clear, the exchange I described took place in the early weeks of production on season four - no more was said, and there's no reason to think that at so early a point they had conceived yet of Sela or of using Nimoy in a TNG episode.

Early in season four... perhaps they were planning on working Denise into "Legacy", with Ishara Yar.

 

[xvicente]

To see hottie Denise Crosby again. Too bad she wasn't in a bikini. Do they have beaches in Romulus?

 

[Hober Mallow]

To see hottie Denise Crosby again. Too bad she wasn't in a bikini. Do they have beaches in Romulus?

Nah, the hot women wear puffy shoulder pads and hang out in caves.

 

[varek]

Sela was Crosby's sad desperate attempt to return to TNG. Thankfully, the writing staff abandoned the character after "Unification."

I agree. She played a role in some of the later books, but (thankfully) not for too long.

 

[Ghrakh]

Unification II should have had Carolyn Seymour or Andreas Katsulas. I can't imagine either of their characters pouting "I hate Vulcans. I hate the logic, I hate the arrogance, very well."

 

[AgentCoop]

Slightly OT, but it always ticks me off in Redemption when Guinan tells Picard that he's responsible for the whole situation. Alt-Guinan's comments to Alt-Tasha had much more to do with how Tasha ended up as a Romulan prisoner than anything Alt-Picard did. Granted, maybe Guinan can't sense that much detail, but that doesn't stop her from laying blame at Picard's door.

 

[Lance]

Slightly OT, but it always ticks me off in Redemption when Guinan tells Picard that he's responsible for the whole situation. Alt-Guinan's comments to Alt-Tasha had much more to do with how Tasha ended up as a Romulan prisoner than anything Alt-Picard did. Granted, maybe Guinan can't sense that much detail, but that doesn't stop her from laying blame at Picard's door.

And the reality is that alt-Picard didn't 'send' her back at all -- alt-Tasha volunteered, and when alt-Picard raised an objection about it she insisted on going back. But in "Redemption", Guinan acts just like Picard ordered her to go back with the Enterprise-C. It just wasn't so.

 

[Mytran]

IMO, it just adds weight to the whole argument about how unreliable Gunian's "intuition" really is. She clearly has some of psychic connection to other timelines (at least when in the presence of of multi-spacial temporal rift) but assuming that the information in her head is infallible is taking things a step too far.

Sadly, alt-Picard learned this lesson too late.

Luckily, our Picard ignored her and soldiered on regardless!

 

[Noname Given]

Sela was Crosby's sad desperate attempt to return to TNG. Thankfully, the writing staff abandoned the character after "Unification."

^^^
If only they'd done so PRIOR to "Unification" (Sorry, I never cared for the "Tasha survived and had a 1/2 Romulan daughter" tack on to what I thought was a decent story in "Yesterday's Enterprise" myself.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Slightly OT, but it always ticks me off in Redemption when Guinan tells Picard that he's responsible for the whole situation. Alt-Guinan's comments to Alt-Tasha had much more to do with how Tasha ended up as a Romulan prisoner than anything Alt-Picard did. Granted, maybe Guinan can't sense that much detail, but that doesn't stop her from laying blame at Picard's door.

You can either blame Ronald D. Moore for not knowing what he did there (he finalized "Yesterday's Enterprise" screenplay and should have known best) or you can congratulate him - like I do - for offering an alternative for the dilemma inevitably created.

One of the mission goals of YE had been to give the Tasha Yar character the "meaningful death" she didn't have in "Skin of Evil" (well, she died instead of another crew member so there was something "meaningful" about her death so that another crew member could live, IMHO).

Then came Denise Crosby wanting to star as her daughter (Moore: "It's insane!"). Since both Moore and Carson (DP) felt that they had given Tasha Yar a "meaningful death" following the unseen aftermath of YE as late as 2008, I have interpreted that information from "Redemption II" as a subtle but nevertheless clear hint that the Tasha that was captured and eventually executed by the Romulans came from yet another (unseen) parallel universe.

One thing is for certain: This wouldn't require rationalizations how the Tasha that travelled to the past in YE could have possibly been overlooked by the Romulan Tal Shiar intelligence, noticing her strange TNG era uniform and considering that all surviving members of the Enterprise-C knew they had been to the future.

Bob

 

[Mytran]

Maybe Tasha just ditched the jacket and was captured wearing just the trousers and T-shirt (like Ensign Ro in her first appearance).

It's certainly no great secret to the Romulans that Tasha came from the future (Sela was well aware of it, anyway). However, any knowledge would have come from an alternate timeline - the information obtained would quickly become out of sync with the 24th century we know.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Just ditching the jacket? Here is what I wrote in the closed Enterprise-C thread to illustrate the possibilities:

• There was nothing to worry about because when the Enterprise-C crossed the threshold her “universe at war” uniform somehow transformed into a uniform of 2344
• Tasha realized that fatal oversight prior to crossing the threshold, got undressed, grabbed Castillo’s phaser and vaporized her uniform and combadge (they were still about to engage the Romulans, not the Ferengi). [Although this image does exist in our reality, I guess it would be inappropriate to illustrate it here] Tasha’s daughter Sela would later state “a Romulan general saw her and became enamoured with her”. No more questions.
• The Romulans didn’t care and just thought that Tasha Yar had a fancy tailor
• … maybe the other Picard should have been listening to the other Riker, his own instincts (“Every instinct tells me this is wrong, it is dangerous, it is futile”) and Igor Novikov instead of Guinan…
• This Enterprise-C went back in time, but got diverted into a similar parallel universe “at war” where it got destroyed but where its actions saved a lot of people so that in total the war in that parallel universe cost less than 40 billion lives.

I think that the idea of a Romulan general simply taking Tasha under his wing and away from the Tal Shiar (in “our” universe) rather sounds like a fairy-tale than an authentic story. Tasha’s return to our universe must have been meticulously prepared to provide her with a cover that wouldn’t blow the minute the first survivor was interrogated and none of what we saw in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” did remotely suggest that.

All we learn in "Redemption II" was that Sela was aware of it. Possible that Tasha told her four year old daughter where she had come from and where she intended to escape to.

Actually, this is the part where I feel things get really interesting. Did Sela tell her father and how did he react to it? Did he give Tasha the choice of being executed or turned over to the Tal Shiar? There are some elements that would have been interesting to learn in a continuing Sela story arc, but unfortunately that never happened.

Bob

 

[Mytran]

The observation of Sela's personal history having elements of a fairy tale is probably very close to the truth. We have only her testimony to go on, really (Guinan's information is somewhat third-party).

Troi senses that Sela genuinely believes she is the daughter of Tasha Yar. This is hardly revelationary, since Romulan torturers are experts in their field and can make a person believe anything (see TNG's The Mind's Eye). Did Sela really get kidnapped by her mother aged 4, or is this just what she's been conditioned to believe? What were the extent of the "interrogations" that Tasha and the crew of the E-C underwent after their capture and what physical state were they in afterwards?

I can't help but agree with Robert_Comsol, this is a mine of untapped dramatic resources!