Did Natasha Yarr deserve that sort of death?

[Willim Davies]

I have just been re-watching through the first, second and third series.
I began to ander if Yarr really deserved to die in that way.
personally i didn't like her charcter much but i thought it would have been better if she was killed off in like a more either heroic way or meaningful way.
what do you guys think?

 

[T'Girl]

The whole purpose of her death was that it be sudden and jarring, and as Guinan put it "a meaningless death." Tasha's death did absolutely nothing to advance the recovery of Deanna and her pilot. Tasha didn't get to do the death bed in sickbay thing, saying goodby to each of her friends in turn.

She just died.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yar?

Probably not but at least it was "realistic." Space exploration and dealing with mal-intended beings isn't always going to be pretty.

But remember Yar was killed off because Denise Crosby was being a prima donna and thought that being a nobody actor that no one had heard of earned her more than what she was getting on a new TV series struggling to come up with good stories during a writer's strike (either in the wake of or a looming one.) So she wanted out of her contract, somehow thinking that this would make her appealing to future employers. So Crosby got what she deserved.

 

[Willim Davies]

true true

 

[iguana_tonante]

But remember Yar was killed off because Denise Crosby was being a prima donna and thought that being a nobody actor that no one had heard of earned her more than what she was getting on a new TV series struggling to come up with good stories during a writer's strike (either in the wake of or a looming one.) So he wanted out of her contract, somehow thinking that this would make her appealing to future employers. So Crosby got what she deserved.

Wow. Kind of harsh, don't you think? Maybe she made the wrong call for her career, but I don't see the reason for such acrimony against her.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I've never understood what was so "meaningless" about Yar's death to begin with.

 

[Christopher]

I've never understood what was so "meaningless" about Yar's death to begin with.

I agree. She died doing her duty, trying to save a life. Nothing could be more meaningful, whether she succeeded or not. Armus's act was meaningless, but Tasha's sacrifice was not.

Besides, where do we get this notion that who dies or how has anything to do with what they "deserve?" That's not the way the world works. Death is unfair and arbitrary and leaves things frustratingly unresolved -- that's its nature. I think it's dishonest to approach fictional death in such a way that nobody ever dies unless there's some profound meaning or resolution to it -- or unless they're "unimportant" characters whose deaths are trivial. The idea that any death is unimportant is a lie. A security guard who dies facing down a vampire cloud or a murderous space probe may just be Redshirt #2 to us, but to his friends and family, that random, unnecessary death is a tragedy that they'll have to live with for the rest of their days. Tasha's death was very meaningful because it showed us what it feels like when an arbitrary redshirt death happens to someone we care about, someone whose loss isn't just an incidental plot point. It's meaningful because it's honest, far more honest than treating any person's death as a casual, minor event.

 

[Trekker4747]

But remember Yar was killed off because Denise Crosby was being a prima donna and thought that being a nobody actor that no one had heard of earned her more than what she was getting on a new TV series struggling to come up with good stories during a writer's strike (either in the wake of or a looming one.) So he wanted out of her contract, somehow thinking that this would make her appealing to future employers. So Crosby got what she deserved.

Wow. Kind of harsh, don't you think? Maybe she made the wrong call for her career, but I don't see the reason for such acrimony against her.

It's just the prima donna attitude she had that she wasn't being treated fairly and was just a "hailing frequencies open, captain" character. Troi, LaForge, Worf and Crusher were hardly all that fleshed out either and they all stuck through it (setting aside the issues McFadden had with the crew/they had with her character.) For some reason Crosby couldn't be arsed to full-fill whatever contractual obligations she had to the series and then broke the contract.

That's the key thing she broke the contract. That hardly makes her look good and makes it look like she was somehow better than the show and was just so great in her few years of acting (near as I can tell all of the roles she did before TNG were pretty small) and she was being wasted in TNG.

Yeah, her character wasn't given a lot to do, sure, at the same time it was the show's first season she should have stuck it out and honored her contract. But she left fine.

What's worse is the way she's tried to shoe-horn her way back in to Trek ever since and almost spinning the story as if she was somehow cheated. Yes, it was the creators' idea to bring her back in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and it worked nicely. But Sela was Crosby's idea because she thought it was so fun to do TNG again. Which, okay, Sela mostly worked for her first episode but then it kept going back to the well and post-TNG she tried acting "relevant" to Star Trek by doing the Trekkies movies (not doing the fandom any great favor in the process.)

So, sorry, I'm a little harsh on her but she broke a contract, regretted it and has been trying to change history ever since.

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

No, she didn't deserve that sort of death. But it was not meaningless. She was a security officer. It's her job to die before the captain does, to be blunt. Picard lived on to greatness, assimilation, and Q-induced senility! Yar rotted at the bottom of a living pond-scum.

 

[Trekker4747]

No, she didn't deserve that sort of death. But it was not meaningless. She was a security officer. It's her job to die before the captain does, to be blunt. Picard lived on to greatness, assimilation, and Q-induced senility! Yar rotted at the bottom of a living pond-scum.

Actually she rotted in whatever serves as a proper burial in the 24th century.

 

[Therin of Andor]

That's the key thing she broke the contract.

No. Crosby asked to be released and Paramount could easily have said "No", and then it would be up to her to either see out four more years, perhaps grumbling and griping all the way like Robert Beltran did on VOY, or simply stop reporting to the set (like Farrah Fawcett-Majors on "Charlie's Angels", or Valerie Harper on "Valerie") and get sued for breach of contract.

makes it look like she was somehow better than the show

Or simply that the role did not evolve the way it was originally pitched to her: that she would have major screen time whenever an away team was called.

 

[Trekker4747]

That's the key thing she broke the contract.

No. Crosby asked to be released and Paramount could easily have said "No", and then it would be up to her to either see out four more years, perhaps grumbling and griping all the way like Robert Beltran did on VOY, or simply stop reporting to the set (like Farrah Fawcett-Majors on "Charlie's Angels", or Valerie Harper on "Valerie") and get sued for breach of contract.

makes it look like she was somehow better than the show

Or simply that the role did not evolve the way it was originally pitched to her: that she would have major screen time whenever an away team was called.

It was absurd for her to expect the world inside of one season.

 

[Distorted Humor]

Well, she mad a bad choice, and she had a silly death. In 20/20 hindsight I think it would of been more appropriate if she was going to have a pointless death, have a rock slide take her out or something. Even as a kid I knew the "oil slick" was stupid.

 

[iguana_tonante]

For some reason Crosby couldn't be arsed to full-fill whatever contractual obligations she had to the series and then broke the contract.

That's the key thing she broke the contract. (...)

So, sorry, I'm a little harsh on her but she broke a contract, regretted it and has been trying to change history ever since.

As Therin of Andor explained, you are basing your opinion on a wrong assumption, which makes your enmity towards the actress even more ridiculous.

It was absurd for her to expect the world inside of one season.

Well, it is good to know that you have such insight on the inner working of a tv show.

 

[BlobVanDam]

The funny thing is that when I watched TNG for the first time, I actively despised her character at every opportunity, and I could not have been happier to see her get such a degrading death as being smacked around by space tar.

Does that make me a bad person?

 

[Pauln6]

I can understand Crosby's frustration. Just because many of the other actors were treated the same doesn't mean she didn't have some justification. Yar's most memorable episodes occurred in the first few episodes and after that she was portrayed as a rather stupid, ineffectual character. I do think that reducing her to saying, 'Hailing frequencies open' was very insulting to the character, particularly when most fans even in the eighties viewed that as a rather demeaning characteristic of Uhura.

She was offered a movie role, she asked to leave, and they agreed to release her. The biggest shame is that they replaced the female security chief with a bartender. I'm not a huge fan of many shows out one in mentality where they have to replace any actors who leave with a very similar character but even so only leaving women in the 'caring' professions and a bartender did affect the female dynamic of the show.

As for her death, it was awesome, as I had no idea it was coming. Brutal and meaningless deaths can be really fun (Serenity had a cool one too). I'm so over heroism and cheesy deathbed speeches. I loved it. If I have a criticism, it's that it would have been cooler if an older Tasha had been part of the Romulan underground instead of using the same actress to play her daughter. I know Crosby had a ball playing Sela but Tasha's second, off-camera demise felt hollow and poorly thought through.

 

[Therin of Andor]

It was absurd for her to expect the world inside of one season.

She quickly got reduced to saying "Hailing frequencies open, sir", the very phrase that haunted Nichelle Nicols for three years - and TOS wasn't an ensemble cast.

Yar was supposed to be as prominent and memorable as Vasquez in "Aliens". Crosby had been told that Yar would be in charge on away missions, challenging Riker's decisions with meaty dialogue. Now, it could be that her relatively weaker performances led to the writers giving the stronger parts to other characters, but there was no indication her role was going to get bigger. She was told things weren't likely to change. And her penalty box sobbing and say-no-to-drugs lines in other eps were quickly lampooned.

When she read "Skin of Evil", Crosby was so moved by the funeral speech that she said that if all scripts had lines like that, she'd never have left. But the series was heavy with main cast members. Troi was already slated to be written out (she is absent from several episodes in Season One because the writers couldn't find enough for everyone to do) until Crosby asked to leave.

 

[Trekker4747]

You don't give up in the first half of the first inning because you're down by several runs is all I'm saying. Had she stuck it out and the actions they were taking on her character HAD taken place then, sure, she'd have a reason to get out of her contract. But she didn't even make it through one damn season because things fell off course a bit.

 

[Therin of Andor]

You don't give up in the first half of the first inning because you're down by several runs is all I'm saying.

Sometimes you do. She asked about an improved situation and they said it wasn't coming. Then she got offered a movie and she would have had to turn it down.

Leaving early worked quite well for Farrah Fawcett, even with paying a huge breach of contract fine to Paramount and being forced to return for several episodes.

 

[Pauln6]

Early TNG needed a smaller main cast and a larger cast of recurring guest characters until they worked out which characters the writers could work with. If Troi had appeared in the same number of episodes as Guinan, she would still have been a main character but she wouldn't have been reduced to lame one-liners in a lot of episodes. The characters' jobs on their own are not enough to build on - they need other definable traits and Yar's traumatic upbringing wasn't showcased at all in the entire season. On balance though, they got the hang of things fairly quickly and ended up with an impressive, well-rounded cast.