How did Denise Cosby help or hurt her career by leaving TNG??

[tighr]

I remember for years as a kid being a fan TNG through reruns but somehow missing the early episodes so the first time seeing some of the first episodes was really strange and I remember wondering who the hell that woman was.

I remember thinking it was too bad the "Skant" uniform didn't stick around past season 1.

 

[Doug Otte]

TNG certainly got better without her, but it possibly would have got better anyway as characters become better and deeper.

Worf would have still got air time, being the only klingon if crosby left, but some human would have had to make way for crosby along the line, maybe less crusher or maybe no ro laren.

But the point is the show progressed without herand it hindsight i am glad she had left.

I agree with your post, but what does the highlighted text mean? Crosby didn't portray a Klingon.

Doug

 

[BruntFCA]

TNG certainly got better without her, but it possibly would have got better anyway as characters become better and deeper.

Worf would have still got air time, being the only klingon if crosby left, but some human would have had to make way for crosby along the line, maybe less crusher or maybe no ro laren.

But the point is the show progressed without herand it hindsight i am glad she had left.

I agree with your post, but what does the highlighted text mean? Crosby didn't portray a Klingon.

Doug

I believe the OP means that Worf would have still been the only Klingon even if Crosby STAYED and would still have got air time.

 

[Silvercrest]

Truth be known, she's really no better or worse off for having been on the show or left it. It's likely her career wasn't going to do any better than it did anyhow. However, if she had really intended to make a go at being in major motion pictures, then her mistake wasn't leaving TNG, but rather signing up in the 1st place, which was a concern that Patrick Stewart even considered, at the very beginning, & that guy is a brilliant actor, a far cry from being the actress who's biggest claim to fame prior to TNG was being "Sleazy Girlfriend or... Prostitute?" (I can't remember) in 48 Hours

Oh, but you're forgetting her starring role in ... (drum roll, please)... ELIMINATORS!

If she had stayed they probably would have made Worf chief engineer and I think that would have beenb much more interesting than his security job.

Actually I think it more likely that he'd have ended up at the helm. I think they were wanting Geordi elsewhere even before they moved him there. His featuring at the helm & in command roles didn't seem to stick much

It would have been very interesting to see Worf at the helm. Encounters with, say, the Romulans, would have gone very differently, what with Worf being tempted to kamikaze the ship.

Picard: If the cause is just and honourable, they are prepared to give their lives. Are you prepared to die today, Tomalak?
Tomalak: I expected more from you than an idle threat, Picard.
Picard: Then you shall have it. Mr. Worf.
Worf: Aye, sir! Today is a good day to die! RRRARGHH! (Fires up the impulse engines)
Picard: Do not engage! Mr. Worf, do not engage! (merde)

 

[CaptainJack]

I think its hard to say if TNG would have been better or not if she had stayed. But I have to think that she missed a nice steady paycheck and also 4 movie paychecks. So I think she should have stayed.
And who knows, maybe her character would have gotten better along with the rest of the show, not because she was not there necessarily...

 

[Mojochi]

If she had stayed they probably would have made Worf chief engineer and I think that would have beenb much more interesting than his security job.

Actually I think it more likely that he'd have ended up at the helm. I think they were wanting Geordi elsewhere even before they moved him there. His featuring at the helm & in command roles didn't seem to stick much

It would have been very interesting to see Worf at the helm. Encounters with, say, the Romulans, would have gone very differently, what with Worf being tempted to kamikaze the ship.

Picard: If the cause is just and honourable, they are prepared to give their lives. Are you prepared to die today, Tomalak?
Tomalak: I expected more from you than an idle threat, Picard.
Picard: Then you shall have it. Mr. Worf.
Worf: Aye, sir! Today is a good day to die! RRRARGHH! (Fires up the impulse engines)
Picard: Do not engage! Mr. Worf, do not engage! (merde)

lol I think if he was able to restrain himself with being in charge of the ship's arsenal, the helm wouldn't have been nearly as tempting

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Had Yar stayed alive, in S2 Geordi would have been promoted to Chief Engineer and Worf would become the new Conn Officer, leaving Wesley to sit at the science console (which makes more sense given his apparant 'brilliance').

Crosby would have gotten more comfortable in her role, just as all the cast did, and Yar would have gotten more development. I always envisioned a romance between her and Worf forming (seeing as how they had so much in common).

If she'd stayed, some people always say Worf wouldn't have gotten the development and screen time he did. But his character was always more about being Klingon than being Security Chief. He could have been the Ship's Janitor and still had lots written about him and plenty of opportunities to be developed.

 

[Eno]

Another question then: Was Star Trek The Next Generation Season Two and beyond better without Denise Crosby?

I believe so. I disliked Tasha Yar. She lacked judgement and self control. This hardly qualified her for security chief on the flagship.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Would have been a hilarious running gag if she'd stayed and She constantly complained because Picard kept giving the security assignments to Worf anyway like he did in AGT.

 

[Keith1701]

It does appear that Tar Yar and Worf really had the same duties, so in many ways her leaving was good for the story lines and show itself.

 

[Commander Riker]

I think it was good for the series to get Yar off of the show. It also showed the viewers that a major character could die. That episode 'Skin of Evil' should have been the season finale.

Worf and Yar were inhabiting the same niche.

 

[Trekker4747]

Backing out of your contract part-way through the first season of your first meaningful role is hardly a good way to lure potential employers into your camp, especially if your talents as an actor are limited.

She was a young woman whose parts up to that point were small, obscure, or one-offs character-of-the-weeks. She landed a regular role on a TV series with a built-in fan base that'd probably help ensure it'd last a while not to mention the notoriety that'd likely come with it given what happened with the original cast.

Yes, during the first season she wasn't used much or given much but neither were a lot of the people on the show aside from Stewart, Frakes and Spiner. She thought she was much better and deserving than she was and wanted out of a contract. That never is going to look good.

You can ask many actors who've backed out of contracts of shows they're on over the years how it panned out and it rarely works out and almost always results in that character being killed or ruined in a manner that coming back is impossible. (Fortunate for Crosby she was on a Sci-Fi series that allowed for hand-waving to allow her to come back a couple of times.)

She decimated her career by leaving the show. If she wasn't happy there she should have worked out the rest of her contract (or waited until the series was canceled if that was to be the show's destiny) and then moved on. Yeah, she may not have been happy on the show but it was still a paycheck and working her contract out would at least give her some integrity to future employers. But by backing out of her contract not even a year into it makes he look flaky and not like a stable person to hire.

Would you hire someone who quit their previous job less than a year into a 4-year contract because they thought they were better than they were?

If Crosby had made into Season 3 her character certainly would've gotten better (as everyone else's did) and her acting likely would have improved as well as she got more work in (again, everyone else's acting even improved over the course of the series.)

But she was too unstable and likely had an agent giving her delusions of grandeur by whispering things in her ear and making promises about "other projects and avenues" he couldn't hold-up to.

And given that Crosby did nothing of meaningful note post-TNG and that she's tried to weasel her way back in many times over the years it certainly did hurt her career and did nothing to help it.

Granted, her appearance in "YE" wasn't hers but the writers'/producers' idea but Sela was her idea to try and get back in there and, well, I liked the idea behind Sela so I'm mostly okay with that. After TNG ended, though, it seemed like she kept trying to make her Trek-Train keep on going with "Trekkies" and doing audio books and the like which strikes me as, "Ummm... Why are you so nostalgic and grateful for your time on the show when you didn't even last-out one season because you thought you were better than it?!"

(As for Worf's role in TNG's first season. I think he was just a relief officer or perhaps some-kind-of "intern" who just went wherever he was needed. Had Yar stayed I think Geordi still would have gone to Engineering and Worf likely would have taken over at helm or just remained a "relief officer" or, better yet, made Chief Medical Officer for contrived reasons since McFadden's departure would still have happened. (This, of course, likely would have meant no Pulaski and no return of Crusher.) And, yeah, I've no idea how they'd make Worf CMO with it logically making sense unless they just said, "Yeah, well you finally finished that MD you were working on, congrats, Worf!"

 

[Locutus of Board]

May 1988 playboy /thread

 

[Keith1701]

May 1988 playboy /thread

Yeah...I enjoyed that issue for sure.

 

[BruntFCA]

While having her in Yesterdays Enterprise was alright the whole Sela thing was pretty weak sauce.

 

[Dr. Crusher]

I certainly didn't miss Tasha Yar much after she left, but that had a lot to do with how short her stay on TNG was. Any of the characters at that point in the first season could probably have made a similar claim about lack of character development.

I do wonder, though, how the series would have progressed once it really its stride if Tasha Yar had remained part of the crew. I wasn't a huge fan of the many additional appearances that Denise Crosby made on the show after Tasha's death, but I am not sure that says much about where Tasha's character would have gone later on.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

How I'd liked to have seen the crew from Season 2 onwards:

Commanding Officer — CAPT Jean-Luc Picard
First Officer — CDR William Riker
Chief Operations Officer — LT CDR Data (Android)
Ship’s Counsellor — LT CDR Deanna Troi (Betazoid/Human)
Chief Security/Tactical Officer — LT Natasha Yar*
Chief Engineering Officer — LT Geordi La Forge
Chief Medical Officer — LT Selar (Vulcan)**
Chief Flight Control Officer — LT JG Worf (Klingon)***
Trainee Officer — ACT ENS Wesley Crusher

* - Still alive, gets more comfortable in her role and gets more development--including a romance/physical relationship with Worf
** - Replaces Doctor Crusher. Whilst Data is on a quest to be more human, she can help him study emotions from a more neutral standpoint
*** - He pilots the ship, is taken on missions in need of more muscle, covers at Tactical when Yar is away, then has to face being dishonoured by Duras before exposing the truth (so basically everything he did in the series, except he wears red throughout)

 

[Trekker4747]

While having her in Yesterdays Enterprise was alright the whole Sela thing was pretty weak sauce.

I liked the idea of Sela with the predestination paradox idea but the use of Sela was weak.

It may have been more interesting if the captured, middle-aged, Tasha had survived into the -D's time and got to talk with "this universe's" Picard about what had happened, solidifying the claims made by Guinan.

 

[MNM]

I think its hard to say if TNG would have been better or not if she had stayed. But I have to think that she missed a nice steady paycheck and also 4 movie paychecks. So I think she should have stayed. .

It's easy to say that in hindsight though, when we know the series was very successful, lasted seven seasons, got multiple movies, etc..

But when she made he decision, none of that seemed likely and she wasnt getting much from it, so leaving didnt look like the worse decision you could make.

 

[Flake]

Denise Crosby left TNG because her 18 hour days involved her standing around on the bridge in the background at tactical and saying the odd line or two. She hated every minute of it and couldn't wait to get out. !