Natasha "Tasha" Yar is a character that mainly appeared in the first season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Portrayed by Denise Crosby, Yar is chief of security aboard the Starfleet starship USS Enterprise-D and carries the rank of lieutenant.
The character first appeared in the series' pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". After Crosby decided to leave the series, Yar was killed in the episode "Skin of Evil" near the end of the series' first season. She has a guest appearance in the third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", in which her character was still alive in an alternate timeline, and again in the final episode of the series "All Good Things...", which included events set prior to the pilot.
Yar was described as a forerunner to other strong women in science fiction, such as Kara Thrace from the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica, while providing an intermediary step between the depictions of female characters on The Original Series to the command positions they have on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Some fans have speculated on the sexuality of her character, and that the events in the episode "The Naked Now" were designed to establish her heterosexuality given an otherwise ambiguous portrayal.
Concept and development
The original December 1986 casting call for actors described early versions of the crew. It included a character named "Macha Hernandez" inspired by Vasquez in Aliens who was the security chief of the . The producers considered Jenette Goldstein, who had played Vasquez, for the role, but writer Dorothy Fontana pointed out that the actress "is not Latina. She is petite, blue-eyed, freckle-faced". The character was briefly renamed "Tanya" in March 1987 as a result. The guide described her character as such:
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The starship Security Chief, Tasha, who performs that same function both aboard ship and on away missions. Born at a "failed" Earth colony of renegades and other violent undesirables, she escaped to Earth in her teens and discovered Starfleet, which she still "worships" today as the complete opposite of all the ugliness she once knew.
In April 1987, Lianne Langland, Julia Nickson, Rosalind Chao, Leah Ayres, and Bunty Bailey were each listed as being in contention for the role; Chao was a favorite candidate. Denise Crosby was described as "the only possibility" for the character of Deanna Troi. The production staff were not keen on having two actresses in the bridge crew roles with similar physical types and hair colors, and so the team took account of the casting of the two roles together. The writers and directors guide described Yar as having a muscular but very feminine body type, and being sufficiently athletic to defeat most other crew members in martial arts. Roddenberry agreed to her request and she left on good terms. In a later retrospective, Crosby noted that the producers loved the character of Tasha Yar, despite the scripts of the first season failing to do much with the character. She speculated that her departure (and the departure of Gates McFadden) might have saved Marina Sirtis's then-tenuous position, as the producers had to avoid a situation where all three of the lead female actresses of season 1 were dismissed in season 2.
Crosby was happy to return in "Yesterday's Enterprise" due to the strength of the script, saying that "I had more to do in that episode than I'd ever had to do before". Prior to the episode being aired, the media had to be reassured that Yar was not returning in a dream sequence. Crosby later said that she was impressed with the changes wrought by Michael Piller as showrunner in the third season. Tasha Yar was written into Star Trek Online as part of the third anniversary celebration in 2013. Denise Crosby recorded audio for the game, in scenes set after those in "Yesterday's Enterprise".
Appearances
Natasha Yar's origins are explained in the season four episode "Legacy". She was born on the planet Turkana IV in 2337. She had a younger sister named Ishara, who was born five years after her. Shortly after Ishara's birth, the girls' parents were killed and they were taken in by other people; however, they were subsequently abandoned and Tasha was required to look after her sister on her own. The government on the planet had collapsed, and the sisters were forced to scavenge for food while avoiding rape gangs. In 2352, aged 15, Tasha managed to leave Turkana IV. She never saw Ishara again; the latter joined the "Coalition", one of the factions on the planet before Tasha left. Tasha refused to join the cadres on the planet, blaming them for her parents' deaths. In both that episode and "Hide and Q", she is outspoken and the most openly defiant of Q of the cast, although her defiance is ineffective both times. In "The Naked Now", while the crew are under the influence of an alien ailment, she initiates a sexual encounter with the android Data. In "Code of Honor" Yar is abducted by Lutan, the leader of the planet Ligon II, after she demonstrates her combat skills on the holodeck. She kills Lutan's wife Yareena in ritual combat to the death, though Yareena is revived on the Enterprise by Doctor Crusher. During the events of "Where No One Has Gone Before", Yar begins to hallucinate that she is back on Turkana IV and running for her life.
In "Skin of Evil", Yar forms part of the away team that beams down to Vagra II to rescue Deanna Troi from a crashed shuttlecraft. She is killed by the creature Armus in a display of his power. The crew hold a memorial service for her on the holodeck, and Worf replaces her as chief tactical and security officer.
Yar's legacy has a minor role in "The Measure of a Man", a second season episode. Despite Data's lack of emotions, he is sentimentally attached to her, and keeps a small hologram of her in his quarters. During the court hearing on Data's stature as a sentient being, he says that he and Yar were intimate and that she was special to him.
The USS Enterprise-C emerges from a rift in space-time in "Yesterday's Enterprise", and the timeline is changed. Yar is once again alive and in her former position on the Enterprise-D. She works with the older Enterprise's helmsman, Richard Castillo, and the two become close. Guinan, who has some awareness of the timeline that would be restored by the Enterprise-C returning into the rift, confides in Yar that she believes that Yar died senselessly in that timeline. Based on that advice, Yar transfers to the Enterprise-C and returns with it to two decades into the past, and its expected destruction at the hands of the Romulans while defending the Klingon outpost Narendra III. The alternative universe version of Yar traveled back in time on board the Enterprise-C, and into the main timeline. This process was later described as "world jumping" rather than a typical timeline travel story by critics.
In the two-part episode "Redemption", Denise Crosby plays Sela, Yar's half-Romulan daughter. In a follow-up to "Yesterday's Enterprise", it is revealed that several members of the Enterprise-C crew were captured by the Romulans when it returned through the rift, including Yar. A Romulan general offered to spare the crew's lives if she became his consort. After a year, Yar gave birth to Sela. When Sela was four, Yar attempted to escape but Sela screamed to prevent her from being taken away from her father. After she was caught, Yar was executed.
The series finale "All Good Things..." includes Yar's final appearance, in scenes that take place prior to and in the early parts of "Encounter at Farpoint". As most of the bridge crew are yet to join the Enterprise-D in the scenes, Yar is one of the senior members of the crew under Captain Picard in the earliest of the three timeframes in the episode. She needs to be convinced by Picard to put the ship in danger in order to destroy the temporal anti-time anomaly that threatens to prevent life from evolving on Earth.