Another original Star Trek: The Next Generation main character is making an appearance in Star Trek: Picard season 3.
Is Tasha Yar in Picard?
Denise Crosby, who played Tasha Yar in The Next Generation, hinted in August 2022 that her Star Trek character will appear in Picard season 3.
According to TrekMovie.com, a fan asked Crosby on the opening day of the 56-Year Mission Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas if she will be part of Picard season 3, which is bringing back most of her former The Next Generation castmates for what has been described as a “sendoff” season.
Seemingly surprised by the question, the actress replied: “Oh. I don’t want to give away too much. But I’m going to tell you that you will see Tasha Yar, but I’m not going to tell you how. You’ve got to watch.”
Crosby’s answer is quite intriguing, especially after she told TrekMovie.com in May 2022 that she had “never been asked” to appear in Picard season 3. When the website noted that production on the final season of the show had already wrapped last March, the actress even commented that the “ship has sailed.”
While it’s possible that Crosby was just lying when she said that she was not asked to return for Picard season 3, it’s equally possible that she’s actually telling the truth. After all, there are a couple of ways in which Tasha can appear in Picard without Crosby filming a single scene on set. For instance, Crosby probably shot a brief scene remotely or the show would just use old footage of her as Tasha.
Who is Tasha Yar?
First appeared in The Next Generation’s pilot episode, Encounter at Farpoint, Natasha Yar, nicknamed Tasha, was the security chief aboard the USS Enterprise-D in the show’s first season. Carrying the rank of lieutenant, Tasha was regarded as a forerunner to other strong women in science fiction.
What race is Tasha Yar?
Tasha was a human born in Turkana City on Turkana IV, the inhabited fourth planet in the Turkana system of the Beta Quadrant.
What is Tasha Yar’s backstory on Star Trek?
Tasha was born a drug addict due to her mother’s joy dust addiction. According to The Next Generation novel Survivors, Tasha’s mom fed her the drug when she was still a baby to keep her quiet until she couldn’t afford enough for the both of them. This explains why Tasha’s earliest memories were of withdrawal pains.
Not only that, Tasha’s homeworld, Turkana IV, was a “failed” Earth colony of renegades, rape gangs, and other violent undesirables. In fact, at the young age of 6, Tasha saw her parents get killed with her very own eyes after they were caught in a crossfire between opposing cadre forces. This pushed her to escape to Earth in her teens, leading her to attend the Starfleet Academy. Because of the lawless environment in which she grew up, Tasha deliberately joined Starfleet Security.
Fast-forward to 2363, while conducting a rescue mission, Tasha rescued a colonist after traversing a Carnelian minefield. Impressed by Tasha’s bravery, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) requested her to join the Enterprise crew, as Tasha’s current ship’s captain owed Picard a favor.
When did Tasha Yar leave TNG?
In Skin of Evil, the 23rd episode of The Next Generation’s first season, Tasha was part of an away team that beamed down to Vagra II to rescue Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) from a crashed shuttlecraft. During the rescue mission, Tasha was killed by the creature Armus, a powerful entity resembling a sentient oil slick. When assaulted by the creature, Tasha suffered a head trauma that ultimately took her life.
Tasha’s manner of death was received with mostly negative reviews calling it a senseless death, as that kind of demise was usually reserved for redshirts and similarly unnamed characters. Her death scene was so bad that it was even included in a list of tasteless sci-fi deaths.
Following Tasha’s death, Worf (Michael Dorn) took over the role of chief of security aboard the Enterprise.
Did Tasha Yar come back?
Tasha was written back into The Next generation for a guest appearance in the season 3 episode, Yesterday’s Enterprise, in which her character was still alive in an alternate timeline. In this episode, the crew of Enterprise-D must decide whether to send the time-traveling Enterprise-C back through a temporal rift to its certain destruction, to prevent damaging changes to their timeline. Widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series, the installment also prominently featured the character of Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg).
Tasha also returned for the show’s series finale, All Good Things…, in scenes set during the events of the show’s very first episode.
In addition to Tasha, Crosby also played the role of Sela in seasons 4 and 5 of The Next Generation. Sela is a Romulan commander and was the product of a union between Tasha’s counterpart from an alternate timeline and a Romulan general. Sela was regarded as a key figure in the Romulan Empire’s covert attempts to destabilize both the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
In the 80th episode of The Next Generation, titled Legacy, the series also brought viewers to Tasha’s homeworld, Turkana IV. While Tasha didn’t appear in the episode, Captain Picard and the crew of Enterprise-D encountered her younger sister, Ishara Yar.
Why did Star Trek get rid of Tasha Yar?
In an interview with StarTrek.com back in 2012, Crosby pointed out that she was not fired from The Next Generation. According to her, she put in a request to be released from her contract as a series regular at the end of the show’s first season, which creator Gene Roddenberry granted.
Asked if she made the right choice to exit the series at the time, the actress said: “Yes. For me, I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show. I was dying. This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going “Aye, aye, captain,” and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years.”
Crosby continued: “I think you have to take your chances. I was really young. I didn’t have to make house payments or put kids through private school or support people. I was free to make those kinds of decisions. I’d been in acting school really dreaming of playing all kinds of different things. Whether it’ll happen or not, you don’t know, but you’ve got to give yourself a chance. God forbid you go through your life thinking, “What if?”
Star Trek: Picard season 3 release date
The third and final season of Picard is set to premiere on Paramount+ on February 16th, 2023, and will run for 10 episodes until April 20th.
Star Trek: Picard season 3 trailer
The official trailer for the last season of Picard dropped in February 2023. You can watch it below:
