Remember how outrageous that Okona was? Man was he ever outrageous. He’s so outrageous that he makes all of us who are standing around talking about how outrageous he is look very not outrageous in comparison.
He was a rogue. A scoundrel.
Chicks dig that.
Tasha Yar was killed off because the actor wanted out.
There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the character as a concept, the show just was woodenly written. Denise Crosby is a perfectly competent actress. You can have a great actor look terrible given bad scripts; look at poor Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequels.
That said, in retrospect, the character dynamic was far better with Tasha gone, Worf in the security role, and room freed up for Geordi to be chief engineer.
“Risk is our business! That’s why I’m moving five armies into Kamchatka.”
Agree. Crosby’s work as “alternate Yar” and as “Sela” was fine.
I didn’t say Denise Crosby was bad. I said Tasha Yar was bad. She was. Whether that was Denise Crosby’s acting or the writing or the directing or whatever is irrelevant. 
And how was Geordi freed up to become chief engineer because of Tasha Yar’s death? They could have done that at any time. And let’s not talk about how stupid that promotion was: you promote your helmsman to chief engineer? This is because he was helmsman on account of his incredible knowledge of warp drive engines?? :smack::smack:
As for the acting chops of Denise Crosby, I think that’s best summed up by the fact that she’s had limited major roles as an actor: Tasha Yar, Rachel Creed in Pet Semetary, and (arguably) Marilyn Wade in Dolly Dearest, a limited budget film that was almost direct-to-video. She had a minor role in Days of Our Lives, and has had limited guest roles in TV shows, etc.
Not exactly the resume of a stellar actress. But in her defense, she certainly didn’t act any worse than Marina Sirtis, and one can argue that the only reason Sirtis lasted the whole series on TNG was that she was willing to be cast in an eye-candy-like role.
She was wooden no matter which role she played. And I thought the whole “alternate timeline/she had a child by a Romulan” story line was stupid and unnecessary.
Geordi was probably promoted because Roddenberry or Justman didn’t want to repeat the cliche of a Scottish Chief Engineer, and they didn’t want to spend the money to hire another actor for the role. Also, they wanted to make LeVar Burton’s role more important, since he was getting star billing already.
Of course! Didn’t you know that all professional drivers are also master mechanics? They’d jump out of their cars and fix everything themselves in the Pit, but they don’t have time.
Plus she had spectacular boobs! :o
Thank you, Counselor. We’d never have figured that out by ourselves! :smack:
Or, you could wank it that before getting a promotion to Chief Engineer, or the head of any department, an officer must serve in various other positions around the ship to “round them out” into a proper Big Deal Occifer. Geordi was just doing his required stint as a Bridge Officer first season. It’s not like he actually flew the damn ship. He just punched a few buttons and fell over when the director yelled “Hit!”
I don’t think it a terribly long stretch to assume a highly talented officer would be asked to perform multiple roles on the ship as he worked his way up.
If anything, I find it rather less likely a person spending decades in Starfleet would stay in the same role forever. People don’t even do that in navies and armies today, and the implication in Star Trek is
- People do things because they want to, not because economics makes them do it, and
- People live a bit longer, so their careers are a bit longer.
One would think a well-rounded Starfleet officer, especially a really, really good one, would have taken the time to do several different jobs.
The things that didn’t work for me were:
-
WESLEY being a helmsman. That made zero sense. Now, having said, that, I liked the CHARACTER of Wesley Crusher. He was a useful dynamic in terms of defining the other characters and he was an interesting character himself, well played by Wil Wheaton. They just shouldn’t have had him on the bridge. Enterprise is one of the fleet’s most prestigious postings; every officer on board who had taken flight training would be writing angry emails to Starfleet about how some kid was steering the ship and they weren’t being given the chance.
-
Deanna Troi as the “counselor.” The idea of Troi having empathic powers was ill advised and more or less forgotten most of the time, because it usually got in the way more than anything else. The thing is, whenever asked to do anything else interesting, I liked the character and Marina Sirtis; any episode where her mother showed up was wonderful, as Sirtis got to play a much more relateable person.
-
Beverley Crusher in general; she was a terrible character. I’m not to this day precisely sure what her character was, really. She just seemed to be this perfect moral crusader. Having a sort-of-romantic foil for the ever-professional Picard was a fine idea, and those scenes were often the show’s most poignant, but she could have been a lot more human.
I have a hazy feeling about this…
I’ve got two:
The two episodes with Dr. Leah Brahms. Isn’t Geordi smarter than that? Plus, ick factor.
The episode where they find Scotty stuck in a transporter buffer. The whole damn, stupid episode. Scotty: You soured the milk! :smack::smack::smack:
And for good measure: anything with Diana Muldaur. Anything!
One good bit: Q turns Dr. Crusher into a very attractive Irish Setter. I’m rather fond of dogs…fond of dogs…fond of dogs… .
I would have paid good money if the last episode that season she’d fallen down a turbolift shaft.
I said that exact thing to my wife and she punched me on the arm!
Can’t happen. By the 24th century, technology has been perfected. For things like transporters, turbolifts, holodecks, the safeguards are too embedded. These things are foolproof. Nothing can go wrong…go wrong…go wrong…
I’d like o defend Denise Crosby, if not exactly Tasha Yar.
Yar was not a very good character, but the concept was very sound and would have worked extremely well. It’s that she was written… badly. Abysmally badly. And also, there are some rumors, or rather very-likely-but-not-confirmed-facts, that she was maybe-possibly being harassed… err… personally by two men who happened to be her bosses. Crosby could see how bad the show was and wanted out. And frankly, it would indeed struggle for the next year, and only really turned around once the leadership team had been entirely overturned.
Note that she was invited back for guest roles, and did quite well in them. So I don’t think anyone can plausible argue she was the problem, and she left because she wanted to leave, not because she was forced.