Tasha Yar Waves goodbye...

Tasha Yar Waves goodbye...

Lorerunner did a review of Skin of Evil and I thought about the Tasha Yar death issue. The thing I remembered the switch-a-rue behind the scenes with the production order of the episodes. They filmed Skin of Evil before the episode Symbiosis. So, technically, Symbiosis was Denise's final episode despite filming her death scene episode a week before. Like TOS, early TNG would film things out of order.

So, she quickly breaks character and waves to the camera for the final time. I remember seeing strange movements in the background back when this was first aired. I only found out about Yar waving years later in a TNG BTS book. Does it break the universe? Yep, but that's okay. There were a few moments like that during season one of TNG. And the entire cast goofed off for seven years.

I know that Denise was a huge Trek fan and was disappointed with the manner her character was developing. And, I think she had every right to leave the show. I think her departure helped push Michael Dorn's Worf character to the forefront of both TNG and DS9 (and ST6). The was richer with this expansion of his character, Gene HATED Klingons and Worf.

Get this, Crosby intended this take to be in the outtakes/bloopers, but the production used this wave take in the final cut!

From Trek Core, ((Denise Crosby: Well I knew it was going to be my very last shot of the entire show – what I perceived to be my last shot – so I wanted to just do what I thought would be a bloop on the blooper reel and wave goodbye to the fans. Well then they said, “Cut” and they moved on.

I said, “They didn’t see that? They’ve got to redo it, they can’t use that…” and they had to use it. ))

I always thought this was a nice little thing to note in early TNG.

Side Note: Make sure to read the interview in Trek Core to hear the story about her encounter with Rick Berman.