I don’t know whether this is an unpopular opinion or not but I actually think that the way Tasha Yar died gave the show much higher stakes throughout it’s entire run. Here is the chief security officer, main bridge crew, tragic back story, potential love interest for the robot character just slapped down by the monster of the week. It made all the subsequent dangerous situations seem much more dire because “they were willing to kill off someone in the main cast”. I also think that Yesterday’s Enterprise was an awesome send off for that character that let them have a heroic ending for her after all.
It was a shame because I think Denise Crosby could have been awesome as a recurring character and in my opinion, we didn’t get a great strong female character in the main cast (until DS9 which is an embarrassment of riches in that department). But I maintain that casually killing off Tasha Yar made my first watchthrough of TNG much more exciting.
I don’t however like the additional stretch of her half-romulan daughter. It’s pretty soap-opera-ish in my opinion and tarnishes the heroic sacrifice of her character.
There was a real threat that Picard would get killed off in Beat of Both Worlds.
Is that the one with the robots who challenge him to a dance contest?
Rhythm is futile?
Oh great, here come the Korg. With their wicked beats and impossibly tripedal dance moves…
I think the fact she got lightning-bolted by a sad puddle sort of ruined the dramatic impact of her death.
Soap-opera-ish is completely right - killing off a character is meaningless if you establish your writers will stoop to a fakeout or a never before mentioned sibling/twin (or clone or mirror universe version, since it’s sci-fi).
Okay, but that’s not really what they did with Sela.
Sela wasn’t ‘Tasha returned’ - she had nothing in common with Tasha (in terms of personality or her role in the show) except for being played by the same actress. She clearly wasn’t just a backdoor soap opera route for Tasha to return.
Also she was only actually in four episodes (on the first of which the character wasn’t identified and Denise Crosby was an uncredited voice only). Sela’s brief appearances were so memorable that we tend to forget how minor her role actually was across the span of TNG - Tomalak had a bigger role, for example.
I mean they killed her because they wanted to fire her, right? At least that’s what I seem to recall.
They didn’t want to fire her, but she did want to quit. She wasn’t happy with the direction they were taking her character. I wouldn’t be surprised if she also had issues with the same guy McFadden did. Jadzia was killed off because Berman wouldn’t let Farrell switch to being a recurring rather than a regular, which may be what you’re thinking of.
I don’t know if this is unpopular, but I wasn’t a fan of her character or the writing. Not sure how to describe it. But the whole first season was kinda off.
