Denise Crosby played security chief Tasha Yar on Star Trek: the Next Generation for 22 episodes of season 1 before choosing to exit the series. At the STLV: Trek To Vegas convention in early August, I had the opportunity to moderate her panel on the main stage about her early days with the show and the changes she discovered when she returned a few seasons later.
Gene, Rick, and stodgy Patrick
Crosby talked at length about her time on season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, saying that watching episodes with The 7th Rule for the first time gave her renewed appreciation for it, saying she “fell back in love with the character of Tasha,” which took her by surprise.
She said that in those early days, they used to do table reads of each script over lunch, a practice later abandoned by the show (and not done on the other Berman-era shows) due to timing and production logistics. Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman would both be there to talk about the script and answer the actors’ questions. She described the tone of those gatherings: “Gene was just very much there to support us in our interpretation of the character. It’s like, this is yours now, this belongs to you.”
Marina Sirtis, Denise Crosby, Jonathan Frakes, and Brent Spiner in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1
Those early days were full of chaos behind the scenes, but Denise and her castmates worked to keep themselves insulated from it, focusing on trying to figure out their characters. “Within all of that,” Crosby said, “there was a lot of joy, a lot of spirit, a lot of teamwork, a lot of silliness.”
In his memoir Making It So, Patrick Stewart described a meeting in which he chastised his castmates for “goofing off,” and in response to Crosby’s insistence that they had to have some fun sometimes, he replied, “We are not here, Denise, to have fun.”
Crosby described her version of this now infamous event (and did a pretty good Patrick Stewart impersonation at the end):
“… between takes, it was a series of either Broadway show tunes or really bad dance moves or just loud commentary. And then we were right there when the when action was called and the scene would start. And there was one director who literally went to Rick Berman and just said, ‘I can’t, they are out of control. It is like nursery school in there. I can’t control them. They are nuts. They are laughing. It is screaming, it is chaos. You have got to go in there and just get these guys to calm down.’ So Rick Berman comes to the set and brings us all into Captain Picard’s little ready room, and sits us down and says, ‘Guys, guys, what in the—I’ve got the director complaining that … you’re unruly, he can’t direct you.’ And we were looking at each other, going, ‘You’re kidding. We got this.’ And I said, ‘Look, we’re here 15 hour days, 26 episodes a season. We’re just goofing off in between takes. You gotta have a little lightness here. We gotta have some fun.’ And that’s when Patrick turned to me, he said, ‘Fun? FUN? There’s no fun. I didn’t sign up for fun. You’re not being paid to have fun.’”
Coming back for “Yesterday’s Enterprise”
Crosby left the show before the end of season 1, feeling limited by Tasha’s role, which had the security officer fading more and more into the background as the episodes progressed. When she returned for “Yesterday’s Enterprise” in season 3, she was happy to see some things had changed—including Sir Patrick.
“We’d had crappy little trailers, and now they got nice dressing rooms and—oh, you actually have craft service food? It’s not just slices of tomato and Cremora to eat between meals? Oh, Patrick got a sense of humor!”
The episode’s story was both a surprise and a gift:
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that phone call would have come from Rick Berman, calling me at home, saying, ‘We have a script that brings Tasha back. She’s alive.’ … I read the script over the weekend. It was phenomenal. And I said, ‘Absolutely. Oh my god, absolutely.’ … Everything about it was was a surprise and and I was thrilled. And the script was genuinely really good.”
Tasha’s back!
Pitching Sela to Rick Berman
After the success—and the storyline—of “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” Crosby realized there could be more to Tasha’s story, so she pitched a way to return as a guest star.
“I called Rick and asked if we could have lunch. I had an idea. My original idea was that Tasha was pregnant with Lieutenant Castillo’s baby when she goes to battle with the Romulans in that final battle.”
When it was pointed out that we didn’t see that scene in the episode, Crosby said she flagged it during filming.
“I tried. I begged for that scene. So did Chris [McDonald ], by the way. So yeah, we would not have been a great scene asking, you know, Lieutenant Castillo, first, I have to ask you something, are you fully functional? That becomes Tasha’s running line.” (laughs)
Here’s her idea as she pitched it to Berman:
“My original idea was that when the Romulans win the battle, Tasha is still alive, and they scan her and realize she’s pregnant, so they decide to keep her alive to give birth to this human child that they will use as a bargaining tool with the Federation. So that was my idea, and that the child would grow up completely oblivious to their human-ness. [It] would be a human child raised by Romulans, believing they were Romulan.”
Rick asked her if he could think about for a bit, and she assumed that meant he was passing on the idea, but he ended up calling her back to say they were going to do it, but with some changes:
“He said we’re going to run with that idea. We’re going to, but instead of Lieutenant Castillo’s child, the child will be half Romulan, half human, because we can’t figure out how Tasha and Lt. Castillo would have had enough time.”
Oh, they’d have found time…
Sela made her first appearance shrouded in shadows, face hidden, in “The Mind’s Eye,” where Geordi goes through a Manchurian Candidate-style brainwash and almost assassinates a Klingon governor to destroy the alliance between the Federation and the Klingons. But it was the two-parter “Redemption” that put Sela in the spotlight, and her story was concluded in part 2 of ‘Unification.” While Crosby was happy with the way it all went down, she still thought her idea had potential:
“They didn’t follow through what my story arc for her would have been, that through her pursuit and rage of the Federation, she would begin to know her mother, because she never knew her mother, and would then be able to embrace her humanness.”
Sela, full Romulan, in “Unification, Part II”
Sexism in the ’90s
When asked about a quote she’d given decades ago about how Trek producers would have been happy for her to “wear really tight outfits and heels and stick my tits out,” Crosby didn’t remember that interview specifically, but brought up another not-so-classy comment that came her way when she came back as Sela.
“I don’t want to attribute it to the person that said it, but when I was playing Sela, I have little pointy ears, and they were asked to be looked at and and approved. And the answer was ‘Nobody’s going to be looking at her ears. They’re going to be looking at her tits.’”
Crosby says that was par for the course at the time in the entertainment industry.
“Really, it was a men’s club, and men were in charge. Very rarely did you see a woman in an authoritative position. Definitely, no women directors, very few, and no women showrunners, no women producers, no women heads of studios. So it still was that misogynistic vibe of ‘Honey, just shut up, wiggle your ass, stick out your tits, wear high heels, look pretty and shut up. You have a job.’”
But all in all, Crosby has positive feelings about her experience in Trek.
“[I’m] grateful that I got to participate in something this meaningful, this deep in our culture, and I am grateful that it resonated, and I’m truly humbled by it.”
Tasha Yar, security chief
Behind the scenes
On a personal note, I had a great time planning, doing research for, and moderating this panel. When Denise arrived backstage, we chatted about some of the topics I wanted to bring up, particularly Nana Visitor’s book Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman’s Trek. Denise said she was willing to talk about anything and everything, and did so with honesty and grace. I showed her my tiny Tasha Yar figure that I was bringing on stage, and told her I’d had it since the first wave of TNG toys came out back in the day.
Denise Crosby checks out a tiny Tasha Yar action figure at Star Trek Las Vegas with moderator Laurie Ulster (Photo: TrekMovie.com/Jon Spencer)
After the panel, I wanted to give her the figure. “But you’ve had it since you were a child!” she said, and I confessed that I was not, in fact, a child when I bought it all those years ago. She happily accepted it.
Denise Crosby, tiny Tasha Yar, and Laurie Ulster backstage at STLV (Photo: Ian Spelling)
More STLV 2025
STLV is now over, but we have much more to report from the 5-day Star Trek event, like Jonathan Frakes’ surprise at the mixed reception for SNW’s “A Space Adventure Hour,” Simon Pegg’s thwarted plans for a Star Trek Beyond spin-off, and more. Check out our STLV tag on social for all of our coverage so far.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
source: trekmovie.com