Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Tasha Yar

A pox, a pox, a polywater pox upon thee! Depending on how you count things, the even more sexed-up copy-and-paste job that was The Naked Now was only Star Trek: The Next Generation's second or third ever episode. In hindsight, The Naked Now strikes as oddly comical, but at the time the episode proved controversial. It was a very early risk and more than just a little risqué. Of course, what stands out most about it now is Data's "fully functional" and the Yar who went there.

Denise Crosby has, in general, recalled the episode favourably, however, telling StarTrek.com in 2012,

What was so wonderful was the humour and the absurdity of it […]. That episode was fun because you got to see the other side of Tasha. You'd seen her as this fierce warrior, this take-charge character, and then she gets contaminated with this virus or whatever it was, and she takes on this other persona. That was a lot of fun.

The problem there, as numerous reviewers have pointed out over the years, was that we really just needed to learn more about the fresh cast of unknown characters in an authentic way. There was, ultimately, little truth to be found in seeing them pissed up on polywater! Sex or no sex with Data, at least Yar got a fair bit to do in The Naked Now. Skipping over the unmentionable episode, that wouldn't be the case as the season went on.