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

The temptation to say, 'see Yar late-ar,' here, was mighty strong, so I'm glad we avoided it from the outset! In fact, Denise Crosby might well have said the same. That a member of the cast jumped ship before the end of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was no doubt somewhat of an inevitability given the Chaos… behind the scenes. After all, by the end of the season, and long before Data did it in Star Trek: Generations, another character/actress — Doctor Crusher/Gates McFadden — was pushed overboard too.

By all accounts, Crosby left in order to maintain her sanity, and because prop legs just wouldn't do. "I actually asked them, 'Could you make a mock-up of my legs?'," Crosby stated in episode five (Queue for Q) of The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek. With so much focus on the guys down below, Yar was basically left standing there at tactical with nothing to do. But for the legs, as Crosby pointed out, she might as well have just gone home. Crosby asked for better stories but was "rebuffed" by Gene Roddenberry who wanted to stick with the triumvirate model — in this case Picard, Riker, and Data. "So Gene made firm plans to dispense with Tasha Yar," as McFadden added in the voice-over for The Center Seat.

In 2012, Crosby was asked in her interview with StarTrek.com if she would make the same decision again in hindsight. She replied,

Yes. For me, I was miserable. I couldn't wait to get off that show. […] I didn't want to spend the next six years going 'Aye, aye, captain,' and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge.

Like in the song her grandfather once recorded with the Andrews Sisters, Crosby laid the (phaser) pistol down and left.