10 Most Pointless Deaths In Star Trek

Although it wouldn’t be the last time, Star Trek’s first offing of a main cast member was a huge shock to the fandom at the time, and the debate surrounding the legitimacy of Tasha Yar’s death in the ensuing decades is one that has inspired some scathing opinions on the fate of Enterprise-D’s original Head of Security.

Across her brief tenure aboard the ship, Lieutenant Yar had quickly established herself as a fan favourite, due to her bravery in the face of God-like beings such as Q, martial arts skills, and her troubled backstory alluding to the shadowy failures of the previous utopian Federation. It was less than a year into Enterprise’s voyage, however, that the showrunners decided to write her out in controversial fashion.

Visiting the abandoned planet Vagra II on a rescue mission, the away team of Yar, Riker and Data come across a seemingly sentient pool of black tar. When the pool coalesces into the faceless shape known as Armus, it stands in the team’s way and refuses to let them rescue the crashed ship. Yar, displaying her trademarked defiance, confronts Armus before being thrown back by an energy blast, fatally injuring her.

Yar’s death was the result of actress Denise Crosby’s dissatisfaction with her time on Star Trek, but the manner in which she was written out has inspired a great deal of ire amongst many of her fans. In a further twist of the knife, Armus reveals that he committed the act to see if it would amuse him, but that it did not, and so a promising character met her end at the ‘hands’ of what amounted to an oily petulant edge-lord.

Crosby would return to the character a few times over the years, in the guise of alternate timelines and Romulan clones, but we can’t help but wonder what we could’ve missed had she made it past Season One.