10 Star Trek Twists That The Actors Hated
6. Tasha Yar Dies - Patrick Stewart
Denise Crosby played Lt. Tasha Yar for most of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season, though she quickly grew frustrated with how little the character was being used. There were many scenes in which she simply stood at the security station, answering yes, no or hailing frequencies open. This got to the point where she felt that if the production crew were to paint a mural of her legs and place it behind the captain's chair, it would do the same job that she was supposed to.
She elected to leave the show, with Skin of Evil being her big exit episode. Gene Roddenberry decided that, to really shock the audience, he would kill off the character. He wanted it to be sudden and brutal, or at least as brutal as the show could get away with. One person who truly hated this idea with Patrick Stewart.
In the documentary Chaos on the Bridge, which traces the many production woes of The Next Generation's first season, he said that losing Denise Crosby was a dreadful mistake, one that lessened the show's already poor representation of women in the future. He felt that there could have been any number of negotiation tactics that would have prevented this call but in the end, she is killed by a giant oil slick.
Thankfully, Crosby returned as Yar twice more, in Yesterday's Enterprise and All Good Things, while also appearing as Commander Sela.