Star Trek The Next Generation: Every Season One Episode Ranked From Worst To Best

By roughly midway through the first season, Denise Crosby had grown tired of what she felt was the under usage of Yar's character. She felt in fact that there were so many scenes that required her to simply stand at the tactical station doing nothing more than punching buttons that if a cardboard cut-out of her legs had been commissioned, it could have been put in place behind the captain's chair and no one would have been any the wiser.

It is an episode that is both controversial and ironically fondly remembered by cast and crew. Crosby stated that, while she wasn't happy with the manner in which Yar died, she was very happy with the script and had more scripts that gave her as much to do as this one been made, she never would have asked to leave the show.

Johnathan Frakes also thought this episode was one of the stronger ones. He felt that the funeral scene had a sense of reality because on the day of shooting, the cast really were sad at Crosby's departure. He felt that this episode was an example of how the early seasons had taken more creative risk than the later seasons, even if the quality of the episodes weren't as high.

The episode also featured more behind the scenes meddling by Leonard Maizlish again, with little notes appearing on scripts after they had been finalised. Allegedly, he was credited with the dull manner in which Yar dies, perhaps to punish Crosby for leaving.