Tasha

[cosmolinguist]

All my friends seem to think it's cool that Tasha Yar died and Worf got her job, because they like Worf better. I say, while Worf is perfectly okay, I don't consider him an especially intriguing character. Besides, come on, how much could you know about Tasha? She wasn't around that long. She was killed in the stupidest way imaginable, being eaten by a pile of goo, basically. It's dumb, espeically for someone tough and strong and cool like she was. Still, the most convincing argument I can come up with for why I think Tasha is cool is she had sex with Data! How can that fail to be interesting?

Comments

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

I never liked Tasha, myself, although I did love when they brought her back with the Romulan thing and the Enterprise C. I thought that was brilliant. You're right, though -- death by shiny goo is about as lame as it gets. Stupid first season. Blah.

::shifty eyes:: No, I'm not a humongous geek, why do you ask?

yet another geek chiming in. ;)

[silverwraith.livejournal.com]

indeed! the Enterprise C ep is one of my all-time favorite TNGs. *nod*

[cepcion.livejournal.com]

Crosby wanted out really early in the series. It was a crappy way to die, but it was supposed to set the rule that it wasn't just redshirts who always died. 'course, no other leads bit it in the following seven seasons, so meh.

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

But Data "died" in "Time's Arrow" and everyone died several times in that episode with the Temporal Causality Loop (I forget the name of the ep)

I'm fairly certain scores of random yellow shirts have died in Engineering ... And Wesley effectively died ... until they panned over him at Riker and Deanna's wedding in Nemesis...

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, but Nemesis was messed up anyway (especially in terms of people dying ... ) :-).

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

everyone died several times in that episode with the Temporal Causality Loop (I forget the name of the ep)

"Cause and Effect," from season five.

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I knew it was something like that, I just couldn't think of it.

[cepcion.livejournal.com]

to be fair, in TOS security wore the red shirts, hence the term redshirts. in TNG and onward security wore gold, but you're right about the mortality rate of the engineering crew.

/geek

[cosmolinguist]

I know there were reasons in reality, but you'd think they could've thought up something better for the show. It ended up making Tasha just a lame little footnote. A footnote is okay, I just don't think she's that lame.

[silverwraith.livejournal.com]

I remember being traumatized by Tasha's death at the hands of that asshole tar blob. I'm fond of Worf, but I wished they hadn't felt the need to kill Tasha off and THEN advance his career. rather needless, I'd say. I mean, a ship as big as the Enterprise surely has enough space for two commanders of security, right?

obviously I've thought about that way too much.

(when I was a whee lass, I had a crush on Data and I was very jealous of Tasha for sleeping with him. hehe.)

[cosmolinguist]

I probably had a crush on Data long before I realized it as such. Then I thought it was really odd. Now it, oddly, makes sense. Data's so fun.

Worf had a job before Tasha got killed--he was tactical officer, I think. And didn't he still do that stuff? I mean, they didn't bring in anyone else. It was his job to say, "We are being hailed!" and "Photon torpedoes armed," and he still did that. Becoming chief security officer just meant that he got to go on away missions and threaten to beat people up, in addition.

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

I probably had a crush on Data long before I realized it as such.

I have to remind myself that The Next Generation started when you were about 5 years old, while I was out of college before the series wrapped up. A kindergartener having a crush on Data just cracks me up for some reason... :-)

[cosmolinguist]

I actually didn't even watch them when I was five--I didn't get into Star Trek at all until I was in junior high.

Even so, I've been a rather asexual being most of my life.

[silverwraith.livejournal.com]

both of those new additions were well-suited to his Klingon heritage, methinks.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

Tasha and Data having sex was a serious script issue. Afterwards, Data was embarassed, and didnt' meet her gaze. DATA COULDN"T GET EMBARASSED, HE DIDN"T HAVE EMOTIONS!

Also, the Tasha death episode always made me think. It made me think how convinience it was that Riker didn't have his beard yet, because that would have been HELL to get out.

[cosmolinguist]

My freshman year there was a long debate about whether Riker looked better with his beard or without it. Originally, setharoo and I were the only ones voting for "without," but then about a month later he had apparently forgotten that and was part of the "with" camp. I was disappointed, but I still hold my ground. I, as a rule, do not like facial hair all that much anyway.

Besides, that debate wasn't as interesting as the "How do the Borg breathe?" one of the following year ...

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

In the end it was better for the show, I think. During the first season, the extent of intrigue around Worf was "OOOOH! A Klingon is on the show!" However, I think Michael Dorn was a substantially better performer than Denise Crosby, with greater presence and range. He could go from deadpan comedy to angst to warrior mode. Crosby could never do that.

Building on that, Dorn gave the creators of the show the opportunity to flesh out and expand the Klingons. Without him in a place of prominence on the show, we'd have been shortchanged that great look into the Klingons, and the richness that they provided would have been missed.

I cannot say that Tasha Yar's background was nearly as interesting. The first season episode in which we see her home planet was very weak, and it did not provide the kind of depth and cultural study that the Klingon episodes with Worf could provide.

Regardless of the fact that Crosby wanted to leave the show, I think it would have been an interesting move anyway.

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the Klingons ... What the hell happened? If Enterprise fits into the StarTrek Universe continuity, then something drastic happened to the Klingon race systemically for a generation at most before they returned to "normal" I'm referring to the lack of a brow ridge in the TOS Klingons vs the Movie / TNG, et al Klingons.

In the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribulations" where the Defiant travels back in time to the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" Worf says "We don't discuss it with outsiders" in response to the question of "What happened?" ...

Also, notice in the credits of StarTrek VI, there's a line crediting Michael Dorn as Worf, and if you watch the trial scene he's actually there and has a line if I remember correctly. How old do Klingons get? And how old is Worf?

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

The explanation for that is a bit weak, if you ask me: Dorn played Colonel Worf in that, who was supposedly the grandfather of the character from TNG. I think it was a bad move, myself. I like Dorn, too... but they could have used somebody else, or at least came up with a different name!

And now I will stop usurping Holly's journal!! [CHUCKLE]

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

but it's so fun to usurp Holly's journal! Why stop now? We could argue StarTrek into the night.

Hey, here's a question I've never had satisfactorally answered: In ST IV: The Voyage Home, what did that use to build the whale tank? I say plexiglass, as that's the only thing available at the time. My friend says transparent aluminum 'cause Scotty gave 'em the formula and in his opinion the walls as they're being lowered into place by Sulu in the Huey don't look six inches thick (the thickness the plexiglass would have to have been). Thoughts?

[cosmolinguist]

You think The Undiscovered Country is a bad movie?!

It's my favorite, you know.

Even so, usurp away. I always love such conversations.

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

No, I think it is a very good movie. I said that having Dorn play a character named Worf was a bad move. No "i". Funny what the addition or removal of one letter can do to how one interprets a statement, huh? [GRIN]

I'd rank 'Undiscovered Country' as the second best. In my opinion, here's the order in terms of how good they are:

1) Wrath of Khan (without this one, NONE of the rest of the series or movies would have been made... it revived the franchise)
2) Undiscovered Country
3) First Contact
4) The Voyage Home (yeah, I know it was mostly played for laughs... but they were good laughs, with characters we knew and loved! Besides that, I now live in Alameda... where they keep the nuclear wessels!)
5) Nemesis (which was better, I think, than people give it credit for... and Paramount messed up in their marketing, as they should have known better than to release it when they did.)
6) Search For Spock
7) The Motion Picture
8) Generations
9) Insurrection
10) The one where God needs a starship, which the revisionist historian in me still refuses to accept was ever made.

Not that you actually asked for my list, but there you go...

[cosmolinguist]

Sorry about the 'i' thing (she said, sheepishly).

I actually agree with most of your list. I still find VI more fun to watch than II, but I totally see your point about the pivotal role II played, and it is a darn good movie. VI is sort of my guilty pleasure, too--it's the first one I saw, though, back when I was a junior high kid, so maybe that has something to do with it.

And I am reminded of Matthew's tendency to say that Insurrection shouldn't even count as a Star Trek movie; he hates it that much. I saw it once but it left absolutely no impression on me at all--which I think is pretty bad. V is more memorable, even if it's not memorable for anything good. I almost think it has a shot at being so bad it's a good-bad movie (you know, somethnig worth watching just to heckle), and not just a bad movie. Maybe.

Why do they call that "sheepishly," anyway? Sheep aren't like that. Never mind; I'm just the kind of person that wonders about stuff like that.

[uclacorey.livejournal.com]

Tasha was such a poorly developed character--she seemed to be hanging, troi-style the whole first season. So I didn't mind her dying, per se--besides, I had watched the later episodes before the reruns got around to 1st season and had gotten use to Worf. But I was pissed that Tasha died in such a crappy way; and in all honesty i dislike the first season anyway--and that old doctor in the 2nd, bleh!

p.s. TNG is not a geeky show! DS9 is when it starts =)

[cosmolinguist]

You know, that's a good point. TNG is popular enough among non-geeks that you don't have to be all that geeky to be a fan of it.

Of course, if you're not all that geeky, you might be afraid that merely liking Star Trek makes you incredibly geeky, not knowing the amazing lengths to which geekiness can go. I know enough to know that it gets much worse than Star Trek.

Never mind me; I'm just being silly.