Tasha Yar

 

This morning I saw a post on twitter that had Worf chanting in rhyme how Picard thought he was better Yar and that he could have taught Yar something but she died in Tar.

               I get the joke, but, well it’s not that funny, really.

               I was in middle school when TNG came out, and Yar was my favorite character.  The week she was killed off was also the week when Pilot, the sole female character in the short lived, toy tie in series Captain Power was killed off.  In a week, two strong women who could literally kick as were killed off. 

               There were legitimate reasons why Crosby left the series, but even today I have a special fondness for the first season solely because of Yar.  Here’s why.

               Yar was different.  While TNG was better with regular female cast members, two of them Troi and Crusher were women in what were more traditional nurturing roles. This isn’t too diminish or suggest that Troi or Crusher were weak, but that the role of Counselor/therapist and doctor.  They were also more traditional feminine.  Yar was in a role that was usually associated with men (a position that a male Klingon took over), and she carried herself, generally, in a less traditionally feminine manner.  Yar was a woman, she was attractive (highlighted in that space drug episode), but she was also allowed to be for television at the time, a woman in a non-traditional role.  Not only that, she was also shown to be attractive, even though she wasn’t as traditionally feminine or nurturing as Troi and Crusher were.  Geordi when Q temporary gives him his sight, says to Yar that she is even more beautiful than he imagined.  Yar is told this when she is standing at her station dressed in her uniform.  She is beautiful as she does her kick ass job.

               God, after that I wanted  them as a couple so badly.  Forget Troi and Riker, give me Geordi and Yar.   That will always be the TNG I want to see.

               It wasn’t until DS9 that we got two kick ass women again – Kira and Dax at first, and then other women.

               It’s true that TNG did include women who weren’t as traditional in depiction as Troi and Crusher. Pulaski, a woman doctor more in keeping with Bones, or Ensign Ro, or Commander Shelby, and more regularly Guinan.  But Yar – a security officer who was a woman as a regular was just so refreshing, something that was ruined, that something being equality of the sexes.  People usually rave about TNG but the sometimes sexist aspects of the series tend to be glossed over by some – for instance, the two piece uniforms for the men but the single pieces for the vast majority of female characters.  Or the killing off the first woman in the position of head of security. Or the two main female characters as nurturers and starting the series as having connections to the men in command positions  - Troi as Riker's ex lover, and Crusher's husband having died under Picard's command.  Yar had no connection to any man on the Enterprise prior to the start of the show.

               So yes, I get the joke, but as that young girl who was not overly feminine who was not into “girly” things, Yar meant so much, and even after so many years, I am still pissed about how she was done dirty.