I don’t know whether this is an unpopular opinion or not but I actually think that the way Tasha Yar died gave the show much higher stakes throughout it’s entire run. Here is the chief security officer, main bridge crew, tragic back story, potential love interest for the robot character just slapped down by the monster of the week. It made all the subsequent dangerous situations seem much more dire because “they were willing to kill off someone in the main cast”. I also think that Yesterday’s Enterprise was an awesome send off for that character that let them have a heroic ending for her after all.
It was a shame because I think Denise Crosby could have been awesome as a recurring character and in my opinion, we didn’t get a great strong female character in the main cast (until DS9 which is an embarrassment of riches in that department). But I maintain that casually killing off Tasha Yar made my first watchthrough of TNG much more exciting.
I don’t however like the additional stretch of her half-romulan daughter. It’s pretty soap-opera-ish in my opinion and tarnishes the heroic sacrifice of her character.
There was a real threat that Picard would get killed off in Beat of Both Worlds.
That was entirely dependent on Stewart’s contract negotiations, though, rather than anyone wanting to kill off Picard.
Is that the one with the robots who challenge him to a dance contest?
Rhythm is futile?
This is a Lower Decks episode that badly wants to get made.
Oh great, here come the Korg. With their wicked beats and impossibly tripedal dance moves…
They challenged him to manufacture a superconductor.
Soap-opera-ish is completely right - killing off a character is meaningless if you establish your writers will stoop to a fakeout or a never before mentioned sibling/twin (or clone or mirror universe version, since it’s sci-fi).
It would be nice if the show was not afraid of killing named characters in general. Whenever someone dies it is almost exclusively a random character brought onto that episode just to die. Tasha Yar dying is more of an anomaly and never made the show feel like it had high stakes for me.
I don’t know if this is unpopular, but I wasn’t a fan of her character or the writing. Not sure how to describe it. But the whole first season was kinda off.
The show runners of Discovery have talked about wanting to create a feeling that no one, not even series regulars, were safe. They referenced Game of Thrones in that discussion, but Yar is a great example and probably would have gotten a little more love from the community.
