star trek next gen skin of evil

Skin Of Evil (episode)

• View history
• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Production history
• 4.2 Story and script
• 4.3 Cast and characters
• 4.4 Production
• 4.6 Continuity
• 4.7 Reception
• 4.8 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also starring
• 5.3 Guest star
• 5.4 Co-stars
• 5.5 Uncredited co-stars
• 5.6 Stunt doubles
• 5.7 Stand-ins
• 5.8.1 Unused production references
• 5.9 External links

Summary [ ]

The USS Enterprise -D is traveling through the Zed Lapis sector where it will rendezvous with shuttlecraft 13 , carrying Counselor Deanna Troi , who is returning from a conference, along with the shuttle pilot , Lieutenant Ben Prieto . As the engineering crew is conducting maintenance of the ship's dilithium crystals , the ship is flying at impulse , with the main engines deactivated. On the bridge , Lieutenant Worf tells Lieutenant Natasha Yar that deep space probes have picked up no vessels or debris within three light years . Worf then shifts the conversation towards the martial arts competition happening on the Enterprise -D in three days .

" You bet on me? "

He asks Yar if she is ready. She replies that she needs some practice with the Mishiama wristlock and break, and if she can use it on Worf, she can use it on anybody, an assumption Worf promptly assures her is valid. He then asks who she is facing, and Yar says her first opponent is science officer Swenson . Worf says that she will easily defeat him. However Yar is more concerned about being beaten by Lt. Minnerly , a skilled kickboxer . Worf then boosts her confidence by telling her that she is heavily favored in the ship's pool to win. Yar asks Worf if he placed a bet on her. Worf replies that it is a sure thing. Yar then looks at Worf with a smile. Worf, embarrassed, moves away.

Helmsman Lieutenant Geordi La Forge reports to Captain Picard that the Enterprise -D will meet up with the shuttle in just over an hour . Picard comments how it will be good to have Troi back aboard, a sentiment Commander Riker agrees with. Suddenly, Worf receives an emergency distress call from the shuttle. The shuttle's computer is severely damaged and impulse engines are off-line. Prieto can't even tell what their current location is. Picard calls down to main engineering and asks chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Leland T. Lynch how long it would take to restore warp drive.

The removed dilithium crystals

When Lynch complains that he's currently in the middle of re-aligning the dilithium crystals, Picard tells him there is an emergency and they urgently need warp drive. Lynch initially says it'll be more than twenty minutes, and Picard berates him, telling Lynch that they don't have that much time. Lynch promises to re-align the crystals by hand to get warp drive restarted immediately. La Forge then tells Prieto that he's coming dangerously close to a planet , which Prieto confirms. Lieutenant Commander Data reports that the shuttle is near Vagra II , an uninhabited planet. Picard calls down to engineering again and Lynch tells him that although he offers no guarantees, he's working on it and it'll be about three minutes. Just then, Prieto reports that the shuttle is now out of control and has been caught in Vagra II's gravity , to the grave concern of the bridge crew.

Act One [ ]

In engineering, the engineers are frantically trying to restore the Enterprise -D's warp drive. Lynch, along with his engineering crew, quickly re-align the dilithium crystals into the warp reactor and Lynch decides to ignore the final safety check, telling the computer to restart the warp drive. When the ship's computer begins the checklist, Lynch overrides the checks and they go directly to startup. As the warp reactor comes back online, Lynch calls Picard and tells him that they now have minimum warp drive . When La Forge reports course for Vagra II is laid in, Picard orders warp eight. Over the intercom, Lynch tells Picard he recommended minimum warp drive. Picard then tells Lynch he heard his command and to make it so.

Shortly thereafter, the Enterprise -D arrives at Vagra II and enters standard orbit , although the ship is not reading the emergency signal from the shuttle. Data runs a scan of the planet. There is no vegetation and no lifeforms on the planet, but the atmosphere is breathable for Humans . Worf locates the shuttle on the planet. It appears to be buried under debris . Picard asks if they can beam up Troi and Prieto; however, the debris appears to be blocking the ship's sensors. Picard, seeing this as strange, orders Riker to prepare an away team . He chooses Data and Yar. Picard signals Doctor Beverly Crusher to join them.

" Trouble. "

On Vagra II, the shuttle's nacelle has been ripped off and the shuttle itself has been embedded within a rock face. The away team materializes on the barren surface of the planet, near the wreckage of the shuttle. Dr. Crusher notes that the signals inside the shuttle are weak. The away team begins to walk over to the shuttle, but a giant black liquid pool is blocking the way. Yar asks the away team to walk around it, just to be on the safe side. However, the black substance follows the away team to the right side. Yar suggests that they go to the left, but the substance still follows them.

Crusher prepares to step over a narrow part of the pool, but Riker stops her. He then asks if the creature has a skeletal structure. Data scans with his tricorder , however, he cannot confirm Riker's question. Picard asks Data if the black substance is a lifeform. Again, Data cannot confirm. When asked finally if it is possible that this pool is alive, Data says it is but again, he has insufficient information. Then they hear an ominous voice calling Data "Tin Man" and a figure begins to slowly arise from the black liquid. Picard asks Riker what he sees, and Riker simply replies, " Trouble. "

Act Two [ ]

Dr. Crusher, Riker and Data see to Yar

Picard signals Riker and comes to the conclusion that the placement of the creature and the location of the shuttle's crash landing cannot be a coincidence. Picard asks Riker to try to communicate with the creature, which Riker does. The creature states that his name is Armus , and asks why the crew has come. Riker explains that they mean no harm and they have injured crewmembers on the shuttle and asks permission to pass over. Armus states that he has not given him a good enough reason. Riker states that preserving life is important to all Humans, but Armus is not satisfied and suggests the Enterprise -D crew leave the planet. Yar walks up to Armus and says that they will not leave without their crew and that they must help them.

Yar begins to walk over to the shuttle and is hit by a blast of energy from Armus and knocked away. Riker and Data react quickly and fire their phasers at Armus as Dr. Crusher rushes over to Yar, followed by Riker and Data. Picard asks for a report on the situation and Data says their phasers had no effect on Armus as he seemed to feed off their energy. As Armus retreats back into the black liquid, Picard inquires about Yar's condition. After scanning her body, Dr. Crusher grimly reports that Yar is dead, prompting Picard to have the four of them beamed up quickly. As soon as the away team rematerializes on the transporter pad, Dr. Crusher reports that they will have to get Yar to sickbay immediately if they are to revive her. Picard tells Worf to put the ship on yellow alert and leaves the bridge for sickbay.

" That thing just sucked the life right out of her. "

In sickbay, Dr. Crusher and her medical assistants are desperately trying to revive Yar. When Picard asks for a report on her condition, Crusher reports that it is unchanged. Riker and Data stand in the back, joined by Picard, waiting and watching intently. Crusher puts Yar on total life support , but Yar is still not responding and her synaptic network is breaking down. Crusher, seeing no other choice, decides to go for direct reticular stimulation . The electrical energy goes into Yar's body, but she is still flatlining. Trying the procedure a few more times out of desperation, Crusher then pronounces Yar officially dead, and that Armus sucked the life right out of her.

On Vagra II, Armus moves toward the shuttle. Inside, Lieutenant Prieto is unconscious, lying down on his console, while Troi is injured but conscious. She taps her combadge and tries to contact the ship, but Armus is blocking the communication. She can feel Armus' presence, and he taunts her by saying that her friends deserted her and that he killed one of them. Troi says she knows, as she felt Yar die. Armus then says that he wanted to kill Yar to amuse himself. Troi tells him that he thought it would amuse him, but it did not. Sensing that he has a great need for something, Troi asks Armus to let her and Prieto go, and that the crew of the Enterprise -D will not give him what he wants: to break their spirit. Armus coldly replies that if breaking their spirit amuses him, he will do it.

Trapped in the shuttlecraft

In the conference lounge on the Enterprise -D, the senior officers are arguing and talking over each other about Yar's death and how she did nothing to provoke Armus. Only Worf and Picard remain silent. Picard taps the table with his fingers to bring the meeting back under control. He tells the crew that Yar's death is painful for all of them, but they will have to put it aside until the crisis is resolved. Picard makes Worf acting chief of security , which Worf accepts. Crusher says the life signs of the shuttle crew are faint, but the sensor readings are fluctuating, which means they may not be accurate. Riker asks to go down to the planet again and La Forge volunteers to join the away team; his VISOR may see something in Armus that the other crewmembers may not be able to see. Riker asks Worf to join them, but Worf believes he will be better used at tactical , since the main objective is to not battle Armus directly, but to safely bring back Troi and Prieto without any more deaths.

Act Three [ ]

Worf's sensor readings

The away team sees Armus stretched out over the shuttle. He is surprised that the away team came back for Troi and Prieto. Troi senses something in Armus, that he was abandoned by his kind. Troi says he cannot hide the emptiness he feels from her. Back on the Enterprise -D, Worf and acting ensign Wesley Crusher are monitoring Armus from a science station . Worf notes that Armus' energy went down when he enveloped the shuttlecraft. Picard asks them to chart it and to see if there is a pattern.

" I will find something else to amuse me. "

The away team beams down again. Armus returns to his humanoid state and speaks with Riker. La Forge examines Armus with his VISOR discreetly as Riker pleads with Armus to see their injured crewmembers, with Dr. Crusher making an impassioned plea to the creature. Armus says she can, but only if she says please. Crusher submits to Armus' strange request and he allows her to communicate with Troi via combadge. Troi responds and says she is fine. Armus is angered when the crew continues to ask him about going over and helping their crewmembers, which he views as ungrateful. He then rises up again, but taller than before. Armus uses his powers to throw Data's phaser and La Forge's VISOR away. La Forge, blinded, falls to his knees looking for his VISOR. Data directs him, but Armus moves it away. Data then refuses when Armus demands that he try to help La Forge again, knowing he will just keep moving the VISOR away anyway. Angry that the crew won't amuse him, Armus allows Data to retrieve the VISOR then leaves.

Armus re-envelops the shuttle, and on further probing from Troi, reveals how he came to be. The original inhabitants of Vagra II devised a process via which all their negative drives would be physically manifested as a "dank and vile" second skin, which could then be shed. This left them as " creatures whose beauty now dazzles all who see them ," who then left the planet, while the parts that they left behind coalesced into the singular being that is Armus. Troi expresses sympathy for him, but this causes Armus to temporarily lose cohesion. He becomes enraged again, he shakes the shuttle, then moves over to the away team. Suddenly, Riker falls to the ground and is dragged toward Armus' liquid state. Riker screams for Data's help, but Armus threatens to kill Riker if any of them touches him. The first officer is sucked into the slick and disappears beneath the surface. Picard orders the away team to return to the ship, but Armus warns that if they leave, Riker and the crash survivors will all be killed. Data, La Forge, and Crusher gasp as Riker's lifeless face briefly surfaces, wracked with pain, before disappearing back into the pool.

Act Four [ ]

Picard, after seeing the grave danger his crewmembers are in, decides to beam down. Troi, feeling her imzadi , struggling and in pain, pleads with Armus to let him go. Armus continues taunting Troi, with her begging him to let the away team go. He considers it, but then realizes that Picard has beamed down. Data surmises that, since death can no longer alleviate Armus' boredom, then Riker is, indeed, still alive. Picard asks to see his crewmembers, and Armus asks Picard to entertain him, but Picard refuses. Armus replies that he will have to provide entertainment for himself.

Armus controls Data

Data, under Armus' influence, takes out his phaser and points it at Crusher and then Picard. Armus asks Data how he would feel if he was responsible for the death of Captain Picard. Data notes that as he is not in control of himself, thus he would not be an instrument of his death. Armus then makes Data point the phaser at Dr. Crusher, then La Forge, then finally, has Data point the phaser at his own head, before finally having Data drop the phaser from his hand. Data feels that Armus must be destroyed, since he is capable of great cruelty and sadism and thus he cannot be redeemed. Picard again asks Armus if he can see Troi and Prieto. Armus lets Picard see one member of his crew, Commander Riker, covered in black, who is finally brought up to the surface by Armus.

Act Five [ ]

As Crusher sees to Riker, Picard tells Armus that this is now between the two of them. He tells Armus to let the Enterprise -D beam up the remaining members of the away team; they are beamed back to the ship. Picard is eventually allowed to see Troi and is taken inside the shuttle by Armus. He checks Prieto's pulse and finds that he's still alive, while Troi asks if they were able to revive Yar. Picard, regretfully, tells her that they weren't. Troi is saddened by the loss of her friend, but is able to tell Picard about Armus' past, and advise him on how to distract Armus long enough for Troi and Prieto to be rescued.

Armus brings Picard back outside the shuttle, and asks to be taken aboard the Enterprise . He makes it clear that he wants to find Vagra II's original inhabitants and avenge himself upon them. Picard attempts to sympathize with Armus, who irately dismisses his attempts and taunts him over Yar's death. On the Enterprise , Worf and Wesley notice that Armus' energy field has almost weakened enough for Troi and Prieto to be transported, and set the computer to automatically beam them out when the field weakens sufficiently.

In response to Armus' claims to be the embodiment of evil, Picard says that true evil would be allowing Armus to force them into giving him what he wants. Armus threatens to kill Picard and the shuttle crewmembers, to which Picard points out that even if Armus murders them, he will still be immortal and alone, forever, on Vagra II. Armus lets out an angry scream, and is distracted enough and the Enterprise -D beams out Troi and Prieto from the shuttle. Finally, Picard announces he will not take him anywhere, at which Armus yells out another enraged scream as the Enterprise -D beams up Picard, once again leaving Armus as the only lifeform on the entire planet as the sadistic creature continues to scream in rage.

Back on the Enterprise -D, Picard orders that the shuttle be destroyed with a photon torpedo fired from the ship so that Armus will not have a chance to leave Vagra II and declares the planet off-limits. Still, as Picard notes in his log , the damage has already been done.

" My thoughts are not for Tasha, but for myself. "

On the holodeck , a funeral on a grassy knoll with a bright blue sky for Yar has begun. All of the senior staff – Worf, Data, La Forge, Beverly and Wesley Crusher, Riker, Troi, and Picard – attend the service. To begin the service, a hologram of Yar is played, with her noting all of the exceptional qualities that each member of the crew possess and what she in turn learned from them. The service concludes when the hologram of Yar fades away. Everyone leaves the holodeck, except Data and Picard. Data notes that, during the service, he was not thinking about Yar, but how empty it will be without her. He asks if he missed the point of the service, but Picard assures him that he understood it completely.

Log entries [ ]

• Captain's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), 2364

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Data, something's got me! "

" Lieutenant Yar's death is very painful for all of us. We will have to deal with it as best we can for now. Until the shuttle crew are safely beamed aboard the ship, our feelings will have to wait, is that understood? Lieutenant Worf, you're now acting chief of security. " " I will do my best, sir. "

" You wanted her to suffer. You have a great need. " " I need nothing . " " Liar! "

" I think you should be destroyed. "

" She said you'd be back. "

" I would guess that death is no longer sufficient to alleviate its boredom. "

" If any of you leave now, he dies… and so do the survivors of the crash. "

" Save your compassion; it's revolting. You offer it like a prize, when, in fact, it's an insult. "

" A great poet once said "All spirits are enslaved that serve things evil.'"

"You say you are true evil? Shall I tell you what true evil is? It is to submit to you. It is when we surrender our freedom, our dignity, instead of defying you. " "I will kill you, and those in there." "But you will still be here. In this place. Forever. Alone, immortal." (Armus begins growling loudly) "That's your real fear: Never to die. Never again to be united with those who left you here." (Armus begins screaming) "I'm not taking you anywhere." (Armus screams continually as Picard beams out)

" We are here to honor our friend and comrade, Lieutenant Natasha Yar. Coming to terms with the loss of a colleague is perhaps the most difficult task we must face in the work we have chosen to pursue. We will all find time to grieve for her in the days that are ahead. But for now, she has asked that we celebrate her life, with this. "

" Hello, my friends. You are here now watching this image of me because I have died. It probably happened while I was on duty, and quickly, which is what I expected. Never forget I died doing exactly what I chose to do. What I want you to know is how much I loved my life, and those of you who shared it with me. You are my family. You all know where I came from and what my life was like before. But Starfleet took that frightened, angry young girl and tempered her. I have been blessed with your friendship and your love. "

" Will Riker, you are the best . You trusted me, you encouraged me, and most of all, you made me laugh. "

" Deanna, you are capable of so much love. You taught me without ever having to say a word. I realized I could be feminine without losing anything. "

" Ah, Worf. We are so much alike, you and I: both warriors, orphans who found ourselves this family. I hope I met death with my eyes wide open. "

" Beverly. Your fierce devotion comes from within. It can't be diminished. From you, I have learned to strive for excellence, no matter what the personal cost. "

" Wesley, I'm sorry I won't be able to see you grow into the exceptional man you'll become. But your kindness and innocence are ageless. "

" Geordi, in those moments I felt the most despair, you took my hand and helped me to see things differently. You taught me to look beyond the moment. "

" My friend Data, you see things with the wonder of a child. And that makes you more Human than any of us. "

" Captain Jean-Luc Picard. I wish I could say you've been like a father to me, but I've never had one so I don't know what it feels like. But if there was someone in this universe I could choose to be like, someone who I would want to make proud of me, it's you. You who have the heart of an explorer and the soul of a poet. So, you'll understand when I say: death is that state in which one only exists in the memory of others; which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes, just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir. "

" Au revoir, Natasha. The gathering is concluded. "

" Sir, the purpose of this gathering confuses me. " " Oh? How so? " " My thoughts are not for Tasha, but for myself. I keep thinking, how empty it will be without her presence. Did I miss the point? " " No you didn't, Data. You got it. "

Background information [ ]

Production history [ ].

• Final draft script ( titled "The Shroud"): 22 January 1988
• Four-page memo of script notes from Robert H. Justman : 27 January 1988
• Maurice Hurley "polish" of final draft script (still titled "The Shroud"): 28 January 1988
• Three-page memo of script notes from Robert Justman: 29 January 1988
• Revised final draft script: 1 February 1988 [1]
• Two-page memo of script notes from Robert Justman: 4 February 1988
• Score recorded at Paramount Stage M : 5 April 1988 ( Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Ron Jones Project liner notes [2] )
• Premiere airdate: 25 April 1988
• UK premiere airdate: 6 March 1991

Story and script [ ]

Filming the episode

• The original title of this episode was "The Shroud" (another name for the entity), and during the funeral/memorial scene, Commander Riker was scripted to have "signs of the shroud" still on his face. [3]
• The writing of this episode was influenced by Natasha Yar actress Denise Crosby requesting to be released from the series because she had become disappointed by how little Yar was being developed in the series' first season . On leaving the show and marking the end of her character, Crosby stated, " Gene [Roddenberry] really felt that the strongest way to go would be to have me killed. That would be so shocking and dramatic that he wanted to go with that. " ( Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book )
• At the time this episode was written, several rumors had been surfacing that Roddenberry's lawyer, Leonard Maizlish , was rewriting a majority of the season's scripts, an illegal act in terms of Writer's Guild policies. [4] (X) According to one source, Maizlish was responsible for the dismal manner of Yar's demise, and wanted to be sure that Roddenberry's story idea was enforced, and that Yar's death happened as a matter of course during a dangerous mission, despite the differing views held by the various writers involved with the story. In the end, there was considerable controversy among the show's staff regarding this death: some felt that it was cynically manipulative, while others felt that a swift death made sense to avoid sentimentality. ( Trek: The Unauthorized Behind-The-Scenes Story of The Next Generation )

Cast and characters [ ]

• Denise Crosby has expressed that, if more TNG scripts had provided parts for her that were as strong as this episode, she would never have asked to leave the series. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission , p. 61) She has also said that, had there been more scenes like the one at the beginning of the episode between her and Worf , she may have considered staying on the show. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion  ( ? ed., p. ? )) However, Crosby added, " Perhaps Tasha should've really gone out in a blaze of glory. There's never any real battles ever fought. The show is never supposed to be about violence and it shouldn't be. But I think if you have one cause for there to be a show about a real violent battle, that was it. Let's see this supposed expert security officer do her stuff. " ( Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book )
• Denise Crosby later returned to the series, firstly as an alternate timeline version of Yar (in " Yesterday's Enterprise "), then as Yar's offspring Sela (in " The Mind's Eye ", " Redemption ", " Redemption II ", and " Unification II "), and finally as Yar again in the series finale " All Good Things... ".
• As a whole, Troi actress Marina Sirtis felt she did some of her best work in this episode, citing it as one of two episodes from the first season that she fondly recalls, with the other being " Haven ". ( Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book )
• In describing TNG Season 1 and Gene Roddenberry's attempts to "push the limits a little," Jonathan Frakes stated, " I think we took greater chances then than we do now. The shows may be better, the level of it, but 'Skin of Evil' was absurd. We had Patrick sitting and talking into a black oil slick – but what was wrong with that? [....] That was absurd. " Frakes referred to the physicality of his own part in the episode as another bizarre aspect of the installment. ( Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book ) He expressed sadness, too, regarding Crosby's departure in "Skin of Evil", musing, " That's an episode where we were all crying as our characters and ourselves. " ( The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years , p. 112) Frakes also commented, " It's ironic, that they finally came up with a script that gave Tasha great things to do, and it was the one where she died. " ("Jonathan Frakes – Commander William Riker", The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 5 , p. 9)
• Mart McChesney later portrayed the Sheliak director in TNG : " The Ensigns of Command ".
• This episode marks the first appearance of recurring background actress Juliet Cesario .
• This was also Wil Wheaton 's final appearance of the first season.
• Roddy McDowall was a favorite of director Joseph L. Scanlan for voicing Armus in this episode but ultimately didn't get the part. ( Creating the Next Generation , p. 60)

Production [ ]

• Michael Westmore created Armus' head, whereas his body was represented with a costume made by Makeup & Effects Laboratories . ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 12 , p. 26) The black slime was actually a mixture of Metamucil and printer's ink . ( Journey's End: The Saga of Star Trek: The Next Generation ) The slime was created by TNG's special effects department. Westmore recalled, " It was a combination of printer's ink and a water-soluble gel, but I don't know what else was in it because it caused the glue in the costume – very strong shoe glue – to undo itself, and the costume would fall apart, so we would need a new costume for the next day! " ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 12 , p. 26)
• The scene when Riker is sucked into Armus was actually performed by Jonathan Frakes himself. During a break in filming – while Frakes was lying on the beach set, covered in the black sludge – LeVar Burton approached him and said, " Frakes, I never would have done that! " ( Journey's End: The Saga of Star Trek: The Next Generation ) Recalling the experience, Frakes himself said, " I suffered physically like a fool with Mikey – sure, I'll get in that black fucking Metamucil shit. That was absurd. " ( Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book )
• Filming the funeral/memorial service for Yar was an emotionally charged affair for the cast and crew; indeed, the tears cried by Marina Sirtis during the scene were real, as she and Denise Crosby had become particularly close friends while working together on the series. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion  ( ? ed., p. ? )) Sirtis regarded Yar's holographic farewell as " one of the most moving things we've ever shot, " adding, " Jonathan [Frakes] and I were standing together at that point and I was sobbing… unfortunately, I started sobbing which got Jonathan very teary-eyed and set the tone. Every time Denise [Crosby] looked at me, she just walled up because I was so sad that this was happening. I cried all day. No matter how many times I heard Denise do [the lines], no matter how many takes, it still made me cry. " ( Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book )
• Despite the cast being very deeply saddened by Denise Crosby's departure, there was meanwhile a need for the cast to try to avoid becoming maudlin about the situation and instead maintain a sense of levity during production. As Jonathan Frakes later recalled, there was a particularly memorable lighthearted moment on the set; while shooting the final holodeck scene for Yar's funeral, Patrick Stewart jokingly lightened everyone's mood by singing "The Hills Are Alive" from the musical The Sound of Music as they were walking up the grassy knoll. ( The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years , p. 112) On another occasion, Frakes spoke not only about how sad he had found "the day we finished up filming that last show," but also remarked about Crosby, " She shot her farewell message to us in one take. " ("Jonathan Frakes – Commander William Riker", The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 5 , p. 9)
• The episode's score, composed and conducted by Ron Jones , was recorded on 5 April 1988 at Paramount Stage M . ( Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Ron Jones Project liner notes [5] ) The complete episode score, totalling thirty-two minutes, twenty-four seconds, appears on Disc Four of the Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Ron Jones Project collection.

Continuity [ ]

• With its depiction of Natasha Yar's death, this episode marks the first time in Star Trek history that a regular character is killed and not brought back to life.
• Although Tasha Yar dies in this episode, Denise Crosby's name remains in the opening credits for the remainder of the season.
• The stardate for this episode (41601.3) is set before the stardates of seven other first-season episodes, four in which Tasha Yar is still alive: " The Battle ", " The Big Goodbye ", " Angel One ", and " The Arsenal of Freedom ".
• This episode is part of a story arc involving Data's treatment as an equal member of Starfleet. Armus continues to refer to him as just a device. In episodes of the second season, he is continued to be regarded as such until " The Measure Of A Man ", when Data is declared property of Starfleet.

Reception [ ]

• According to Ronald D. Moore , strong dissatisfaction among fans and production staff with the manner of Yar's death in this episode was one of the main reasons the character was brought back in the alternate timeline of " Yesterday's Enterprise ". ( Chronicles from the Final Frontier , TNG Season 4 DVD special features)
• Alternatively, in his online review, writer Keith R.A. DeCandido expressed much more satisfaction with Yar's death in this episode, saying, " Frankly, I've never gone along with the complaints about how Yar is killed. Klingon feelings notwithstanding, there's no such thing as a 'good' death, and Yar going out in a blaze of glory isn't inherently any better than being casually snuffed out by a sadistic oil slick. In fact, Yar's death is in keeping with the deaths of security people throughout Trek history – the only difference is that this one's listed in the opening credits… I actually prefer this random, pointless death to the clichéd-up-the-wazoo one she would get in the third season's 'Yesterday's Enterprise', though many, including the cast and crew of the show and a large chunk of the fanbase, disagree with me. " [6] DeCandido also commented on Yar's death in general, saying, " The loss of Yar is unfortunate. While it's true the character as portrayed didn't live up to the character as envisioned – Yar was the most interesting person in the TNG bible – that's also true of a lot of characters. Denise Crosby has never been the best actor in the universe, but Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, and Marina Sirtis weren't any great shakes in the first season, either, and their characters didn't blow the doors off. They got better with time, and there's every reason to believe the same would've been true for Crosby had she remained. " [7]
• A mission report by Robert Greenberger for this episode was published in The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 5 , pp. 59-62.
• Reviewing this episode for its re-release on video in the UK in 1998 , Star Trek Monthly ( citation needed • edit ) described it as " arguably the bravest moment in all of Star Trek for being the permanent death of a regular character in such a sudden manner. "

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• Original UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 12 , catalog number VHR 2441, 7 May 1991
• UK re-release (three-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment ): Volume 1.8, catalog number VHR 4649, 5 October 1998
• As part of the TNG Season 1 DVD collection
• As part of the TNG Season 1 Blu-ray collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard
• Jonathan Frakes as Commander William T. Riker

Also starring [ ]

• LeVar Burton as Lt. Geordi La Forge
• Denise Crosby as Lt. Tasha Yar / Natasha Yar (hologram)
• Michael Dorn as Lt. Worf
• Gates McFadden as Doctor Beverly Crusher
• Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi
• Brent Spiner as Lt. Commander Data
• Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher

Guest star [ ]

• Mart McChesney as Armus

Co-stars [ ]

• Ron Gans as Voice of Armus
• Walker Boone as Leland T. Lynch
• Brad Zerbst as Nurse
• Raymond Forchion as Ben Prieto

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Majel Barrett as Computer Voice
• Terrence Beasor as Alien voices
• James G. Becker as Youngblood
• Juliet Cesario as operations division officer
• Dexter Clay as operations division officer
• Tim McCormack as Bennett
• Burt Nacke as operations division technician
• Steve Reed as Enterprise -D science officer
• Guy Vardaman as Darien Wallace
• Female medical officer
• Female medical officer (voice)
• Female science division crewmember
• Female science division officer
• Three command division crewmembers
• Two female operations division crewmembers

Stunt doubles [ ]

• Dana Dru Evenson as stunt double for Denise Crosby
• Tom Morga as stunt double for Jonathan Frakes

Stand-ins [ ]

• Demetrius Bryant – stand-in for Armus
• James G. Becker – stand-in for Jonathan Frakes
• Darrell Burris – stand-in for LeVar Burton
• Dexter Clay – stand-in for Michael Dorn
• Jeffrey Deacon – stand-in for Patrick Stewart
• Susan Duchow – stand-in for Denise Crosby
• Nora Leonhardt – stand-in for Marina Sirtis
• Tim McCormack – stand-in for Brent Spiner
• Lorine Mendell – stand-in for Gates McFadden
• Guy Vardaman – stand-in for Wil Wheaton

References [ ]

acting ; aikido ; " a lot "; " all right "; amusement ; analysis ; answer ; antimatter injectors ; assumption ; " as yet "; atmosphere ; attack ; attention ; audio ; au revoir ; away team ; battle ; beauty ; blood ; blood pressure ; boredom ; brain ; bridge ; cellular structure ; central nervous system ; " change my mind ; chart ; checklist ; chief of security ; child ; choice ; circulatory system ; cloud ; coincidence ; colleague ; " coming to terms "; community ; compassion ; competition ; competitor ; computer ; comrade ; conference ; conference room ; contact ; coordinates ; cortical stimulator ; course ; crash landing ; creature ; cruelty ; current feed ; damage ; danger ; day ; death ; debris ; deep sensor probe ; despair ; device ; dignity ; dilithium articulation frame ; dilithium assembly ; dilithium crystal ; direct reticular stimulation ; distress call ; doctor ; effect ; emergency ; emergency signal ; emergency transmission ; emptiness ; energy ; energy core ; energy field ; energy level ; entertainment ; entity ; evidence ; evil ; excellence ; existence ; explorer ; extinction ; eye ; fact ; family ; father ; father figure ; fear ; feeling ; feminine ; first officer ; flight control computer ; force field ; freedom ; frequency ; friend ; friendship ; frustration ; funeral ; Galaxy -class decks ; gift ; goal ; gravity ; hailing frequency ; hand ; harm ; hate ; haywire ; heart ; holodeck ; hologram ; hope ; hour ; Human ; humanoid ; hypospray ; idea ; image ; impulse power ; imzadi ; " in effect "; " in fact "; information ; innocence ; insult ; intelligence ; intermix ratio ; internal organ ; " in time "; judgment ; kickboxer ; kindness ; last will and testament ; leader ; liar ; library computer ; lifeform ; life sign ; light year ; life support ; location ; loneliness ; love ; machine ; main engineering ; main viewer ; martial arts ; matter injectors ; matter-antimatter reaction assembly ; meaning ; medical tricorder ; medkit ; memory ; meter ; microvolt ; Minnerly ; minute ; Mishiama wristlock ; mission ; mister ; moral judgment ; musculature ; neural stimulator ; neural system ; neuron ; non-humanoid ; norepinephrine ; number one ; observation lounge ; obstacle ; " off limits "; onboard system ; " on the safe side "; order ; orphan ; " out of control "; override ; pain ; painting ; parallel transport ; path ; pattern ; personification ; phaser ; phaser energy ; pilot ; prize ; pity ; place ; poet ; position report ; power ; preventive maintenance ; prime ; problem ; protein ; proximity ; psychology ; pulse ; quality ; race ; rage ; ratio ; reactant ; ready room ; reason ; rendezvous ; respiration ; reticular stimulation ; right ; " right away "; robot ; sadism ; science officer ; Science II ; sensitivity factor ; sensor ; Shelley, Percy Bysshe ; ship's pool ; Shuttlecraft 13 ; shuttle crew ; sickbay ; sight ; skant ; skeletal framework ; slick ; soul ; spirit ; standard orbit ; Starfleet ; start-up sequence ; status ; status report ; strength ; survivor ; Swenson ; synapse ; tactic ; tactical station ; thing ; thought ; " Tin Man "; Titans ; transportation ; transporter ; Transporter Room 4 ; tricorder ; turbolift ; type 2 phaser ; Type 7 shuttlecraft ; unnamed plants ; utility uniform ; universe ; Vagra II ; Vagrans ; vegetation ; VISOR ; vital signs ; warp drive ; warp power ; warrior ; wonder ; word ; yellow alert ; z-particle ; Zed Lapis sector

Unused production references [ ]

Zed Lapis system

External links [ ]

• "Skin of Evil" at StarTrek.com
• " Skin of Evil " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Skin of Evil " at Wikipedia
• " Skin Of Evil " at the Internet Movie Database
• " Skin of Evil " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• "Skin of Evil" script  at Star Trek Minutiae
• 3 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

• More to Explore
• Series & Movies

Published Apr 24, 2023

A Look Back at 'Skin of Evil'

On its 35th anniversary, we revisit the episode's production as well as Armus' first appearance!

StarTrek.com

Few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are as controversial and divisive as " Skin of Evil ," which premiered on television sets on April 25, 1988.

On its 35th anniversary, we're revisiting the episode that has stoked plenty of debates over the decades, which continues to this day, ranging from Armus ' first appearance, the death of Lt. Tasha Yar (and actress Denise Crosby's exit), and The Next Generation 's first season in general.

The Malevolent Entity Armus

" i do not serve things evil. i am evil. " — armus.

"Skin of Evil"

Armus is the embodiment of all that was negative and destructive of Vagra II and the literal byproduct of their "skin of evil." The former natives of the planet, the Vagrans, expunged every undesirable emotion and negative attribute they possessed. While they became "creatures whose beauty now dazzles all who see them," their second skin manifested into the "dank and vile," unwanted substance known as Armus.

Despite resembling a living oil slick, Armus is able to alter forms into a variety of shapes, including a humanoid-like form and a thin shielding large enough to envelop a Galaxy -class starship's shuttle. Its formidable energy fields can affect passing vessels, or nearby people.

Data's tricorder could not detect any skeletal or cellular structure among the viscous pool of black liquid substance; Armus' dormant state. Its rage was what allowed it to generate energy fields. In addition to that, Armus was capable of thought, psychokinesis, teleportation, and energy discharges. Armus found pleasure in torture those it was able to lure into its pit of evil.

The Making of Armus

" save your compassion; it's revolting. you offer it like a prize, when, in fact, it's an insult. " — armus.

Armus was played on set by Mart McChesney, who later portrayed Sheliak in "The Ensigns of Command," and voiced by Ron Gans.

During this year's Star Trek: The Cruise , on the Star Trek: The Next Generation panel, actor Jonathan Frakes (William Riker) brought up "Skin of Evil" during his discussion with fellow castmates, Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar), Brent Spiner (Data), Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi), and John de Lancie (Q).

In the episode, during a fit of rage, Armus pulls Riker into its liquid state, enveloping him along with previous Starfleet crash survivors. Armus' victims are incorporated into its liquid state where they remain conscious as it inflicts suffering upon them, an act spurred by boredom that Armus uses to amuse itself.

Speaking on filming the scene, Frakes noted, “The black slime. No one, especially present company and Levar [Burton] and [Michael] Dorn, nobody would actually get in this pile of shit. It was 100 gallons of Metamucil dyed with black printer’s ink. The only one in there with me, Wil Thoms; he was our special effects guy.”

Commenting on the production, Spiner quickly addressed Frakes, “There was an upside too. You’ve been completely regular ever since.”

The April 2002 issue of Star Trek: The Magazine detailed that series makeup artist and supervisor Michael Westmore designed Armus' head while the costume was made by Makeup & Effects Laboratories. Westmore stated there was a potential additional ingredient in the black slime created by the series' special effects department, "It was a combination of printer's ink and a water-soluble gel, but I don't know what else was in it because it caused the glue in the costume — very strong shoe glue — to undo itself, and the costume would fall apart so we would need a new costume for the next day."

Crosby recounted the "difficult" production for StarTrek.com back in 2012 , "They way they rigged that rubber suit, the actor [playing Armus] had to literally be submerged into and out of that muck. That had to work within a minute because he had no oxygen in that suit. That’s no special effect. You saw him literally come up out of this muck, and it was very hot and really dangerous."

The Death of Lt. Tasha Yar

" i would guess that death is no longer sufficient to alleviate its boredom. " — data, on armus.

In addition to Armus' first appearance, the episode is most known for Armus' brutal killing of Lt. Tasha Yar at the start of the second act, where she is quickly hit with an energy blast from Armus and instantly killed.

Yar's storyline came to its conclusion in the first season due to actress Denise Crosby's request to be released from her contract as she was not happy with her character's development and was eager to pursue other opportunities. Gene Roddenberry obliged and Yar died in a sudden and unsentimental manner, in the line of duty.

In a 2012 interview with StarTrek.com , Crosby noted that she made the right decision leaving the series, stating, "For me, I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show. I was dying. This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going 'Aye, aye, captain,' and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years. I think you have to take your chances."

Many fans felt that Yar deserved a far better send-off, with most of them deeming Armus a silly adversary that cheapened Yar's already lackluster demise. On the other hand, there are those fans who appreciated the fact that Yar died as many people do, on the job and without warning, with no departing words.

In the same aforementioned interview, Crosby shared her views, "What I’ve always gotten from fans was, 'What a weird way to kill one of your main characters.' It was so indiscriminate, without a fight, without any confrontation or battle. This thing just takes her out. Then, when I came back for 'Yesterday’s Enterprise,' there was some sort of redemption there."

" Hello, my friends. You are here now watching this image of me because I have died. It probably happened while I was on duty, and quickly, which is what I expected. Never forget I died doing exactly what I chose to do. " — Tasha Yar

In actuality, Yar did utter final words, saying goodbye to her beloved crew (and fans) via a hologram played during a tearful memorial service in the holodeck.

However, this would not be Crosby's final Star Trek appearance, as she would return to The Next Generation as Yar, in an alternate timeline, and Sela, the half human, half Romulan daughter of the alternate universe Tasha Yar.

Current Star Trek Connections

" when i find you, i'm gonna kill you with a flake of my power i am a skin of evil " — armus, "the spy humongous".

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Prank Calling

The influence of "Skin of Evil" continues on in current day Star Trek . In Star Trek: Lower Decks ' second season "The Spy Humongous," with Shaxs' submanifold casting stone, the lower decks crew aboard the Cerritos prank calls Armus, who is still stuck on Vagra II, bored and in need of someone to torture.

While in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard 's episode "Surrender," as Data and Lore battle over control of their positronic body, Data willingly hands over his priceless memories to Lore, which includes a holocube of Tasha Yar.

"Skin of Evil" Fast Facts

• The episode, like the creature, was originally called "The Shroud."
• "Skin of Evil" was conceived by screenwriter Joseph Stefano, who co-wrote the teleplay with Hannah Louise Shearer.
• Armus was named after the first season's writer and producer, Burton Armus.
• The episode was marked as the first time Star Trek had killed off a series regular.
• The filming of Tasha Yar's memorial service emotionally affected the cast; to lighten the mood on set as they headed to the grassy knoll for the scene, Patrick Stewart sang The Sound of Music 's "The Hills Are Alive."

Get Updates By Email

Christine Dinh (she/her) is the managing editor for StarTrek.com. She’s traded the Multiverse for helming this Federation Starship.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. The series will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Italy, France, the Caribbean, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and South Korea.

In addition to streaming on Paramount+ , Star Trek: Picard also streams on Prime Video outside of the U.S. and Canada, and in Canada can be seen on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave. Star Trek: Picard is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Skin of Evil"

Item preview.

There Is No Preview Available For This Item

This item does not appear to have any files that can be experienced on Archive.org. Please download files in this item to interact with them on your computer. Show all files

Share or Embed This Item

Flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

Download options, in collections.

Uploaded by bobarchives on September 6, 2023

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Skin of Evil

Cast & crew.

Mart McChesney

Information

© 2011 CBS Corp.

Accessibility

Copyright © 2024 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Internet Service Terms Apple TV & Privacy Cookie Policy Support

Den of Geek

How Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Killing of Tasha Yar Became an Awkward Mistake

The underwhelming death of Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar was a mistake that Star Trek: The Next Generation took years to correct.

• Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)
• Share on Twitter (opens in a new tab)
• Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)
• Share on email (opens in a new tab)

“[I] died a senseless death in the other timeline. I didn’t like the sound of that, Captain. I’ve always known the risks that come with a Starfleet uniform. If I am to die in one, I’d like my death to count for something.”

Denise Crosby’s Lt. Tasha Yar, Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s inaugural chief of security, managed—due to some alternate timeline trickery—to take that legendary meta-minded dig at her own death from two years earlier in the Season 1 episode, “Skin of Evil.” With that episode having originally aired on April 25, 1988, the anniversary is a good occasion to look back on the controversial behind-the-scenes circumstances that resulted in poor Tasha’s unspectacular, abrupt, red-shirt-like fatal encounter with an alien tar monster on a cheap-looking set.

“Skin of Evil” was the 22 nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s inaugural season—just three episodes away from the season finale. Consequently, with audiences at this point having stuck with the show for seven months since its September 26 premiere, the death of a main cast member certainly felt like a stakes-redefining kick against procedural complacency. However, those who had been following industry trades, and read the then-fresh, spoiler-teasing cover story exposé in Starlog magazine , titled “The Security Chief Who Got Away,” pretty much already knew that Crosby was on the outs with the series. Thus, the prevalent question going into Season 1’s final few episodes was not if Tasha Yar was leaving the Enterprise D, but how . Well, said how would prove to be one of the most controversial, lamentable moments in Star Trek history .

Crosby denied the growing rumors of her impending exit during contemporaneous interviews published before “Skin of Evil” aired, but she had indeed quit the series, mostly due to the lack of character development given to Tasha Yar. While she was given a backstory of a rough upbringing on the lawless abandoned Earth colony, Turkana IV, Yar’s only real moment in the spotlight (besides her famous seduction of android Data in “The Naked Now” while under alien viral influence) had been Episode 3, “Code of Honor,” in which she became the amorous focus of an authoritarian alien leader, and would be forced to participate in a campy fight to the death with the leader’s outraged first wife. Thus, dealing with the show’s notoriously demanding schedule, and faced with the believed prospect of spending years soullessly saying “hailing frequencies open,” Crosby put in a request to be released from her contract, which creator Gene Roddenberry granted.

Ad – content continues below

Unfortunately for Tasha Yar, Roddenberry’s acquiescence would come with a shocking caveat: a sudden and underwhelming onscreen death. “Skin of Evil,” directed by Joseph Scanlan, written by Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, set things up with a rescue mission after an Enterprise shuttlecraft containing Counselor Deanna Troi and pilot Lt. Ben Prieto crashed on the barren planet, Vagra II. Accordingly, Yar joins an away team consisting of Cmdr. William Riker, Lt. Cmdr. Data, and Dr. Beverly Crusher to the planet surface, on which they encounter a powerful, tar-like creature that calls itself Armus.

There, Yar quickly loses patience as the creature continues to block their rescue effort, and tries to move past it, resulting in an attack that sends her flying backwards, leaving her tar-marked face lifeless on the ground as the essence drains from her body; a condition even beyond the help of subsequent emergency efforts back on the Enterprise. Thus, Yar’s arc, for what it was, had come to an anti-climactic conclusion; a fate attributed to the dangerous nature of Starfleet service, especially for someone in security. However, said fate allegedly wasn’t inspired by any artful motivations.

Why Star Trek Needs More Characters Like Captain Lorca

Q’s Return on Star Trek: Picard Season 2 will Follow “Significant Trauma”

So, why did Yar’s exit go down this way? Crosby recounted in 1993 behind-the-scenes book Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book that “Gene [Roddenberry] really felt that the strongest way to go would be to have me killed. That would be so shocking and dramatic that he wanted to go with that.”

However 1992’s Trek: The Unauthorized Behind-The-Scenes Story of The Next Generation , alleges that the “Skin of Evil” script—as with other Season 1 episodes—was secretly tweaked and/or rewritten by Roddenberry’s lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, who held an ambiguously-defined full-time staff position on the series. The purported rewrite, which would have been illegal in the Writer’s Guild, was believed to have been designed to deny any dramatic or sentimental value to Crosby’s character. With Roddenberry having recently lost creative control of the Star Trek movie franchise from Paramount Pictures, Maizlish may have been there to protect his bottom line, in this case ensuring that a dead-and-forgotten Tasha would leave no incentive for a potentially-costly new contract for Crosby down the line.

Nevertheless, “Skin of Evil” concluded with an emotional sendoff for Yar, with a memorial service—consisting of only the main cast member characters—set on the holodeck, where the late security chief posthumously delivers well wishes to her colleagues, notably a weeping, possibly guilt-ridden rescuee, Troi (actress Marina Sirtis was reacting to Crosby’s set presence off-camera). Yet, Crosby still had to endure the show’s apparent power plays, even after said memorial, since the show’s out-of-sequence production schedule resulted in her having to shoot one last appearance for her death episode’s immediate predecessor, Episode 21, “Symbiosis,” which also provided another famous Tasha Yar moment, in which she delivers a ham-fisted, Just-Say-No-era anti-drug speech to Wesley Crusher when addressing the episode’s alien drug pushers. It’s a bit of trivia that Crosby would use in a now-famous 2019 Twitter dunk on controversial executive producer Rick Berman.

Oh friend, my final scene on @StarTrek was not in SKIN OF EVIL but SYMBIOSIS which was filmed out of order. You came to the set to thank me and brought a cake, then ceremoniously ripped off my Communicator badge saying “you won’t be needing this anymore.” Don’t remember? — Denise Crosby (@TheDeniseCrosby) February 4, 2019

While Crosby’s post- Star Trek aspirations wouldn’t quite pan out the way she had likely envisioned, save for a co-starring role in 1989 movie Pet Sematary (she’s more recently banked an impressive array of TV appearances on shows like The Walking Dead and Ray Donovan ), her apparent status as persona non grata on the Enterprise wouldn’t last long, and she would make a monumental return as Tasha in 1990 Season 3 episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” in which a temporal anomaly alters the timeline for the Enterprise D, creating a reality in which the Federation is fighting a war with the Klingon Empire, and an anachronistic Season 3-era Yar is very much alive. Pertinent to the episode’s time-bending meeting with predecessor vessel the Enterprise C, Yar—after learning of her main timeline death from Guinan—would transfer to the embattled historical ship (after the earlier-quoted speech,) to ensure that it fulfills a sacrificial destiny to prevent a war that wasn’t supposed to take place, finally giving meaning to her death.

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” was so well-received that it facilitated more Yar-adjacent material, first with the 1990 Season 4 episode, “Legacy,” in which the Enterprise crew go to Tasha’s home, Turkana IV, and become embroiled in a scheme concocted by her bitter estranged sister, Ishara (Beth Toussaint). However, a prominent Crosby comeback would dominate Seasons 4-5’s two-part cliffhanger storyline, “Redemption,” when she played Commander Sela, the daughter of the “Yesterday’s Enterprise” alt-timeline Tasha Yar and a Romulan general to whom she was forced to become a concubine after the Enterprise C’s war-preventing act.

Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

In a twist of fate, Crosby, once an underutilized outcast crew member, had been positioned to play one of the show’s most memorable villains, since Sela is a ruthless, unwaveringly loyal servant of the bellicose Romulan Empire, and displays her own heartlessness when revealing that her mother, alt-Tasha, was killed while trying to escape with her as a child.

Additionally, Crosby reprised the role of prime-Tasha in Picard’s Q-conjured pilot-era flashbacks of 1994 two-part series finale “All Good Things.”

Historically, it seems clear that a series of myopic mistakes rendered Denise Crosby’s Star Trek journey more circuitous than necessary. However, the result was a character arc that stands the test of time. Plus, not for nothing, the fantastical nature of current spinoff series Star Trek: Picard could easily facilitate a contemporary Crosby comeback—either as Commander Sela (who eventually became a Romulan empress in the non-canon story of video game Star Trek Online ) or even as alt-Tasha, whose alleged death was never confirmed onscreen. To put it in the parlance of the late security chief, such a comeback would be a jewel for fans.

Joseph Baxter

An often overly-analytical, sometimes sarcastic writer whose work can be seen on Syfy Wire. It was previously seen on Cinema Blend and during a longtime tenure…

• What’s The Viewscreen?
• Donation Success!
• Star Trek Movies I-VI Re-Watch Index
• Star Trek: The Animated Series Re-Watch Index
• Related Posts Index
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch Index
• Ten Forward
• The Re-Watches
• Privacy Policy
• Star Trek Re-Watch Index
• Laugh Treks

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Skin of Evil”

Season 1, Episode 23 Original air date: April 25, 1988 Star date: 41601.3

Mission summary

Since not much is going on, Chief-Engineer-of-the-Week Leland T. Lynch decides to polish the Enterprise ’s dilithium crystals; fortunately, chugging along at impulse just means it will take that much longer to pick up shuttlecraft 13, in which Counselor Troi is returning from a conference on “How to Succeed in Starfleet Without Really Trying.” Then sensors read an emergency on the shuttle, interrupting Worf and Tasha’s long-overdue bonding moment—she’s really looking forward to a martial arts competition in a few days, and Worf’s betting on her, even though they don’t have any money in the future. (Or maybe because they don’t have any money in the future.)

The shuttle inexplicably loses power and crashes on the uninhabited planet Vagra II in the Zed Lapis sector. Lynch jams the dilithium crystals into the warp core and hopes for the best, and the ship races to the planet. But something blocks their ability to scan the shuttle or beam up its survivors—debris or something, maybe. Riker, Yar, Data, and Dr. Crusher beam down to investigate.

Shuttle 13 is in bad shape, but the away team can’t approach it because a black puddle on the rocky ground keeps oozing to intercept them. Weird. Data’s totally stumped, but suggests that it could be a living creature. “Very good, tin man,” it intones, and a humanoid shape rises from the muck.

They exchange pleasantries—the thing’s name is Armus—and Riker requests access to the shuttle. Armus declines, and Yar decides to force the issue. The creature zaps her, sending her flying, and easily absorbs the energy from Riker and Data’s phasers. Dr. Crusher pronounces Yar dead, but still spends a while trying to revive her, to no avail. Bummer.

They briefly discuss the senselessness of Yar’s death, then Picard promotes Worf to Acting Chief of Security; after all, he wouldn’t be a true Klingon if he didn’t benefit from his superior’s untimely death. Worf immediately proves himself more competent than Yar by deciding to remain aboard the ship to develop a tactical solution to their problem, while Riker’s team returns to the planet with La Forge, who hopes to offer a different perspective on their slick adversary.

Down on the planet, Armus covers the shuttlecraft to chat with Troi. He tells her that her friends have left her, but she doesn’t believe him. She can sense the creature’s nature and knows that he needs to make people suffer. And, oh look, here’s the away team. It’s play time! When he leaves the shuttlecraft, Worf and Wesley on Enterprise note that his energy levels were lower while he was covering it—a common side effect of talking to Troi—which they may be able to exploit to beam everyone to safety.

Armus keeps messing with them: He makes Data’s instruments fly away and knocks La Forge’s VISOR off his face. What a jerk. Armus slips off to chat with Troi again, and tells her that he is the castoff, concentrated negativity from a powerful and beautiful race—left behind like some sort of… Skin of Evil! Troi’s pity for him only pisses him off enough to drag Riker into himself. There’s only one reasonable course of action—Captain Picard must beam down to the planet and place himself in mortal danger with the rest of his command crew in order to deal with Armus personally.

Armus toys with the away team some more, forcing Data to aim his phaser at Dr. Crusher and making her choose the next person to die. But Picard has realized that talking about his feelings makes Armus weaker, so he convinces him to let the others go. Armus spews out an oil-covered Riker and allows the away team to beam away while he and Picard parlay. All Armus wants is a starship, but Picard insists on seeing Troi first.

As the captain and counselor help Armus confront his troubled past, Worf and Wesley manage to beam up Troi, the injured shuttlecraft pilot, and Picard, leaving Armus behind to scream in impotent rage. They blow up the shuttle to remove his last chance of escape, slap up a “Do Not Enter” warning on the planet, and get the hell out of there. But there’s still one more bit of unpleasantness to get through… Yar’s funeral.

Yar has left a recorded message for each of her “friends” on the holodeck, where she shares the things she learned from and appreciated about each of them. Her last is for Captain Picard.

YAR: If there was someone in this universe I could choose to be like, someone who I would want to make proud of me, it’s you. You who have the heart of an explorer and the soul of a poet. So, you’ll understand when I say, death is that state in which one exists only in the memory of others. Which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes. Just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir. PICARD: Au revoir, Natasha. The gathering is concluded. DATA: Sir, the purpose of this gathering confuses me. PICARD: Oh? How so? DATA: My thoughts are not for Tasha, but for myself. I keep thinking how empty it will feel without her presence. Did I miss the point? PICARD: No, you didn’t, Data. You got it.

She’s not really dead as long as we remember her. What was her name again? Tar?

At last, our long national nightmare is over.

I feel bad that I’m actually relieved at the death of a series regular, but it’s just one more step to getting this show to the TNG I love. Who knows how the show might have turned out if Denise Crosby had played Counselor Troi instead of Marina Sirtis, or if she had remained on the show longer? But as senseless as her death was—about as senseless as the rest of the episode—bigger and better things await her. As much as I dislike Yar in the first season, her mind-bending return to TNG in “Yesterday’s Enterprise ” is one of the highlights of the series for me, as is the creative way they bring Crosby back into the fold as a recurring character. Even seeing her again in “All Good Things…” is a special treat that oddly enough does more to flesh out her character than the entire first season of forced exposition. Truly, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I imagine that even with the likely rumors that Crosby was leaving the show, or hints that a major character would die, Yar’s brutal, bizarre, meaningless death must have been a shock at the time. Far from a dispensable red shirt on the original series, she’s a character that some people must have grown to like, or at least identify with. Maybe even care about her, a little? As Dr. Crusher works to save her life, viewers might have expected a last-minute miracle, but it would take many more seasons before she would be brought back to life. But hey, I have a more important question: What was that strange mark on her cold, lifeless cheek?

The biggest problem with Yar’s death is that the characters aren’t able to truly deal with it. She dies twelve minutes in and the rest of the episode proceeds pretty much as usual, aside from an excruciating holographic farewell—which must have been ironic for Crosby to deliver since she tells them to dwell on “good memories.” We won’t see anyone wrestling with her loss in any significant way next week, and pretty soon we’re on to a new season; the only person who shows any real sense of loss is Data, who holds onto that holo recording of her. (On a side note, are these really the only people who liked her on the ship? And why is she transparent if she’s a holographic image… on a holodeck?) It’s kind of mean to make her last words on the show, “Hailing frequencies closed, sir,” don’t you think?

Although the “episode where Yar dies” is otherwise basically a write-off—Armus looks and sounds like a monster-of-the-week on The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers , with little more to motivate him than he’s made of evil—it touches on the classic Star Trek themes of immortality, abandonment, and loneliness. But I’m most fascinated by Armus’ probing questions about whether one life means just as much as another to Troi. Though she and Riker insist that all life is equal and deserves to exist, it rings falsely. “Preserving life, all life, is very important to us,” Riker says. “We believe everything in the universe has a right to exist.” Countered by this:

DATA: Curious. You are capable of great sadism and cruelty. Interesting. No redeeming qualities. ARMUS: So what do you think? DATA: I think you should be destroyed. ARMUS: A moral judgment from a machine.

When I saw the explosion on the planet’s surface, for a moment I thought that Picard had bombed the crap out of it to destroy Armus, but it may be an even worse punishment to leave him there forever, alone. I will also note that Picard never lies to Armus; he very carefully avoids promising to transport him off the planet, evading the question and enforcing conditions on agreement before finally flat out refusing him. I appreciated this small bit of morality, in an episode where it’s important for the Enterprise crew not to resort to Armus’ measures to survive.

So in the end, unlike Armus, this episode has some redeeming qualities, but it is further crippled by extra screen time for an overwrought Counselor Troi, as well as yet another example of the captain beaming down into a hazardous situation. Aside from this episode’s ultimate importance to the series now and in years to come, I think we should warn off any who think of approaching it.

Eugene’s Rating: Warp 1 (on a scale of 1-6)

Best Line: PICARD: You say you are true evil? Shall I tell you what true evil is? It is to submit to you. It is when we surrender our freedom, our dignity, instead of defying you.

Trivia/Other Notes: The original title for this episode was “The Shroud.”

Jonathan Frakes was submerged in Metamucil and printer’s ink for the scene in which Riker is absorbed into Armus. At the time, LeVar Burton reportedly told him, “Frakes, I never would have done that!”

Yar was originally killed even earlier  in the episode, with less emphasis on her death. Roddenberry felt that her death was fitting for a security officer.

Marina Sirtis sheds real tears for Yar during the memorial scene; she and Denise Crosby had become close friends. The cast was very sad to see her go.

According to Ron Moore, Yar’s character was brought back in response to fan and staff reactions to her death. (Another perspective might be that they hated her so much, they killed her twice.)

Writer Joseph Stefano was a veteran of the 1963 science fiction anthology series  The Outer Limits –and it shows.

Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 22 – “ Symbiosis .”

Next episode: Season 1, Episode 24 – “ We’ll Always Have Paris .”

About Eugene Myers

34 comments.

I can only speak for myself, but as I remember it the news that Crosby was leaving was well known and the episode had no tension for me. In fact I have always hated the ‘CPR of the future scene’ because no one else get it. Before and after anyone who dies will simply be dead, not heroically but futile attempts to revive them. I do remember wondering who was that had cast off Armus, oil slick of evil. They could not have been as noble and good as they proclaimed to leave such dangerous evil lying around unguarded, ready to pounce on any passing shuttle. (And I’m still voting the Organians) This episode also had the tired cliche of the captain ordering repairs faster than the estimate. Lynch is a pretty crappy engineer if he tells the captain 20 min, but it can be done in three simply by ordering it.

Hey, don’t you go dissing The Outer Limits . The original was a great show and Stefano wrote some decent episodes for it. Unlike this one. (Although maybe Stafano’s original script was better.)

There really aren’t any redeeming features, are there? The sets are bad, even by season 1 standards. Hell, they’re bad by TOS standards. The McGuffin is stupid. Yar’s death is stupid. About the only thing going for it is that Troi sort of almost does her job. She actually does a little head-shrinking on Armus and it sort of works for a while.

As far as LeVar Burton’s comments about not being willing to roll around in Metamucil and printer’s ink: Man, he should talk. Every time he takes off the VISOR and has to put in those solid white scleral shells I cringe. I’ve got a serious eye thing, and just the thought putting those in or taking them out makes my skin crawl.

Obviously, the main topic here is Yar. It was pretty well known that Crosby was leaving the show and there was talk they were going to kill her character off, but to make it such a meaningless death, one that didn’t even really advance the plot in any way, turned off a lot of people, even those who didn’t like Tasha. I almost think this was the producers’ way of punishing Denise Crosby for not liking what was being done with her character, talking publicly about it, and finally asking to leave the show because of it. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” could be seen as an apology of sorts, giving Yar a good death. But then they went and took that away from her, too. I did like Sela though.

Aside: I went to Memory Alpha to look up Sela’s name and they had a photo of Yar’s goodbye hologram. My first thought was, “That’s the “§&%ing Windows 95 default desktop background!” Then I realized Win 95 was still 7 and a half years in the future. Now I’m just puzzled.

I hate this episode. I know it’s cause she wanted to leave, but I do believe her character could have been a real genre-breaker for the time, a tough, competent, and yet still attractive and clearly a woman. Instead we got Miz FEEEEEEEELINGS and two versions of Doctor Cares-a-Lot, and all the decisive, action-oriented roles went to men, all the way until Ro Laren shows up, way too late.

Instead they misused her, shoved her aside, gave her the horrid background, and never gave her (Crosby) the chance to grow as an actor that some of the other less…initially gifted…of the actors got (*ahem*FrakesSirtisWheaton*ahem*).

And we went back to the groundbreaking (not) situation of having the old white man be in charge, the next-oldest white man 2iC, the white-man-painted-green as third/Braino, one Black man as a sexless differently abled engineer/helmsman, another as the always-violent-before-talking brute, and the two women in charge of caring for heart (Crusher) and soul (Troi). I’d stopped watching by this point, but when I saw the show later I loathed them for making it.

I really like a decent death – if she’d done something heroic, ANYTHING, in the death scene, it would have been much more tolerable. I can take a pointless death when the dying one chooses it. But to just have this pointless act, out of nowhere, with no opportunity for anything to make it a “good” death? That’s a crap way to get rid of a character intended to be important to the show, and especially the only mould-breaking character of the bunch. :/

@3 Caitie Well said, though I’m not sure Pulaski counts as a Doctor Cares-A-Lot. She’s a rather less pleasant female stereotype, but we’ll get to her. I’d also quibble with your inclusion of Wil Wheaton in that list. He had already turned in an outstanding performance in Stand By Me . One that had actually left me slightly optimistic about his character before the show began. He, more than anybody else, may have been a victim of the writing. Looking back, I feel like the writers really hated the Mary Sue-ness of Wesley, especially while Roddenberry was leaving his greasy fingerprints all over everything, and they took it out on the character as best and nastily as they could.

I can concede on Wheaton; I may be influenced by my current view of his current self, of whom I have rather less stellar an opinion than many seem to.

But I’d say Pulaski is exactly that: she only turns grumpy (like Bones did) when she’s thwarted in her intense drive both to help people and to ignore her own needs in doing so. She regularly risks her own life to do so,, making her a form of the self-sacrificing mother figure that is so, so common (oh, ye gawds, Supernatural and its MOMMY ISSUES!). I like her, personally more than Crusher, because at least she’s not almost always nice to people, which the lovely Ms. McFadden often is.

Plus, y’know, Diana Muldaur. Who’d been in two of the most awesome episodes from the old series! :D

I fell asleep watching this–twice–and laughed out loud fairly continuously through the eulogy. Maybe I’m a bad person.

An oil slick was never, ever going to be a believable character, and an alien with no motivation other than “well it’s just evil” does not a villain make. In any case, if you KNOW you have a nasty environmental hazard down there holding one of your people hostage and killing another one, why would you let the captain beam down . In fact, why would you let ANYONE beam down. I’d just send down a hologram, or Data, or a sack of turnips. That’d probably piss him off and tada! Emotional drano.

For a group of allegedly compassionate, progressive spacefarers, what they do to Armus in the end is the height of cruelty. If he’s so dangerous and so alone, just put the thing out of its misery. Don’t condemn it to another million years of isolation.

As for Lt. Tar: what the hell. I understand on an intellectual level why Roddenberry was interested in showing someone dying in the line of duty. But as an emotional viewer, that was absolute crap. You can have someone die on a routine mission but can they maybe do something ?!?! It doesn’t even have to be a cliche kind of heroism. It can be a private, personal kind of heroism that defines her. But nothing about her death contributed anything to a) the episode; b) her character; c) the progression of the series; or d) the emotional development of the other characters. Eugene is right, no one has to face her death except for a lengthy three-minute presentation. There’s no wrestling with what that death means, how the other characters weigh the risks they themselves take every day, or whether that mission was worth losing a friend over. It’s just senseless and emotionally vacuous.

The eulogy: where is the rest of the crew?? ST has this problem a lot, where they think that the people you see on the bridge are the only friends anybody has. Either there’s a strict caste system going on, or it’s seriously contrived writing. (One of the few things I liked about DS9 was that people had all kinds of friends in all areas of the station.)

I also just don’t buy that I’d want the rest of my friends to hear what I have to say to each person individually. For one, I know I’d feel a lot more special if my dead friend send me a personal note than just lumped it into a bucket checklist to be read in front of everyone. I cannot BELIEVE that the writers had Tasha thank Troi for teaching her how to be feminine. Just wow. The real problem here is that Tasha thanks people for who they are using adjectives to describe their virtues–virtues we have never seen in action . If the series had bothered to show instead of tell, there’d be no need for any of that sequence. If the show had actually put these people in situations that highlighted the qualities Tasha imagines in them, we would feel the force of her goodbye without her having to say it. As it is, it feels like the hollow desperation of a hack writer getting his digs into a character he loathes one last time.

Rating: Impulse power.

Ding-dong, the witch is dead.

Aw, that’s not fair. Tasha probably wasn’t really a witch. But—like the Witch of the East, upon whom Dorothy’s Kansas cottage falls—the only thing we really knew about her is what others said about her.

“An outstanding officer.” Never saw it. Never saw it, before her stockinged toes curled up and withdrew under the house the writers threw down on her in a cyclone of terrible scripts and casting choices.

Though they changed the division colors, Tasha goes out in the most pathetic and meaningless manner of the lowest ranked Red Shirt. Ever.

The closest this gang rape survivor ever got to a characterization was when she got roofied on polywater and set out to hornily hunt down the ship’s biggest battery-operated sex toy, a fully funktional positronic phallus. Cmdr. Data—evidently only pretending to be drunk just to get lucky like a frat boy, since no other explanation was offered or made sense—leaped at the idea of joining in on the date rape of a junior officer. Horrid, just horrid.

The next stab at characterization was when this gang rape survivor was captured for Idi Amin’s (or was it Mobutu?) love slave harem and forced into some saucy girl-on-girl action. Again, horrid.

Women’s issues in TNG get handled with the same clumsiness as other issues of social justice: An arrogant fiat at the outset that such problems do not exist in the STU, followed by a sludge of scripts that indicate (directly or indirectly), yes, they do.

One wonders if she could have been written any better, given the era and the emphasis. It probably is worth contemplating how different the show would have been had she stayed, and not in a good way.

My guess is, there would have been more “girls, they wanna have fun” playfulness among the Troika, more Risa-style risquiness. You saw a glimpse of that dark future when the girls laughed at Riker’s disco diaper in “Angel One.” The excellent Michael Dorn would have remained longer in the background… but not forever because, in one of the unwritten rules of SF screenwriting, alien warriors are more fun to write about than rape victims. And writers can handle the character issues better there, too.

As for the rest, a TNG Season 8 Tweet cast it best:

A Tasha Yar clone hails the ship; the crew turns off the lights and pretends they’re not home.

@ 1 bobsandiego DeepThought and I both shouted at the engineer when ordering him to go faster miraculously forced faster results. Engineering does not work that way!

And yeah, the attempted zombie resurrection is just weird.

@ 2 DemetriosX I wear contacts, so that doesn’t bother me…

I had forgotten that Yar dies like five minutes into the episode. There’s really no purpose whatsoever to her demise.

@ 3 CaitieCat and @ 7 Lemnoc Honestly, I’m glad they didn’t go whole-hog on Yar and try to do anything with her. Forget the potential. They basically revamped her character for DS9 as Kira, and that was a disaster. Kira’s hard-nosed and doesn’t take shit from people, which would be good, except that her character is always wrong , and they even gave her a little rape gang planet past of her own, and her mommy had Stockholm Syndrome. And she’s the love object for several other characters and mostly exists to motivate others’ mistakes. But mostly she’s wrong. When Eugene and I watched DS9 a few years ago we realized too late that we should have kept track of the number of times she offers a solution or idea that the entire crew shits on because, well, it’s usually idiotic and motivated by emotions.

I love a good death myself, which is probably why I can tolerate traipsing through the forest enough to love Lord of the Rings . Imagine how much more powerful this episode could have been if Yar had chosen her death.

Time for me to buck the trend, I guess.

I’m a big fan of anti-drama. All main characters should be in jeopardy, at all times, and that can only be demonstrated by offing a few of them now and again. The flaw with this episode isn’t that Yar was offed suddenly, for no reason, and with no preamble–that was the awesome part–but that she got her interminable dying speech anyway.

This felt like a TOS episode, both good and bad, and I was pretty satisfied with it. I never felt Yar needed a “proper” death, and never really cared that much for “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

I suppose if I’d kept up with entertainment news more, I’d have known something about Crosby’s departure, but instead it came as a complete surprise–which is probably the best way to have seen the episode.

Ah, the episode that gave Denise Crosby her best role: playing a holographic image on that little device which Data keeps. Seriously…everyone must know by now that I dislike Lt. Yar and hold Data in utter contempt most of the time, but when he resigns his commission in “Measure of the Man” and pulls out that holographic memento of Lt. Yar for a few seconds, I actually tear up a little bit, even knowing that the basis for Data’s sentimentality is in one of the worst TNG episodes ever made.

I’ve also never liked Dr. Crusher much but she demonstrates a quality in this episode that is lacking both from Dr. McCoy (however much I may adore him) and from his regrettably inferior (but still appealing) copy Dr. Pulaski: she does what I expect a doctor ought to do when a patient flatlines, which is to rush around frantically and do everything possible to save him or her. We joke about McCoy’s habit of saying, “He’s dead,” but really it’s not that funny. I don’t think any doctor worth his or her salt would merely check a dead man’s pulse and pronounce him a goner without at least trying to resuscitate him first. McCoy and Pulaski hardly ever bothered but Crusher, with Lt. Yar, tries everything she can. I like that.

OK, so maybe she wasn’t the best doctor, but…man, I’ll never understand the hatred for Dr. Pulaski. She had ten times Dr. Crusher’s force of personality and so what if she was mean to Data. Someone needed to be mean to Data, considering how everyone else indulged his antics.

I must be the only Trekkie who loathes Sela. She was horrible, sorry. Cursed with all of Yar’s worst qualities–smugness, stridency, wooden line delivery–she was never blessed with anything to redeem her at all aside from that fact that we’re supposed to feel something for her because she’s sort of kind of a renascence of Tasha Yar, complete with the ghostly echo of her affinity for Data.

@9 S. Hutson Blount

All main characters should be in jeopardy, at all times, and that can only be demonstrated by offing a few of them now and again.

That’s true, and it’s something a lot of shows don’t have the guts to do. Even Joss Whedon flinches a bit, but the deaths in Serenity go a long way toward providing an actual sense of danger for the remaining characters in the final minutes of the film. I admire that.

And though I agree wholeheartedly with what everyone else has said about Yar’s farewell speech, I dig the idea that crew members have recorded these messages because they could be killed at any moment. Though I did wonder how often she had to update it. That’s one of the tricky things about lumping all the messages together.

@10 etomlins

I must be the only Trekkie who loathes Sela. She was horrible, sorry. Cursed with all of Yar’s worst qualities–smugness, stridency, wooden line delivery

Ah, but those traits are perfect for a Romulan security officer! I didn’t like Sela exactly, but I was intrigued by her and like what she represented to the Enterprise crew.

Sela remains aggravating because of the might-have-been factor: despite all that setup, they decided to make her a buffoon. I don’t have the same antipathy for Denise Crosby that seems to be prevalent here, but she in no way compared to Andreas Katsulas’ Tomalok for scenery-chewing awesomeness.

OK, so maybe she wasn’t the best doctor, but…man, I’ll never understand the hatred for Dr. Pulaski. She had ten times Dr. Crusher’s force of personality and so what if she was mean to Data. Someone needed to be mean to Data, considering how everyone else indulged his antics.

Actually, watch Pulaski in “Unnatural Selection” and you will see the fiercest ever dedication and sacrifice a doctor ever made for the life of her patient(s).

Hate to say it, but one of the things that probably made Pulaski shine as a character was she was older and therefore ipso facto not a sex object, and therefore the writers could focus on things other than her boobs and hair. They actually had to treat her as a person—you know, have a conversation with something other than her chest—and they did.

I must be the only Trekkie who loathes Sela. She was horrible, sorry.

You’re not alone there. All of the wood and clumsy delivery, unredeemed by any sort of humility and joy the Good Guys are required to emit in order to be, uh, good.

Sela’s story arc just heaps more dung on the bio of Tasha Yar. The rape camp victim did not die an honorable death after all, but was captured alive (presumably allowing the Enterprise C tech to fall into the hands of the enemy) and forced to copulate with her captors and bear their seed. Again, horrid.

I dig the idea that crew members have recorded these messages because they could be killed at any moment. Though I did wonder how often she had to update it.

Yes, it’s something I and my friends do for one another all the time. I’ve found a Tumblr blog works really great for the constantly evolving declarations and obit ;-)

@ Caitiecait Of course Yar could have been a good or even great character, but not with this writing crew.It didn’t help that Ms. Crosby was at best a mid-level talent and so given horrid lines she couldn’t save the character from becoming nothing more than a joke, but the prinicple fault lies in the lines and not the star. You can still have the anarchy world background, but you have to think what does that mean to the character and how would it color her view of people? No one would survive on such a planet without a group. period. Loyalty to the people who have your back would be paramount, not to ideals, but the concrete people guarding you while you sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom. Anyone outside of the group is always suspect. Treason is the greatest sin. No one is innocent. Eat well today because tomorrow you may starve. Be proactive, because those who wait are lost. These are some of the things someone like Yar would have learned very early on. Now take her out of that envirnment and put her in Starfleet. SHe’s unlikely to be super dedicated to the ideals of Starfleet, but more loylal to her crew and even to the particualr crew memebr who mentally map to her gang. She’s going to be more suspcious of strangers, more questioning of the state motives of those encountered, and more of a prove it to me kind of person.

@Bob #15 Yes, yes yes yes yes and yes. This is a huge flaw in the writing of this show — it never bothered to think about things. It was just “BAM! Rape gang planet! Okay, backstory done, now she does whatever the plot requires this week… just like everybody else!”

Another index of the weak writing in this episode is something we’ve been seeing as a theme for the last several episodes this season — the writers have no idea what to do at the beginning that isn’t filler. We had the space light show last week, now this week we get to Thrill! as Routine Starship Maintenance Happens At An Inconvenient Time! Maybe next week the check-engine light will come on and the Enterprise will stop to have some transmission repairs before the plot starts. Seriously, why is this in the episode? I’ll tell you why — because these writers’ idea of “character” was to have Picard shout at people, and because they had no idea whatsoever what story they were trying to tell. It was just some stuff that happens anyway, so why not put some nonsensical tech the tech crap at the beginning? Nonsensical, by the way, *on its face*, because you don’t stop and overhaul anything when you’re on the way to meet someone. Why would you do that.

In light of all this, while I suppose Tar could’ve represented a great genre-transgressing opportunity for the show, in reality it just wouldn’t have played out. Whether the writing or the direction or who knows what, Dorn was already taking stage from Crosby, and with the amount of fat in these episodes we just wouldn’t have had enough actual events to develop anyone without getting some of the characters off the bridge. In the hands of better writers, absolutely, Yar could’ve been a tremendous asset; but it just didn’t work out that way, and it’s entirely to Dorn’s credit that he’s able to make a character out of practically nothing and really start to shine.

I mean, this stuff goes all the way down to the level of direction and blocking. Look at how the away team fans out after they’re first thwarted by Arnis. You can almost see them walk to assigned positions because they were told to stand there so they’d all be visible on the cameras. Nothing is happening organically , and it’s a miracle that this show survived long enough that it eventually started to.

@2 DemetriosX

Hey, don’t you go dissing The Outer Limits. The original was a great show and Stefano wrote some decent episodes for it.

I was more making fun of the fact that Armus looks like a throwback to the monsters on that show, but I never felt the stories compared favorably to The Twilight Zone . I keep meaning to re-watch The Outer Limits , though.

I’ll also say that thsi is not my idea of stroy telling either. To me a story about a character making a decision, one that cannot be revoked once made. How does th character change in the lead up to and in the aftermath of making that decision? This is the heart of story and drama, all else to me are puzzleboxes. That’s what this was, a puzzlebox. How do you get past Armus. It would have made a medicore game session and it made a very weak story. No ONE made in hard calls here, no one at all.

the writers have no idea what to do at the beginning that isn’t filler.

To be fair, I think TV storytelling was going through a bit of a transition in this period. You had the earlier period in TV storytelling where nothing happened that did not further the main plot, and a later period that presented A & B (and even C & D) parallel storylines to mix it up and keep viewers guessing. Then you have this period with a bit of misdirection, before the plot narrows and settles down to the main storyline.

The Simpsons have often made fun of this, moving from story trope to clichéd story trope (on the way to spend the night in a haunted house we got stuck in the car wash and won the state lottery. Oh, look, a cat stuck in a tree!).

And I imagine that, this early in the series, the writers were actively (desperately?) planting seeds and hooks for future stories. And some of this stuff (very little, but more in Season Two) does evolve into future plot points. You can’t do that stuff at the end of the story, and you really shouldn’t do it in the middle when the plot is developing and underway. So that leaves only the beginning.

All that said, none of the writing here seems particularly taut, and there’s a kind of torpor throughout this season.

Honestly, the only reason this series survived was because we at the time were starved and grateful to have it! I mean, we had shit like “Man From Atlantis” and “Bionic Woman” and “Greatest American Hero” passing itself off as the pinnacle of the highest aspirations of science fiction.

@17 Eugene Nah, Armus isn’t anywhere near the quality of the monsters on Outer Limits . Armus isn’t anywhere near the quality of the monsters on Lost in Space . For me he falls somewhere between the Horta and the rock monster. Or maybe down around that awful gorilla-robot hybrid from Robot Monster . Janos Prohaska couldn’t have saved Armus.

Comparing Outer Limits and Twilight Zone is almost apples and oranges. Or maybe it’s more like the difference between a story for Analog and one for F&SF. TZ came to rely a little too much on the twist, which actually can lead to a lack of surprise for a critical viewer. OL had some terrific stories, including 2 by Harlan Ellison which are fantastic. The first season is better than the second, but both are worthwhile. Stefano also wrote a little film called Psycho . I’d love to see what the original script for this abomination looked like. I bet it was miles better.

@20 DemetriosX

It does seem very much like an Outer Limits kind of story, though. You have the “bear” Armus, who is depicted as terrible and terrifying through most of the episode, and then everything is inverted and the bear is suddenly a pitiable creature trapped in conditions not of its making. You can almost hear the voiceover as the ship departs, delivering whatever moral can be gleaned here.

Yes, yes, could have been much better, much more dimension, but it does follow that OL pattern of surprising us with suddenly human monsters. What it’s lacking, that OL was excellent at, is presenting us with a human antagonist that is the story’s true monster. Maybe that’s what got ripped out, as you suggest, of the script and rendered it without a center.

“That’s true, and it’s something a lot of shows don’t have the guts to do. Even Joss Whedon flinches a bit, but the deaths in Serenity go a long way toward providing an actual sense of danger for the remaining characters in the final minutes of the film. I admire that.”

You want meaningful and surprising deaths for characters? You need go no further than the Ron Moore version of “Battlestar Galactica” which I very much liked. I was expounding the virtues of the show to my then boss, and loaned him the first season while the third was airing.

Although I didn’t want to give any unintentional spoilers, I did mention to him as he borrowed the second season from me ( he and his wife watched the entire first season in two days! ), “Not to give anything away but don’t get too attached to any particular character.” That series was just brutal with making you care for a character then unexpectedly offing them. I can’t think of any SF series from even less than a decade earlier that was so unflinching and cavalier about killing off main and supporting characters. In a way it was brilliant, as it really made you care and worry about the fate of these people. When a lead was wounded or in danger, by god, they really COULD die. They even resisted magically curing the Laura Roslin character’s cancer…even though they led you to believe they might.

Anyway, back to this pointless exercise. I was reading articles and fan mags about the show when it originally aired, and Denise Crosby’s leaving the show was one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood. In fact the news was leaked so far in advance of the actual episode that I was tuning in to each episode for weeks, even a couple of months, wondering if “this one is the one where she dies”. Her sudden death had very little impact on me at the time. I did get a bit choked up by the memorial scene, but I too thought it was hokey, and a bit too warm, fuzzy and sentimental. I kept wondering when she actually spent that much time with these people to get so attached to them.

As for Pulaski’s bad rap; it’s not that she was unlikeable, it’s because she was so obviously a dead-on McCoy clone. If she had held ANY other position than chief medical officer I think she would have been more accepted. I liked her okay, but I cringed at the too obvious McCoyisms ie: not getting along with Data/Spock, Being afraid of the transporter, being stubborn and unafraid to stand up and call the captain on his bullshit…etc.

Why not give some of these traits to the other main characters and liven things up a bit? Why make her the only cantankerous main character? I understand they needed a new medical officer, but why replace a woman doctor with a female “Bones”? To me it’s almost sexist to replace a departing female character with another female. It’s like replacing a black actor with another black actor, just to keep the ratio in balance. That’s not progress…it’s tokenism.

Imagine if Pulaski had come aboard as the permanent no-nonsense chief engineer ( would have sucked for Geordi, but… ). Wouldn’t that have been a nice message for young girls watching the show? You don’t have to be a ‘caregiver’. You can aspire to do something technical and be good at it too! Of course, if they’d done that, she probably would have been Scottish and drank too much too.

I watched the Bolero part of Allegro Non Troppo then The Fifth Element to prepare for this. (The animal nature of Man and the Ultimate Evil) In the Bolero part, Man’s nature is mocked but only at the end after we see what has come of his turning to a different path while the rest of life marches on. In Fifth Element, the Perfect Being calls Mankind’s worth into question (and much of what we’ve seen and laughed at to that point supports her question) but she comes to see that Mankind – with flaws – is better than ultimate Evil and is worthy of being saved. See. Stories dealing with the dark side of human nature can work and be entertaining.

Then we have this episode. I dislike this episode so much that I’ve taken to calling it Skin of Awful. We have this pool of evil cast off by someone, it holds someone hostage, it kills someone and the rest have to figure out how to get away from it. That’s not a good story idea, that’s only a weak collection of story elements. The three main questions these elements lead a thinking person to ask are “Who shed this evil?” “Why did they just leave it out like this?” and “What happened to them?” Not addressed. Bringing these into the mix could have sparked some life into this story.

I don’t see the Organians as being the source of the mess that is Armus. And who they were didn’t have to be all that important if the writers would have looked to the TOS episode The Enemy Within to develop the answers to the second and third questions. The people who shed Armus left it out because they no longer had the drive or will to harm it. Their civilization declined – weakened with indifference – then passed into obscurity. Imagine the conversation Kirk would have had (knowing this) with Armus. Armus becomes confused then calls out “Norman. Please Coordinate.” Well, maybe not that line but you get the idea. Armus could have become confused or could have become more arrogant. Either way, it could have added something to the story.

Instead, we got this annoying skin of awful.

I’ve been thinking about McCoy’s simple “He’s dead, Jim” and the statement that this is the only time we see Crusher attempt to revive someone. As for McCoy, that probably says more about the state of medicine in the mid-60s than anything else. Closed-chest, portable defibrillation was still pretty new and certainly wasn’t part of the general consciousness. The expectation was likely still that once your heart stopped beating, that was it.

As for Crusher, this may be the only time we actually see her working on someone who is apparently dead, but there are several times she calls for an emergency beam out to sickbay. There may not be screentime for it, but there is at least an implication of extraordinary measures. And we do see her fight for patients who are in life-threatening situations, sometimes even having to fight against the patient himself (like Worf).

@dep1701 #22

You want meaningful and surprising deaths for characters? You need go no further than the Ron Moore version of “Battlestar Galactica” which I very much liked.

I have to say, I don’t think I can agree with this. I recall only two or MAYBE three “meaningful and surprising” deaths; one of those was a minor player, another was actor-initiated (the performer in question wanted to leave the show to pursue a movie career), and the third [spoiler redacted]… I mean they kill off a lot of Cylons starting right from the beginning, but the whole point of Cylons is that they come back, so those deaths aren’t meaningful.

…but I think I’m digressing a bit…

I vaguely remember that heroic measures were employed to save the life of the Russian physicist Lev Landau, who clinically died at least once after he was smashed up horribly in a motor accident in the ’60s some time. I can’t remember where I read about it though.

There are economies to be taken in teleplays, I realize, so for a Star Trek doctor to pronounce someone dead after doing nothing–or perhaps after making a single hypospray injection of go-juice–is perhaps just a way of speeding the story along. All the same, it contributes to the problem of depicting futuristic medicine when you get the inadvertent sense that an ordinary 20th century sawbones would strive harder and employ better tools to save a life than the supposedly more civilized and medically advanced doctors of the future.

On a different thought: I’m more of less a fan of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” despite its flaws, e.g. using Guinan as all-purpose plot glue. But it should have been enough of an answer to the question of Tasha Yar’s shabby exit from the show–if it was shabby. I never felt myself that the mode of her death was particularly insulting; it’s not like she was killed by a random accident, she was killed by a genuinely powerful and dangerous being. And Lt. Yar at least died in the line of duty. Yet “Yesterday’s Enterprise” plays into the whole idea that Yar’s death was a joke. Was it? I honestly don’t see it.

Ick. There are so many things wrong with this episode, especially for someone who really wanted to see Yar go away. I actually disliked her even more than Wesley and I’ve never been a fan of the show bringing her back. Yesterday’s Enterprise is, for me, much the lesser for it. And I hate her Romulan spawn.

So despite my lack of appreciation for either the character or the actress, I still think the death is crap. The thing is, all the other main characters at one time or another (often several times) have “died” in exactly the same sort of senseless manner and have been deus ex machina’d back in one way or another each time.

And the funeral service hologram thing always irritated me. It’s a little like being drowned in syrup.

Otherwise I kind of think an entity that’s composed of evil isn’t all that terrible an idea. It might have been interesting if they’d done it completely differently. And I thought the swallowing Riker alive bit had the potential to be kind of freaky if I were actually capable of taking the episode seriously.

@26 Deep Thought

“I have to say, I don’t think I can agree with this. I recall only two or MAYBE three “meaningful and surprising” deaths; one of those was a minor player, another was actor-initiated (the performer in question wanted to leave the show to pursue a movie career), and the third ”

Well, maybe I was wrong by referring to lead characters. But it seemed like BSG would flesh out supporting players ( particularly the pilots and technical crew ) and then just as we got to know and/or recognize them…WHAM. They’d be gone. Look at Cally ( who I generally found whiny and annoying ). She went from being Chief Tyrol’s subordinate and friend, to his wife and mother of his child, then she’s killed by Tory. Then there was Billy ( the one who wanted a movie career…hmmm doesn’t seem to have gone much of anywhere ), Dualla (aka Dee, whose suicide really shocked me ), Gaeta, the president’s spiritual advisor, Jackhammer, Kara’s hotshot rival pilot ‘Kat’, Ellen Tigh – before she’s revealed as a cylon, and so many others whose names escape me at the moment.

To equal that body count, “Next Gen” would have had to kill off Barclay, Ro Laren, Nurse Ogawa, the Bolian barber, Robin Lefler, the ensign who spilled hot chocolate on Picard, Guinan…hell, pretty much everyone of any significance except Picard and Data. TOS would have had to kill off everyone from Scotty on down to Yeoman Rand.

My point was more that when the characters died on Galactica, you cared more because they had had some fleshing out, and recurrent screen time and a lot of the time you didn’t see it coming. Yes, they were at war and casualties were to be expected, but you usually didn’t see that kind of carnage on SFTV, unless they were nameless extras, who might have had a line or two.

Yar’s death was barely affecting at all and she had been there, promoted as a main cast member, for nearly an entire season. She was little more than a cipher. Even if Yeoman Rand had been killed off on TOS, rather than just disappearing without an explanation, her death would have had more of an impact than this death scene did.

@27 “Otherwise I kind of think an entity that’s composed of evil isn’t all that terrible an idea. It might have been interesting if they’d done it completely differently. And I thought the swallowing Riker alive bit had the potential to be kind of freaky if I were actually capable of taking the episode seriously.”

While I may have a bit more sympathy for Yar ( and like her return and sacrifice in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” ), I agree that the gothic horror aspect of an entity composed of pure evil is an interesting idea.

What might have made this episode more compelling would have been if Yar had been the one sucked into Armus. Then we could have seen the being absorbed into her, basically taking her over ( shades of “Lights Of Zetar”, I suppose ). Then she/it could have still been as absolutely nasty, uncooperative and evil…still exerting force to keep Troi and the pilot trapped. Then through some clever writing ( I know, asking a bit much at this juncture ) have the only way to defeat the alien and save Tasha from an eternal hell of being manipulated and ‘owned’ Armus be that one of the Enterprise crew have to kill Yar themselves. Perhaps Tasha could even assert her desire to die rather than live that way.

Then you would have had moral dilemma, guilt, drama, sacrifice, and shock. things Roddenberry wasn’t allowing at this point. I know it would have been a cliched story ( “Lights Of Zetar” with a pinch of “Where No Man Has Gone Before” ) , but it might have been more meaningful than this episode.

Of course I’ve been wrong before.

Man, Lights of Zetar used to scare the HELL out of me when I was a kid. That creepy voice, and the face making that weird croaking noise, and changing colours, and dying? Guh…*shudder*…it scared me more than the weird monster that was sucking people under it in an Eagle on Space:1999 once…

@31 “Man, Lights of Zetar used to scare the HELL out of me when I was a kid. That creepy voice, and the face making that weird croaking noise, and changing colours, and dying? Guh…*shudder*…it scared me more than the weird monster that was sucking people under it in an Eagle on Space:1999 once…

I’m with you. the possession effects in “zetar” used to creep me out too ( as did the ‘erased face’ bit in “Charlie X’ ).

LOL. that monster in “Dragon’s Domain” nearly got “1999” banned in my house. When the series was first being aired in ’75, my youngest sister wanted to come in my room and watch “1999” with me. Just so happened that “Dragon’s Domain” was the episode that was being aired. Since it was a first run show, I had no idea it was going to have those graphic effects in it. She ended up having nightmares that night, and I got in trouble for letting her watch it!

Funny thing is, I’d probably LOL at the creature in Dragon’s Domain (thanks for that, btw, I didn’t know the name obviously), but it had me freakin’ and peakin’ for a few weeks.

That, and some giant spikey turtle monster in a Japanese monster movie, that I saw walk up concrete steps in an apartment building or something, and then HATED EVERY FIRE ALARM EVER AFTER THAT. And since we lived in the projects where pulling the alarm was more or less the best form of entertainment we could afford…;)

I’ve been conducting a re-watch of Doctor Who alongside the Star Trek franchise, and this episode feels like it would have played better as one of the Doctor’s exploits. He’s always facing down ancient evil and monsters of the week.

As for Yar, I think the randomness of her death would have been less of an issue if the episode didn’t seem to be all about killing her off. If they’d cut the space cpr scene or whatever that was and replaced the silly hologram goodbye with a briefer standard Starfleet funeral, this episode wouldn’t have been nearly as bad for me. It still would have felt pointless, but that’s better than awful.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  Notify me when new comments are added.

Recent Comments

• Nanda on Star Trek Re-Watch: “And The Children Shall Lead”
• GMC on Star Trek Re-Watch: “Miri”
• Joey on Star Trek Re-Watch: “The City on the Edge of Forever”
• bcjammerx on Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Datalore”
• Richard Simpkins on Re-Watching Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Recent Discussions in Ten Forward

• Re: A data journalism approach to solving "best ST" debates? by: Kevin July 3, 2017, 19:02
• ST Rewatch: The EMotion Picture (long) by: Guest October 18, 2015, 15:13
• Re: Chaos on the Bridge by: Kevin September 3, 2015, 13:13
• Re: Leonard Nimoy by: Kevin February 28, 2015, 15:13
• "Shaka, When the Walls Fell" by: ecmyers June 19, 2014, 08:20

Recent Posts

Laugh Treks: “Spock’s Brain”

Making "Spock's Brain" re-watchable.

Laugh Treks are humorous audio recordings you can sync with your Star Trek episodes to enhance your viewing experience.

Favorite Posts

Uhura takes the first steps to becoming a crazy tribble lady.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who on the ship is meanest of all?

If you hit Forever, you went too far.

Wrath, like a seed, needs time to grow... in a Petri dish, best kept cold.

This week on Masterpiece Theater... Shakespeare’s Hamlet! In space.

• June 2014  (1)
• May 2014  (1)
• January 2014  (2)
• November 2013  (1)
• October 2013  (1)
• August 2013  (5)
• July 2013  (2)
• June 2013  (4)
• April 2013  (3)
• March 2013  (4)
• February 2013  (4)
• January 2013  (4)
• December 2012  (2)
• November 2012  (4)
• October 2012  (3)
• September 2012  (4)
• August 2012  (4)
• July 2012  (3)
• June 2012  (5)
• May 2012  (4)
• April 2012  (4)
• March 2012  (5)
• February 2012  (4)
• January 2012  (4)
• December 2011  (5)
• November 2011  (5)
• October 2011  (6)
• September 2011  (1)
• August 2011  (7)
• July 2011  (8)
• June 2011  (8)
• May 2011  (5)
• April 2011  (6)
• March 2011  (4)
• February 2011  (5)
• January 2011  (6)
• December 2010  (5)
• November 2010  (6)
• October 2010  (6)
• August 2010  (1)
• July 2010  (3)
• June 2010  (3)
• May 2010  (6)
• April 2010  (8)
• March 2010  (4)
• February 2010  (3)
• October 2009  (2)
• September 2009  (6)
• August 2009  (1)
• July 2009  (5)
• June 2009  (8)
• May 2009  (8)
• April 2009  (9)

About Arras WordPress Theme

The Viewscreen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Skin of Evil Stardate: 41601.3 Original Airdate: 25 Apr, 1988

<Back to the episode listing

Star Trek ® and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc . Copyright © 1966, Present. The Star Trek web pages on this site are for educational and entertainment purposes only. All other copyrights property of their respective holders.

• Web Channels
• Star Trek: The Next Generation

Skin of Evil

Deanna is held hostage by a black oil-like alien creature capable of infinite sadism… and infinite power. To save her, one of the Enterprise crew will die.

Mart McCesney

Brad Zerbst

Raymond Forchion

Walker boone, cast appearances.

Patrick Stewart

Jonathan Frakes

LeVar Burton

Michael Dorn

Gates McFadden

Marina Sirtis

Brent Spiner

Denise Crosby

Wil Wheaton

Episode discussion.

No comments yet. Be the first!

• Buy the Book…
• Reviews Hub

the m0vie blog

Following Us

• Adding Our RSS Feed to Your Gmail
• Following our Feed in Internet Explorer
• Millennium (Reviews)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Reviews)
• Star Trek: Enterprise (Reviews)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation (Reviews)
• Star Trek: The Original Series (Reviews)
• Star Trek: Voyager (Reviews)
• The X-Files (Reviews)
• X-Files Fandom Poll Form

Check out the Archives

Awards & Nominations

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Skin of Evil (Review)

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation , and also next year’s release of  Star Trek: Into Darkness , I’m taking a look at the recent blu ray release of the first season, episode-by-episode. Check back daily for the latest review.

Skin of Evil is a mess of an episode. It’s a whole bunch of concepts thrown together, and executed in the most ridiculous and banal manner possible. There’s a lot of the disparate elements of Skin of Evil that could easily work if handled properly. Most notably, the idea of a character dying in the line of duty rather than as a hero is a fascinating one, and the eponymous monster could be an interesting twist on the “god-like beings” we seem to stumble across once every couple of weeks in the Star Trek universe. However, Skin of Evil winds up feeling the one thing it should be impossible for an episode like this to be. Despite all the different stuff happening involving all the different characters: it’s boring .

A slick operator…

Skin of Evil is best known for the death of Tasha Yar. I know that might catch a few latecomers by surprise, but a figure a show that is a quarter-of-a-century in age has very few surprises for the modern audience member. Indeed, even those watching Encounter at Farpoint for the first time all these years later will probably figure that Yar is not long for this world. After all, she’s the only member of the ensemble who wasn’t part of the crew when the show broke into the pop cultural consciousness.

Crosby opted to leave early on in the series because she felt that Yar wasn’t getting enough development of the franchise. It’s something that seems strange, looking back over the series, given that Yar has the first character-centred episode with the dire Code of Honour . Although, I suppose, if that were the episode driven by my character, I probably wouldn’t be too happy about it either. Still, the vast majority of the ensemble was still undeveloped at this point. Worf had only just had his first character-centric episode in Heart of Glory , and Geordi had been relegated to bit-parts. Symbiosis had given Beverly Crusher her most significant role to date, but Gates McFadden would also leave the series at the end of its first year.

Funeral for a friend…

Reflecting on the decision, though, it’s hard to fault Crosby for leaving. She was clearly unhappy on the show :

For me, I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show. I was dying. This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going “Aye, aye, captain,” and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years. I think you have to take your chances. I was really young. I didn’t have to make house payments or put kids through private school or support people. I was free to make those kinds of decisions.

Then again, nobody involved in the show seemed particularly happy with that first year, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera. You wonder if things might have improved for Crosby had she stayed.

Into darkness…

Still, it’s not my place to second-guess Denise Crosby’s career choices or to wonder how things might have been. Yar’s death really wasn’t as big a deal as it should have been. I am not talking about the decision to randomly kill her by the threat of the week. I can understand the appeal of such an approach, even if the execution has its problems. I am talking about how Yar’s death shaped the rest of the series, and the impact that it had on the crew of the ship.

Of course, it has absolutely no impact on the rest of the show. There’s no indication in any subsequent episode that the crew treat space exploration as more inherently hostile because their friend died in the line of duty.In Yar’s next appearance, in Yesterday’s Enterprise , Guinan makes it quite clear that her colleagues don’t really talk about her that much. Even when Yar’s daughter, Sela, appears in the show, nobody seems to reflect too much about Yar.

Crash and burn…

Compare this, for example, to the passing of Jadzia Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . There, Dax’s passing had a massive impact on those around her. Her oldest friend was so deeply shaken that he returned to Earth to find himself. Her husband went into prolonged mourning. The station was never quite the same, and a large portion of the following (and final) season was spent exploring about how her replacement fit into her niche aboard the station. I’m not ecstatic about Jadzia’s death in Tears of the Prophets , but it’s a far better example of a random act of violence have repercussions than anything in Skin of Evil .

Yar is relegated to minor appearances whenever the show wants to remind us that Data is most certainly not a virgin, or when the episode is trying to convince us that an adventure is set in the past. Indeed, the most significant impact that Yar’s death had was pushing Worf to the fore. Worf was lucky to be a regular character. Thanks to Yar’s death, he was suddenly pushed into the role of Chief of Security. If Yar had never left, I can’t imagine that his character arc would have flowed quite so perfectly over the following years. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only thing really notable about the death of a major character is the room that presented for another member of the ensemble to develop.

Truth be told, it’s a bit of a drag…

Then again, Yar always felt like a missed opportunity. Up until this point, Star Trek had always had a bit of difficulty with gender roles. Indeed, none of the female characters on the original Enterprise seemed especially well-developed or essential. In fact, Nichelle Nichols had considered leaving the original Star Trek until Martin Luther King convinced her that her role was important to a generation of young African-Americans.

While Crusher was a doctor and Troi was a counsellor, Yar was the Chief of Security of the new Enterprise. Explicitly based on the character of Vasquez from Aliens , she really should have been a strong female character in a show that really needed more of them. Instead, she became a mess of a character who was defined by a back story featuring the perpetual threat of sexual violence and continual shown to be even more incompetent than most of her colleagues in a first season that treated the crew as idiots to advance the plot.

She’s dead, Jim…

You could argue that a lot of Yar’s potential would be realised four years later with Ro Laren in Ensign Ro . It wouldn’t be until we met Kira Nerys in Emissary that we had a truly strong female character as a regular on a Star Trek show, which feels far too late. Gates McFadden would be forced out at the end of the season by behind-the-scenes pressures , and Marina Sirtis (the only surviving female cast member) would be treated to The Child as the opening story of the next season.

Given that Diana Muldaur, the female lead who joined the show in McFadden’s absence, would also leave after only a year on the show, it feels reasonable safe to suggest that The Next Generation had some very serious gender-related issues both in front of (and behind) the camera. It’s hard not to feel that Yar (as a character) was a victim of these difficulties, as the writers seemed to struggle to find a voice for most of the female cast. Crusher didn’t really get a character-centred episode this year, and Marina Sirtis was absent quite a bit.

Oil handle this…

Still, regardless of what one might think about Yar as a character, it’s hard to get too excited about her death. The death of Yar is – in theory – a fascinating plot point because it should serve to teach the audience that death is random and sudden. It doesn’t just arrive in sweeps months or at season finales. Not every character gets to go out in some grand blaze of glory. The universe is cold and uncaring, and sometimes good people die bad deaths, and that is just terrible. Skin of Evil should be shocking because Yar’s death just sort of is. She’s fine one moment and dead the next.

Except, unfortunately, that doesn’t work. For one thing, we barely know Yar. It’s too early for her death to have meaning. For another thing, it doesn’t impact any of these characters that much after that final shot of Data. Finally, The Next Generation is just not that kind of show. The series never quite embraced the idea that space was that randomly hostile, and it was too smart to expect us to believe that the main characters could die at any moment. The death of Yar doesn’t raise any stakes or mark a turning point for the series.

It’s on the rocks…

Indeed, her death is probably the least indicative moment in this run of episodes. Heart of Glory proved the writers could tell new stories with old races. Symbiosis justified the Prime Directive and proved “messages shows” could work. We’ll Always Have Paris centred on Picard as a character. Conspiracy subverted Federation ideals. The Neutral Zone resurrected the Romulans and teased the Borg. Yar’s death should be an important moment – whether it is random or not – but it ends up feeling largely hallow.

A lot of that is down to the conceptual framework, and the fact that the audience knows Yar is dying because Crosby is leaving, rather than because the stakes are being raised. However, a great deal of it is down to the execution, which is just terrible. I mean, she has a ketchup stain. On her face. It looked dodgy in standard definition, and I’m disappointed that the remastered edition didn’t touch it up. I’m not sure how, but it looks just plain goofy.

The only bloodstain I have ever seen that looks like a Batman! sound effect…

On top of this, the sequence where Beverly tries to revive her is more awkward than intense, despite the fact that the actors do the best with the material. And then there’s the funeral, which attempts to make Yar a much deeper character than she actually was, but showing rather than telling. It’s just absolutely terribly written, as much as “friend dies in random and pointless act” should be a fascinating story beat.

Reportedly, Skin of Evil received a bit of a re-write from Leonard Maizlish, Roddenberry’s lawyer. Roddenberry hadn’t been in the best of health working on the show, and Maizlish had tried to take control of the production, causing much friction with the crew. In fact, David Gerrold, the respected author and Star Trek veteran, explicitly states that it was Maizlish who forced him to quit the series :

I left Next-Gen because Gene Roddenberry’s lawyer made the working conditions untenable. Gene’s health was failing and the lawyer told him not to trust his own staff. Over thirty other people left the show that first year (a television record) because of the office politics. Even today, if you mention the lawyer’s name on the lot, people roll their eyes and say, “We don’t mention him.” (Like what? Is that going to whitewash something?)

It’s worth noting that Maizlish wasn’t a writer by trade, so it might explain some of the clunkier plot elements. It should also be acknowledged that Maizlish’s actions were expressly in violation of the rules of the Writers’ Guild. It’s interesting that the next three episodes (the final three of the season), would end up impacted by a writers’ strike.

It’s a dirty job…

That said, it isn’t as if the death of Yar ruins an otherwise fantastic episode. Armsu is an interesting idea for a villain, if only because the Star Trek universe is so densely packed by god-like beings that encountering something vaguely like this was almost inevitable. It’s not the most graceful of metaphors for purging the darkness inside – what with creating a literal “skin of evil” that you can shed – but that doesn’t mean it can’t work as a story. And, for the record, I actually quite like the visual of Armus, even if making him a puddle of black goop is a little on the nose.

The real problem, however, is that Armus never seems evil. He just seems like a douche. He kills Yar, but his other notably evil acts include mocking a blind man and pulling a cheap “psyche” on Beverly. “You ask nicely. I will allow it. Wait! I’ve changed my mind. Talk to her from here.” Typing that out, I need to clarify I am not paraphrasing. That is literally what he says. Despite killing Yar, he never seems like that much of a threat to the crew, because he seems more like a petulant child than a being of pure evil. He could take lessons from some of the other villains of the franchise in that regard.

Pooling resources…

It doesn’t help that he is eventually defeated through the generous application of psycho-babble. I suppose that it is a better way of resolving the episode than relying on techno-babble, but it’s still pretty disappointing. “Save your compassion,” Armus advises Picard. “It’s revolting. You offer it like a prize when in fact it’s an insult.” Picard twists the knife, “Because you feel unworthy.” The villain’s weird filtered voice sounds more ridiculous than threatening when delivering lines like this. More than that, though, it continues the season’s trend of presenting the Federation as smug and superior, which means they never feel threatened.

That said, the creature’s interactions with Data were fascinating. I love how Data is logical enough that he simply doesn’t play along with the creature – making him no fun. When the creature toys with Geordi, Data refuses to entertain Armus by helping his friend when he knows the monster won’t let them retrieve the VISOR. “You will just move it again, and I will not help you hurt him.” When Armus threatens to use Data to shoot Picard or Crusher, Data refuses to feel guilty about it, logically stating, “I have no control over what you do with the phaser. Therefore, I would not be the instrument of his death.”

Kicking and screaming…

One of the best scenes of the episode sees Riker dragged into the puddle, kicking and screaming. The creature tells Data that if he helps Riker, Riker dies. Riker, naturally, doesn’t see things this way and screams for help, but Data is logical enough to just stand there. It’s a surprisingly effective five-second sequence in an episode that is otherwise quite shallow, and it’s a moment that works because you know Riker would rather take the chance, but Data’s mind doesn’t work like that.

However, the effectiveness of this sequence is undermined by the fact the fact that it seems like Armus gets to Data in some small way. Of all the main cast, Data should be the one who rises above it all, but there’s something unnerving about the moment where Data suggests, of Armus, “I think you should be destroyed.” We’d see later in the series, in the Most Toys , that Data was capable of violence and murder, but it seems strangely out of place here. The main thrust of the scenes involving Armus and Data is that Data is so innocent as to be beyond Armus’ manipulations, so the revelation that Data wishes to destroy Armus erodes that idea a bit.

Apparently the definition of “truly evil” includes “sublimely dickish”…

There’s not really too much to Skin of Evil beyond that. It is interesting to see that the Enterprise has yet another new Chief Engineer. I keep wondering what happens to these characters as they tend to wander into (and out of) the series with no real reason given. After all, it’s not like Chief Engineer should be an especially lethal job. (Well, discounting the occasional engineer-related fatality like in Lonely Among Us .) Here it’s Lynch, who keeps introducing himself as “Leland T. Lynch.”

It’s weird to hear a character repeatedly use his middle initial to people who should already know him. Perhaps he’s just trying to get the name to stick in Picard’s head. Or maybe he just wants to stress the fact that he totally shares a middle initial with both William T. Riker and James T. Kirk. “T-buddies for life!” Either way, we never see the character again, so I guess we know how this works out. Lynch is, I believe, our last new Chief Engineer of the season, so Skin of Evil sort of stabilises the roster, with Yar departing Security and the last of the rotating Chief Engineers showing up.

Keepin’ it handy…

I don’t hate all of Skin of Evil . I actually quite like Ron Jones’ ethereal score. His music for the early years of The Next Generation actually evoked a sort of a weird science-fiction landscape that slowly became something a bit more conventional as the series went on. I like the strange aural landscape of these early episodes, and Skin of Evil is no exception. It is, to be entirely frank, the best part of the episode.

Still, Skin of Evil is perhaps the last truly terrible instalment of the first season, so I guess we’ve passed some sort of important turning point. Conspiracy would be a muddled mess, but one with good ideas. The Neutral Zone would see the crew back on top patronising form, but did feature the promise of better stuff ahead. So, Skin of Evil feels like the last truly irredeemably bad episode of a first season that has been less than smooth.

It’s okay, Data, you never have to watch Skin of Evil again…

Don’t worry, though, the second season is just around the corner, with The Child and Shades of Grey .

Read our reviews of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation :

• Supplemental: The Lost Era – The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett
• Supplemental: Star Trek – The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1988)
• Supplemental: The Sky’s the Limit – Meet with Triumph and Disaster & Trust Yourself When All Men Doubt You by Michael Schuster & Steve Mollmann
• Supplemental: Star Trek – The Naked Time
• Code of Honour
• The Last Outpost
• Supplemental: Star Trek – The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane
• Lonely Among Us
• Supplemental: Reunion by Michael Jan Friedman
• Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1989) #59-61 – Children of Chaos/Mother of Madness/Brothers in Darkness
• Hide & Q
• The Big Goodbye
• Too Short a Season
• When the Bough Breaks
• Supplemental: Star Trek – The Devil in the Dark
• Coming of Age
• Heart of Glory
• Arsenal of Freedom
• Supplemental: Survivors by Jean Lorrah
• We’ll Always Have Paris
• Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1989) Annual #3 – The Broken Moon
• Supplemental: Deep Space Nine – The Lives of Dax: Sins of the Mother (Audrid) by S.D. Perry
• Supplemental: Operation Assimilation
• Supplemental: The Lost Era – Serpents Among the Ruins by David R. George III

Share this:

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly , Beverly Crusher , Data , Denise Crosby , Encounter at Farpoint , Gates McFadden , Geordi La Forge , Health , J Abrams , Jadzia Dax , james t. kirk , Marina Sirtis , picard , Riker , Ro Laren , Shopping , Skin of Evil , star trek , Star Trek Next Generation , star trek: deep space nine , star trek: the original series , William Riker , Yar |

7 Responses

Skin of Evil holds a special place in my heart, as it was my first exposure to any Trek ever. I must have been 3 or 4 and this was on right before dinner. Armus haunted me for some time.

I can see it. I love the design of Armus, but not so much his voice. Apparently the suit kept dissolving, I believe.

That’s the worst review of Skin Of Evil I have ever read and I really don’t agree with the majority of it at all. I cried my eyes out during Tasha’s eulogy at the end and I agree, the basic musical theme that runs through this episode is haunting and sombre. I still love the episode and it’s a shame you find it so terrible.

Minor correction: I guess chief engineer Lynch made his first and other appearance in “Arsenal of Freedom” as an antangonist to Geordi in command… A surprising sign of continuity regarding this post…

Nope, that was a different guy. Logan, not Lynch.

Oh my… You are right. So sorry! But it is a “little bit” confusing. Maybe we should invent the term “yellow-shirt” for TNGs 1st season… 😉

I think I may already, albeit borrowing from TV Tropes. Using it to refer to characters who are “a grade up” from red shirts, usually through some token characterisation. I think Empok Nor is the… ahem… gold shirt standard.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Recent Posts

• Doctor Who: The Devil’s Chord (Review)
• Doctor Who: Space Babies (Review)
• 375. Monsters, Inc. – Ani-May 2024 (#200)
• 373. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (#225)
• 371. Poor Things (#246)

Recently tweeted…

• "I Simply Am Not There": The Existential Horror of Eighties Excess in "American Psycho"...
• X-Men: Fatal Attractions (Review/Retrospective)
• Doctor Who: Space Babies (Review)
• Doctor Who: The Devil's Chord (Review)
• Crime and Pun-ishment: The Art of the CSI One-Liner

Available at…

Blogs Well Worth Your Time

• 1001 Must See Films
• Andrew at the Movies
• Anomalous Material
• Cut the Crap Movie Reviews
• Encore Entertainment
• Fandango Groovers
• FlixChatter
• Four of Them
• It Rains… You get Wet…
• Jameson Cult Film Blog
• Jar Watches Films
• Let's Go To The Movies
• M. Carter at the Movies
• Marshall and the Movies
• Movie News First
• Musings from a Man Lost in La Mancha
• Never Mind Pop Film
• Paragraph Film Reviews
• Roger Ebert's Journal
• Ross v. Ross
• Scannain.com
• Screenwriter (Donald Clarke, Irish Times)
• Strange Culture
• The Film Cynics
• The Pompous Film Snob
• The Projection Booth
• Things That Don't Suck
• Too Busy Thinking About My Comics
• Undy a Hundy

Film Nerd Resources

• CinemaBlend (News)
• Internet Movie Database
• Rope of Silicon
• The Guardian Film Blog
• James Berardinelli
• Roger Ebert

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Sign me up!

Blog at WordPress.com. WP Designer.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

• Star Trek: The Next Generation/Season 1 episodes
• 1988/Episodes
• April, 1988/Episodes
• Jean-Luc Picard/Appearances
• William T. Riker/Appearances
• Geordi La Forge/Appearances
• Tasha Yar/Appearances
• Worf/Appearances
• Beverly Crusher/Appearances
• Deanna Troi/Appearances
• Data/Appearances
• Wesley Crusher/Appearances
• Dilithium crystals/Appearances
• Type 2 phaser/Appearances
• Medical tricorder/Appearances
• USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D/Appearances
• Klingons/Appearances
• 24th century/Appearances
• 2364/Appearances
• Alien life forms
• Electrokinesis
• Energy absorption
• Force fields
• Laser weapons
• Planets/Appearances
• Robots/Appearances
• Shuttlecrafts
• Slime monsters
• Space travel
• Space vessels
• Articles that need to be Wikified

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Skin of Evil

• Edit source
• View history

"Skin of Evil" is the twenty-second episode of season one of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and the twenty-third episode of the series overall (if one counts the two-part pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" as two episodes). Combining the episode count of all Star Trek -related TV shows to date, it is the 127th episode of the entire franchise. This episode was directed by Joseph L. Scanlan and written by Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer based on a story treatment developed by Stefano. It first aired in syndication in the United States on April 23rd , 1988 .

• 1.1 Principal Cast
• 1.2 Guest Stars
• 3 Notes & Trivia
• 4 Home Video
• 7 External Links
• 8 Episode links
• 9 Series links

Principal Cast [ ]

Guest stars [ ], notes & trivia [ ].

• Production code number: 40271-122.
• Stardate: 41601.3 - 41602.1. The events of this episode take place in the year 2364 .
• This is the second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation directed by Joseph L. Scanlan . He previously directed "The Big Goodbye". His next episode is "Contagion".
• This is the only episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation written by Joseph Stefano . Following this episode, Stefano will go on to write episodes of the Swamp Thing television series on the USA Network .
• This is the second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation written by Hannah Louise Shearer . She previously wrote "When the Bough Breaks". Her next episode is "We'll Always Have Paris" .
• Actor Tim McCormack is uncredited for his participation in this episode.
• This is the first television acting work for Mart McChesney . He also plays the role of Sheliak in the season three episode "The Ensigns of Command" . This will be his final television acting work.
• This is the only episode of the series featuring the voice talents of Ron Gans . He is best known for providing the voice of Drag Strip on the Transformers animated series. This is Gans' final television acting work.
• This is the third and final appearance of actor Brad Zerbst playing a medical technician . He previously appeared in "Heart of Glory" and "Justice". Zerbst is primarily a camera operator.
• First and only appearance of Walker T. Lynch.
• First and only appearance of Ben Prieto.
• This is the eighteenth appearance of the character of Ensign Bennett.
• This episode is notable as being the final canonical appearance of Lieutenant Tasha Yar , who dies in this episode. Actress Denise Crosby will continue to receive opening title credit for the remainder of the season. Denise Crosby will return to the series several more times in subsequent seasons to play alternate versions of the Tasha Yar character, usually as a hologram. She will also play the Romulan character Sela in "Yesterday's Enterprise", who is the daughter of Tasha Yar from an alternate timeline.

Home Video [ ]

• Star Trek: The Next Generation VHR 4648
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Complete First Season
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Complete Season One/Blu-ray
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 1-7
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Full Journey
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Captain's Log, Stardate 41601.3. We are crossing through the Zed Lapis sector where we will rendezvous with Shuttlecraft 13 carrying Deanna Troi who is returning from a conference. Because engineering is involved in preventive maintenance on our dilithium crystals, we are presently traveling on impulse power.
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Captain's Log, supplemental. We've lost all contact with shuttlecraft 13 and can only assume they've crash-landed on Vagra II. Meanwhile, main engineering is trying to return us to warp power.
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Captain's Log, supplemental. While on a mission to rescue survivors from an unexplained shuttle crash, the away team has encountered a strange creature which seems able to assume different forms including one which resembles humanoid.
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Captain's Log, supplemental. There is grave danger to the crew on Vagra II. My first officer is missing - attacked by this entity known as Armus.
• Captain's Log, Stardate 41602.1: The shuttlecraft has been destroyed to prevent any possibility of Armus leaving the planet. Vagra II will be declared off-limits but the damage has been done. One of the saddest duties I've ever had to perform is now ahead of me.
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : We are here to honour our friend and comrade, Lieutenant Natasha Yar. Coming to terms with the loss of a colleague is perhaps the most difficult task we must face in the work we have chosen to pursue. We will all find time to grieve for her in the days that are ahead.
• Lieutenant Tasha Yar : My friend Data, you see things with the wonder of a child. And that makes you more human than any of us.
• Lieutenant Tasha Yar : Captain Jean-Luc Picard. I wish I could say you’ve been like a father to me but I’ve never had one so I don’t know what it feels like. But if there was someone in this universe I could choose to be like, someone who I would want to make proud of me, it’s you. You who have the heart of an explorer and the soul of a poet. So, you’ll understand when I say: death is that state in which one only exists in the memory of others; which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes, just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir.
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Au revoir, Natasha...
• Lt. Commander Data : Sir, the purpose of this gathering confuses me.
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Oh, how so?
• Lt. Commander Data : I find my thoughts are not for Tasha but for myself. I keep thinking, how empty it will be without her presence. Did I miss the point?
• Jean-Luc Picard : No... no, you didn't Data. You got it.

See also [ ]

External links [ ], episode links, series links.

• 1 Siobhan Corbyn
• 2 Colt Seavers
• 3 Jody Banks

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TearJerker/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E22SkinOfEvil

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Tear Jerker / Star Trek: The Next Generation S 1 E 22 "Skin of Evil"

Edit locked.

Naturally, "Skin of Evil" was a pivotal episode, and a tearjerking one almost by default.

• Beverly's frantic attempts to revive Tasha. The worst part is when Picard can no longer stand to watch, and turns his back to the proceedings—until Bev says, defeated, "She's gone."
• This exchange: Deanna: Were you able to help Tasha? Picard: (very long pause) ... no.
• While Armus was literally Made of Evil , and perhaps even because of that, it's not uncommon to feel a sliver of pity for him. His screams of pain and grief in the end do show his torment.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• TearJerker/Live-Action TV
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

Screen Rant

Star trek: tng's "yesterday's enterprise" finally allowed denise crosby to play the tasha yar she auditioned for.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

TNG: Tasha Yar's Death, Alternate Reality & Romulan Daughter Explained

I forgot guinan had children on star trek: tng, jonathan frakes reveals how roddenberry described riker & how “nervous” he was in tng season 1.

• Lt. Tasha Yar was a compelling character with untapped potential on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Denise Crosby's return in "Yesterday's Enterprise" allowed for a deeper exploration of Tasha Yar.
• "Yesterday's Enterprise" is considered one of TNG's best episodes, showcasing a more complex Tasha Yar.

The classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise," gave Lt. Tasha Yar actress Denise Crosby the chance to play the version of the character she had been presented with in her original audition. Denise Crosby's Lt. Tasha Yar was a member of TNG's original cast, but she was unhappy with her limited role and left the series. Tasha was abruptly killed off in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, episode 23, "Skin of Evil." In 2023, Denise Crosby joined The 7th Rule podcast to review Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1.

Tasha Yar was a fascinating character with a tragic backstory who never reached her full potential. Yar rarely took center stage in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, and the lone episode in which she did, TNG season 1, episode 4 , "Code of Honor", is widely regarded as one of the series worst outings. Nearly two seasons after Denise Crosby left the show, she returned to play an alternate universe version of Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3, episode 15, "Yesterday's Enterprise." Not only does this episode fill in some important elements of Star Trek canon, but it's also a phenomenal episode of television.

Tasha Yar died in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but her legacy would extend throughout the show’s run in some surprising ways.

Tasha Yar Got More Depth In "Yesterday's Enterprise" Than All Of TNG Season 1

"yesterday's enterprise" is widely regarded as one of tng's finest hours..

Denise Crosby returned to The 7th Rule podcast co-hosted by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Cirroc Lofton and producer Ryan T. Husk to discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Yesterday's Enterprise." When speaking about Yar's characterization in the episode, Crosby said the following:

You see a depth to her that is… you’re able to share in. You know, there’s not a lot of episodes in the show in the first season where Tasha’s contemplating those kind of deep ideas - the self-worth, the self-purpose. She’s reactionary, she’s doing her job, she’s taking care of business, but in this episode, it gives her time to be reflective and ask the deep questions of herself. And the writers allow those answers to come out and for us to touch upon that.

In "Yesterday's Enterprise," the USS Enterprise-D encounters a rift in spacetime from which the heavily damaged USS Enterprise-C emerges. Suddenly, everything on the Enterprise-D changes — the ship becomes a warship involved in a conflict with the Klingons and Tasha Yar is back as the ship's tactical officer. Only Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) , the enigmatic Ten Forward bartender, notices anything amiss. Guinan tells Captain Picard that the Enterprise-C must return to its own time period to restore the proper future. In the end, Tasha goes back in time with the Enterprise-C and the future rights itself.

Prior to the podcast episode, Crosby, Lofton, and Husk all watched "Yesterday's Enterprise," and Crosby remarked that this was the first time she had seen the episode since it first aired in 1990.

Denise Crosby's Original Audition Presented A More Complex Tasha Yar

Crosby read a scene during her audition that never made it into a tng episode..

Denise Crosby also spoke about her audition process for Star Trek: The Next Generation , during which she read a "beautiful" scene that never appeared in the show. Read her quote below:

You know, I’ve mentioned before that my audition piece was a very, very beautiful piece written for the Troi and Tasha characters that was never – It’s almost like they lured me in, you know? That was the carrot they dangled and said this is what this is going to be, and then the show wasn’t that. They never had a scene anywhere near that.

Crosby did the best with the material she was given in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1, but that material didn't always live up to the character she had originally been promised. Crosby mentions a scene between Tasha Yar and Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) , and it's true that TNG failed its female characters in some ways, especially when it came to friendships between them. Most of the stories that centered on TNG 's women focused on their relationships with men or featured weaker storylines. Thankfully, modern Star Trek shows like Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have remedied this oversight, and Star Trek: Picard season 3 even allowed some of the women of Star Trek: The Next Generation to play more complex versions of their characters.

Source: The 7th Rule

Star Trek: The Next Generation is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

• Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)

Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV Series)

Skin of evil (1988), full cast & crew.

Directed by 

Writing credits  , cast (in credits order) complete, awaiting verification  , produced by , music by , cinematography by , editing by , casting by , production design by , art direction by , set decoration by , costume design by , makeup department , production management , second unit director or assistant director , art department , sound department , special effects by , visual effects by , stunts , camera and electrical department , casting department , costume and wardrobe department , music department , script and continuity department , transportation department , additional crew .

Release Dates | Official Sites | Company Credits | Filming & Production | Technical Specs

Contribute to This Page

• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos
• User Reviews
• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

Star Trek Finally Revealed What The Breen Look Like Under The Mask

Contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Discovery"

Just because Starfleet's directive is to seek out new life and civilizations doesn't mean that life always wants to be sought out. Such is the case with the enigmatic Breen, a xenophobic warrior race first mentioned in the Season 4 "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Loss" that became one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries in "Star Trek."

The Breen are referenced several more times throughout that series and "Star Trek: Voyager," with each mention adding equal parts intrigue and insight to fans' knowledge of the mysterious race. But Breen-curious fans eager to finally meet the long-hyped race were sorely disappointed at their first on-screen appearance in the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode "Indiscretion." Although the episode featured the reclusive figures prominently, the Breen appear with helmets and environmental suits hiding their true forms — an outfit they would rock in subsequent appearances.

But those decades of suspense finally paid off in a huge reveal in the Season 5 "Star Trek: Discovery" episode "Mirrors" — even if fans had to wait until the 32nd century to learn what the Breen really look like. As revealed through the character of rebel Breen L'ak (Elias Toufexis), the unmasked Breen are gelatinous greenish humanoids with icy eyes who tend to solidify after a few moments of exposure to the air. And if L'ak is any indication, they're not the worst-looking aliens in the universe — at least when they're in their solid form. 

Read more: Star Trek Stories That Are Actually Horrifying

The Mysterious Breen Physiology

Viewers learned many details about the Breen physiology through throwaway "Star Trek" dialogue. In "The Loss," a "Next Generation" episode that finds Troi (Marina Sirtis) temporarily losing her empathic abilities, Data (Brent Spiner) reveals that the Breen are a rare example of a race that is undetectable to empaths — a trait beneficial to a reclusive species. Data later considers the Breen as possible culprits for an attack on a Federation ship in "Hero Worship," citing the Breen's nearby outposts, cloaked vessels, and similar battle tactics. In the "Deep Space Nine" episode "In Purgatory's Shadow," Bashir (Alexander Siddig) hints at the Breen's gelatinous physiology, noting that the species does not have blood.

Other details that are revealed through the series suggest that there's a certain degree of myth and misinformation surrounding the species. In "Indiscretion," Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo) referred to the Breen homeworld as a "frozen wasteland," noting that the dilithium-rich desert planet Dozaria would have been "about fifty degrees too hot for them." But this is contradicted in "The Changing Face of Evil" with Weyoun's (Jeffrey Combs) revelation that intelligence reports calling their homeworld a frozen wasteland are incorrect as the planet is actually "quite comfortable."

In the "'Til Death Do Us Part," Trill Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer) speculates to Worf (Michael Dorn) about the species' appearance. While Ezri hypothesizes that the Breen might be "all furry" since Breen is said to be a cold planet and shares a dream that they have large claws, Worf has only one concern — how dangerous and intolerant of other species the Breen are. According to Worf, the Breen were responsible for the disappearance of an entire fleet of Klingon ships foolishly intent on conquering their homeworld.

The Breen Anatomy Was Inspired By A Deep Sea Fish

With all the mystery surrounding the Breen physiology, it's that much more frustrating when the species finally makes an appearance in the franchise only to be covered in head-to-toe gear. But there's a canonical reason for that, as Weyoun points out in "The Changing of Face of Evil" — they're in refrigeration suits, although the purpose for the Breen wearing them is not revealed until "Star Trek: Discovery," when we learn that these suits allow them to interact with normie humanoids without solidifying out of a fluid state ("Mirrors"). One of the best things about the big Breen reveal is that viewers had a chance to get to know a Breen before learning that's what he was. Although first introduced in the "Discovery" episode "Red Detective," L'ak's race and troubled history as a rebel Breen is unmasked in "Mirrors."

In a TrekMovie.com interview, episode co-writer Carlos Cisco called the opportunity to expand the Breen lore with a long-awaited peek under the helmet "a really big privilege." According to Cisco, after the writers initially pitched a gelatinous form, the art team drew inspiration from the translucent-headed barreleye fish."We got really excited about that," Cisco added. Like the deep sea-dwelling fish, the writers imagined the Breen as a species that evolved in a harsh environment. "So they developed a way to protect themselves which was hardening their outer shell into basically a skin," Cisco continued, "but that takes an immense amount of concentration and energy, making them slower, more sluggish, less intelligent, basically." After the Breen eventually developed refrigeration suits, they used them to protect their solid form, which they perceived as beneath their more evolved natures.

Read the original article on Looper