The Unauthorized Trekkers’ Guide to the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. James Hise van

well-toned and very female body, she was capable of pinning most crewmen. She was also an exciting sensual and intellectual challenge to men who enjoyed full equality between the genders. Neither Number One nor Picard was blind to these qualities in Tasha, but she could never bring herself to view these “saints” as mere mortals.

      In “The Naked Now,” Tasha revealed a previously concealed interest in Data. She even went so far as to take him into her quarters and seduce him! When the judgment-inhibiting effects wore off, Tasha realized that she had completely violated her personal sense of decorum, and told the literal-minded android, “It never happened.” Since she didn’t specify what “it” was, Data was a bit confused as to what, exactly, had never occurred.

      Tasha’s death at the hands of the creature Armus was a senseless tragedy that left her comrades stunned and bereaved. Oddly enough, it seems to be the emotionless Data who cherishes her memory the most; he keeps a holographic snapshot of her among his most cherished possessions.

      The Enterprise crew later encountered Ishara Yar, Tasha’s sister, when they went to rescue a Federation freighter’s crew from captivity on Tasha’s hellish homeworld. She reminded them of Tasha, but she was using them to get help for her political faction. Perhaps she was as capable of loyalty and friendship as Tasha, but Ishara’s loyalties were bound up in the ongoing struggle of her world, and she lacked the courage to turn her back on the chaos and follow her sister’s path.

      In “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” a temporal anomaly gave Tasha a chance to die a meaningful death, sacrificing herself to go back to a certain doom in order to restore reality to its proper balance. As it turned out, the doom, while certain, was somewhat delayed.

      In the fourth-season cliffhanger “Redemption I,” we see a Romulan commander who looks exactly like Tasha Yar. In “Redemption II,” we learn that the woman’s name is Sela and Tasha Yar was her mother. In this alternate timeline, Tasha Yar had been captured by the Romulans due to the events set in motion in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and taken as a Romulan’s wife. Sela was her daughter from that union. When Tasha attempted to flee Romulus with her young daughter, they were stopped and Tasha was executed. Sela does not miss her mother and believes that Tasha deserved her fate.

      DENISE CROSBY

      Denise Crosby described the character she played with this thumbnail sketch: “She comes from an incredibly violent and aggressive Earth colony where life was a constant battle for survival. She can fight and she knows her job, but she has no family, is emotionally insecure, and somehow feels that she doesn’t quite belong on this ship of seemingly perfect people.”

      As the granddaughter of the late legendary crooner Bing Crosby, Denise enjoyed the part and even related to it to some extent. “My grandfather was a Hollywood legend. Growing up with that wasn’t exactly normal or typical either, and I think that helps me understand Tasha’s imbalance and insecurities,” explained the actress in a first-season interview.

      Prior to getting involved in developing an acting career, Denise went through what she describes as her “European runway model thing. I hated modeling, but I was taken to Europe by three California designers who were trying to launch their fashions there. I loved London, so I just stayed on.”

      When she returned home for the Christmas holidays, she was almost tapped for an acting role. “Toni Howard was casting a movie called Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker and had seen my picture in a magazine. I looked wild. My hair was about a quarter of an inch all the way around. I wore army fatigues and no makeup.” While she didn’t land that role, Toni Howard encouraged her to enroll in acting classes. The roles soon followed.

      Her feature film credits include 48 Hours, Arizona Heat, The Eliminators, The Man Who Loved Women, Trail of the Pink Panther, and Miracle Mile.

      The TV credits for Denise also include L.A. Law, Days of Our Lives, The Flash, and the made-for-TV movies O’Hara, Stark, Malice in Wonderland, and Cocaine: One Man’s Poison.

      Denise has also appeared in some local Los Angeles theater productions, including the critically well-received Tamara, in which she had the lead, as well as the controversial one-act play Stops Along the Way, directed by Richard Dreyfuss.

      Needless to say, Denise Crosby reprised her role as Tasha Yar in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” and returned to the show in its fifth season. The form this character took was revealed in the final episode of the fourth season, “Redemption I.” A clue about this occurs in the episode “The Mind’s Eye” in which Denise Crosby plays one of the Romulans on the ship that kidnaps Geordi, although her identity in “The Mind’s Eye” is obscured unless you look closely. In the fifth season Denise Crosby turned up periodically, such as in “Redemption II,” and “Unification I & II,” in the latter appearing with Leonard Nimoy in his guest-starring role of Spock. She is one of the few Next Generation regulars to ever play opposite Leonard Nimoy or appear with Mr. Spock.

GUINAN

      The mysterious Guinan serves exotic drinks and meals in Ten Forward, but her most important role seems to be that of counselor, as she is also a fount of wisdom, giving advice and support, sometimes unsolicited but always needed, to members of the Enterprise crew. She has Captain Picard’s complete trust, as when she alone sensed that something was amiss when the time lines shifted in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and Picard believed her. Their shared background has never been revealed. In “The Best of Both Worlds,” she says that she was “more than family and more than a friend” to Picard, and elsewhere it is revealed that the two met before the Enterprise-D was commissioned (“Time’s Arrow, I and II”).

      What is known is that Guinan is thousands of years old, and that her homeworld was destroyed by the Borg and her people dispersed. She was not there at the time, however, and did not witness the destruction. She is an old nemesis of Q, who obviously fears her. She undoubtedly possesses powers that have never been revealed. Her encounter with Q, two centuries ago, is another mystery, deepened by Q’s revelation that she wore a different form at that time. Supposedly, her relationship with Q has something to do with her presence on the Enterprise, but, as usual, revelations about the character only deepen the mystery that surrounds her.

      More about Guinan’s background was revealed in “Time’s Arrow,” the fifth-season cliffhanger. Here we learned that she had met Data and other Enterprise personnel hundreds of years before on Earth in San Francisco in the nineteenth century. She has kept silent about this incident, never speaking of it until she urged Captain Picard himself to pursue Data, who was lost in the past, because his presence was necessary there, as she knew this to be a fact.

      Still, to most crew members who encounter her, Guinan is the twenty-fourth-century equivalent of the classic bartender, who not only serves up just the right variety of synthehol, but also lends a caring ear and freely gives a touch of humane wisdom wherever and whenever it is called for.

      WHOOPI GOLDBERG

      Whoopi Goldberg describes her character Guinan as “a cross between Yoda and William F. Buckley,” but freely admits that she’s put a lot of herself into the role as well. Growing up in New York, young Whoopi was inspired by the harmonious message of the original Star Trek, and especially by Nichelle Nichols.

      When Goldberg learned that her friend LeVar Burton would be on a new Star Trek series, she asked him to tell Gene Roddenberry that she wanted to be on the program, too—but the producers of The Next Generation thought he was joking. A year later, Goldberg took matters into her own hands and contacted Gene Roddenberry; the two worked together to create the mysterious alien bartender who runs Ten Forward, a popular gathering place for the crew of the Enterprise.

      Although Whoopi’s first showbiz experience took place at the age of eight, there was a large gap in her career as she raised a child and, at one time, contended with a heroin addiction. She worked at a variety of jobs, including one in a funeral parlor whose owner had a curious sense of humor, and “initiated”