Of all of the tough women to wear a Starfleet badge, few in the “Star Trek” franchise got a worse deal than “Star Trek: The Next Generation” Chief of Security Lieutenant Tasha Yar, played by Denise Crosby. After a little less than one season of frustration over her poorly-handled character, Crosby left “The Next Generation.” “I was just stage dressing,” she would later tell StarTrek.com, adding, “I chose to leave instead of just being satisfied with that.” Fortunately for “Star Trek” fans, Crosby would eventually return to the series as a guest star, appearing in several episodes both as Tasha Yar and her half-Romulan daughter, Sela.

After leaving “Star Trek,” Crosby would have a steady career as a character actor. Shortly after her first exit from the series, she appeared as Rachel Creed in the Stephen King film “Pet Sematary.” One of her more memorable roles was a two-episode appearance on “The X-Files” as Dana Scully’s replacement obstetrician after her first doctor turns out to be involved in alien fetus cloning experimentation (“Essence,” “Empedocles”). She played an angel of death nurse on the first season of “Dexter,” and she had a recurring role on “Ray Donovan” that lasted 15 episodes. Crosby also appeared on “The Walking Dead” as a cook in the cannibalistic community of Terminus.

She has also continued to be involved in the “Star Trek” universe, much to the delight of fans. In 2009, she appeared in the fan-created Trek project “Star Trek: New Voyages,” which also featured appearances from Trek alumni Walter Koenig (Chekov), Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand), and George Takei (Hikaru Sulu). Crosby co-produced the documentaries “Trekkies” and “Trekkies 2,” and she voice acted for the video games “Star Trek: Armada” and “Star Trek Online.”

Denise Crosby didn’t know much about “Star Trek” before taking on the role of Tasha Yar — and she certainly didn’t know how beloved the franchise was. But she did feel from the beginning that the character — partly inspired by the tough-as-nails Private Vasquez from “Aliens” — deserved better writing than the series gave her. As Crosby told StarTrek.com, Tasha’s complexity appealed to her. “She was really, deeply insecure and had this wonderful paradox going on,” Crosby explained. “She was so physically capable and had this very strong persona, but inside was just this little girl that felt very much out of her depth.” But although the role had loads of potential, the nuanced writing Crosby felt Yar deserved simply never came to pass, with the writers instead sticking Tasha with some of the most poorly-aging stories in “The Next Generation.” As the actor told IGN, “It was all these old white dudes in the room until, God love them, until Gene passed.”

Even so, Crosby truly valued the writing her characters received in later “Star Trek” episodes and is especially appreciative of how well-received Tasha Yar has been despite her early death. She also loves being part of the “Star Trek” family and connected to the community of fans that inspired her to produce the “Trekkies” documentaries. 

As the actor told TrekMovie.com, she had been attending Trek conventions for a little under a decade when she began to reflect on how deeply the fandom ran for so many Trekkies, building relationships and inspiring them to create good in the world. “And that was all gleaned from this kind of inherent utopian vision of the future.”