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Star Trek - The Next Generation, Episode 63: Yesterday's Enterprise [VHS]

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I was an original Star Trek fan back in the 60's but didn't catch hardly any of the Next Gen. series until after it was over went into reruns. Then I caught all of them in a year and a half, since they were playing them 5 nights a week on a local station.

Having now seen probably all of them, I have to say this is one of the greatest episodes. Denise Crosby gets to reprise her Tasha Yar role in a dramatic episode where she returns with an earlier doomed Enterprise (about 70 years earlier) to its past to try to save the ship, which is losing a battle with the Klingons. She is told by Guinan that her death was "...without meaning," and now she has a second chance. She goes back with the doomed crew to see if she can make a difference.

There are some other nice touches to this episode, such as Guinan's relationship with Captain Picard, who must convince Picard that there is something wrong with their timeline and something has altered their present, and so it must be changed back by returning the earlier Enterprise to its past. But Crosby finally gets to be the star of this one episode. Don't miss it.

This is one of the finest hours of Star Trek. Denise Crosby returns to portray Tasha Yar and die meaningfully. This is one of those episodes that can change the way you look at life because it shows in the tradition of the original generation that one life or one choice can make all the diffrence.

YESTERDAY'S ENTERPRISE is probably my personal favorite TNG episode. Surely, Captain Rachel Garrett's attempt to defend the Klingon colony at Narendra III ought to rank up there with some of the fabulous rear-guard actions of history and literature, if some Sir Charles Oman in the future decides to write another book of famous battles.

This episode was one of the inspirations for Josepha Sherman's and my novel VULCAN'S HEART.

Every bit of it just works. Captain Rachel Garrett turns in a GREAT performance as the captain of the Enterprise-C . Patrick Stewart's finest performance as Picard; a harder man who has seen many more battles than his alternate-timeline counterpart; carrying the weight of the knowledge that the war with the Klingons does not go well for the Federation. He doesn't smile once.

The final line in Picard's battle speech to his crew, as he explains that the Enterprise-D MUST protect the Enterprise-C at any cost: 'Let us make sure that history never forgets the name Enterprise.' Best line ever spoken in Star Trek.

Here's an episode that brings out the best of Star Trek. The alternate universe created by the Enterprise C's time slip is utterly eerie. The war-torn Federation is getting trounced by the Klingon Empire (hardly surprising, if it did indeed come down to all out war). Everyone's on edge, Picard is at Riker's throat, and Tasha Yar strolls the gritty bridge, back in the land of the living.

And of course, Star Trek provides us with a moral dilema as Picard must convince the C crew to return to certain death. One is reminded of Wrath of Khan, when does the good of the many outweight the good of the few? It's also inspiring to give Yar a better send-off after the disaster that was Skin of Evil. This episode is a must for any fan of Star Trek.

This episode fills in a portion of the gap in "Trek" lore between Enterprise-A ("The Final Frontier" and "The Undiscovered Country") and Enterprise-D. It provides a second chance for a more heroic (in a blaze of glory, so to speak) farewell for Chief Tactical/Security Officer Natasha "Tasha" Yar, namely an un-meaningless death, to say the least. And it showcases the would-be relationships between Picard and Garrett and Guinan and Yar.

This episode, aside from being an outstanding one as a standalone, is rather remarkable for having so many a link with what did come before and will come after.
1. "Skin of Evil" - Yar's death in the original timeline
2. "Redemption II" and "Unification II" - Yar's offspring resulting from her transfer to Enterprise-C
3. Captain Rachel Garrett - in chronological terms, she rather than Kathryn Janeway of Voyager would be/is the first female starship captain.

It is a shame that this story was given a meager 46-minute treatment. If anything, this episode, with the captains of Enterprise-D and -C teaming up and standing shoulder to shoulder, should have been made into a feature-length film (theatrical or non-theatrical) instead of "Generations"!

Synopsis:

The course of history is altered by the mysterious appearance of a U.S.S. Enterprise from the past.

While on a routine mission, the U.S.S. Enterprise discovers a bizarre rift in space, which reveals an unidentified vessel. Both ships are now on an alternate universe where the Federation is in the midst of a twenty-year bloody war with the Klingons.

The crew identifies the mysterious vessel as their ships' immediate predecessor, the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-C, believed to have been destroyed in battle twenty-two years ago. Their own crew now includes Tasha Yar, the ex-security chief who was killed in the line of duty. Meeting with the captain of that vessel, Captain Rachel Garrett, Picard learns that it was responding to a distress signal on a Klingon outpost when it was attacked by four Romulan Warbirds. But in the middle of the assault, the ship broke through the space rift, thus saving it from the destruction recorded in the history books, and now history has no memory of the U.S.S. Enterprise-C's battle with the Romulans. Although Picard and his crew are baffled by the strange appearance of the U.S.S. Enterprise-C, Guinan's alien instincts lead her to believe that the Federation's current bloody war with the Klingons is the result of the U.S.S. Enterprise-C's presence in their future. Certain that the ship is now existing in the wrong time line, she pleads with Picard to send the U.S.S. Enterprise-C back through the rift in order to change the course of events, which has resulted in the loss of 40 billion lives during the Klingon war.

Picard confers with Data, who asserts that if the U.S.S. Enterprise-C was destroyed while aiding the Klingon outpost, it would have been viewed as an honorable act, which means the current war with the Klingons may have been avoided. Faced with this knowledge, Picard decides to send the U.S.S. Enterprise-C back through the time rift, to face its tragic destiny.

Meanwhile, Tasha learns from Guinan that, in the correct time line, she died a meaningless death. In response, Tasha requests that she be allowed to serve on the doomed U.S.S. Enterprise-C crew so that she may die in the heroic battle with the Romulans, and Picard reluctantly agrees.

As the U.S.S. Enterprise-C makes its way back through the time rift, three Klingon warships try to launch an attack on it. To assure that the U.S.S. Enterprise-C returns to its rightful place in time, Picard positions the U.S.S. Enterprise-D between that vessel and the Klingons, sustaining heavy casualities in the process. Just as the U.S.S. Enterprise-D's engine core seems on the verge of exploding, Data announces that the rift has closed, and, unaware of the preceding events, the U.S.S. Enterprise returns to its original time line, heading for a cultural exchange program with a Klingon delegation.

The Next Generation's stellar YESTERDAY'S ENTERPRISE is the Star-Trek-Movie-That-Should've-Been.

A temporal anomaly (aren't there just too darn many of these hanging out in space these days?) thrusts the crew of the Enterprise-D into an alternate timeline wherein an all-out war with the Klingon Empire has left the Federation nearly in ruins. The anomaly also happens to have thrust the captain and crew of the Enterprise-C into the future, where it is learned that their disappearance from the past has caused the dramatic alternation to the present.

I won't mix words: this is, by far, Trek at its best.

However, imagine if this had been the crossover Trek film of our lifetime? Imagine if it had been Captain Kirk and company that had come into the 24th century, and imagine that they had to go back and go out in a blaze of glory ... instead of having a metal walkway crush Kirk in a disgraceful death?

Imagine the send-off Kirk and company could've had ...

This haunting tale is one of my all-time favorites of any of the series. Any ship bearing the name ENTERPRISE is always going to represent humanity's best. This episode portrays the noble character of Star Fleet officers, and brings to mind "The City on The Edge of Forever." Whoopi Goldberg puts in an outstanding performance.

This episode explores the diference a single fact can make in history. A lot of action, and a chance to see Liutenant Yar in action again.