Some fans aren’t fans of the reason Denise Crosby left Star Trek

Denise Crosby left Star Trek: The Next Generation during its first season

Denise Crosby played Lt. Tasha Yar, the security chief of the USS Enterprise, on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But Crosby wasn’t happy with the role, saying she didn’t go to drama school just to stand around saying “aye aye captain.”  A recent Yahoo! post discusses why Crosby left the series but then returned throughout the series’ run.

In an interview with Startrek.com shared by Yahoo!, Crosby reiterated that she wanted to leave the show because she had all these ideas and couldn’t do them. She called herself “stage dressing.”  The response from fans on Yahoo!, for the most part, shows that believed Crosby left because ego and vanity.

Denise Crosby returned to the Star Trek: The Next Generation a number of times

And even her return drew criticism from commenters who said that she came “crawling back to The Next Generation” for her old job after her movie career flopped.

There were others who said, had Crosby waited, her character would have, most likely, been fleshed out as the other characters on the show were. And she could have had a long run as Yar. But the need for instant gratification stood in her way, according to one fan. Still another commented that she “jumped the ship an hour into the voyage.”

So while Crosby still maintains a presence in the Star Trek community, not everyone is happy that she does so. Some have even said they’d have more respect for her if she admitted that she made a mistake in her decision to leave the series.

The Next Generation struggled in its first season, and none of the characters were three-dimensional. It took some time (after the chaos of the first season) for the writers to find the voices of those characters. Had Crosby remained with the series, she could have possibly seen Tasha Yar become an even more important part of the cast. She made a career decision, and that always comes with fallout, specifically from vocal Star Trek fans.