2. 'Yesterday's Enterprise'
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” does something almost unheard of for a genre show in 1990: it admits that a character’s fate was a mistake and uses time travel to fix it emotionally, if not literally. In the altered war-torn timeline, Tasha is alive and serving on a battle-hardened Enterprise-D, and this version of the character finally gets the story she always deserved; confident, respected, and central to the moral stakes of the episode.
Guinan’s sense that Tasha “shouldn’t be here” becomes the catalyst for Yar’s decision to transfer to the Enterprise-C, sacrificing her life in a way that may restore the prime timeline and save billions. Her choice reframes the earlier, arbitrary death in “Skin of Evil."
In this reality, Tasha dies on her feet, in the line of duty, and with full agency over her own destiny. The episode also plants the seeds for Sela, the half-Romulan daughter whose existence later reveals that Tasha’s story continued beyond the battle, even if it ended in captivity and execution.