Thirty-five years ago, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired one of the entire franchise’s most beloved episodes, “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” on February 19, 1990. Critics and fans often rank this episode as one of the very best, not just of TNG, but across the entire Star Trek franchise. Like some other great Star Trek chapters, it involves time travel, something Trek fans often love. But it also rectifies a mishandled cast member exit from an earlier season, fills in major gaps in Star Trek history, and gives Sir Patrick Stewart one of his most memorable Picard lines of all time: “Let’s make sure history never forgets the name… Enterprise.” These days, “fan service” is a dirty word, but this episode did fan service right. And it’s a miracle all the elements came together for it to ever even happen.
The First Two Seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation Actively Avoided Fan Service
For the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the idea of “fan service” was almost completely off the table. Series creator Gene Roddenberry wanted almost no connection to his previous Star Trek for his new take, even putting a hefty 78-year time gap between the end of the adventures of Captain Kirk’s Enterprise crew and his new one. (The real name should have been “The Next Next Generation.”) Roddenberry didn’t even want old alien races like the Klingons from the classic series brought in for his new version. Michael Dorn as Worf was a late addition to TNG, when others convinced Roddenberry it showed growth that the Klingons could now serve in Starfleet. Aside from an Easter egg of DeForest Kelley as an elderly Dr. Bones McCoy, seasons one and two barely had any connection to Trek’s past.
During the show’s game-changing third season, however, the ice started to thaw on that edict. Maybe the producers thought TNG was successful enough at this point that referring to Trek’s history wouldn’t make the fans view it as desperate. Or, something more likely was true. By season three, creator Gene Roddenberry was quite ill. Others, like Rick Berman or showrunner Michael Piller were more in charge of running TNG day to day. (Roddenberry passed early in season five.) And clearly, they had less of an issue connecting to Star Trek’s history, or utilizing it to tell stories. More “fan service,” as we call it today, became evident in episodes like “Sarek”, also in season three. That episode saw Mark Lenard return as Spock’s father. In fact, “Sarek” marked the first time anyone uttered the name “Spock” in TNG (Rick Berman overruled Roddenberry on that.)
Season Three’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Gives Star Trek Fans What They Want
But the biggest fan service episode came earlier in that season, with “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” This episode rectified actress Denise Crosby’s unceremonious exit from the show in season one, when her character Tasha Yar died thanks to a black tar monster. (Yes, really.) In addition, it finally explored the history of the mysterious other starships named Enterprise between Kirk and Picard’s time. It even explained how the Klingon Empire and the Federation became staunch allies. These last two especially were significant questions TNG left unanswered when the show began. The real miracle of that episode was that the script came pieced together from spare parts. This is quite similar to how director Nicholas Meyer stitched together many different scripts to create the fan-favorite film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982.
The Genesis of “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” a Script Written by a Star Trek Fan
The genesis of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” came from something unique to TNG. This was their open-door submission policy for scripts from amateur writers. Particularly, those writers without agents. No other TV show did this at the time. Truthfully, most scripts the TNG offices received (over 5,000 a year) were not very good. Other times, they were just unfilmable on a TV budget. But the cream always rises to the top. A script by a newbie writer and serious Trek fan named Trent Christopher Ganino caught the attention of the TNG staff. Ganino’s script centered around the Enterprise-C, which travels 20 years into the future. In this story, Picard must convince the crew to return to their time, and die, in order to preserve the Federation’s idyllic future. The basic premise of the final episode was there from the start, but many more changes were yet to come.
Early Versions of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Featured Stronger Connections to The Original Series
One interesting tidbit is that Ganino’s Enterprise-C crew was introduced because he knew he couldn’t use Captain Kirk’s iconic Enterprise-A crew. This was for no other reason than because of expense. Years later, TNG producer Rick Berman said he wished he’d kept the “Yesterday’s Enterprise” story for a feature film uniting the two iconic casts. Interestingly enough, the director of this episode, David Carson, was given the job of directing the first TNG feature Star Trek: Generations. When his script didn’t go anywhere, Ganino worked with another writer, Eric Stillwell, with another time travel Trek pitch. This one was a sequel to the iconic TOS episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” It featured time alterations to the planet Vulcan’s past, via the use of the Guardian of Forever portal.
The timeline change in this proposed script occurs when the father of Vulcan logic philosophy, Surak, is killed millennia ago, before his time. This altered the present, leading to Starfleet being at war with a united Vulcan/Romulan empire. Rick Berman decided he wanted to save the Sarek character for another episode. But he liked the concept of the past changing, thus altering the present. He hired Ganino and Stillwell to fuse that concept with their earlier Enterprise-C time travel script. Only now, without Sarek at its core. But there was one other big wrinkle added to the story, that helped make this episode an all-time banger.
The Return of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar Gives “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Its Emotional Throughline
At a Trek convention, Eric Stillwell struck up a friendship with actress Denise Crosby. Crosby played Security Chief Tasha Yar in the first season of TNG. Crosby asked Roddenberry to write her off, which he did by killing Tasha in a very silly episode. She asked Stillwell to write a script that could bring her character to life again. He took up the challenge, incorporating the return of Tasha into his Enterprise-C script. The script now found its emotional core with Tasha realizing she died a meaningless death in the prime timeline, and chooses to go back in time to die a death that helps to save the future. Tasha also has a romance with Enterprise-C officer Lt. Castillo (character actor Christopher McDonald). In the altered timeline, the Federation was losing a war with the Klingon Empire, adding another interesting twist. This version of the story really clicked with the TNG producers.
The script went through even further revisions with TNG staff writers Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler, Richard Manning, and Ronald D. Moore. Together, they beefed-up the story importance of Whoopi Goldberg’s intuitive Guinan character, as only she realized time had shifted. A previous draft had Riker and Geordi as the only crew members who knew things had changed. It also creates a true moral dilemma for Captain Picard, who struggles with sending the Enterprise-C crew to their deaths. Another last-minute change was altering the Enterprise-C’s Captain from Richard Garrett to Rachel Garrett (Tricia O’Neil). Thus, making her the first woman in command of the Federation flagship. Without a doubt, the positive reception to Garrett helped pave the way for Kathryn Janeway in Voyager five years later.
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” Becomes One of the Highest Rated Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” was given a budget slightly higher than most TNG episodes. This was justified as the episode would air during February sweeps, something once important to broadcast TV advertisers. The bigger budget went to all the redesigns of the altered Enterprise-D, the new Starfleet uniforms, and the Enterprise-C set. The episode was the most-watched episode of the season, and the third-highest-watched episode of the series overall to that point. It garnered 12 million viewers, a huge number by today’s standards. Fans went nuts for it, and it has since been elevated to one of the greatest chapters in Star Trek’s nearly 60-year history. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” proved there’s nothing wrong with fan service, as long as the writers remember to do more than just empty callbacks. When you connect a long-running franchise to its history and still give us real drama, the result can be an all-time classic.