Denise Crosby On The Star Trek Director Who Couldn't Handle The TNG Cast

Denise Crosby has told pieces of this story over the years, but her latest pass at STLV: Trek to Vegas hits the sweet spot: goofy TNG set energy, one very stressed director, Rick Berman playing principal, Patrick Stewart dropping a reality check, a blunt look at 90s Hollywood sexism, and the wild pitch that eventually became Sela.

The day Berman had to play hall monitor

Crosby played security chief Tasha Yar for 22 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 before she chose to exit. At STLV, in a chat with TrekMovie's Laurie Ulster, she painted a pretty vivid picture of the early days: lots of camaraderie and lots of noise. Apparently one exasperated director marched to executive producer Rick Berman to complain the cast was impossible to wrangle.

'I can't, they are out of control. It is like nursery school in there. I can't control them. They are nuts. They are laughing. It is screaming, it is chaos. You have got to go in there and just get these guys to calm down.'

Berman responded by gathering the gang in Captain Picard's room for a stern talk about dialing it back. Crosby pushed back, saying they were just having fun. Patrick Stewart, ever the captain, cut through it with a line that clearly stuck.

'We aren't being paid to have fun.'

Crosby looks back on it with a grin and, overall, she talks about TNG warmly... mostly.

Joy on set, ugly stuff off it

Between takes, Crosby says the cast kept their own little bubble going: Broadway show tunes, terrible dance moves, loud running commentary — the whole variety hour. But when she returned later as the Romulan-aligned Sela, she got a very 90s reminder of who was in charge and what they chose to value.

'Nobody's going to be looking at her ears. They're going to be looking at her t*ts.'

Her wider read on the industry back then was not subtle, because the behavior wasn't either.

'Really, it was a men's club, and men were in charge... that misogynistic vibe of "Honey, just shut up, wiggle your a*s, stick out your t*ts, wear high heels, look pretty and shut up. You have a job."'

Even so, Crosby says she was and is grateful to have been part of something bigger than herself.

The pitch that morphed into Sela

After the fan-favorite episode 'Yesterday's Enterprise' hit, Crosby tried to write herself back in with a twist: Tasha would be pregnant with Lt. Castillo's baby when she goes into that doomed fight with the Romulans. In her version, the Romulans actually win, discover she's pregnant, keep her alive to use the child as leverage against the Federation, and raise the kid to believe they are fully Romulan.

Berman took the core idea and remixed it: the child becomes half human, half Romulan — which is how we got Sela and Crosby's later guest runs. Not the story she pitched, but the door back in was open.

Quick refresher: TNG in a nutshell

• Full title: Star Trek: The Next Generation; creator: Gene Roddenberry
• Series run: 1987–1994; 7 seasons; 178 episodes
• Timeframe: 24th century, mainly 2364–2370
• Primary setting: USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D
• Mission profile: exploration, diplomacy, and defense of the United Federation of Planets
• Captain: Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart)
• First Officer: William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes)
• Key crew: Data, Geordi La Forge, Worf, Deanna Troi, Beverly Crusher
• Main antagonists: Borg, Romulans, Cardassians, Q

Star Trek: The Next Generation is streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S.