Yesterday's Enterprise
In this episode, the ship's crew must decide whether to send the time-travelling Enterprise-C back through a temporal rift to its certain destruction, to prevent damaging changes to their timeline.
The plot for "Yesterday's Enterprise" was based on the merging of two story ideas—one featured the crew of the time-traveling Enterprise-C and the other the return of Denise Crosby, whose character Tasha Yar had been killed in the series' first season.
In syndication, "Yesterday's Enterprise" outperformed most of the third season's episodes with a 13.1 Nielsen rating, the third-highest number for the series at the time.
Neither Worf nor Counselor Troi are present, and Tasha Yar – killed years before in the original timeline – runs the tactical station.
Garrett explains that they responded to a distress call from a Klingon outpost on Narendra III, and were attacked by Romulan starships.
Picard discusses the situation with Garrett, revealing to her that the Federation is on the verge of defeat and one more ship will make no difference, but if the Enterprise-C returns to the past they might prevent the war from starting.
The Enterprise-D suffers massive systems damage and major crew losses, including the death of Commander Riker.
Despite Paramount Television's resistance to the change, The Next Generation became the first show produced in Hollywood to allow such writers to submit their scripts.
Ganino's speculative script, submitted to the office of pre-production associate Eric A. Stillwell in April 1989, was titled "Yesterday's Enterprise".
An Enterprise-C ensign accidentally discovers the fate of his vessel and panics, requiring Worf and Riker to capture him after he attempts to escape.
[7] During the same period, Stillwell met Denise Crosby – who played Tasha Yar in the series' first season – at a 1989 fan convention in San Jose.
Over dinner, Crosby admitted she missed being part of the series and suggested that Stillwell write a script to bring back her character, who was killed off in the episode "Skin of Evil".
The Romulans and Vulcans joined forces to attack the Federation, Worf is no longer a crewmember on the Enterprise, and Tasha Yar remains alive.
Piller felt that Data's romantic feelings for Tasha Yar were over the top, and that an alien probe which served as a central part of the story was a cheat in terms of resolving Picard's dilemma.
[16] The production of the episode, originally scheduled for January 1990, was moved to December 1989 to accommodate the filming availability of Crosby and Whoopi Goldberg, who played Guinan.
[15] The task of writing and polishing the new treatment in half the time fell upon writer Ronald D. Moore, who submitted his first draft on November 9.
In addition to the story credit to Ganino and Stillwell, Moore, Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler and Richard Manning would work on the teleplay, and Piller would provide the finishing touches.
[19] The altered timeline provided a chance to show the Enterprise crew in a much more dramatic and human light than would be allowable in a normal episode.
[20] Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach submitted technical memos regarding the type of anomaly that might drag the Enterprise-C through time, and suggested interstellar, super-dense strings as a possibility.
One reason for the increase was that "Yesterday's Enterprise" would air during February sweeps, an important time for the studio to attract solid ratings.
During this lineage project, Probert also produced a small color sketch of his version of Enterprise-C, but he left at the end of the season and his absence meant that no one knew what the drawing was intended to be.
When he learned about the ship requirement for "Yesterday's Enterprise", he followed a thought process similar to Probert and built off the old sketch.
[25] The model was modified to appear as various Ambassador-class starships in later Next Generation episodes, with its saucer and nacelles spaced apart to create a larger ship.
The Enterprise-C officers wore costumes from earlier Star Trek feature films due to the expense and time-consuming nature of creating more than a half-dozen or so new uniforms for the episode.
Since much of the episode took place in the darker alternate universe, Carson wanted to emphasize the toll that decades of war had taken on the crew and the bridge.
The cameras were equipped with longer lenses than usual in order to reduce the depth of the scenes and provide a grittier feel.
[43] Fans attending the Star Trek 50th Anniversary convention in 2015 voted "Yesterday's Enterprise" the fifth-best episode of the franchise.
1 best time travel plot in Star Trek[53] The first home media release of "Yesterday's Enterprise" was on VHS cassette, appearing on July 11, 1995, in the United States and Canada.
[54] "Yesterday's Enterprise" was also included as one of four episodes (along with "The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I and II" and "The Measure of a Man") in a DVD collection entitled "The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation".
[55] The episode was later included on the Star Trek: The Next Generation season three DVD box set, released in the United States on July 2, 2002.
