“Skin of Evil”
Written by Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer
Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan
Season 1, Episode 22
Production episode 40271-122
Original air date: April 25, 1988
Stardate: 41601.3
Captain’s Log: Shuttlecraft 13 is on its way back with Troi from a conference when it starts to lose power. The Enterprise is doing maintenance on the warp drive, and by the time Chief Engineer Lynch can get the dilithium crystals back where they belong, the shuttle has crashed. The transporter can’t lock on the two shuttle inhabitants—Troi and Lieutenant Prieto, the pilot—so Riker, Data, Yar, and Crusher beam down. Their way is blocked by an oil slick that appears to be sentient.
When they try to simply walk past the creature—who calls himself Armus—he attacks Yar and kills her. Riker and Data fire on it, to no effect. The away team beams back, but Crusher is unable to revive Yar—Armus apparently damaged her nervous system beyond repair.
On the planet, Armus tries to taunt Troi, but Troi gives as good as she gets. Armus claims that he killed Yar to amuse himself, but Troi’s empathy sees through that, knowing that it was intended to amuse him, but failed.
A second team beams down, with La Forge in Yar’s place. Riker tries to negotiate, but Armus is capricious and cruel. He lets Crusher speak to Troi, but no more—then he knocks La Forge’s VISOR to the ground, taunting him with lost sight, and finally envelopes Riker.
Armus reveals to Troi that he was created by a species that was able to bring all the negativity in their psyches to the fore and cast it out in this one creature, which they abandoned on this world. Data sums it up best: he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Picard beams down to further negotiate with Armus. The crew refuses to give in to his bullying, which frustrates him. Armus disgorges Riker and lets the away team beam back. Picard leads Armus on by pretending to allow him transport off the planet if he can speak to Troi. The counselor tells him that making him confront his rage weakens him, and Picard is able to, basically, taunt him until he screams. The energy field lowers when he’s pissed off, enough that Worf is able to beam Troi, Prieto, and Picard back.
The episode ends with a memorial service for Yar, which includes a prerecorded message for each person in the opening credits.
Thank You, Counselor Obvious: Often forgotten regarding a story mostly remembered for Yar’s death, is that this was one of Troi’s better episodes. She plays Armus like a two-dollar banjo, getting Armus to open up to her, manipulating him while psychoanalyzing him. She also forces him to confront his rage, which causes his energy field to fluctuate, which is what enables her eventual rescue.
Can’t We Just Reverse the Polarity?: Chief Engineer Leland T. Lynch has to manually restart the dilithium crystal chamber, skipping the checklist and the final checks. Given that we’re talking the annihilation of matter and antimatter, Picard basically asked Lynch to risk blowing the ship up.
The Boy!?: Wes takes over Worf’s generic “bridge officer” function after Yar’s death, and he helps Worf track the energy signature given off by Armus.
If I Only Had a Brain…: Yar refers to Data as “my friend.” One assumes that’s friends with benefits, given the events of “The Naked Now.” Supposedly in an earlier draft of the script, Yar said to Data that “it happened.”
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf has bet in Yar’s favor in an upcoming martial arts competition—that she obviously doesn’t live to participate in. Worf is made acting head of security, despite the fact that Yar’s deputy chief of security (whoever that might be) should have taken over. Worf also shows remarkable good sense in declining to go on the second away team, believing that he can best help Troi and Prieto from the bridge.
Welcome Aboard: Ron Gans gives Armus a cartoony deep voice that manages to completely undercut the creature’s menace. Mart McChesney gets guest star billing for mostly just sitting in an uncomfortable oil-slick suit and gesturing occasionally. Walker Boone is the fourth and final member of the First Season Chief Engineer Derby, following MacDougal in “The Naked Now,” Argyle in “Where No One Has Gone Before” and “Datalore,” and Logan in “The Arsenal of Freedom.” His tetchiness and insistence on referring to himself by his full name make him come across as unnecessarily snotty, but he also proves himself quite the miracle worker by getting the warp engines up and running. I’m actually kind of sorry we didn’t see more of this character.
I Believe I Said That: “I find my thoughts are not for Tasha, but for myself. I keep thinking, how empty it will be without her presence. Did I miss the point?”
“No you didn’t, Data. You got it.”
Data wondering if he understood the reason for the memorial service at the end, and Picard reassuring him.
Trivial Matters: This is the first time a main Trek character has died and stayed dead. An alternate-reality version of Yar would show up in “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” in part to give the character a “proper” death, that alternate Yar’s daughter Sela would appear in the two-parters “Redemption” and “Unification,” and Yar would return in the finale “All Good Things ” during the first-season parts.
Leland T. Lynch was revealed to have served for a time as the head of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers in the novella The Future Begins by Steve Mollmann & Michael Schuster, which is in the Star Trek: Corps of Engineers: What’s Past compilation.
One of the early TNG novels, Survivors by Jean Lorrah, focused on Yar and Data, and had to have a framing sequence hastily added to account for the former character’s death. That novel also delved into Yar’s backstory, hinted at but never revealed, though that was superseded by the fourth-season episode “Legacy.”
Make it So: “Data! Data, something’s got meeeeee!” An episode that should’ve been a lot better, undermined to many by the pointless death of a main character, but far more undermined by a disastrous portrayal of Armus.
The loss of Yar is unfortunate. While it’s true the character as portrayed didn’t live up to the character as envisioned—Yar was the most interesting person in the TNG bible—that’s also true of a lot of characters. Denise Crosby has never been the best actor in the universe, but Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, and Marina Sirtis weren’t any great shakes in the first season, either, and their characters didn’t blow the doors off. They got better with time, and there’s every reason to believe the same would’ve been true for Crosby had she remained.
Frankly, I’ve never gone along with the complaints about how Yar is killed. Klingon feelings notwithstanding, there’s no such thing as a “good” death, and Yar going out in a blaze of glory isn’t inherently any better than being casually snuffed out by a sadistic oil slick. In fact, Yar’s death is in keeping with the deaths of security people throughout Trek history—the only difference is that this one’s listed in the opening credits. So that is not this episode’s problem—I actually prefer this random, pointless death to the clichéd-up-the-wazoo one she would get in the third season’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” though many, including the cast and crew of the show and a large chunk of the fanbase, disagree with me.
No, the problem is that Armus fails in every possible way as a villain, and that’s entirely on the backs of the people doing the visual effects and the voice casting. As written, Armus is a formidable and fascinating villain. As dramatized, he’s either a slightly burbling oil slick, a doofy-looking humanform oil slick, or cheesy-looking black mass that reminds us all of the sorry state of CGI in 1988. It’s not a coincidence that the most effective scenes are the ones on the shuttle with Troi talking to Armus, which are the only Armus scenes where we don’t actually see the creature.
To make matters worse, Ron Gans sounds like a dopey bad guy out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon rather than an embodiment of all that is evil in a species. If they’d gotten David Warner or John Vickery or John Schuck or J.G. Hertzler, or somebody with an awesome voice who could have made Armus a true terror, this episode might not have been viewed as such a failure.
But, sadly, a failure it is, despite it being one of the best Troi vehicles, despite some excellent work by Sir Patrick Stewart when he confronts and manipulates Armus.
Warp factor rating: 3.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written a great deal of Star Trek fiction, ranging from novels to comics to short stories to novellas, but never once wrote the character of Tasha Yar. His latest novels are Unicorn Precinct, SCPD: The Case of the Claw, and the upcoming Guilt in Innocence, part of the Scattered Earth shared-world science fiction series. Go to Keith’s web site, which is a gateway to his blog, Facebook, Twitter, and much more.
I was 5 years ld when this episode first aired, but I remember one thing from it very clearly. My mother was a huge Trekkie from back in the 60’s, and she and I would watch TNG together every week, but this episode almost made her stop watching completely. She was righteously pissed that they killed off a strong “I am Woman, hear me roar” character and left Troi and Random Crewperson #85 alone. She had this big conspiracy in mind that a character like Yar was too intimidating for the typical fan to be able to enjoy, so “They” killed her off and replaced her with the Klingon. I just thought it was funny, because I was 5. Looking back on it though, it was definitely a waste of a character with a lot of potential, which makes me thankful for the expanded universe novels and whatnot.
“Hey, Tin Man!”
Something I always wondered: where and when did Armus see “The Wizard of Oz?” One of the inhabitants of his makers’ planets must have seen it on computer…interesting that the phrase “Tin Man” would again be important in a couple of seasons.
I remember reading somewhere that Denise Crosby wanted her character killed off, rather than written out any other way. I disagree about “Yesterday’s Enterprise”–I found Yar’s wish to choose her manner of dying moving–but I agree that this one could have been really interesting if it had been much better done. It’s all down to the painfully obvious (frankly, 1960s-level) visual effects. (Okay, looking back I also find the fact that there’s a competition “in a few days” somewhat obvious forshadowing.) I think a novel about the people who created Armus could be interesting, especially if they have to come to terms with their decision to try to deal with their negative emotions in the way that they did.
Despite this episode’s faults, I’m embarrased to remember that I cried my eyes out during the memorial scene! I’m glad that wasn’t the last we saw of Yar. I never knew the writers had Yar say “it happened” to Data, I wish they’d kept that line. Interesting that Data would eventually have loved and lost both Yar sisters.
By the way, I hadn’t noticed that the shuttle number was 13. Nice horror cliche! I think this was co-written by the writer of “Psycho.”
it’s worth noting that the show didn’t intentionally kill off yar. denise crosby wanted to do a movie and thought that TNG wasn’t using her to the best of her ability, so she asked to leave the show.
while it looks like a massive error in hindsight, she rarely got to do anything during the first season other than say “hailing frequencies open, captain.” i wish she had stuck around (never a big worf fan), but you can’t blame the producers for killing the character. quibble about the method perhaps…
i think this is a decent episode. i agree that the special effects are lacking but it is interesting that the villain is totally irredemable and that yar is killed so arbitrarily that you keep expecting them to fix it.
did think it lame that wesley was included in tasha’s memorial. like she cares about that dweeb.
Another trivial matter: according to the episode’s wikipedia page, Armus was named for writer/producer Burton Armus.
Keith and Jec81: It is indeed interesting that for the first of very few times in “Trek” (TNG at least),” the villain has “no redeeming features.” The only other purely evil villain I remember is the Cardassian who tortures Picard in “Chain of Command.”
@don3comp,
While Armus didn’t have any redeeming features, I did think he had a point in wanting vengeance on his creators. That was what was unsatisfying about this episode for me: that whoever it was that thought it was a good idea to create a sentient embodiement of pure evil and just leave him sitting around never got any sort of comuppence.
And why did Yar need to die? She could’ve been called to help her sister, she could’ve been transferred to another posting, she could’ve resigned. The crap Yesterday’s Enterprise could’ve been redone as a capture while she was traveling or something, and the character (beloved by many for some reason) could be used again, if desired.
When Armus gave his backstory my first and still most compelling thought is it was left over after the smug Organians accended into their god-like state.
The memorial scene still makes me tear up, every time, some 20+ years later. That alone makes this episode one of my favorites. Sure, Armus could’ve been done better (perhaps — I actually don’t think the voice is miscast; and this was very early days of CGI, so I’m not sure what more the creative team could’ve done); but as a concept, he is intriguing; and, as Keith points out, we get some great acting by Marina Sirtis, who is finally given something interesting to work with. I think it deserves a whole lot more than a “3” — maybe somewhere around a 6 or 7?
I never understood why people preferred Tasha to Worf. I disliked nearly every episode she was in and thought Yesterday’s Enterprise was much worse than it could have been because of Crosby’s acting. While Unification and Redemption are two of my favorites they really suffer because of her.