“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.
it isn’t so much that i prefer tasha than that i am slightly bored by klingons in general. michael dorn is a great actor though.
it is hard to blame her acting too much because she had almost nothing to do in season 1 and sela was a terrible character. i never watched her in UE with a critical eye. it is quite possible she is bad though.
but what do i know? i like pulaski.
What the heck is “formidable and fascinating” about a villain who admits he’s basically a collection of icky thoughts?
Somehow, that strikes me as something that’s just as lame in writing as it would be no matter how they tried to depict it on camera, and I’m not very enthusiastic about “Beings of Pure ____” in fiction to begin with.
A forgettable, awful episode. I hated it as a kid, hate it even more as an adult. Just a waste.
Well, we learn in “Redemption 2” that Yar didn’t exactly get a hero’s death the second time, either. I liked both of her deaths, if that’s possible.
I do however, dislike this episode, for all of the reasons mentioned. I always wondered if Armus looking like an oil slick, was a pseudo-commentary on the oil industry in general. If so, it was a very poor one. Your “opening credits” critisims normally doesn’t bother me as much, but it sure does with regards to Yar’s memorial service. Her holographic image has no time to talk to any of her security officers, but the young acting ensign, she can talk to.
This is one of those episodes that has some good things, but they are cancled out by everything that is wrong. It’s the opposite of most TNG episodes, which are flawed, but are more then cancled out by what is right with them.
Six-year-old me didn’t think they really killed her. My dad warned me, before the episode began, that she was going to die — it has been spoiled in our local newspaper. And she certainly appeared to die and everything, but I had seen “Hide and Q,” I wasn’t going to fall for that crap a second time. Then when the episode ended, I cried for about an hour. I held out hope for another full week that Tasha would magically be back the following week. When I saw her name in the opening credits of “We’ll Always Have Paris” (they didn’t remove it from the title sequence until season two) I was sure I had been right, and then my hopes were dashed all over again that week (but there were three Datas doing really exciting things with antimatter, so that cheered me up).
@14 Pendard – I loved your memories of this episode in its first airing. Made me smile. :-)
I remember my surprise with next week’s episode was thinking the guy who fences with Picard at the beginning (“What was that technique?” “The technique of a desperate man”) just had to be the new security chief. After all, they weren’t really going to leave a continuity thread like that hanging, were they? (I guess I’d forgotten that Worf was promoted to acting security chief as soon as Yar died.)
Tasha’s death scene in sickbay has made me cry every single time I’ve seen it, thanks largely to Ron Jones’s intense, poignant scoring, built around a soulful Tasha Yar theme that recurs in the memorial scene. It underlines the power of a good character leitmotif, something which was forgotten later in the show.
I’m with Keith about the death itself. I think it’s missing the point to demand that characters we like should only get “noble” or “meaningful” deaths. That’s not what death is. Death is arbitrary and pointless and painful and frustrating and unfair. That’s why it’s a bad thing. And stories that sanitize and glorify it by making it heroic and meaningful are stories that lie to their audience. Although I disagree completely that Tasha’s death was meaningless. Armus’s decision to kill her was meaningless, but Tasha’s death was in the performance of her duty, the result of an effort to save her crewmates, and that is profoundly meaningful. Whether she succeeded or not doesn’t matter; what matters is that she tried, that she acted selflessly and devoted her life to helping others. Bringing Tasha back later to give her a more conventionally “heroic” sacrifice just cheapened her original death. It rejected the simple, realistic message of “Skin of Evil” — that exploring space is dangerous and any one of our heroes could be killed at any time — in favor of a more romanticized, sanitized, grossly dishonest view of death and danger, where redshirts can be casually tossed aside without a thought but main characters get a special exemption and only die if it’s glamorous and uplifting enough.
But I also agree that Armus was a disappointing antagonist. Not so much due to the effects — I grew up with cheesy ’60s and ’70s effects and am used to thinking of them as just suggestions and using my imagination to take them the rest of the way — but due to the concept. Aliens that discarded their evil side as a sentient puddle of goo? That’s just mystical twaddle that has no place in a moderately plausible universe like ST, where everything is supposed to have a logical scientific explanation even if it’s based in junk science. This felt more like something out of a fairy tale or a cartoon.
I never really thought about how strong a Troi episode this is, but you’re right, she does get a rare chance to shine here. It is a very psychological story, with Armus being more a metaphor than a character, and it’s cool seeing Troi and Picard win by psyching out their adversary rather than using brute force. I also like that they ultimately treat Armus with pity rather than vengeance, refusing to sink to its level. They win by being better than it is. It may have the power to kill, but that’s the only power it has, and that’s what makes it inferior. Any mindless force of nature can destroy; it’s the pettiest, emptiest form of power. Winning through intelligence, reason, even compassion, is wielding real power. By refusing to embrace vengeance and hate, they deny Armus’s power over them and leave it ineffectual.
I sure did like that Armus fellow in this episode. I think he gets a bad rap. What would have been really cool was if they had replaced Tasha with Armus as the new security chief. Forget that lamo, Worf! I mean, can you imagine a more badass Starfleet officer than Armus? Or, better yet, if Armus had killed Captain Picard and taken his rightful place as captain of the Enterprise, that would have been the best. Captain Armus of the USS Enterprise is here to kick a** and take names! What up, punks!
Christopher: What you said, regarding death, but I like the concept of Armus, and it’s no more ridiculous than the transporter splitting Kirk into his “good” and “evil” sides — in fact, it’s pretty much exactly the same thing, which makes you wonder if the species that dumped Armus on the planet are now a bunch of ineffectual wusses……..
I always found this episode interesting, if anything because it was a first season episode and they killed off a main character. Being an actor, I can see how if you aren’t enjoying what you do on stage, that you should leave, but then again there are always mitigating factors: This was TV. This was acting for a living. This was STAR TREK. I can’t think of Crosby as anything but inherently stupid for making that decision. Yes it gave us Yesterday’s Enterprise, but it cost her what could’ve been a sweet gig.
Anyway, this is one I’ve been meaning to rewatch via Netflix (now that they’re streaming), but I somehow was remembering it as a more taught and thrill-laced storyline.
Meanwhile, Tasha Yar was rebooted as a better character in the SCE novels: Domenica Corsi. She’s far more interesting, has a great deal of character development, and I’m sure a fair sight prettier. At least someone wrote the “Blonde Security Woman” right…
JYHASH: As the creator of Domenica Corsi, I thank you. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@Christopher (#16): Rumor has it that Gene Roddenberry felt exactly the same way as you did about Tasha’s death. I believe I read in the Star Trek TNG Companion (may have been somewhere else) that he personally vetoed a heroic death in favor of something senseless, because he believed death was always senseless. It was one of many anti-dramatic ideas that he worked into his conception of the Star Trek universe. Like it or not (I do), Roddenberry had a very clear idea of what he wanted to say with the Star Trek universe, and the concept frequently overrode things that would have been helpful from a narrative point of view (such as conflict between the characters, or a heroic death for Tasha Yar).
Also, I don’t agree with you about the idea of Armus being ridiculous. Yes, the science that created him was unusually metaphysical, but in the early days, the Star Trek universe was a place where anything could happen. In later years, the new worlds stopped being so strange and I think the show really suffered for it. The stories got a by-the-numbers feeling — the universe of the show was completely defined and nothing surprising ever happened. TNG season 1 has many faults, but one thing it got right was you always felt like there was something new to discover. By the time TNG ended, that feeling had all but gone. It returned very infrequently on DS9, and practically never on Voyager and Enterprise.
@smart Alex (#17): Armus as a TNG regular! What a fabulous idea! It’s such an clear and obvious choice! I can only guess that it’s what the writers intended all along, but Rick Berman nixed the idea when he saw the projections for cleaning black tar out of the Enterprise’s beige carpets every week.
Not to be a pedantic nerd (oh, who am I kidding), but, technically, “our” Tasha Yar was not brought back for a more heroic death. An alternate Tasha was told by Guinan — somewhat erroneously, as Christopher’s comments above prove — that she died “a meaningless death,” and thus (ostensibly) got to have a more heroic death. (Forgive me if someone already split this hair and I just missed it.)
Personally, I approve of the way both Tashas died. And, when you think about it, they’re not all that dissimilar. Both Tashas died by choosing to place themselves in harm’s way to help others. “Greater love hath no man…”
And, personally, my favorite Denise Crosby return remains Trekkies!
Good point, Mike. As Fredric Brown points out in What Mad Universe, an alternate universe counterpart is not the exact same person anymore than two identical twins are the same person. The “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Tasha was never used to retcon or reverse the fate of the Tasha from the prime timeline.
Plus, keep in mind that the opinions put forth by fictional characters are not necessarily the opinions of the author writing them. While Star Trek is guilty more often than not of characters being mouthpieces, in this case I think it’s more Guinan sees some kinds of death as being deep and meaningful compared to others more than the episode writer themself thought that way. Just a thought.
This is one episode I have no desire to see again. For a brief period after I first saw it I called it “Skin Of Awful” There’s no one thing that I can point to that I didn’t like about it. It’s just that there’s no one thing that I can point to that I liked about it.
And with the discussion of pointless death. I think the best (television) example of a pointless death was Henry Blake in M*A*S*H. His tour is over. He’s getting out of the army and his plane out of Korea gets shot down. Now that was a pointless death that can make you think about how unfair death can seem.
No-one is going to mention that Joesph Stefano was the co-prudcer and main writer of the original Outer Limits? I’d have preferred the Zanti Misfits, but the oil slick is pretty much a full-on Outer Limits bad guy
Even as a child watching the original broadcast of TNG, I thought Denise Crosby’s dreadful overacting was distracting and often brought scenes to a grinding halt (eg. the penalty box scene from Hide and Q….) Yes, she wasn’t the only one with that problem, and maybe Code of Honor just biased me, but I thought the series was better off without her. Ok, so Armus the evil oil slick was a lame call, but it beats the hell out of having her go off to another plane of existance after a spirit quest like Wesley eventually did. Tasha’s death also provided growth for Data’s character and a common loss for the crew. I really could have done without her weak return as variations on Tasha in later episodes. The blonde Romulan thing made me wish Armus would come oozing back to finish her off.
The concept killed the episode. Even now I remember finding the whole thing horribly boring. Slick-man pops up, slick-man pops down, repeat.
Removing Yar did a lot for Worf’s character. I didn’t find her appealing, and I thought the memorial service was overblown at such an early point in the series. But the pointless way she dies isn’t the problem here. It’s the pointless way she’s written out. She’s supposed to mean more to the viewers than random redshirt #12. The espisode is centered around the oil embodiment of evil. It doesn’t properly explore the theme of arbitrary death, making her death pointless to the story as well as the events within it. Ironically, in a universe where main characters take priority and all stories have messages, a story about pointless death needs to dig especially deep for meaning when it randomly kills major characters. Kirk’s son dies pointlessly…well, not literally…but the emotional impact of that is much stronger and suits the tone of the movie at that point.
I could never take this seriously because Armis sounded too like the after-shave Aramis. I was perfectly happy to see the demise of the annoying bonde bint – well, she was annoying. This episode is sometimes made out to be a Toy Story, but she was her usual pathetic self and blubbed a lot with bad hair. How the hell could the captain of a star ship take advice from a manic depressive hysteric?
There were some interesting ideas in play in the episode. I quite liked the idea thart one can become so pure that we slough off our outer evil. But what the episode never dealt with was: “What happened next?” They left BP on a dead planet. Doesn’t really say much for those guys, does it?
The end was astonishingly dreadful. Who the heck wrote this shite? “Will Riker, you are the best”. No. He’s a twat. It was appalling rubbish.
@krad – I’m with you on Tasha’s death. I thought it was perfect actually as it was in no way cliché’d, except for the way in which you mentioned (the dead security guard). Props to Denise Crosby, too, for “meeting death with her eyes open” but actually showing herself dead on screen with her eyes closed. I am sick to death (no pun intended) of actors playing dead with their eyes open. It rarely happens that way.
I agree that Armus was handled really poorly, but that aside I really like this episode, because I thought the idea of Armus was a good one and that the character was written well. It was just portrayed horribly.
I believe this is also the first time we’ve seen “direct reticular stimulation” or whatever they called it, i.e. the medical staff jolting the brain instead of the heart of someone who had died.
Another totally random thought: Marina Sirtis was not only excellent in this episode, but quite beautiful in her sadness.
@8 – I totally agree! The Organians were the first thing I thought of as well. They seem the perfect race to create something like Armus
@16 – Great post! I agree with all points except the concept of Armus. As I said, I like the concept.
@24 – I agree about Henry Blake and M.A.S.H. And that show was a comedy. Go figure that one out.
@28 – At least she wasn’t a moistened bint lobbing a scimitar at you…
@EnsignJayburd
That one is easy to figure out. M*A*S*H was more than just a comedy. It was satire, often with strong social commentary.
Even though I am kind of late to the game (I got my husband the complete series for his birthday and we are now making our way through – this is my first time watching most of the episodes, although I have seen a handful of episodes) I wanted to comment on a few things:
“Supposedly in an earlier draft of the script, Yar said to Data that “it happened.”” – YES! That is canon now in my head!! Data is actually one of my very favorite characters, so maybe I’m a little biased, but I kept waiting and waiting for her to say that in her memorial! While ‘in real life’ I would have some qualms with the idea of having sex with a machine, I kind of suspend that while watching the show and it actually really bothered me that she says ‘it never happened’ because she was “drunk”…it just seems like a really heartless and insensitive thing to say, especially because for Data it did seem like a meaningful encounter (I found Brett Spiner’s acting for this episode really touching, actually…he really did seem affected by her death). Although I know that we tend to view being drunk as an impediment to true consent, especially if the other party is not…I am not totally sure how that applies when both people are under the same influence though. In my mind I’d like to think it was something they both wanted and was meaningful for both of them, although I don’t want to make that generalization for anybody who feels like they were taken advantage of while drunk.
I also completely agree with Chris at 16 – I wanted to comment that I actually really liked how she died and was impressed with that aspect of the episode. Instead of making a big deal out of it, she was causually snuffed out while trying to do her job. She knew it was a risk, but she still wanted to try and save her crewmembers and do her job. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t glorious (whatever that means) or that Armus had no real reason to kill her – that’s the point. Death is cruel and senseless, and there are definitely murderers out there who do not view their murders/victims as anything significant (ie, the ‘But For Me, it Was Tuesday’ trope). While I do feel that Tasha wasn’t quite given enough to do on the show – and perhaps as the show evolved they might have worked this out better had she stayed – I think her death was perfect for her character and she did go out with honor and selflessness and love (I have not seen this other episode others are speaking of so I can’t comment on that…)
Minor quibble – I was kind of hoping Data would retort that he was not made of tin, haha. And also that he is not a robot, he’s an android! Or are all androids robots, but not all robots are androids?
At my comment above, I feel the need to correct my typo – I meant Brent Spiner, of course!
Being a fan of the original series, I can overlook a little overacting at times. It’s part of the charm of the writing, the franchise. I’ve come to expect it in places. The only time I really mind is when it’s BAD overacting, which is why I sorta did a Southern good ol’ girl whoopdie woop when Tasha bit it. Star Trek’s never been about writing for strong women, and the Tasha character was a cliche’ nestled into a stereotype of what a strong woman is. As progressive as the West Coast is in aspects, the gender gap is still showing it’s 1950’s perfect-makeup-teased-hair-get-your-lipstick-on-before-the-hubby-arrives-home-from-work nonsensical drivel in writing for ‘strong’ women. (Just write for humans, you dodoheads, gender’s got nothing to do with strength). Tasha made me cringe, Janeway made me yawn, Kirk made me dream of pirates, and Picard made me dream of Shakespeare. Oh, and Data made me dream of The Three Stooges. =p Anyway, seeya Tasha, wish your dad were still around to give you a few pointers.
Oh, and Dr. Crusher repeatedly zapping Tasha’s corpse over and over and over and over in an attempt to re-animate… COMEDY GOLD!! BzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzT!
People are so weird. They want a drama that’s not “safe”, but then bitch when a show tries to do something really brave.
The killing of Yar did a lot of good for TNG. It made a lie of the received wisdom, “That character can’t die because they’re in the opening credits.” Following this up with the sudden transfer of Dr. Crusher just a few episodes later made me think that no one was sacrosanct. It’s honestly a high point of season 1, for me. It helped turn TNG into must-watch TV, because it perpetrated the sense that the very next episode might be the one where insert name here died. Though this sense had dissipated by about season 5, I do think the effects of Yar’s death were still very much felt by the first airing of “Best of Both Worlds”. One of the reasons that the “I am Locutus of Borg” ending works so well is that it could have been the irrevocable truth. We’d only just been reminded of the mortality of Tasha Yar in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. There was every chance in the world that Tasha’s death might have been foreshadowing for the biggie. It was my very active theory in the season 3/4 break that Picard might actually be done. In the internet-less past, wasn’t it possible that someone had seen Sir Patrick on the telly and offered him a fat contract to do something else? Was the show actually indivisible from its captain?
“Skin of Evil” simply introduced the valuable dramatic commodity known as doubt. It made Star Trek dangerous. Of course that sense of peril would have been heightened even more if we’d been given a reason to actually care about Yar during her 22 episode run. But neither Crosby nor the writers were up to the task. She was just a cypher in clichéd feminist clothing — hardly a patch on the varied depictions of feminine strength that were to come on ST. We hardly had to wait long. Suzie Plakson would show us what Yar was probably supposed to be in “The Emissary” just a year later.
So for me what’s funny about the episode isn’t the Armus voiceover. I kinda dig that evil doesn’t have a sterotypical [British] baritone. Indeed, I’d defend the actor’s choices because Armus is said to be looking for amusement. He’s a more dangerous version of a trickster than the embodiment of Satan. So I don’t buy the Armus hate. What’s funny to me is the last scene. That dreadful fake memorial. Leaving aside the sheer improbability of a recording that would name only the people who happened to attend the ceremony — and the fact that boring, unimaginative Tasha could only come up with that crappy little hill, despite the vast resources of the holodeck — is the fact that none of Yar’s observations make any damned sense. How does she know Riker is “the best”? Cause he can dock with the saucer section manually? Cause he dressed like a whore on Angel One? When has Troi shown Yar how to be “feminine”? Scratch that. Why would Yar need Troi’s help? Maybe Tasha just forgot the events of “The Naked Now”. And where’s the root for Picard-as-father-figure? They’ve been serving together for only a few months. How is any of Yar’s reverse-eulogy earned?
Aside from this Splendarrrific ending, though, “Skin of Evil” is a satisfying blend of Original Series’ “funkiness” and ahead-of-its-time narrative bravery. And as you’ve pointed out, Keith, it’s not really a Yar episode at all, but a Troi one. Fittingly, even her last episode, Denise Crosby was handily upstaged.
A big problem I had with the episode was that, instead of the characters actually having to deal with the idea of the evil within us (as we saw in TOS’ “The Enemy Within”), it just turned into a manipulation-fest. So the point was that we can deal with evil by distracting it until we can escape? It felt like an episode with potential that was just reduced to being a monster-of-the-week show.
I disliked Tasha when TNG first ran, but looking back at the first season in order, I have come to like her. Now, somehow, like Sofia Coppola as Mary Corleone in Godfather 3, her limited acting range makes her seem more real to me, and I would wish we’d seen more of her. I always liked this episode. You can disparage Armus all you want, with his cartoony voice and drippy appearance, but he did kill Tasha with a gloopy wave of his “arm”, and that alone made him more than bad-ass enough to get my attention. And the idea that a creature exists that is a compilation of the cast-off negative aspects of an entire species–that idea, to me, says something about the way evil exists in our species today, almost as a separate entity that we ignore and with whom we fail to deal.
I also recently rewatched this episode and wholeheartedly agree that what might have been a compelling character was so thoroughly botched in execution that it ruined the episode. Actually when I heard him explain how he came to be my thought immediately went to the Schwarzenegger-DeVito movie ‘Twins’, where Arnold was genetically sculpted to have only good characteristics, while his brother was nothing but leftovers, or ‘I’m the crap!?’ as I seem to recall him asking as the reality dawned on him.
I also, like you, appreciate the seeming arbitrariness of her death—it rang true for me. In fact, I hate this particular episode so much (again just because of the stupidness of the villain and the fact I don’t care to experience him again) I prefer to reconstruct TNG’s first season in my mind without that episode (same goes for a few others from that year) without that episode at all. For me, it’s just as well she died off screen somewhere, and no more or less arbitrary than the way she went ON screen. To similar ends, I actually kind of like the ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ story they gave Tasha. In a way I thought they tied the two deaths together nicely through the meditation on meaningful and meaningless death in the scene with Guinan.
For fuck’s sake. You’re entitled to your opinion about her death, but good storytelling means that anything that happens has to serve a purpose. And this didn’t. That’s the issue. A heroic death is just an easy way to make your death matter to the story.
Yes, the idea that anyone can die can be helpful, but the show didn’t use this for that purpose. At no point were we ever afraid anyone else would die. And, precisely because the villain was so comical, the death itself seemed comical. The attempts to make it meaningful with the memorial at the end was at odds with the story itself.
That’s why fans complain. She died in a really crappy episode.
The way the crew, as much as they able, refuse to be intimidated or toyed with takes a step toward justifying the outright fantasy concept of the villain but the episode doesn’t really take it anywhere.
I did like the little detail of the usually-good-tempered Geordi flinging his arms down in anger after getting his visor back.
I enjoyed this episode despite the awful voice acting for Armus. I liked the idea that he couldn’t be measured and understood by their instruments. One of the problems with Star Trek and some other sci-fi in general is that everything can feel so dry and plain; it can be hard to convey wonder and amazement when every single thing is perfectly understood by anyone willing to wave a little plastic box at it. The sense of discovery and exploration can be undermined, or at least hollowed out, when it all just fits perfectly neatly into what you currently know and understand. Yeah, you strive to gain that understanding in time, but to have it immediately and with such little effort (complete enlightenment is just a quick bleep and bloop away!) cheapens it. It actually emotionally moves it in line with something you already knew about rather than something totally new to you. If you instantly can quantify and file everything away, then nothing really seems new. It’s like seeing a burger with a different sauce on it rather than seeing a whole new type of food. “Oh that’s a burger, but with jam on it” is a silly food analogy for how a lot of Star Trek discoveries are instantly normalised and mundane-ised, to make up an awkward word.
Just because something is mysterious and unknowable like that, it doesn’t move it out of being scientific. We still don’t understand most things in the universe and haven’t encountered 99.999…% of things there are to encounter. We didn’t used to understand gravity yet it was still real, not some fairytale thing. It also allows for ambiguity that maybe it actually IS something outside of the laws of science, moving more into the kind of thing you get in Lovecraft, but since it’s ambiguous you can choose not to see it that way if you so desire.
FYI to everyone:
Just rewatched this episode on BBC America and they wound up cutting this scene!
WTF??
Another example of idiotic cuts is Data’s Day, when Data is dancing with the holodeck woman partner with that big dopey grin on his face. Hilarious scene! But not on BBC America any more!
Yeah cut out all the good bits so they can squeeze in more promos for the next guests appearing on the Graham Norton show.
I thought the Beeb was a class organization. Shame on them! I’d like to take a bat’leth to the morons who authorized these edited episodes.
As far as I understand it, while obviously connected in certain ways, BBC America is different from good old regular BBC. For one thing it’s a commercial entity whereas the BBC proper is strictly noncommercial and is funded by the license fee, a kind of semi-voluntary tax (I can only imagine how ridiculous that might sound to non-Brits).
Or is there another arm of the BBC that’s the commercial one?
Nothing wrong with the sudden death of Yar by an alien of the week—that makes it more powerful for the show overall. The problem is the way it was executed (no pun intended). Dying from a cliched, poorly rendered monster with a cartoon villain voice is an embarrassing end in any universe.
I loved Data in this episode. I loved how even without emotions, he recognizes Armus for the embodiment of evil he represents. First he refuses to take part in Geordi’s torment. Then he correctly concludes that Armus is irredeemable to the point where Picard has to hold him back from attempting to destroy him. How Data planned to do that, I don’t know but it really gives some depth to the character that he “felt” that way even without emotions.
I disliked this episode mostly for the idea that a people could discard all their negative aspects, and the result would be “creatures whose beauty now dazzles all who see them”. After “The Enemy Within” had argued so forcefully that we need our negative side, it seemed like a huge step backwards.
The Enemy Within wasn’t really good side vs evil side though. It was the impulsive side versus the introspective side. We need both of those, but we should constantly be working to discard the evil impulses from our nature.
@47/random22: No, acccording to Spock, it was “hostility, lust, violence” versus “compassion, love, tenderness”. Those can be impulsive too, so it wasn’t impulsive versus introspective. Spock explicitly told Kirk that “his negative side […], his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.” I like that. I like the idea that having negative impulses is okay, even useful, as long as people don’t act on them.
I just semi-randomly pulled up this article, and found myself drawn to KRAD’s comment about the voice of Armus needing a better actor. Let’s see here…pure evil…shiny black exterior…likes to manipulate with magic-like talents. No-brainer: They should have called James Earl Jones.
I think the biggest problem is that it’s half-assed. The effects are half-assed – they did a better job in the 1930s. Make the thing live in a dim swamp or something. Then you can hide the edges and it could generally feel more eerie, like this is the domain of evil. The whole rest of the planet could be nondescript except this one area.
The amuse me concept is half-assed… “entertain me” just sounds dumb and one-note. Perhaps “It’s been so long since I’ve really accomplished anything! I used to do so much in a day!” or even a “give in to the dark side, let go of your conscience…” that kind of thing is old and cliche but that’s because it resonates. But simply forcing humans to perform for you is half-assed, esp because it wasn’t done very creatively, like Q-style. It could have preached about the brilliant societal evils of its past. (Picard could have said it’s a shame they couldn’t learn about this historic civilization.)
The whole evil concept is half-assed – if it’s “all the evil”, use that to make a statement about what evil is. It’s not just being a bully. It’s unfairness of ownership, it’s envy, it’s destruction of resources. It believes that it is in everything; that no matter how good anything is, there’s an evil motivation inside it, or an evil effect that it will have. It sees itself in everything. It sees no point to goodness. It believes that love is a lie, that love will end, that those you care about will hurt you, leave you, or die, or your love will disappear in time. It believes that self-preservation demands selfish motivation, that we are fooling ourselves if we think anything is selfless. So many good or logical seeming points could be made by a true collective evil. Also it should be bigger; that seemed like maybe 10-100 people’s evil; if it’s all the evil of a civilization it could get really large at some point (though I assume it isn’t in the budget)..
Anyway, ST sometimes is good at bringing up deep discussion topics and this episode utterly failed, and yeah, Tasha dying pointlessly is one thing, but dying pointlessly in a half-assed episode is another :)
Final note, Tasha’s farewell tape would have been more touching if it had been more wrong. “Hi, I hope to get to know all of you, it’s my first week on the Enterprise, and already so much has happened. I hope you are watching this years from now and laughing at how young we all were and how weird our haircuts were.” And then gone on to talk about her expectations and it would have been heartbreaking, much like when Wes sees a message from his father. “I hope this is the first of many years of these, kid!” They learned a thing or two in the interim. :)
Though why she has to be a blinky hologram on a pedestal in a holodeck is beyond me. She could have walked in and high fived everyone.
That said, the memorial music was great. Really elevated it. I felt feelings.
this page’s google placement is not half-assed: rewtch skin
I don’t buy the notion that Crosby/Yar would have improved with time. When she did return for several episodes later on, she was just as awful as she was in the first season. I also find the holodeck ceremony awfully convenient. Did Yar record that minutes before she beamed down to the planet? How would she know that each person she addresses would be there?
What has always irked me the most about Yar’s death – what sent me into a full-on tizzy when the show first aired – wasn’t so much that she was killed off (sooner or later someone other than a red shirt had to die on an away team!) (also, I didn’t like Yar) (but if I had known how much I would come to despise Worf I would have been even madder) (where was I?) but that absurd little squiggle on her face that was the killing wound. It looks so *stupid*. Given TNG’s family show aims, they couldn’t have blood and guts, but no mark at all would have looked better, and saved them the buck ninety-eight they spent on that ridiculous port wine stain.
Sorry I’m late to the show here. I’m rewatching ST TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT on Netflix. There is a lot of different opinions about Denise Crosby’s acting, the voice of Armus, etc. But I have to disagree on the thoughts of whether death can be meaningless or not. I can tell you I’ve been surrounded by a lot of untimely death lately and it certainly can make a difference of the difference between a good death and a senseless death. Take an example if they had written that Armus had directed an energy beam at Crusher and Yar jumped in the way to take it herself? Certainly a difference. Also I think to sacrifice oneself to save another as opposed to dying in a hospital bed from some insidious disease would be the way I would prefer to go. Another perspective is there’s an old adage “I’d rather die on my feet then live on my knees.” Think about assimilation by the Borg. Would you rather that or death? I know I’d choose death. I also don’t think Denise Crosby‘s acting was that bad. I would’ve liked to have seen her give the show a chance and in future episodes they did more character development but her leaving the show changed how future episodes would be written so there’s that
Regarding Tasha’s tape and the criticism on how did she know who would be there; has it never occurred to anyone that the recording was designed to address who came? In other words, she could easily have recorded three dozen messages to various members of the crew she felt close to and the program (this is an a.i. after all) would access only the messages for the people who came. Indeed, others could come later and hear the message she left for them. If Lieutenants Smith, Spork, and Dinglefritz came in an hour later we wouldn’t hear a thing about Picard, Riker, Troi, Crushers, et al, just personal messages for Smith, Spork and Dinglefritz.
I don’t think the idea of a military person (yes, despite the claim that Star Fleet isn’t a military) would record messages to be delivered in the event of their death is odd. (which is why I find @@@@@50. jofesh‘s idea of a flirty, silly recording weird. Why would you do that except in your personal logs? A death message makes far more sense.)
I was 17 when this episode debuted and remember watching it with my mother not unlike JasonD @1 — but older. She was a Trekkie herself, if not one active in fandom, who had a similar reaction. Me, I was simply flabbergasted that a member of the regular cast was killed.
“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.”
Can’t disagree there.
“despite it being one of the best Troi vehicles, despite some excellent work by Sir Patrick Stewart when he confronts and manipulates Armus”
There either. I also found the extreme closeup on Picard’s face at the memorial service as the group disperses, with some members walking between him and us / the camera, potentially just weird but actually very effective.
The fact that the creature is essentially magic, not only because of how it makes objects fly and disappear but how it swallows and later expels Riker while having no depth when it moves along surfaces, is apparently such a typical experience in Starfleet encounters that it doesn’t even rate a mention. “Emotionally Stunted Nigh-Omnipotent Entity #796: partly extradimensional and substandard at mimicking humanoid form; otherwise unremarkable.”
“Chief Engineer Leland T. Lynch has to manually restart the dilithium crystal chamber, skipping the checklist and the final checks.”
Picard gets an exasperated look when Lynch answers over comms from engineering. I kinda wonder if there was to be a story behind that at some point or it’s simply a welcome bit of character lagniappe. You’d think from him using his full name he’d turn out to be an inveterate stickler for details, but he does indeed bypass the checklists, which if memory serves Picard didn’t explicitly ask for despite his insistence on getting under way ASAP. That not biting them in the ass later feels like a violation of Chek… well, in this case, more like Scotty’s Gun.
“The episode ends with a memorial service for Yar, which includes a prerecorded message for each person in the opening credits.”
Yeah, I guess the primary bridge crew were Tasha’s only friends — although costumer @54 makes a good point. Good thing she died the way she supposed in her message, too, and that all the folks singled out were still around. I really like the idea from jofesh @50 that she maybe hasn’t updated the recording since right after her assignment to Enterprise.
There are many problems with Armus, but my big one is that he is an inherent contradiction. Creating something like him is an act of evil in itself. It’s malignantly negligent toward the rest of the galaxy, and utterly cruel to the creature itself. No sooner had he been created than his creators should have realized and corrected their mistake. He cannot truly be a manifestation of his creators’ evil, but rather a more complex set of qualities; they have clearly kept some of their evil within them.
Come to think of it, why do we even believe Armus? He could be lying. He’s probably just an asshole.
Frozen, electrocuted, swallowed by a sentient oil slick – Riker is having a difficult stretch of episodes, isn’t he?
Armus feels more like a Doctor Who monster than a Star Trek villain, which makes me imagine an alternate universe where Sophie Aldred charges it with a baseball bat, gets swallowed alive, and Sylvester McCoy has to talk her free. It would probably be voiced better, but I shudder to think of what it would have looked like.
I skipped this one on my own personal (very late) rewatch, because I remember it was dreadful even when it first aired. Rewatching the dregs I skipped over now and it’s… well, not as bad as I remembered, but also not that good. However “convenient” the memorial scene was, I did get a little teary eyed — though not because Yar would no longer be part of the show. It’s funny, when the show first aired, I’m not sure we’d lived with any of the characters long enough to make her sentiments that meaningful.
But lo these many years later they’ve gotten into my brain, and it did get me in the feels.
So I actually want to speak in favour of what I think this episode was going for, because, in a setting where almost every villain is at least somewhat redeemable, or if not redeemable, then at least has “redeeming qualities”, or at least some degree of pathos, I think that it’s an interesting subversion to beam down to a planet and just…meet someone who’s Evil. Why is he all alone on this dead planet? Because he’s Evil; what else are you going to do with him? Why is he is Evil? Because he is; it would never occur to him not to be.
Where I think that the episode falls down is that he’s not evil enough. Such a creature as Armus should be absolutely detestable; you should spend the episode being angry at him, and disgusted by his smug, sadistic cruelty towards everyone he has under his power. And here’s where I think that making him nonhumanoid was a mistake, because what they really need is someone like Jack Gleeson as King Joffrey or Toby Jones as the Dream Lord on Doctor Who, or even Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched or Kai Winn; someone who really gives off those rancid “pulls-the-wings-off-a-fly-just-because-they-can” vibes. But you really can’t pull that off with a faceless tar monster who talks like a generation-1 My Little Pony villain.
Ron Gans (Armus) never did My Little Pony, but he did voice work for The Smurfs and played a Transformers Decepticon called Drag Strip, as well as playing Juggernaut in the Pryde of the X-Men pilot. Interestingly, he also played Eeyore in animated Winnie-the-Pooh productions from 1983-6, before Peter Cullen (aka Optimus Prime) took over the role. Which means that Eeyore has been both an Autobot and a Decepticon.