UNCUT REACTION - Star Trek TNG S3E15 - Yesterday's Enterprise

This episode is the reason I joined your Patreon

This episode felt like a movie - not a TV episode from the 90s. Amazing plot, acting and the music! The music during the first scenes of the ending battle is amazing.

Watching you guys shit-bricks at the Tasha reveal was worth every penny.

This was my mom's favorite ep of TNG. In a retrospective review, Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club praised the episode for quickly establishing the premise and stakes, as well as turning Tasha Yar's death into one of the episode's "strongest emotional beats." Tasha's determination to die with meaning by the end of [the episode] transforms her death, as she say's herself from something meaningless into something more noble. I loved this episode's tense, almost dark atmosphere. In particular the increased tension between Picard and Riker. As you would expect as most of it takes place during a wartime setting. TV critic Critic Marc Bernardin described the episode as Star Trek's "smartest time-travel experiment" and a fan favorite. Time Magazine rated this episode as one of the top ten moments of Star Trek, including television series and films up to that time. The work of multiple writers on this episode came off with amazing smoothness. Resulting in a tight thriller with a real bang up climax. Fans attending the Star Trek 50th Anniversary convention in 2015 even voted this episode the fifth-best episode of the entire franchise. Like my mom and so many Trek it would be hard for me also to not consider this my favorite TNG episode. Great scenes also between Picard and Guinan which go to the heart of their long friendship. And Worf falling in love with prune juice. Just delightful! In 2016 SyFy ranked "Yesterday's Enterprise" as the No. 1 best time travel plot in Star Trek. The episode truly deserves the accolades it has gotten through the decades!

This is why, at the end of the day, TNG is the best Star Trek. Who would have thought you'd be in-store for a Yar episode!? LOL

One reason for the hard cut at the end is that there is a hard cut in the timeline. By the time the Enterprise C enters the rift a few days have passed, yet when we are back on the bridge we know, we jump back to the moment we left just before the Enterprise C first appears. The timeline we were watching was just cut right off, and we had to go back in time to pick up the timeline we know. Those two scenes are not parallel so blending them makes no sense at all. One of them could be Tuesday and the other Friday for all we know.

The score in this episode was just brilliant! I love the tubular bells that slowly echo in as the rift opens and starts fluctuating. It is like an audio cue that the timeline is fracturing and echoes of the past are spilling into the future. Great choice of an instrument to convey this feeling and the impact of the rift, as tubular bells are often the chimes in clocks, giving it the sense that the clocks are breaking and time is shattering. It gives me chills every time I watch!

I just lived to see Tasha finally get an episode around her and showcase her acting skills. Thought Denise Crosby did an amazing job in this one. The guest stars were really strong!

And here we go, the fantastic outtake for this episode, Guinan asks Geordi about Tasha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqz48DFBRsc

Don't you hate it when great episodes have no lasting consequences and completely hit the reset button at the end...

An exciting episode for sure....but its popularity has always bugged me....just like Wrath of Khan and one of the TNG movies...and lots of DS9.....the fans keep expressing that their favourite and most popular episodes/movies...are the pew pew war/battle ones or darker themes, war time, grim future etc....thats all ultimately NOT star trek....neat side track thing to see though

If you look closely Geordie is wearing the alternate timeline uniform in the final scene.

Did anyone notice how the Ent-C uniforms looked for shit? The necklines weren't finished or anything, just bare cut fabric and no turtleneck to hide the edge. Terrible.

"No matter the time line, if you tell Picard your true feelings, he'll let you do whatever you want." — best quip of the entire history of Target Audience.

I had TOS and nearly all of TNG on beta tapes! I switched to VHS around 1993, then my beta VCR died in late 1994. I had to wait until the sci-fi channel special edition of TOS to come out in ‘98 to get that on tape again

I think we've all been waiting for you two to get to this episode, like "City On The Edge of Forever" and "Yesteryear."

I actually really enjoy the hard cut back to the normal bridge at the end, for two reasons. One because at that point, you're braced for anything to happen, even up to the destruction of the enterprise itself. And yet the episode still has one more way to surprise you. And two because it's not just shock value, it's conveying something meaningful: the moment the C went through the rift, that timeline disappeared. At that instant it no longer matters what happened to the D because nothing at all happened to them, ever again.

It was originally planned to show Data electrocuted and Wesley decapitated by shrapnel, leaving Picard alone on the bridge. But time, money and probably a desire not to be TOO gruesome conspired to cut those deaths.

Wonderful as always. I grew up watching TOS on Betamax with my Dad, and once the reruns started playing more in 80s, I got hooked. Our Apple computer had the TOS screensaver. It could fill the screen with Tribbles. A Horta would chew holes in the Desktop. And Spock would walk around Then TNG came out and this is my series. Every Sunday night, the family was on the couch watching this show. I was in total awe and I was 12 at the time this dropped and enjoyed it immensely. The poster with the schematic of the Enterprise was on my wall for many years. Then as an adult, rewatching these heavy episodes it hit all over again, along with the childhood feels. Thanks, guys!

one of my favourite all time episodes of TNG right here, this for me is top tier Trek.

These poor female captains in TNG, Captain Tryla Scott had a neck bug (S1: Conspiracy), and Captain Rachel Garrett gets shrapnel lodged in her forehead.

Classic episode. Glad you enjoyed it! I think it's not very representative of the series in terms of tone, but it's definitely one of my favorite things ever made for TV.

6:00 I take it Tasha's return was not spoiled for you two? Thank heavens!!

5:13 NOPE! Not a mirror universe switch!!

The Defector might be my favourite TNG ep, but YE is right up there with it, and I'm not going to argue for a second with anyone saying it's their #1. This episode is a masterpiece. As little as we know about the Enterprise-C, knowing the ship went down in a blaze of glory that ultimately led to peace with the klingons is a fate perfectly suited to a ship bearing the name......Enterprise. Also you've now seen the origin of another great Picard meme with "not good enough, dammit, not good enough!!". Regarding Alex's comment about seeing Worf on the other side at the end, I think we've all had that thought. Picture this; after Riker is killed and Picard takes the tactical station, things keep getting worse. Data's console exploded, decapitating him, and a power surge electrocutes Wesley, and we get a bunch of sounds from the tactical console indicating weapons are no longer functioning. One of the klingon ships breaks off to go after the Enterprise-C, and as a desperate final act, Picard goes to the helm station and sets a collision course with that ship. Right as he does, a klingon boarding team beams aboard the bridge, led by Worf. Picard kills his 2 subordinates with his phaser as they materialize but is jumped by Worf who slams his wrist on the console making him drop the phaser. Worf pulls his d'k tagh (klingon dagger from TSFS) to finish Picard in hand to hand, and Picard grabs a starfleet combat knife from his belt, and in a scene reminiscent of the Revenge of the Sith movie poster, we see them grappling with each other in this knife fight, silhouetted against the viewscreen as the klingon ship chasing the Enterprise-C looms larger and larger on the viewscreen, until the moment of impact followed by a bright flash, then a fade in to the original Enterprise-D bridge from behind the tactical console. We see the anomaly on screen and Picard asking for a report, and as he does so, the shot is panning over and we see the yellow shirt and sash right as Worf starts to speak. Since it was already stated in the Encounter at Farpoint comments, Picard was nearly 60 when the show began, making him about 62 here. Starfleet academy is a 4 year course, so assuming he went at 18 and graduated at 22, he's a 40 year veteran of starfleet at this point. That means the first half of his career was that of an explorer, the same as in the original timeline. I think this adds an extra layer to the changes in his character here. The rest of the crew would have spent their entire adult lives knowing war as a fact of life. Not only has Picard likely seen more death and loss than any of them, and being a captain has likely sent a great many people to their deaths(including the 6000 troops carried aboard that Yar mentioned), but he also remembers what peace looks like. His more detached attitude toward his crew is likely a defense mechanism after losing far too many friends to the war. Patrick Stewart is firing on all cylinders in this episode. The scene where he explains to Garrett how bad the war is going was brilliantly performed, and of course "let's make sure that history never forgets the name....Enterprise" is a timeless line for a reason. I also rather enjoyed Garrett's character. The scene where she basically tells Crusher she has work to do and to stop babying her was great. That combined with zero hesitation to go back and face certain death after hearing how bad the war is going, and the fact she was willing to take on 4 warbirds to save a klingon outpost before they were even allies made her brief appearance memorable, and left no doubt for me that she was worthy of the ship she commanded. Regarding the scene at the end with Geordi, I'd assume since we didn't see Geordi in the regular uniform in the teaser, they just filmed that on one of the shooting days he was in for set in the alternate timeline, and removed the belt hoping we wouldn't notice the cuffs, rather than spend time having him go back to the wardrobe department to change. Eric A. Stillwell who co-wrote the story claims he named the planet Narendra III after Naren Shankar, who would join the TNG cast in S4 as a science consultant, writer and story editor. I assume the 2 are friends in real life as he wasn't involved in Trek at this point. Finally, this episode is a measure of redemption for Yar. The original will still die to Armus just the same, but at least Denise got to come back and play the character doing something meaningful with her life. 9.5/10 episode, and only because they didn't have the time and budget for couple finishing touches that would have been epic.

4:44 You could fit a bus inside Alex's mouth.

I don't *hate* TOS, but I don't care for many aspects of it.

Oh man!!! I and we have been all waiting for this episode for weeks! The reaction was priceless! And can not wait for even more now! F YES!❤️🖖

Love the pop at the reveal.

So much great stuff in this episode. It’s my 2nd favorite of the ones you’ve seen so far, only behind Measure of a Man

For fun, go back and watch something like Code of Honor and then this immediately after.

New Trek is great. Ds9 is my favorite though

Been waiting for that Tasha reaction! You guys didn't disappoint haha

The Tasha pop… it’s what we all wanted and it’s not even an adult movie!

One of the all time greatest episodes of any of the Star Trek series. There's many that can come close, but only a very small handful that can beat it. Let's make sure history never forgets the name, Enterprise I find it pretty cool that it didn't. Even more than 20 years after the last episode of TNG, it still lands. People still love it. Also, Picard's "That'll be the day" is exceptional. Really shows the fighting spirit of his at it's finest. We see it in the normal timeline on occasion, but that scene really shows off that side to his character.

Great watch. Probably gonna watch again tonight

WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!! Can't wait to get home and watch this! My whole family did a double take

That pop for Tasha gives me life.

The best episode of the series to this point I love everything about this one and without watching season 1 it would lesson the impact for me. Leaves you wanting more…

Theeerrrreeeeee we go...

Best episode of the series up to this point. Wish I could see it again for the first time like you guys!

I forget to mention…I wish Ron Jones scored this episode. Can you imagine???

Bonkers! Amazing episode from start to finish! The Guinan scenes were mysterious, almost, dare I say, creepy. They really threw the budget at this one! I like how they altered the bridge too. The carpenters added steps and raised the captain’s chair, and calling it a “military log” and “battleship” throughout the episode. A+!

fun goof at the end Geordi still in the alternate uniform

Just so you all know, this one IS in the top 6 for the season. In regards to the darker lighting, be careful what you wish for.

This episode was a great way to give Tasha some justice from season 1.

So, the original plan was to kill more of the Enteprise D cast members in the final battle. Wesley was allegedly going to be beheaded and Data electrocuted at their stations, but just Riker made it into the final cut 👍🏼

Your teaser prediction is distressingly accurate.

Growing up as a TNG er I hated TOS wasn’t till 09’ or maybe sometime before the new movies that I had this need to know everything!

Are there two Thursdays this week? Better watch this twice.

Great reaction! I feel bad for all the people out there that followed the "Skip the first season, it sucks." advice. I can't imagine that this episode lands as hard for them.

I am so happy you posted this today. I had to cancel a trip this morning because I'm recovering from surgery and was eagerly looking forward to this episode and your reaction, so this was a delightful surprise.

Your reaction to seeing Tasha did not disappoint. According to one of the audio commentaries for this episode they wished they could have made it a two-parter, but it was impossible. TA, don't look at the audio commentaries yet because there are spoilers in them.

“Space, the final battleground. These are the campaigns of the warship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to prosecute the war against the Klingon Empire; to render aid and assistance to endangered civilizations; to boldly fight where no one has fought before.” So we come to it at last: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (alternate working title: “NCC-1701-C”), the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation and an enduring classic of science fiction television. In retrospect, it seems surprising that a series with ratings as high as TNG’s ran for only two-and-a-half seasons, producing fewer episodes than TOS, which had lower ratings on its first run. However, both TNG’s popularity and the relative brevity of the series were due to its premise. Gene Roddenberry’s decision to make a darker and more action-packed sequel to the optimistic original Star Trek, with the Federation and the Klingon Empire fighting a war that had already lasted for twenty years, was initially controversial with fans, but supercharged the show’s viewing figures with an audience that had grown up on the original "Star Wars" films. Moreover, TNG’s writers proved unexpectedly skillful at balancing action-packed, battle-oriented episodes with moments of exploration and discovery and compelling character-based stories. TNG gained new energy at the beginning of Season 3 from the return of Dr. Beverly Crusher after a year’s service as a ground combat medic, following the departure of Diana Muldaur’s Dr. Pulaski. Pulaski’s death in the turboshaft remains one of TNG’s most indelible images, remarkable considering that it came at the end of a modestly produced, budget-saving season finale. However, it was clear that TNG could not continue much longer without its plots becoming repetitive and straining credulity in that most of the main characters had survived this long (not to mention the implausibility of Riker and Data remaining aboard the Enterprise in wartime conditions when they were both fully qualified by this point for commands of their own). TNG’s producers convinced a reluctant Paramount to produce a heavily-promoted half-season to conclude the series, culminating with “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” The brief given to the finale’s writers was simple: “Kill ’em all.” (The crew’s deaths were more elaborate and brutal in earlier drafts, with Data electrocuted and Wesley decapitated, but time and budget considerations prevented this.) It was inevitable that TNG’s series finale would focus on Tasha Yar, the show’s breakout character. A minor figure at the beginning of the series, Yar benefited from two or three unusually strong early scripts, capturing the attention of writers and viewers. As she received increasingly meaty storylines, Denise Crosby’s acting talents blossomed, and the role catapulted her to major television stardom while permanently raising the bar for the depiction of female characters on American primetime television. By the midpoint of Season 2, Yar was clearly the show’s main character, even though Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes retained top billing. If they resented a supporting player stealing the spotlight from them, as happened over the years to the putative stars of other TV series such as "Happy Days," "Family Ties" and "Family Matters," they gave no public indication of it. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” would also amply justify a decision that viewers had found odd: the addition of Whoopi Goldberg to the cast at the beginning of Season 2 in the recurring role of ship’s bartender Guinan. This non-military character’s presence seemed incongruous on a wartime vessel, leading critics to accuse the show of stunt casting at the expense of believability. Throughout Guinan’s appearances, however, there were occasional hints that there was more to her than met the eye, as she would occasionally murmur to herself that there was something indefinably wrong with the fabric of reality. The meaning of these vague hints, initially unknown to the writers themselves, would finally become clear in the unexpected story with which the show ended. (“Yesterday’s Enterprise” was the first episode of the series in which Guinan appeared on the Bridge.) It was especially daring for a series with such broad-based popularity to conclude with such a complex story, involving alternate timelines and potential changes to the histories of characters the audience had come to know so well. (Years later, Jonathan Frakes said, “To this day I do not understand ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise.’ I do not know what the fuck happened in that episode. I’m still trying to understand it…”) In its brief run, TNG produced unforgettable episodes. Among its greatest achievements was “Imzadi,” a Hitchcockian thriller guest-starring Marina Sirtis (a British actor who auditioned for the role of Yar during the casting of TNG’s pilot) as a duplicitous half-Betazoid mind-control expert, Riker’s former lover, who subtly turned the Enterprise crew against each other with her empathic abilities and was ultimately revealed to be an agent of an extremist peace group suspected of complicity with the Klingons. Even more memorable was “batlh,” told entirely from the point of view of a Klingon crew locked in hopeless combat with the Enterprise. African-American actor Michael Dorn received an Emmy nomination for his inspired performance as the doomed Klingon captain. Nonetheless, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” remains TNG’s crowning achievement. (It is Denise Crosby’s favorite TNG episode, and features composer Dennis McCarthy’s favorite of the scores he composed for the series.) Remarkably, while bringing the series to a conclusive and explosive end, it pointed the way forward to Star Trek’s future. The Enterprise-C’s desperate journey back in time held out the possibility of an alternate version of the 24th century in which the devastating war between Federation and Empire never happened at all, leaving the way open for a rebooted series returning to the optimism of the original. Star Trek would prove to be in the forefront of the wave of “lighter and softer” sci-fi shows that captured large audiences in the 1990s, in part a reaction against the darkness of TNG itself. And yet however much later versions of the franchise differed from it, TNG’s extraordinary series finale ensured that, as Jean-Luc Picard had hoped, history would never forget the name Enterprise. Incidentally, I considered writing this comment from the viewpoint of an alternate timeline in which TNG was a more optimistic and utopian series from the outset, with “Yesterday’s Enterprise” as a glimpse of a darker alternative. Such a series could, I think, have run as long as seven seasons, although it is scarcely likely that it would have produced a series finale as good as “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” I decided, however, that such a comment would be too complicated and confusing. The information that appears inside parentheses in this comment would have been true in that alternate timeline as well.

A&J, did you guess during the episode that Tasha would choose to go back to rewrite her death?

Not my proudest fap.

I sure do love Th... Wednesdays <3

So glad the credits didn’t spoil Tasha’s appearance

This episode should have been made into a theatrical movie.

Despite having seen every episode dozens of times, it really does feel like the first time following along with you guys through the show. This is a brilliant episode and there are many more to come that match it. Thanks so much for making another re-watch feel new and special again!

They actually increased the budget for this episode. Each episode was costing approximately $1.2 million, and even with the increased budget they couldn't do everything they wanted to do, including most of the crew dying and the Enterprise D possibly being destroyed as the C went through the rift. Such a good episode though. IMO, the best of Season 3 so far.

They were going to kill everybody. Geordi was going to get electrocuted, Wesley or Data (story changes) was going to get a decapitation, and of course Picard goes down with the ship. THe voice of the Klingon is Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, by the way.

I really like the “C’s” crew uniforms altered from the Kirk era uniforms but still a “Monster Maroon”

.....anybody got a cigarette?

Haven't watch your reaction yet, but this gonna be troll thumbnail haha

The transition from normal reality to alternate timeline wasn't planned. It was done in post, and is one of the coolest shots in the show. Then of course Picard moves over, and there's Tasha. So awesome. Since it wasn't planned, no transition at the end was doable. I'm happier with the way it went, though maybe actually seeing the Enterprise explode might have punched it up a bit. The last shot of Picard fighting on with fire coming into frame was a pretty strong visual though.

*ties bib around neck

We have finally arrived..! Great addition to my lunch hour! Thanks Guys!

Captain Garrett .... death by Macross model kit piece

Not that I'm complaining IN THE LEAST, but isn't this episode a day early? This is probably not just one of my favorite episodes of TNG, but Star Trek in general. It felt like a movie. You could tell there was a lot of time and care put into this episode. Just love it!

No, the attack Worf was rescued from was at Khitomer, not Narendra 3. Same players, but different events.

Can you guys make the weekend come a day early too? Please?

A day early?! Glad I chose to work from home today

You are basically saving my day today. I have some very tough four weeks behind me, this comes right on time!

"Enjoying every scene" that's right guys. Watch it again, there's a lot to take in. The changes to the sets and lighting are a feast for the eyes.

I found the somewhat adversarial relationship between Picard and Riker in the alternate timeline to be rather interesting.

You've made my day, literally just finished work ❤️

Okay, here we go. The show really gets kicked up to notches heretofore unknown.

lol got the reaction I was hoping for good knew that pop was gonna be huge lol.

Hahaha, you guys spoke over the first mention of a war with the Klingons

Oh this is gonna be good!

Now you understand the hype, this ep was such a huge deal to us at the time that they literally wrote a book about the making of this one story

Unlike the Sega Saturn, dropping this early without announcement was the right move

Double "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?", you guys delivered

If someone hasn't commented about that, they absolutely WANTED and scripted to show the last stand with everyone else dying, Data was gonna get electrocuted, etc etc. But this show was right up against their budget and time and they just couldn't

Well this drop completely changed my plans for today

I love these early Thursdays. Keep hacking that system clock, team ⏰️

I've been waiting on this one for so long, and it's a day early! Can't wait for work to end so I can watch!

Today just got better!

"Every Star Trek fan is stupid but me." - every Star Trek fan

F'N-A!

Early? Whoa. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHAT WHAT WHAT THE TA MAINFRAME SYSTEM CLOCK HACK WORKED