By Chris Snellgrove | Published
One of the most interesting things about insanely talented writers is that they tend to be very critical of their great works. Sometimes, this is because they lack confidence and worry that everything (no matter how successful) can always be better. Sometimes, it's because they were writing under a deadline and were convinced they could do better if they had more time. This actually happened to some great writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation while working on one of the show's best episodes: “Yesterday's Business.”
Nowadays, fans look back on this episode as a defining episode of the series, which showed how powerful TNG could really be. At that time, however, writers (including future Deep Space Nine show Ira Steven Behr and the future Battlestar Galactica (executive producer Ronald D. Moore) feared the episode would be a disaster because they had to work over Thanksgiving and complete the script by the end of the weekend. However, the high quality of the episode proved one thing: if there's anything these guys can do, it works well under pressure!
Star Trek Into Darkness (Literally)
Why did the writers of “Yesterday's Business” have to work on the Thanksgiving episode? This was with the special stars of the episode, Denise Crosby and Whoopi Goldberg. Crosby's character was killed off back in Season 1, so he was busy with other projects during the filming of Season 3. At the time, Goldberg was a cheap movie star who only appeared on Star Trek because he loved the franchise so much. The episode was originally going to be written after Christmas, but in order to accommodate both actors' schedules, the writers suddenly had to have the script finished by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.
According to the reference book Yesterday's Business TransactionsIra Steven Behr said the writers (which included himself, Ronald D. Moore, Hans Beimler, and Richard Manning) were understandably friendly about working on the holiday weekend. In order to make an episode under deadline, each writer is given a different part of the script to handle. For example, Moore was the main guy behind the romance between Tasha Yar and the late Richard Castillo.
Dropping It All For Some Special Visiting Stars
Despite having a game plan, they fear that the episode will be funny; in accordance with Star Trek: The Next Generation–The Mission ContinuesEric Stillwell (who created the story) said, “Many writers were not happy with the script. [something] and do it in three days.” However, these writers have embraced a silver lining: they finally get to write the kind of dark, angsty episode that Trek bigwigs (most notably, Gene Roddenberry himself) have always rejected. Fortunately, their hard work paid off, and “Yesterday's Business” became the third most watched episode of the entire series.
It's hard to underestimate the power of “Yesterday's Business,” which has become a favorite episode of Denise Crosby, Rick Berman, and episode director David Carson. It won an Emmy and was voted best episode Star Trek: The Next Generation at six different times. And, for better or worse, Roberto Orci later said that this episode was a major influence Star Trek (2009), who pioneered the Kelvinverse. Ironically, though, this insanely successful and powerful episode of TNG was written by four pissed-off writers over the course of three days, all of whom thought it was going to be awful and just wanted to eat the leftover turkey!
