But “Yesterday’s Enterprise” tells a much richer onscreen story about the Enterprise-C. Destroyed 20 years before the episode’s setting, the Enterprise-C goes through a time distillation and arrives in a changed future. In the original timeline, the -C was destroyed while attempting to rescue a Klingon outpost. When the time shift prevents the -C from completing its mission in the past, the future changes and the Federation is suddenly in the midst of a protracted war against the Klingons. In this reality, the Enterprise-D is a battleship, led by an embittered Picard and his military-focused crew, including Denise Crosby’s Tasha Yar.
Directed by David Carson and based on a story by Trent Christopher Ganino & Eric A. Stillwell, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” serves as a proper send-off for Tasha Yar, an original crew member who died an ignoble death at the “hands” of a blob monster in the season one episode “Skin of Evil.” Yar, and the crew of the Enterprise-C, choose to send the time-displaced ship back into the past and complete its deadly mission, sacrificing themselves to prevent the Federation/Klingon war from ever happening.
It’s a glorious episode, one of the best in the series, and a fitting end for Yar. However, Garrett puts in a great showing as a model Starfleet Captain too, embodying the courage and selflessness that marks the best captains. Even though she suffers a surprisingly gnarly death before her ship can go back to the past and complete its mission, Garrett remains a compelling figure from Star Trek lore.
Garrett later got a nod in Star Trek: Picard, which revealed her statue stood on M’talas Prime. But that’s all we currently know about Garrett, unless you count the non-canonical Lost Era novels The Art of the Impossible and Well of Souls, which flesh out her character. In canon, though, Garrett remains a compelling mystery.
As she demonstrated on the series Hannibal, Rohl knows a thing or two about portraying under-explored fan-favorites. On that Bryan Fuller-created adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novels, Rohl played Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of Garret Jacob Hobbs aka the Minnesota Shrike, a serial killer only mentioned in passing in Harris’ books.
Coincidentally, in Section 31, Rohl’s Rachel Garrett will appear alongside another Fuller creation: Philippa Georgiou, played by Michelle Yeoh. As the original creator of Discovery, Fuller introduced Georgiou as Michael Burnham’s commanding officer, who dies in the Battle of the Binary Stars, only for her Mirror Universe equivalent to arrive and take her place.
