Ronald D. Moore Reveals ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ Was Nearly Written Off as a Disaster

Ronald D. Moore joined the Star Trek: The Next Generation writing staff in season three, arriving under new showrunner Michael Piller after the turbulent turnover of the first two years. The episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”—credited to Moore, Hans Beimler, Richard Manning, and Ira Steven Behr—became an all-hands-on-deck effort to depict the Enterprise-D thrust into a war-torn alternate timeline where Lieutenant Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) had never died.

Speaking on The 7th Rule with Cirroc Lofton and Ryan T. Husk, Moore recalled the chaotic process behind what is now considered one of TNG‘s finest hours:

Ronald D. Moore: “I was just one of the people that did ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise.’ We all wrote that together, because we were so behind. We were barely… we went to a production meeting and prepped for that with just a beat sheet. We didn’t really know what the structure was. We were turning in pages. Each of us took an act, and then Michael sewed them all together and plopped them on the stage.

When we were doing that episode, we were convinced it was a disaster. We were all like, ‘This is gonna be one of the worst episodes.’ Seriously, I’m not hyping it. We were like, ‘Wow, this is just one of the worst things. This is all gonna fall apart. This doesn’t make any sense. What does Guinan know? What is she talking about? Is anybody gonna buy this?’

And then you start seeing the dailies, and it’s like, ‘Oh, it looks cool. We’re getting some interesting performances, and the bridge looks really interesting and different.’ And it wasn’t until we saw the first cut, the director’s cut, that we went, ‘Oh! This is actually a pretty good episode.’”

Directed by David Carson—who would later helm Star Trek Generations—the episode applied a dramatically lit, militaristic aesthetic that Carson carried into the film, co-written by Moore and Brannon Braga. Three decades later, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” enjoys higher regard among fans than the feature film it foreshadowed.

Moore’s account underscores the grueling pace of 26-episode seasons. As the fifteenth installment of season three, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” was produced with the same breakneck speed as every other entry, yet the confluence of Piller’s editorial “sewing,” Carson’s direction, and the cast’s performances created an alchemy no one anticipated. The result remains a benchmark for the franchise: a haunting, high-stakes alternate history that helped cement The Next Generation‘s legacy as a science-fiction touchstone.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is streaming on Paramount+.

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