APPRECIATION | TNG’s Patti Yasutake Dies: A True Supporting Player
Actress truly made Nurse Ogawa part of the “Enterprise” crew
“Alyssa, I think you know how much I’ve come to depend upon you here. I’ve recommended your promotion because your performance here has been exemplary.”
— Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), to Nurse Ogawa (Patti Yasutake) “Lower Decks,” Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek has a long history of creating and developing secondary and supporting characters which are so much more than bit players.
These are characters who we might not see in every episode, but nevertheless are woven into a series such that when we do see them, they bring an immediate depth and familiarity that often makes a given scene much more than what might have been on a page in a script.
Nurse Alyssa Ogawa was just such a character for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Appearing in 16 episodes in all — as well as two Next Generation movies — Ogawa came to feel very much like one of the indispensable crew aboard the USS Enterprise-D.
Actress Patti Yasutake, the actress who brought Ogawa to life, passed away Monday after a long battle with a rare form of T-cell lymphoma. She was 70.
It is a testament to Yasutake’s skill as an actor that the character became so integral to Sickbay, grew to be such a close confidant and friend to her boss, Dr Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and beloved by fans.
Although the quote at the beginning of this appreciation was in-universe praise by Dr Crusher, to her subordinate, it also could easily have been a more meta comment on the character of Ogawa herself.
Ogawa’s first appearance actually was in the fourth-season episode “Future Imperfect,” in which she wasn’t even real, but rather part of an elaborate illusion for Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes).
But Ogawa and Yasutake just coming back. The character appeared in the fifth-season episode, “The Game,” even though the original call sheet featured Wil Wheaton and two background performers during the turbolift scene.
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Ogawa even got a big promotion, to Dr Ogawa and the position of chief medical officer of the Enterprise-D — albeit in an alternate timeline in the seventh season’s “Parallels.”
Ogawa kept reappearing throughout TNG’s final season, even getting a send-off in the series finale, “All Good Things …”
But the pinnacle for both the character and actor really was the season-seven classic, “Lower Decks,” which focused an entire episode on a group of junior officers who are serving aboard the Enterprise.
René Echevarria, the scriptwriter for “Lower Decks” said, “We were always very fond of the actress and felt she never had enough to do.”
The story turns on a dangerous, secret mission one of those young officers, Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill) undertakes for Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart).
Sito dies as a result, causing quite a blow to the fellow junior officers who were her friends.
It was a quick, but important, bit of acting on the part of Yasutake that really sold just how much of a gut-punch Sito’s death was.
It was a single gasp, but that gasp communicates all of the heartbreak we feel.
It was her great ability as a professional that allowed Yasutake always to have maximum impact with so little screen time.
Yasutake was so much a part of Star Trek that she was hired in 1993 to reprise her role for a TV commercial for Hallmark’s holiday ornament that year .
That kind of impact will be the legacy Yasutake leaves for Star Trek.
She will be missed.
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