Star Trek Online three-year anniversary beams up guest appearance by Denise Crosby

Star Trek Online is about to boldly go into its third year since engaging back in early 2010, and from January 31 through February 14, players can take part in a celebratory episode called "Temporal Ambassador" where they'll cross paths with the late Enterprise Chief Tactical Officer Tasha Yar, played in-game as she was in The Next Generation series by Denise Crosby.

Yes, Lieutenant Yar was cruelly offed at the end of the first season by the mean tar monster Armus in "Skin of Evil," but we're guessing her appearance has something to do with " Starfleet transponder codes dating back to the mid-24th century " emanating from a temporal anomaly created by the highly territorial Tholians.

Stick around, and you can also expect to be partying with no less than the omnipotent space troll Q, who'll be hosting a special in-game event that will bag you a special Federation Ambassador Class or Klingon Kamarag Class ship.

Crosby's appearance in Star Trek Online will follow other appearances by veterans of the series, including Leonard Nimoy (Spock from the original series), Chase Masterson (Leeta from Deep Space 9), and Zachary Quinto (Spock from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek film) who have lent their characters' voice and appearance within Perfect World's space-voyaging MMO. Still no sign of Wesley, but considering the ensign earned his own death parody video , we're probably better off not letting him on our bridge.

Star Trek Online saw a fair bump in player count since going free-to-play in January of last year. Earlier this week, Executive Producer Dan Stahl announced that more than 2 million captains are continuing to ply the galaxy's warp-ways after the transition. But that's just a fraction of the 4 billion Tribbles stowing away on everyone's ships, as shown in the milestone infographic below.