Trivia / Star Trek: Picard S3E09 "Vox"

• Dawson Casting: All of the characters noted as being 25 or under are played by older actors, some well into their thirties. May not be an issue with Esmar, but the LaForge sisters are human, and Bajorans such as Mura have been shown to age about on par with humans.
• The Danza: Shelby's first name is revealed to be Elizabeth, the same as her actress Elizabeth Dennehy.
• The Original Darrin: The Borg Queen, having been played by Annie Wersching in the previous season, is now voiced by her original actress, Alice Krige. Justified, as the late Wersching's Borg Queen was the Queen of an alternate timeline and not 'our' Queen.
• Reality Subtext: The many emotions of Picard and company setting foot on the restored Enterprise Bridge. It's just as emotional for the TNG cast, setting foot on a recreation of the set where they spent the better part of a decade working, laughing, and becoming a surrogate family and part of a franchise that changed their careers and lives forever.
  Jonathan Frakes: You can imagine how emotional it was. We walked on the set and we had our moment… But one of the most Next Gen aspects of that experience of being back on the Enterprise-D was when we were all jammed in the elevator and knocking each other off their marks and taking the piss out of each other, accusing other people of farting. It was as if we had just gone back to that rambunctious, stupid, childish behavior that we all had in 1987. It was great!
• Rebuilt Set: The Enterprise-D bridge has been rebuilt by Production Designer David Blass and his team for the final two episodes (as has the turbolift set). The rebuilt set is also the Season-Three-era design, rather than the refit bridge set we last saw in Generations. This can be justified both in-universe (Geordi having to rebuild the original wrecked bridge module with scavenged Galaxy-class components) and on a meta level (using the classic bridge configuration that people always remember whenever they think of TNG).
  • And the icing on the cake? According to Blass, the entire Bridge was rebuilt from scratch. But the Dedication Plaque? That was the original prop from TNG.
• Recycled Set: The Enterprise-F bridge is obviously a redress of the Titan-A bridge set with a different lighting scheme and other cosmetic alterations.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • For Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Gene Roddenberry suggested only destroying the Enterprise's saucer section and sparing the stardrive section, envisioning the movie ending with a new saucer being attached to the old secondary hull, making it a fusion of new and old, and giving it a sense of legacy, before he was overruled. Here, we shades of that suggestion, with Geordi bringing back the Enterprise-D's saucer section attached to a new secondary hull.
  • One of the original ideas for the Alternate Future of "All Good Things" was that the Enterprise-D had been decommissioned and placed in a Starfleet Museum. The characters would thus have had to "borrow" it for their mission to the Devron System (much in the same way Kirk and company "borrowed" their Enterprise from Spacedock during Star Trek III). While this was ultimately dropped once the Future storyline was refined and developed (ex. Beverley commanding the Pasteur, the 1701-D serving as Admiral Riker's flagship), elements of that original concept are reused here with Geordi's plan for stopping the Borg and hijacked Starfleet.
• Role Reprise:
  • Alice Krige is back in the role of the Borg Queen, albeit in a voice-only capacity.
  • Elizabeth Dennehy reprises the role of Shelby for the first (and last) time since "The Best of Both Worlds" thirty-three years ago.
  • Majel Barrett posthumously "reprises" the role of the Enterprise-D computer (via archival audio).
• Word of God:
  • While it's implied with the reveal of the rogue Changelings' patrons, Terry Matalas has explicitly confirmed the Face is actually the Borg Queen. Matalas has also confirmed Elnor wasn't on the Excelsior (where he'd been posted as a Cadet last Season) when it was destroyed.
  • Production Designer David Blass has confirmed that in-universe, the damage to the Generations-era Enterprise Bridge was so extensive that it was simply easier for Geordi to just restore it to the pre-refit look.