Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S3E16 "The Offspring"

• Creator Backlash: Melinda Snodgrass commented:
  I felt it was fairly obvious and tired and stupid and I didn't want to do it […] It had a lot to do with "The Measure Of A Man", which I don't think we needed to do again so soon. It was a good show for Jonathan to start with. It was a nice bottle show and he didn't have to cope with alien cultures.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • According to René Echevarria, "'The Offspring' will always have a special place in my heart since it was my first baby."
  • Jonathan Frakes thought it was the best sci-fi episode ever written.
  • This is one of Michael Dorn's two favorite episodes, the other being "The Drumhead".
  • Michael Piller named this episode (along with "The Inner Light" and "The Measure Of A Man") as one of his favorite TNG episodes, "because they had remarkable emotional impacts. And they genuinely explored the human condition, which this franchise does better than any other when it does it well... The perfect show to follow 'Yesterday's Enterprise' and a totally different kind of episode. The script and performances were great, and it was marvelously directed by Jonathan. My taste, it was as good a show as we had all year. When you have good character stuff, you've got my support."
• Directed by Cast Member: For the first time in Star Trek, not counting the films. Jonathan Frakes, after a long apprenticeship behind the cameras, directs this episode, which is perhaps why Riker is barely in it, and also perhaps the reason his main contribution to the plot is the guest star kissing him.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In one of the scenes with Guinan tutoring Lal about Human sexuality, a script line was changed in order to turn a strictly heterosexual explanation into a gender-neutral version. Recalling the original version of Guinan's dialogue, TNG research assistant Richard Arnold stated, "According to the script, Guinan was supposed to start telling Lal, 'When a man and a woman are in love...' and in the background, there would be men and women sitting at tables, holding hands." Whoopi Goldberg insisted on saying, "When two people are in love," instead.
  • One version of the script would have revealed that Starfleet's reasoning for taking interest in Lal was because of the M-5 Incident, claiming that the deaths caused by the machine was a black eye for Starfleet, mostly because they left Daystrom in isolation creating it.
  • There were plans for a follow-up episode in Season Five which would have Lore steal Lal's body and attempt to use the emotion chip in an attempt to revive her.
• Wag the Director: Whoopi Goldberg altered one of Guinan's script lines from a specifically heterosexual explanation. Richard Arnold reflected, "Whoopi refused to say that. She said, 'This show is beyond that. It should be 'When two people are in love.'" It was also decided on set that the background of the scene show a same-sex couple holding hands, but "someone ran to a phone and made a call to the production office and that was nixed," continued Arnold. "[Producer] David Livingston came down and made sure that didn't happen."
• Working Title: Bloodlines.
• You Look Familiar: In her "mannequin" state, Lal is played by Leonard Crofoot, who previously played Trent, the personal secretary of Beata in "Angel One." He would also go on to have an uncredited cameo in Star Trek: Voyager.

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