Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S4E2 "Family"

• California Doubling: The exterior shots of the Picard family's home in La Barre was actually filmed at two locations. The house itself was a private residence in Encino, California, and a dryland near Lancaster stood in for the vineyards, which were then digitally inserted into a matte painting that shows the surrounding village and hills. The interior shots were taken on a soundstage.
• Creator Backlash: Wil Wheaton has been very critical of his performance in this episode, especially during the scenes of Wesley seeing his father's hologram. He felt that he didn't give the scene the full emotional energy it deserved, attributing it to youth-related arrogance or just not caring enough.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Director Les Landau remarked:
  I think it was certainly one of my best episodes and one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever. "Family" was the perfect follow-up to the Borg shows and the conclusion of that storyline. Picard was in a dilemma, what to do and what better place to do it than in the environs of one's 'home.' After all, his home is the universe, but his specific home is La Barre, France. This was a story that was opened up. It was about Earth and a place that we could identify with Human beings and no aliens. That opening moment where Picard walks into the vineyard and see his brother on his hands and knees picking grapes [and] his brother doesn't even acknowledge him, gives me chills just thinking about it.
• Deleted Scene: In a deleted portion of Wesley's encounter with the hologram of his father, Jack mentions his assignment to the USS Stargazer and Wesley's never heard middle name, Robert. Jack also referred to several ancestors of his, including a horse thief on Nimbus III (a reference to the planet seen in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier), one who "fought for the Confederacy at Bull Run, and one who died at Station Salem-One."
• Development Gag: Picard misidentifies a bottle of wine as 2346 and has to be corrected that the vintage is '47. His brother later gives him a another bottle of the '47 as a parting gift. The number 47 is a reference Joe Menosky put in as a Shout-Out to Pomona College.
• Fake Nationality: British actors Jeremy Kemp, Samantha Eggar and David Tristan Birkin play Robert, Marie and René Picard, respectively.
• Fake Russian: Austrian-born actor Theodore Bikel and British actress Georgia Brown play the Belarussian Sergey and Helena Rozhenko.
• Out of Order: This episode was actually produced and filmed after "Suddenly Human" and "Brothers". Originally, the producers simply intended to follow "The Best of Both Worlds" with the usual episode-of-the-week, like nothing has happened, because Status Quo Is God, however Ron Moore argued that Picard has gone through severe trauma during his capture by the Borg and the show needs to spend at least one episode addressing it before going back to the normal routine. Michael Piller agreed, and assigned Moore to write this episode as the immediate follow-up to "The Best of Both Worlds".
• Working Title: "Road Not Taken" and "Crossroads."

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