Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation

Go To

Listed Trivia:

    open/close all folders 

The series:

    A-G 

  • Acting for Two:
  • Actor-Shared Background: Picard lives with the specter of his domineering father, even all these years later. Patrick Stewart has also spoken openly about suffering domestic abuse from his father, a ferocious man with undiagnosed PTSD.
  • Author's Saving Throw:
  • Banned in China:
    • "The High Ground" got banned from broadcast in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland due to a line about Ireland being reunited in 2024 following a successful "terrorist" campaign.
    • Contrary to popular belief, "Conspiracy" was never banned in the U.K. It aired on the BBC at 6pm as normal, but was very heavily edited: the scene actually ends with Riker and Picard firing their phasers at Remmick off-screen. The episode was not aired uncut in the U.K. until a few years later when Sky showed it after the 9pm watershed. However, the "exploding Remmick" scene was accidentally left intact in the 6pm showing of the flashback clip episode "Shades of Grey".
  • Bilingual Bonus : The "Harami Cluster." Harami means "bastard" in Hindi.
  • California Doubling: Lore's Rogue Borg compound in "Descent" is The House of the Book performance hall and library building at the American Jewish University, Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, California.
  • Cast the Runner-Up:
    • Patrick Stewart auditioned three times. Once for Data and twice for Picard. Once bald and once wearing a hairpiece.
    • Marina Sirtis and Denise Crosby were originally going to play Yar and Troi respectively, but switched roles at the last minute.
    • Rosalind Chao auditioned for Yar and was a favorite for the role before Crosby won the part. Chao was ultimately cast as recurring character Keiko Ishikawa-O'Brien.
    • Mitchell Ryan read for Picard. He would later play Riker's father Kyle in "The Icarus Factor").
  • The Cast Showoff:
    • Many episodes feature Riker playing the trombone, because Jonathan Frakes really does play trombone. And the episode "Data's Day" features Dr. Crusher teaching Data how to dance, because Gates McFadden is an accomplished dancer and choreographer.
    • Patrick Stewart reciting Shakespeare. Well, they had to get it in there somehow.
    • Both Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner get a chance to show off their pipes. Picard leads his men in a sea shanty on not one, but two occasions: as an alien facsimile in "Allegiance", and in Insurrection (where he and Data sing "A British Tar" with relish).
    • Anytime Data imitated Picard, no voice-over from Patrick Stewart was needed, as Brent Spiner is able to do a near-perfect Patrick Stewart impression. Spiner has demonstrated this skill several times since.
    • Everyone in the cast sings, pretty well too. Spiner cut an album of jazz standards (and some new material) in 1991 called Ol' Yellow Eyes is Back (referring to his character's yellow irises), and his backup singers were Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton and Jonathan Frakes.
  • Corpsing: If the gag reels are anything to go by, Frakes and Dorn were the worst offenders on set for this.
  • Costume Backlash:
    • Marina Sirtis despised the skant uniform she had to wear in "Encounter at Farpoint" Because the skirt portion was so short, the camera could see right up if she wasn't sitting with her legs squeezed together. She also hated the catsuits she had to wear for the majority of the series as it overly sexualized her and distracted from her performance. When Troi was forced to wear a proper uniform in "Chain of Command", Sirtis took the opportunity to lobby for the change to made permanent and the producers acquiesced.
    • The skant uniform was created to show the Federation as an equal and accepting society where males and females could wear the same clothing without any problems. However, it looked silly on everyone who wore them so the skant was dropped almost immediately.
    • The cast, particularly Patrick Stewart, hated the first iteration of their uniforms. They were made deliberately small to create a sleeker appearance, while the spandex material retained sweat and oils. There was also a rather silly-looking flap around the neck, apparently a futuristic version of a naval uniform's neckerchief. Once the constant back problems and odors became too much to bear, the actors lobbied argued for a redesign that was introduced in Season 3.
  • Creative Differences:
    • "Patrick Stewart WILL NEVER BE MENTIONED AGAIN in connection with Star Trek!" — actual memo from Gene Roddenberry. Fortunately, Patrick had a champion in Rick Berman, director Corey Allan, and others who helped rig the auditions in his favor. From the Blu-Ray TNG reunion:
      Michael Dorn: Two seasons later, he's like, "...what is he still doing here?!"
      Jonathan Frakes: "I told them NO!"
    • With the high profile of The Next Generation securing his position, Roddenberry was able to leverage more control over the tie-ins set inside his universe. His archivist, Richard Arnold, immediately began cleaning house. The on-going DC Comics Star Trek series was immediately cancelled and retconned, replaced with a follow-up that would be much more in tune with the TV series. (Plus one that didn’t deal in as many original or “non-canon” characters.) Arnold also went to work on the novels, bringing his strict editorial sensibilities to bear. Arnold has had a number of choice comments about how he views the writers of tie-in materials, going to far as to suggest that many of the tie-in writers “had never written Star Trek”.
    • Rick Berman was installed on the show by the studio as a way to keep a handle on the show: keep it under-budget, make sure that the scripts were done on time, filter out any adult material. Ultimately, Berman ended up in control because he played the politics game more effectively, season 2 showrunner Maurice Hurley lost his patience dealing with Gene Roddenberry and quit, and Gene was completely toothless at this time, having driven away all of his allies and handed creative control over to his lawyer, Leonard Maizlish. Maizlish is the big bogeyman of the Trek world. However, he is credited with keeping the name "Data", casting John de Lancie and hiring Hurley, which resulted in the debut of the Borg.
    • One of Ron Moore's complaints about TNG was that the characters were not allowed to breathe as individuals or embrace other cultures besides Starfleet. You can almost smell his disdain in episodes he penned himself.
    • According to his book, Resistance is Futile: Assimilating Star Trek, Ira Behr had similar frustrations. Even after Gene passed away, his in-house directorial style lingered and made it difficult to affect lasting change on any of these characters. Both Ira and Moore would jump ship to DS9. That show was scripted in large part as an adolescent reaction to TNG and Gene's somewhat cranky views.
  • Creator's Apathy: Patrick Stewart only joined the show for a paycheck after his agent insisted the show wouldn't last past a season; this is why he never bothered with Picard's French accent and simply used his regular voice. note  However, he grew to love the show and cast as the show progressed and the scripts improved.
  • Creator Backlash:
  • Creator's Pest:
    • Troi was almost written out after the first season because the writers didn't know what to do with her. When the show lost its other female castmembers, she was kept on.
    • Wil Wheaton grew to hate Wesley, joking that he finally understood why he got so much hate mail upon rewatching the series.
  • Defictionalization:
  • Descended Creator: Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett, who also played Lwaxana Troi, owned a great deal of the rights and was one of the chief executives owning Star Trek after her husband's death.
  • Development Gag: "The Schizoid Man" was originally to have guest-starred Patrick McGoohan; the title of the episode is the same as that of an episode from his famous series The Prisoner (1967). Even though McGoohan did not appear in the episode, the title remained unchanged as a tribute.
  • Digital Destruction: Actively defied. TNG's Blu-ray release was a love letter to the fans and Mike Okuda was brought in to make sure that the remastering was of the highest quality. Because TV production practices of the 80's and 90's involved shooting on film but then scanning the footage onto videotape for editing, there were no completed reels that could be used. Instead, the original raw footage was restored and scanned in its entirety and editors then did a frame-by-frame recreation of each episode. Brand-new special effects were also commissioned as needed to better fit in with the brighter and clearer images. The end result was universally praised for its quality, especially in comparison to the divisive nature of the Original Series' use of CGI to replace effects wholesale. Unfortunately, the TNG Blu-ray didn't sell well enough to warrant DS9 and Voyager receiving similar treatment.
  • Directed by Cast Member: Stewart, Frakes, Burton and McFadden all directed episodes. McFadden also choreographed the dance sequences in "Data's Day", Frakes directed two of the movies, and Dorn directed several episodes of DS9.
  • Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Stage actor Howie Seago, who is Deaf in real lifenote , played the deaf negotiator, Riva, in season 2's "Loud As A Whisper." The episode was actually Seago's idea; he'd approached the producers about disability representation, and cast and crew worked closely with him to create the episode. Notably, they rewrote the original ending, where Riva somehow learns to speak, after Seago objected.
    Howie Seago: I told them I couldn't do that because it would perpetuate the psychological harm that's done now in forcing deaf children to use their voice whether they can or not. I didn't want hearing parents to use the show to perpetuate the oppression of their children. And they [the producers] understood that. I was expecting them to be more intractable. That was a real, honest-to-God relief for me and a credit to the producers, not only in accepting the idea but in executing and designing it properly.
  • Enforced Method Acting: The relationships between the characters mirrored the relationships between the actors. Knowing this may cast Gene Roddenberry in a different light.
  • Executive Meddling:
    • Is what got Patrick Stewart an audition in the first place! The casting director saw him in a play and wanted him to try out, but Roddenberry was against it - feeling Stewart was too old and too bald to play Picard. Rick Berman admitted to also having doubts, but he was at least willing to give Stewart a shot. Berman, the casting director and production manager Robert H. Justman kept pressuring Roddenberry until he finally relented to seeing Stewart audition.
    • A minor example having to do with the score. "The Drumhead" is the last episode to be scored by Ron Jones before the brilliant Rick Berman (not the soundest policy maker in the Trek franchise) fired him to ‘try out new composers.’ There’s a reason why people vividly remember the score to "The Best of Both Worlds" but why nobody remembers anything from the last three seasons of TNG. It wasn't until the latter half of Star Trek: Enterprise — barring the odd one-off composer managing to produce a decent score, and then usually being banned from working on the show again — that the composers were finally allowed to produce anything other than Berman's favored "sonic wallpaper."
    • Believe it or not, Riker's beard was the subject of intense meddling, with Rick Berman and Gene Roddenberry literally drawing on Jonathan Frakes' face as they tried to figure out how they wanted it to be styled. This went on for weeks, with bits being shaved off and hair being glued back on, until everyone decided (six episodes into Season 2) that they found a style that worked. Then Paramount issued a memo saying that they wanted the beard to be "reduced by 2%".
    • This hit a lot of episodes in the first two seasons, as there was a rule that a writer was only allowed to produce two drafts of any given script before the showrunner (Roddenberry early on, then Maurice Hurley until the end of Season 2) took over all further rewrites. Michael Piller quickly ditched that rule after he came on-board as showrunner a few episodes into Season 3.
  • Executive Veto: Apparently Tracey Tormé has originally wanted to include an Andorian in "Conspiracy", but was informed by a producer (probably Berman) that, “We don’t do antennae on this show.” As such, the Bolians were rolled in as a compromise: blue, antennae-less aliens. Later, DS9 writer and producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe reported that producer Rick Berman did not care for the antennae, and noted that, “if we’d been allowed to, I guarantee we’d’ve put an Andorian on the show so fast your head would’ve spun.“ The Andorians were finally given their day on Enterprise, appearing in several episodes throughout the series.
  • Exiled from Continuity: Gene Roddenberry originally ruled that none of the TOS races and worlds (Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans...) would appear in TNG. The original characters as well as their possible offspring were also forbidden. This rule was obviously relaxed from the start, with the presence of Worf and Bones McCoy in the pilot, and totally rejected by the third season which featured stories centering on all three races.
  • Fake Brit: Daniel Davis, who played a hologram of Professor James Moriarty and Niles, the snide British butler on The Nanny, hails from the Royal House of Arkansas.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • It goes without saying that Patrick Stewart is, shocker, not a Frenchman despite all the pepperings of "Merde" into his lines.
    • Keiko is from Japan; Rosalind Chao is Chinese-American. Funnily enough, her 12-year-old self in "Rascals" was played by Caroline Junko King, a Japanese-American, thus getting the ethnicity right.
  • Falsely Advertised Accuracy: In "I, Borg", Guinan and Picard are fencing. They are wearing epee costumes, using epee rules, however, the two are clearly using foils. Especially annoying because the writers did their research the last time Picard fenced in-show and had the correct weapons.
  • Friendship on the Set: The entire cast became as close as their characters, as they would be special guests at various weddings and birthday parties, while often treating convention appearances as family reunions.
  • Funny Character, Boring Actor: Inverted with Brent Spiner's Data, a completely emotionless character played by an utter goofball of an actor.
  • Gay Panic:
    • David Gerrold's unmade episode "Blood and Fire", which would have been an AIDS allegory, with Regulan bloodworm infections being one stage in an invasive alien parasites' life cycle. There are many versions of the story of why this particular episode was never filmed. Gerrold had originally written two (very, very subtly) gay characters into the story, and was later pressured to remove these characters, and the script was rewritten several times (eventually it became a story about zombie infection) before it was dropped, even after the reference to the two gay characters had been removed several drafts ago.
    • Another episode with similar themes was planned. It involved Wesley Crusher making friends with an alien cadet named "Los", who was from a species who could change sex at will. This would have led them into having a sort of LGBT style relationship, with the episode exploring complex sexual themes. It was pitched by Rene Echevarria, but rejected likely for being too sexual and outside of mainstream audiences comfort zone (which resulted in a gay couple being axed by Echevarria's first episode "The Offspring").
    • At one stage, Geordi was going to be gay.

    H-S 

  • Harpo Does Something Funny: Joe Piscopo was reportedly solely responsible for his character's dialogue and jokes in "The Outrageous Okona".
  • Hide Your Pregnancy: Gates McFadden was pregnant throughout season 4, including during "Remember Me" which contained a couple of physically demanding stunts that she performed herself (she wasn't aware she was pregnant at that point). Later in the season she is shown almost exclusively wearing her "lab coat" and/or being filmed from the sternum up. Fortunately, Crusher often did wear her lab coat outside of the medical bay, so her sudden constant use of it wasn't quite as noticeable as this trope usually is.
  • Hostility on the Set: The series had a notorious Troubled Production in its first few seasons, it wasn't until the third season that the production team stabilized and the cast really started to get along.
    • Denise Crosby was told up front that her character was not going to get much screentime, and because her bridge station was directly behind the captain, she would spend all day on set with few lines and often just her legs in the frame. This encouraged her to request to be written out.
    • Gates McFadden was vocal about the sexism and racism that turned up in the first season (especially "Code of Honor"), which she attributed to her time in a theater conservatory that encouraged such feedback. This did not help the already difficult writers room (they notoriously went through dozens of writers, many of whom were hired and fired in the same week), and once Maurice Hurley took control for the second season he demanded that she be fired. Once Hurley left and Michael Piller took over in the third season he convinced the execs and McFadden herself to return.
    • Patrick Stewart was uncertain of how successful the show would be, and did not settle into his apartment for years. He was also finicky about being a noted Shakespearean actor in a sci-fi show, and would berate the rest of the cast for joking around in between takes. Famously, when the cast said they were just having fun, his response was a very terse "And where in our contract does it say we are here to have 'fun'?" (another incident was more understandable, during a documentary/interview before the show aired the production allowed one of the interviewers to wear his costume, which he did not appreciate). He eventually lightened up and joined in the joking and pranking, although the cast still gives him grief over the "fun" line.
    • Diana Muldaur left after a single season due to hostility to her presence behind the scenes. She later stated, "Everybody was out for themselves. I don't think they were happy to have me there."
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes:
    • A VERY rare positive example: The Next Level was a Blu-Ray disc containing four episodes from the series to showcase the restoration work to make it HD. One of the episodes, "Sins of the Father", had a 13 second portion (of Dr. Crusher telling Riker about Worf's nanny) that was upconverted from the standard definition tape because the restoration team couldn't find the original film for that section. After that disc was released, they found the film and had a true HD version of the portion in the episode in time for the Season 3 Blu-Ray release and is the version released on Netflix and CBS. In terms of the version with the 13 seconds upconverted from the SD tape, it will likely be gone if and when the Next Level disc goes out of print. As for this being a rare positive example... well, if you had a choice, would you take the version where 13 seconds are a (relatively well done) upconversion or the one that's completely HD? To make it better, the Season 1 set has a documentary about the restoration that talks about the story behind those 13 seconds, meaning the clip can still be seen for historical reference.
    • The Season 2 Blu-Ray release has an extended version of The Measure of the Man. This is thanks to writer Melinda Snodgrass keeping the only recording in existence of a rough cut of the episode.
  • Killed by Request: Denise Crosby wasn't interested in continuing with the series, and requested to be killed off during the first season. She later regretted this choice, and came back as a guest star several times.
  • Life Imitates Art:
    • Michael Dorn often resembles his character during cast reunions. Also, having to modulate his voice for Worf's baritone caused Dorn's real-life (nasally) voice to dip several octaves.
    • In the William Shatner documentary The Captains, Patrick Stewart's behind-the-scenes experiences at TNG share an odd similarity with his character. Stewart, who was stressed out over succeeding the stars of TOS and his long hours, got the cast together and told them to quit goofing off between takes ("We're not here to HAVE FUN!!"); his castmates never let him live that down. In the long run, TNG taught him to do good work and have fun doing it. This is mirrored by Picard's final line of the show when he joins the Bridge Officers' poker game.
  • Memorial Character: Geordi LaForge, who is named after George LaForge, a disabled Star Trek: The Original Series fan who died in 1975.
  • The Merch: Next Gen had two distinct toylines. The first, by Galoob, came out during the first few seasons. It featured 3.75" figures (in scale with Star Wars) and smallish, die-cast vehicles including an Enterprise whose saucer detached. A few years later, Playmates Toys came out with its own line, which... let's just say that Next Gen was a landmark moment in toys, even more so than Star Wars. To break it down:
    • The figures boasted superior sculpting and articulation (though sitting down looked slightly unnatural), there were aliens and villains right in the first run, and the line made incredibly creative use of electronics, with sound effects taken directly from the show! What's more, the show itself provided more than ample inspiration for variants, including the "Holodeck Adventures" line.
    • Playmates also produced ship toys... gigantic ship toys, often a foot and a half in length or more, with a lot of details accurate to the studio model of the Enterprise especially. These also made use of electronics to reproduce sounds from the show and were a staple of Christmas wishlists for years. A great many sci-fi franchises which followed felt compelled to try and match these toys for quality, often with shaky results.
    • Playmates held onto the license with its teeth, providing lines for Deep Space Nine, Voyager, the Original Series (which got its own badass boxed-set), the movies, Enterprise, and the first J.J. Abrams movie.
  • Official Fan-Submitted Content: The series accepted fan-written spec scripts throughout its run. At least four made it into production, and a few more episodes were based on premises supplied by fans.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • For his recurring stint on the show, Alexander was re-cast from Jon Steuer to the slightly older Brian Bonsall. Whether Justified or simply a case of the production team being painted into a corner by having Klingon children grow so fast in the first place is anyone's guess.
    • Spot. Yep. Data's first feline friend was a long-haired Somali, while later ones are played by a generic short-haired tabby. This has caused some Trek authorities to joke that Spot is a shapeshifter in disguise, or else lost his fur in a transporter accident.
    • Not only that, but Spot changed genders midway through Season 7. In one episode, Data is letting Worf take care of Spot, repeatedly referring to the cat as male: "And you must talk to him. Tell him he is a pretty cat. And a good cat." Only a few episodes later, Spot was suddenly female. And pregnant!
  • Playing Against Type:
    • It's old news now, but Dwight Schultz's transition from the half-deranged (and so half-sane!) "Howlin' Mad" Murdoch to the buttoned-down, mousey Reginald "Reg" Barclay was a novelty indeed. It paid off: Barclay is equally as — if not more — famous as his Star-Making Role on The A-Team.
    • Brent Spiner was primarily a comedic actor before being cast as Data. Of all the TNG regulars, Spiner probably goofed off the most between takes, which is why Data is always wearing a semi-menacing grin in behind-the-scenes footage. However, he got to cut loose in "The Outrageous Okona", which had Data practicing his Henny Youngman routine in a comedy club.
    • TNG had a habit of casting notable TV "bad guys" in benign or heroic roles. Jonathan Frakes is the biggest example, as his career up to that point had been almost entirely villain roles. Others include Harry Groener as Tam Elbrun, John Vickery as Andrus Hagan (he'll be back as a backstabbing Gul in DS9's "Final Chapter"), Ronny Cox as Captain Jellico, Christopher McDonald as Richard Castillo, Paul Sorvino as Worf's brother Nikolai, Robert Knepper as Wyatt Miller (he would later play the heavy in VOY's "Dragon's Teeth"), and Spencer Garrett as Simon Tarses (he would go on to play one of the killer holograms in VOY's "Flesh and Blood"). No such luck for Marc Alaimo, though; he played four bad guys!
  • Promoted Fanboy:
    • Wil Wheaton, LeVar Burton and Michael Dorn were Trekkies at the time of their hiring. Wesley's awestruck reaction to stepping onto the bridge in the pilot is entirely Wheaton himself. Dorn appeared on his audition in full Klingon garb.
      • Wil Wheaton recounts an incident with William Shatner in 1988, during which time Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was being shot at the set next door. After taking weeks working up the nerve to introduce himself to any of the Holy Trinity, he finally got the opportunity to meet his childhood hero Shatner, who simply said he would never allow a kid on his ship. After receiving supportive comments from several of TNG cast and crew members, Wheaton was contacted by Gene Roddenberry, who said that Shatner was an ass to work with. The following day, Wheaton received a note from Shatner stating he was a fine young man and Shatner would be pleased to have Wheaton on his ship. Wheaton reports since then he has worked with Shatner a dozen times; and Shatner has always been cordial with him.
    • Whoopi Goldberg was a huge fan of the original series and has specifically named Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration for acting. Just before the second season entered production, she called Roddenberry, saying "I am a Star Trek fan, I was a Star Trek fan long before I was ever Whoopi Goldberg and I'm wondering if there's some part I can play in your show?" Roddenberry was so impressed that he re-wrote the bartender character he had intended to introduce for Goldberg.
    • Jean Simmons had been begging the producers for years for a role on the show as she'd been a fan of the original series. They obliged with the part of Satie in "The Drumhead."
    • Makeup and VFX artist Doug Drexler (who at the time was a former apprentice for make-up legend Dick Smith) was a noted fan before being hired, and has remained in touch with the fandom to this very day. Even helping out on The Orville.
  • Prop Recycling: As usual for the franchise, but at least twice◊, a background matte was reused from, of all movies, Spaceballs!
  • Reality Subtext: LeVar Burton would often get headaches from the devices on his temples that were used to hold the VISOR in place. Likewise, Geordi would occasionally mention headaches as a side effect of wearing the VISOR.
  • Recast as a Regular: Michelle Forbes played a small role in season four's "Half a Life" before coming back in season five as semi regular Ensign Ro Laren.
  • Recycled Script:
    • Three characters were revamped from the cancelled series Star Trek: Phase II, which was turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
      • Riker was based on Willard Decker, the brash young executive officer from the abortive series.
      • Troi was based on Ilia, the Deltan navigator (though Ilia's deal in the film was the inverse of Troi's—that she exuded emotions that affected others, especially sexual ones).
      • Data was derived from the Phase II character Xon, the intended replacement for Spock (as Leonard Nimoy had declined to participate in Phase II). Xon was a full-blooded Vulcan, the idea being that he would provide a contrast to the vanished Spock—whereas Spock was always denying his human side and embracing his Vulcan, Xon would already be secure in his Vulcan-ness and thus be more intrigued and curious about understanding human emotions. This eventually mutated into the idea of an emotionless android seeking to achieve those human emotions. (Unlike Will Decker and Ilia, Xon was removed from the film when Nimoy's conflict with the producers was resolved and he agreed to return, but his actor was allotted a bit role in compensation.)
    • Probably an aversion with Worf; the DC Star Trek comics had long featured a Klingon in Starfleet named Konom, but his backstory and character are very different from Worf's and Roddenberry probably had a similar idea independently.
  • Refitted for Sequel: The Enterprise-D boasting saucer separation as a feature in the pilot episode came from background materials and even an on-camera mention in the Original Series as a feature of most Starfleet ships, but budget and pacing prevented them from showing it on-screen. It was used only four times in the series and for the last time in Generations. Star Trek Beyond showed it as a feature of the original (if Alternate Timeline) Enterprise as well.
  • Romance on the Set:
    • Patrick Stewart, on the lookout for the next Ex-Ms. Patrick Stewart, dated Jennifer Hetrick (Vash) during Seasons 3 & 4. They were briefly engaged during "Qpid", but nothing came of it. In 2000, six years after TNG ended, Stewart and producer Wendy Neuss did marry. They divorced three years later.
    • Early in the show's run and prior to her marriage, Marina Sirtis liked to have flings with male guest stars leading to the cast affectionately and endlessly teasing her about her proclivities even decades later.
  • Science Imitates Art:
    • Boeckaspis geordii, a trilobite, was named so due to its eye ridge's resemblance to Jordi's visor.
    • Bolianus is a genus of beetles with a long groove along their heads that resembles the characteristic ridge running down the Bolians' faces.
  • Separated-at-Birth Casting: Most of the actors playing blood relatives to cast members look impressively like them. For longevity, Majel Barret very much seemed like Marina Sirtis' mother, in "Man of the People" where Sirtis had aging make-up on the similarity became uncanny. There was also Jeremy Kemp as Picard's brother Robert. Then there was the child actors playing Picard, Keiko, Ro and Guinan in "Rascals," David Tristen Burken previously played Picard's nephew in "Family" while Isis Jones also played a younger version of Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act.
  • Shrug of God: Ron Moore mentioned in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion that he'd considered writing that the ancient humanoids from "The Chase" that seeded humanoids throughout the galaxy were the same species as the Preservers from Star Trek: The Original Series, but decided against it. He said that they could be the Preservers and have it be internally consistent. Star Trek Online Arc Welded the two.
  • Star-Making Role: For Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes, though the former was already known as a respected Shakespearean actor, but TNG introduced Stewart to a much wider audience.

    T-Z 

  • Technology Marches On: TNG foresaw the prevalence of tablet devices like the iPad, evolved from the electronic clipboards seen on TOS, though this show, as well as DS9 and VOY, thought we'd use dozens of tablets at a time rather than just one.
  • Throw It In!:
    • "Skin of Evil" was Denise Crosby's last aired episodenote , with her character being killed off. In the previous episode, "Symbiosis" (which was actually filmed later), she's in the background at the end, as Picard and Crusher enter the turbolift. Just as the doors close she waves goodbye to the camera.
    • In "Qpid", Vash has been transformed into Lady Marian by Q. As they were filming the scene where she paces back and forth in her cell, Jennifer Hetrick tripped over her dress. The director left it in reasoning that a 24th century woman would not be used to walking in 12th-century finery.
  • Troubled Production:
    • As chronicled in the documentary Chaos on the Bridge, Gene Roddenberry's declining health, substance abuse, and paranoia about studio meddling led to his lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, taking control of the writing staff for most of the first season. Maizlish was hated by the show's staff and Paramount executives alike, who describe him as an boorish Amoral Attorney who regularly antagonized the show's staff. Near the end of the first season there were rumors that he was breaking into the writer's room to rewrite scripts in flagrant violation of WGA rules. By the end of his reign all of the Original Series veterans were gone, who didn't hesitate to name Maizlish and by extension Roddenberry as the reason they left.
    • The prototype uniforms smelled awful because spandex retains bodily oils more than the cloth uniforms that came later. They also gave the actors back problems because they were made intentionally too small to create a sleeker appearance and pulled everyone's shoulders and spines down as a result. Patrick Stewart's chiropractor said that the costumes would eventually cripple him permanently if they weren't redesigned.
    • Early pains with the cast, namely Patrick Stewart and Denise Crosby. Stewart wasn't convinced the show would last long and had trouble settling in as his Serious Business approach to acting clashed against other cast members, at one point storming off the set to his hotel room after seeing them goofing off between takes. Crosby quickly got frustrated as her character, chief of security Natasha Yar, was given little to do as everyone got cold feet about regularly putting a woman in danger. The producers didn't put up a fight when she decided to leavenote  and her character was Killed Off for Real late in the first season.
    • Things got a bit better for the second season where Maurice Hurley took over the writing staff, but since a lot of TV writers chose to sit out the whole 1988-89 season after the 1988 WGA strike, it left no more than about four or five writers working on the show at any one point. It didn't help that, according to Tracy Torme at least, Hurley didn't get along with anybody as he lacked experience in the genre (having worked in crime shows like The Equalizer and Miami Vice) and was as dogmatic as Maizlish in enforcing Roddenberry's will, though he too clashed with Roddenberry after Roddenberry turned in a script that broke his own guidelines. Producer Rick Berman also cited Hurley for temporarily driving Gates McFadden out of the show during the second season as he "had a bone to pick with her." Hurley would leave between the second and third seasons on bad terms, allowing Rick Berman and Michael Piller to gently steal control of the production.
    • The seventh and final season of the show would see production troubles return, albeit not to anywhere near the extent as in the first two seasons. The main issue was that the writers were simply running out of ideas, forcing them to rely increasingly on implausible and technobabble-laden plots. This was compounded by new showrunner Jeri Taylor putting a stop to the show's open-submission policy, as she felt the writers were wasting time trying to knock amateur scripts into acceptable shape and that it'd be better to have all the scripts written by experienced professionals from the very start, but this ended up cutting off the flow of new ideas at the worst possible time. Taylor also demanded an increased focus on stories prominently featuring Troi and Dr. Crusher, who she felt had been under-utilized in previous seasons, but the writers struggled to actually do this seeing how the most obvious plot routes (the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Troi and Riker, and Crusher and Picard) had been banned by executive producer Rick Berman, eventually causing the writers to resort to the Crack Pairing of Troi and Worf, something that came virtually out of nowhere and was never referenced again after the show ended. The eventual announcement that it would be the show's final season actually helped things out, as they were able to bring back several recurring characters and give closure to their story arcs, ending with a hugely acclaimed series finale, "All Good Things...".
  • Uncredited Role: Almost none of the background extras ever received credit for their roles (usually due to being silent bit parts), most egregious including reoccurring Season 1-3 extras James G. Becker as Ensign Youngblood and Juliet Cesario as an unnamed officer (known as Lt. Baji as later confirmed by Cesario herself), and a young Teri Hatcher as B.G. Robinson in "The Outrageous Okona", who actually requested this due to her scenes being cut. Because of this, more than a few actors remain unknown.
  • Wag the Director:
    • Patrick Stewart wasn't too thrilled with his stodgy, preachy, apparently sexless Captain in Seasons 1-2, and intimated that he might leave the show if something wasn't done about it. (Actually, the phrase he used according to Ron Moore was "there isn't nearly enough shooting and screwing on this show.") The vacation episode, "Captain's Holiday," was tailor-made to please Patrick.
    • Deanna Troi switches to wearing a proper uniform in Season 6 because Marina Sirtis used a plot point in "Chain of Command" — where Jellico forced Troi to change out of her usual catsuit — to lobby for the change to be made permanent.
  • Word of Saint Paul:
    • The Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual, in its entry on the Captain's Yacht, includes an out-of-universe sidebar that says "Patrick Stewart informs us the yacht is named Calypso after Jacques Cousteau's vessel", in a way that suggests that, as far as the writers of the Manual are concerned, he should know. This was never confirmed on screen, since the Enterprise-D yacht was never used (or even confirmed to exist), but was nodded to in Star Trek: Insurrection, where the yacht on the Enterprise-E is called the Cousteau.
    • Also from the technical manual, Rick Sternback had a pet idea for "Cetacean Ops" — literally, navigation research that's being handled by a dozen dolphins being overseen by a couple of whales — in huge underwater tanks throughout the ship. It got a mention in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Perfect Mate", but goes otherwise unregarded by other writers. The concept would only finally be shown on screen in Lower Decks.
    • Whoopi Goldberg said in the 50 Years Of Star Trek documentary that she considers her character Guinan to be Picard's distant ancestor.
  • Working Title: Star Trek A New Beginning, Star Trek A New Generation, Star Trek The New Generation and Star Trek Enterprise 7 (the latter title is explained by the fact the ship was to be known as the Enterprise 7 rather than the Enterprise D).
  • You Look Familiar:
    • Majel Barrett, who played Nurse Chapel in the Original Series, had a recurring role as Lwaxana Troi.
    • Most jarring of all is James Cromwell as the leader of a potential new Federation alliance world in "The Hunted", when he later played Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact. He also played Zaglom Shrek in "Birthright", and Hanok in "Starship Down" (DS9), though you can't see his face in those.
    • Marc Alaimo appeared as a minor Rubber-Forehead Alien in Season 1's "Lonely Among Us"; Romulan Commander Tebok later that season in "The Neutral Zone"; a 19th century gambler in Season 5's "Time's Arrow"; and most notably, he played the first-ever Cardassian in Star Trek, Gul Macet in "The Wounded". Marc Alaimo would become, in Deep Space Nine, Gul Dukat, the main adversary of Captain Sisko. The novelverse lampshades this and establishes the two are cousins.
    • Max Grodenchik as the very typical conniving, treacherous Ferengi Sovak in "Captain's Holiday"; better known for his later role as the very atypical (and somewhat dim) Rom from DS9.
    • Armin Shimerman played both Letek, one of the first Ferengi ever shown onscreen in "The Last Outpost", another Ferengi, Bractor in "Peak Performance", and the better known Quark — from Deep Space Nine. He also briefly appeared in "Haven" as the Betazoid Gift Box, though it's a bit hard to recognize that one.
    • Look out for the future Tuvok (Tim Russ) playing a human terrorist in "Starship Mine" (and, ironically, being the recipient of a Vulcan nerve pinch.) He also plays an unnamed human bridge crew member in the 23rd century in Generations.
    • Robert Duncan McNeill, Voyager's Tom Paris, as Nicholas Locarno in "The First Duty". (The character of Locarno was the inspiration for Paris.)
      • The Voyager creators say they didn't plan to hire the same actor; once they realized they had, they considered making McNeill Locarno on Voyager, but reformulated him into Paris, feeling that Locarno "couldn't be redeemed enough" (read: they didn't want to pay royalties) for what they planned with Paris.
    • Hey, that Ferengi doctor in "Ménage à Troi" sure sounds a lot like Neelix... At one point on Voyager ("False Profits"), Neelix is forced to get makeup and surgery so that he looks like the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi, and Ethan Phillips pulls it off again with great aplomb. Phillips would go on to be one of the 'first' Ferengi ever (in terms of chronological appearance in the franchise), in the ENT episode "Acquisition".
      • Also, keep an eye out for Phillips in Star Trek: First Contact. He is the holographic maître d' who tries to boot the Borg out of his club, saying they aren't dressed properly.
    • Patricia Tallman, known for playing Lyta the telepath on Babylon 5, has a Memory Alpha entry as long as Patrick Stewart himself. Before she got her break, she was a stunt double◊ for the female leads on TNG (barring Whoopi), along with a few on DS9. She also has uncredited roles as a petty officer ("Power Play"), a Klingon (Generations), and a space siren in Star Trek: Voyager ("Fortunate Son").
      • She only had two speaking roles in Star Trek: one of the hijackers in "Starship Mine", and the fake Romulan in "Timescape".
    • W. Morgan Sheppard is a name which may be familiar to you: Star Trek, Babylon 5, and even Doctor Who. He's first seen here in "The Schizoid Man" as Data's 'uncle'. You can also watch him as a Klingon in Star Trek VI and the Ahab-like alien in VOY's "Bliss".
      • Most recently, he was told to get stuffed (figuratively speaking) by Zachary Quinto in the Abrams Star Trek movie.
    • Roy Brocksmth had one-shot appearances here and in DS9: As a Zakdorn in "Peak Performance" and a Bajoran smuggler in "Indiscretion". His most famous role, however, is Dr. Edgemar in Total Recall (1990).
    • James Sloyan is an authoritative actor who has played four aliens, usually with some sort of dark secret attached. He also died often: Admiral Jerok in "The Defector" (suicide), Future!Alexander in "Firstborn" (erased from history), and Jetrel in the eponymous VOY episode (terminal disease). He also had a recurring role on DS9 as Odo's "father", Dr. Mora.
    • Eric Pierpoint had guest roles in all four spinoffs: a shape-shifter who attempted to try it on with Picard ("Liaisons"), a Starfleet Captain in "For the Uniform" (DS9), the Klingons' answer to Judas Iscariot in "Barge of the Dead" (VOY), a big game hunter in "Rogue Planet" (ENT), and a Section 31 honcho during the Terra Prime arc (ENT). He is probably best known for his role as Det. Francisco in the cult show Alien Nation.
    • John Vickery had a good hit rate: Going from a (mute) Betazed in "Night Terrors", to a Cardassian Gul in four episodes of DS9, to Klingon prosecutor in an ENT episode, "Judgement". Babylon 5 aficionados know him as Neroon.
    • Suzie Plakson as Selar, K'ehlyr, and the female Q on Voyager, to name one.
    • Carolyn Seymour plays a Romulan in "Contagion", an alien scientist who chooses to leave her people in "First Contact" and finally reprises her Romulan role as Captain Toreth in "Face of the Enemy" (a Good Troi Episode).
    • "Some day I'm going to be a Starship Captain!" says Rene Picard, which is almost a portent of the future since David Tristan Birkin would go on to play Baby!Picard in "Rascals".
    • Christopher Collins, AKA Chris Latta played a Klingon Captain in "A Matter Of Honor" and later plays a Pakled in "Samaritan Snare". Might be more of a case of You Sound Familiar.
    • Charles Cooper played a drunken and disgraced Klingon general in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Here, he got to play the much more dignified Chancellor K'mpec in "Sins of the Father" and "Reunion".

The pinball adaptation:

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top