Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S1E1 "Encounter at Farpoint"

• Deleted Scene: A deleted scene includes footage of tentacles which reach out of a wall of the alien lifeform and grabbed for Troi and Riker. The producers decided these special effects looked horrible and removed the scene from the episode.
• Early Draft Tie-In: The novelization mentions Data being built by aliens, something the writers originally intended before deciding he was built by a human scientist.
• Edited for Syndication: The movie-length episode was edited to two-parts for syndication, removing a few non-essential scenes (such as Worf's actual trip down to Engineering during the communications "black-out" ordered by Picard), but also a few character scenes, notably Picard asking Beverly in sickbay about whether she wants a transfer off the ship.
  • Extends into Title Sequence Replacement. In the original two-hour cut, a version of the titles is used which lists the actors names without also listing who they play, as it does in every other episode of the show. But when the two-hour was split into seperate one-hour episodes for syndication, the regular title sequence is used instead for both parts.
• Enforced Method Acting: Wesley's awestruck look upon seeing the bridge for the first time is very much Wil Wheaton's excitement about being on the show.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Why is the pilot 90 minutes long? Because Paramount said so. They apparently didn't think a standard 45-minute episode would be a big enough event to mark the return of Star Trek to the small screen, and so mandated at a relatively late stage that it be the length of two episodes, forcing the Q subplot and various other bits of padding to be grafted on to bring it up to length.
    • In more detail: the entire Q story was bolted onto the Farpoint story to make this double length. This is why the connection between the Farpoint and Q stories is tenuous at best. Ironically, the Farpoint mission is quite forgettable while the Q character and story became key to TNG.
  • The infamous moment where Troi declares out loud that Lt. Torres is frozen was a last-minute addition — the shooting script has her make the far less on-the-nose comment "can you feel the cold coming off him?" — after executives became concerned that viewers might think Torres had been Taken for Granite rather than being frozen. Yet not only do other bits of dialog make it clear that Torres (and later Yar) was frozen, the effects used to represent the freezing are actually very convincing, making it unclear what the executives were worried about.
• Prop Recycling: The Excelsior-class USS Hood is the reused Excelsior model from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
• Recycled Set:
  • The battle bridge is the Enterprise bridge set from the first four movies, somewhat redressed.
  • Zorn's office is the redressed Klingon Bird-of-Prey sickbay set from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
• Recycled Script: Or at least, elements of it. This isn't the first time in the franchise's history that we saw our heroes tormented by a seemingly-omnipotent being claiming the authority to put them on trial. Although it is saying something that despite his love of cosplay and constant verbal degradation of the mortals, Q is a lot more mature than Trelane was.
• What Could Have Been: Being the pilot, there are many examples of this.
  • The USS Hood is a reuse of the USS Excelsior model from the movies; they originally planned to build a 'guest ship' model that would look more appropriate for the new era, but a bit smaller and older than the Enterprise, but ran out of money. This started a trend of reusing movie ships in many TNG episodes, even though they're supposedly more than 80 years old now. The planned 'guest ship' design was finally reused as the Ambassador-class Enterprise-C for "Yesterday's Enterprise".
  • The original idea for Q was that they all had the same face, and every time Q changes outfits we're actually seeing a different being. Luckily this was never actually stated, allowing a smooth transition to the singular being when they decided on that instead. But if you know what you're looking for, you can tell John de Lancie was basing his performance on the first idea.
  • McCoy's cameo was originally written for Spock. When they couldn't get Leonard Nimoy, it was rewritten. The cameo was intended to smooth things over for fans who felt alienated by the new series.
  • DeForrest Kelly did makeup and costume tests while wearing a modified version of the "monster maroon" uniform from the films.
  • D. C. Fontana's first story "Meeting at Farpoint" had several different storylines and names. The Enterprise-D has just completed a successful mission. The captain is Julien Picard instead of Jean-Luc Picard, the first officer is Kyle Summers, and the security chief is Macha Hernandez instead of Tasha Yar. Summers is promoted to captain and is up to take over his new command of the science vessel Starseeker at Farpoint Station. While in orbit of Farpoint Station, crew transfers include Lieutenant Commander William Ryker, Lieutenant Commander Data, Dr. Beverly Crusher, and her fifteen-year-old daughter Leslie. Ryker and Data share a deep friendship. Following the transfer an alien vessel appears near the planet and sends a message that all personnel have to beam to the planet or all will die. The captain of the Starseeker fires photon torpedoes at the vessel, resulting in the destruction of the Starseeker. At Picard's orders, the crew of the Enterprise-D beams to the surface and makes contact with their enemy, the Annoi, an ape-like species with a high technology. The Annoi enslave the crew and the inhabitants of Farpoint to mine the mineral Balmin. An away team including Data, Ryker, Troi and Hernandez get aboard the Annoi ship, with the help of Leslie Crusher's knowledge about the ship layout. Troi then learns that there is no engineering room aboard the ship—the ship is a lifeform. This lifeform was enslaved by the Annoi and needs Balmin to survive.
  • In the first draft script, the Annoi became the Annae (and later the Bandi), the people who were living on Farpoint. The story started with the starship Belvedere and Groppler Zorn was named Elzever. Leslie Crusher was changed into Wes Crusher and Ryker first met Geordi La Forge and Ensign Sawyer Markham at Farpoint. The Enterprise-D started a twenty year mission to explore the galaxy and Data was described looking eastern. Dr. Crusher's assistant aboard the Enterprise-D was Dr. Asenzi and the Enterprise-D had to protect Farpoint Station from an alien vessel.
  • The next-to-final version of the script established that Picard had set foot aboard the original Enterprise (or possibly the Enterprise-A) as a young man. This was deleted, presumably because it would have made Picard look unrealistically young when compared to McCoy's cameo. The courtroom scene also had Troi being frozen alongside Yar in response to calling Q a "barbarian." Other, minor differences include Deneb IV instead being called Cygnus IV, and La Forge being established as one of Riker's former colleagues on the USS Hood.
  • For years, the Enterprise would be derided for looking more like a hotel than the Federation flagship. The design was originally even worse, including no chairs (signifying a more relaxed hierarchy) and even hanging plants on the bridge.^note In A.H. Wokanovic's "Three Faces, Same Mirror", written for Trek magazine, the Enterprise-D was referred to as "a magnificently refined work of space-going sculpture" and "our padded cocktail lounge in the sky".
  • David Garrold, who wrote the novelization and had been involved in putting together the writer's bible, had intended Picard to have had a relationship with a woman named Celeste, who had died. This didn't appear in the episode proper, but the novelization does mention this "Celeste" a handful of times.
  • According to the series bible, Riker doesn't quite accept Data as a sentient being, and, on paper, the dialogue of their interaction on the holodeck can give support to this idea (Riker asking if Data's commission is honorary, in particular). But that's not how Jonathan Frakes plays the scene, changing their dynamic entirely, to one of wonder and admiration for Data as Data and making the line "nice to meet you, Pinocchio" not a mocking greeting but more of a statement of acceptance.

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