Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S2E11 "Contagion"

• California Doubling (sort of): If you're Canadian, it's a bit incongruous that one of the exotic landscapes visible through the Iconian portal is Toronto City Hall.
• Executive Meddling: Much like "The Measure of a Man" two episodes prior, Gene Roddenberry was opposed to the episode's concept to begin with, in this case because he said 24th century technology was so advanced that there was no possibility of it ever malfunctioning. He had to be talked around by co-writer Beth Woods, who explained the concept of malicious software and how even the best-designed computer system can be brought down by a scenario that its designers could never have envisaged.
• First Appearance: This is the first time that Picard orders "Tea, Earl Grey, hot!"
• Technology Marches On: It takes an extraordinary amount of work for Engineering to figure out the "shut down and restart" tactic to fix a computer error. In modern times, where personal computers are ubiquitous, this is the very first computer error fix that everyone tries. For many, it's the only one they know.
  • Though, while personal computers weren't quite so ubiquitous in the late 80s, the notion of reloading the system from the original disks/tapes/etc was decades old, so this caused a lot of eye rolling among the more technical audience. At least the script was careful enough to have Geordi point out that the archive was protected. This makes Geordi look a bit amateur though, considering he knew about the archive and that it was protected off the top of his head, but didn't seem to realize why.