Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S3E5 "The Bonding"

• California Doubling: The planet on the viewer looks suspiciously like Mars' Mariner Valley.
• Deleted Scene: Several scenes were filmed but later cut from the episode during editing. These scenes came to light in May 2013 when Star Trek collector Cyril "Patchou" Paciullo (owning several more The Next Generation episodes work prints) uploaded the contents of an early work print VHS tape of the episode to the internet.
  • Portions of the sickbay sequence involving Worf and Crusher.
  • A scene of Picard and Troi visiting Jeremy Aster in his shipboard classroom. Features guest actor Raymond D. Turner as Aster's teacher.
  • A long scene between Troi and Aster, regarding the boy's feelings towards his mother's death. Features Troi's description of her own experience losing her father as a child.
  • Troi cornering Worf in a corridor to discuss his feelings.
  • A portion of Worf's introduction to Jeremy Aster.
  • A portion of the initial discussion between Jeremy and the Marla Aster impersonation.
• Writer Revolt: The story of this episode was conveyed in Michael Piller's unpublished book Fade In. With much of the writing staff of the first two seasons having left and short on scripts, Piller found a submission from an amateur writer named Ron Moore, about a boy whose mother is killed and so bonds with a holographic recreation of his mother due to being overcome with grief. Gene, however, rejected the pitch because "In the 24th Century, people do not grieve. Death is accepted as a part of life." Piller later repitched the story as showing the boy not grieving because that's what he was taught to do, but realizing that it was unhealthy and so must learn to grieve.

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