Star Trek: The Next Generation/Trivia


 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Hey It's That Guy: Often overlapping with Retroactive Recognition
 * Terry O Quinn, aka John Locke, was Riker's first commanding officer, now an Admiral, in "The Pegasus".
 * Bob Gunton, aka Samuel Norton, played Chief O'Brien's previous captain in "The Wounded".
 * Mark 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," Cardassian Gul Macet in Season 4's "The Wounded", and a 19th century gambler in Season 5's "Time's Arrow" before taking on the role of Deep Space Nine's Gul Dukat.
 * The late Andreas Katsulas, who played Romulan Commander Tomalak, was Ambassador G'Kar on Babylon Five, and Fred Sykes, the one-armed man in The Fugitive.
 * General Gogol is one of the scientists in "Home Soil".
 * Data is Devlin Bowman.
 * Hey It's That Voice: The Japanese-dubbed version has some interesting casting choices, mostly from the sci-fi and Mecha genres:
 * Jean Luc-Picard is Keel Lorentz and the Alien Commander, who, by the way, parodies his role as Picard.
 * William Riker is Anavel Gato and Solid Snake.
 * Data is Jiraiya, Yazan Gable and Chibodee Crocket.
 * Deana Troi is Julia.
 * Wesley Crusher is Athrun Zala and Kaworu Nagisa.
 * Keiko O'Brien is Sailor Venus
 * This show and Batman the Animated Series share cast members, two of whom are Diana Muldaur (Dr. Pulaski) as Dr. Leslie Thompkins and John de Lancie (Q) as one of the Penguin's henchmen in "Blind as a Bat."
 * Life Imitates Art: 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 working 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. According to Stewart, TNG taught him to do good work and have fun doing it. This is mirrored by Picard's final line of the show, in which he joins his crew for a game of poker.
 * Trope Namer: This series named the following tropes:
 * Dropped a Bridge On Him:.
 * Growing the Beard
 * Holodeck Malfunction
 * Lower Deck Episode
 * Patrick Stewart Speech
 * Resistance Is Futile
 * Whoopi Epiphany Speech
 * The Worf Effect
 * The Worf Barrage
 * Worf Had the Flu
 * What Could Have Been: Robin Williams was offered the part of the time-traveling "Dr." Berlinghoff Rasmussen in "A Matter of Time", but he was busy working on Hook at the time, so the role was given to Matt Frewer.
 * Stewart auditioned for TNG three times. Once for Data and twice for Picard. Once bald and once wearing a hairpiece.
 * Edward James Olmos was offered the part of Jean-Luc Picard, but declined due to being constrained by contractual obligation.
 * Marina Sirtis and Denise Crosby were originally going to play Yar and Troi respectively, but switched roles at the last minute.
 * The Borg were planned to be insectoid aliens but the special effects budget wouldn't run to it. The concept was reused for the Jarada, who we never see on-screen.
 * The writers considered crashing the ship's saucer section on a planet as the cliffhanger ending of Season 6, but the budget didn't allow for it. This was eventually used in Star Trek Generations instead. Separating the saucer itself was planned to be a much more common tactic, but again effects expenses meant it was only used four times. In addition, halfway through season one it had become painfully obvious that saucer separation was time-consuming and destroyed the pacing, a major issue when it was supposed to happen halfway through dramatic battle sequences.
 * Bill Campbell, who played the titular "Outrageous" Okona, tried out for the part of Riker.
 * Wesley Snipes was considered to star as Geordi LaForge
 * Tim "Tuvok" Russ also auditioned for the role. He came that close to getting it, too.
 * Among the actors that auditioned for Riker were Jeffrey Combs and Maxwell Forrest - both of whom became pretty well-known to viewers regardless.
 * How much better would "The Outcast" have been if the actors playing the sexless J'naii were male instead of female? Jonathan Frakes criticized the staff for not doing that and making the message of the episode that much stronger.
 * For "All Good Things...", the writers considered revisiting "The Best of Both Worlds" in addition to the other three time periods.
 * Dr. Selar (from "The Schzoid Man" and repeatedly referenced) was originally intended to be a recurring character and develop a romance with Worf, but this was scuttled when K'Ehleyr was introduced later the same season. Incidentally, both characters were played by Suzie Plakson.
 * The Enterprise was originally going to be the seventh rather than fifth ship to bear the name, and was referred to in the script as the Enterprise Seven rather than the Enterprise-D we know and love.