Miscellaneous Information on Star Trek: The Next Generation

Just in case you need to know more about the show, here are some useful information for you. You never know when it might come up at a dinner party or even at your next convention. Although, if you were at a convention, bringing up these points would only embarrass yourself as all this is common knowledge!

Riker has been offered the command of his own ship on the following occasions:
In The Arsenal of Freedom, he is offered command of the USS Drake.
In The Icarus Factor he's offered the USS Aries.
In the Best of Both Worlds he is offered the USS Melbourne, later found destroyed at Wolf 359.

The saucer section of the Enterprise separates from the drive section in:
Encounter At Farpoint.
The Arsenal of Freedom.
Best of Both Worlds - Part II.

Captain Picard surrenders:
To `Q' in Encounter at Farpoint.
He tries to surrender to the Ferengi but they surrender first in The Last Outpost.
In The Outragous Okona, Picard orders the shields dropped `In case we decide to surrender to them.'
In A Matter of Honor, Picard surrenders to Riker who is in command of the Klingon vessel Pagh.
In Peak Performance, Riker asks Picard `Would you care to surrender now?' even before the war games start.
In The Defector, the Romulans ask Picard to surrender but he refuses.

Geordi LaForge is named after a real Star Trek fan named George LaForge who died from muscular dystrophy in 1975.

Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) did the special effect shots only for Encounter At Farpoint but they still get credit in every episode because of the extra stock footage for Enterprise fly-bys and such.

If you look closely at the Enterprise during the fly-by in the opening credits, you can see someone walking past the windows.

William Riker and Deanna Troi are based upon Commander Decker and Lieutenant Ilia from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has earned over US$500,000,000 for Paramount in syndication and merchandising revenue.

The Child and Devil's Due were originally scripts for the proposed Star Trek II television series. When this idea was scrapped, the sets were used for the shooting of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

There are numerous in-jokes in The Next Generation:
In The Neutral Zone, the family tree called up by Deanna Troi for Clare Raymond includes the names of all the actors who have played the part of the Doctor in Dr Who.
In Loud As A Whisper, the conference table is marked with the names of Kei and Yuri from the Japanese animation series, The Dirty Pair.
In The Icarus Factor the mat has the Chinese character of `sei' or star on it.
In Up The Long Ladder a ship called Buckaroo Banzai is listed.
In Qpid Picard says `There is something you should know ... I'm not from Nottingham.' - this is a reference to the film The Princes' Bride.
In Sub Rosa one of the gravestones says "McFly", a reference to Back to the Future.
Professor Stephen Hawking is the only person ever to have appeared `as himself' in Star Trek: The Next Generation, in a cameo role at the start of Descent. He has already had a shuttle named after him which appeared in The Host.

"Helm!..... set course for sector 001, warp factor 8, ........ENGAGE!"