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25 facts about Star Trek: The Next Generation you might not know

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Dany Roth
Apr 29, 2019, 6:25 AM EDT (Updated)
Tag: Star Trek
Tag: Brannon Braga
Tag: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Tag: Gene Roddenberry
Tag: Patrick Stewart

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the day Star Trek: The Next Generation's pilot, Encounter at Farpoint, premiered. That's 25 years since Picard stared out into the great and infinite vastness of space and said, "Let's see what's out there." To celebrate, here are 25 things you might not know about the seminal series.

We know there are an awful lot of you Next Gen fanatics out there, but let's see how many of these facts were ones you didn't already know.

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Encounter at Farpoint marked the final TV appearance of DeForest Kelley
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Lore was originally planned to be a female android, but Brent Spiner himself came up with the evil...
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The Borg were originally conceived as a race of insectoids, but that proved too expensive
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Among the other actors contending for the role of Geordi LaForge were Tim Russ (who went on to play...
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Stephen Hawking is the only person to ever play themselves in Star Trek history
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Many Season 2 episodes were actually adapted from the scrapped Trek series, “Star Trek: Phase IIâ...
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Patrick Stewart sang “The Hills are Alive” from the Sound of Music to lighten the mood during...
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One of the best episodes of the series, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” was based off a spec script...
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Q was originally scripted as being the cause of Picard’s time travel in the episode “Time...
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In “Offspring” a scene was planned with a same sex couple holding hands but was nixed because...
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The episode “A Fistful of Datas” was originally titled after a different spaghetti western as â...
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Patrick Stewart hated that there were fish in the captain’s ready room because he felt it was...
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In an early draft of Best of Both Worlds, Data and Picard were combined as one Borg unit.
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Patrick Stewart loves Beavis and Butthead and has been known to do impressions of them
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Although only the women in the cast, Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden had sword training, only the...
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Originally, veteran Trek actor Kirstie Alley was supposed to appear in the episode “Cause and...
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The episode, “Inner Light,” had its title derived from the Beatles song of the same name.
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Tasha Yar was originally meant to reappear in the alternate universe episode, “Parallels” but...
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The only episode ever filmed by Gates McFadden was “Genesis” which was also the first to be...
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In “Chain of Command” Patrick Stewart insisted on being fully nude on a closed set to film the...
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In the original concept for the episode, “Tapestry,” Q was going to show Picard multiple...
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While rehearsing the first appearance of Picard as Locutus, Patrick Stewart recited the line as “...
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Whenever discussing a story Roddenberry wouldn’t have liked, Rick Berman would blindfold the Gene...
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“Captain’s Holiday” came about because Patrick Stewart wanted more “sex and shooting” for...
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The series finale “All Good Things” originally involved the attack at Wolf 359 as one of the...
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Tag: Star Trek
Tag: Brannon Braga
Tag: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Tag: Gene Roddenberry
Tag: Patrick Stewart