Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S 1 E 22 "Skin of Evil"

• Creator Backlash:
  • Subverted; while the staff who worked on the episode (Gene Roddenberry, showrunner Maurice Hurley and teleplay writer Hannah Shearer) were pleased with the way Tasha's death was handled, the succeeding Michael Piller-led creative team thought that giving her a meaningless death was a terrible concept in itself, and the execution of it was even worse. This eventually resulted in "Yesterday's Enterprise."
  • In a more straightforward example, Joseph Stefano, who wrote the first draft of the story, refused to ever speak about the finished product in interviews.
  • Jonathan Frakes didn't care for this episode, calling it "absurd". He also had to endure rolling around in black slime.
• Enforced Method Acting: Marina Sirtis cried real tears filming Tasha's funeral, as she and Denise Crosby had become good friends.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ironically, Denise Crosby has said that if she'd gotten more scenes like the one between her and Worf in the teaser, she would have stayed on the show.
  • Roddy McDowall was a favorite of director Joseph L. Scanlan for voicing Armus.
  • The script for the episode has Picard getting Armus to lower his guard (and thereby the forcefield around the shuttle) by sweet-talking him. The finished episode does the opposite and has Picard give Armus a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, which so riles him up that he loses focus on the forcefield, allowing Troi and Picard to be beamed up.
  • At one point, Tasha's message was also going to include another line: "...and Data? It did happen.", referring to their brief physical liaison in "The Naked Now".
• Working Title: The original title was "The Shroud" (another name for the entity) and during the funeral/memorial scene, Commander Riker was supposed to have "signs of the shroud" still on his face.