Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S1 E25 "The Neutral Zone"

• First Appearance: While not the first appearance of the Romulans in the franchise, this is their re-introduction to the TNG era. What does appear for the first time is the giant D'Deridex-class warbird.
• Recycled Script:
  • The premise of this episode shares some similarities to "Space Seed", as it features the Enterprise encountering an ancient, derelict spacecraft with cryogenically frozen humans from Earth in the 1990s, and then reviving the occupants whose chambers had not failed. (Of course, these occupants prove to be much easier for the crew to deal with, relatively speaking, than Khan Noonien Singh was).
  • Similarly, the episode bears mention of outposts being destroyed along the Romulan Neutral Zone, much as in "Balance of Terror" — only here, the culprits are decidedly not the Romulans (and later implicitly determined to be the Borg).
• What Could Have Been:
  • The second season was supposed to open with the Federation and the Romulans working together to investigate the attacks, as discussed here. However, a writers' strike forced the use of pre-written scripts. The next episode, "The Child", came from a proposed episode for Star Trek Phase II.
  • The same writers' strike forced this episode to go into production with a first-draft script, entirely lacking the polish and even some possible plot points that should have been applied during the editing process.
  • The screenplay featured Wesley and it was he who replicated a guitar for Sonny Clemonds. In a scene (scripted but not filmed) Sonny asks him about several genres of popular music (including rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues) but despite being a teenager, Wesley doesn't have a clue about them.
  • The role of Ralph Offenhouse was originally supposed to have been written for Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and the episode would have been more comedic in nature. However, Roger C. Carmel died before production of the episode could begin, and the Mudd role—and the thrust of the episode—was changed.
• You Look Familiar: That's Marc Alaimo playing the first TNG-era Romulan, Commander Tebok, before playing the first-ever Cardassian, Gul Macet, in "The Wounded", then finally playing Gul Dukat on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.