Trivia / Star Trek: The Next Generation S3E26 S4E1 "The Best of Both Worlds"

• Blooper:
  • When Picard enters Ten Forward to speak with Guinan, he is actually wearing sneakers.
  • When rescuing Picard, Worf's transporter armband disappears in a closeup, as the scene reuses footage from Part 1.
• Completely Different Title: The German title for Part 1 translates to "In the Hands of the Borg" and Part 2 is "Target: Earth."
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Most everyone who worked on TNG has said this is at or near the top of the list for best episode of the series (many fans hold it top five of all Star Trek), but especially Jonathan Frakes since it is very much a Riker episode.
• The Danza: Elizabeth Shelby is played by Elizabeth Dennehy.
• Prop Recycling:
  • In addition to a variety of new designs (mostly kitbashes of other models), the Derelict Graveyard at Wolf 359 includes the destroyed Enterprise from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
  • The Paulson Nebula is a modified form of the Mutara Nebula from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Riker's existential crisis paralleled producer/writer Michael Piller's own crisis, as he pondered whether he should stay with TNG or move on to new opportunities. Riker's statements about Commander Shelby mirror Piller's feelings about younger writers like Ronald D. Moore. Riker and Guinan's conversation about Riker becoming his own man and "letting go" of Captain Picard in order to beat him could almost be about the show's struggle to find its own identity in the long shadow of the original series.
  • In interviews over the years, Elizabeth Dennehy has said that much of Shelby's arrogance and dismissive attitude toward Riker came from Dennehy's not ever watching the show and thus having no emotional attachment to the characters. So she played the role as written (confrontational and borderline insubordinate) which initially took the cast aback before they realized Shelby being unimpressed by Riker and openly gunning for his position was exactly like how early Riker would have acted, and provided a great contrast to how he'd grown as a character.
  • While the third season had notably helped the show grow into something more stable than seasons one and two, there was still some hesitation when it came to being renewed and fans were still not sold on the characters. Patrick Stewart was even negotiating his contract, and was on the fence about leaving the show. This was the actual impetus for his assimilation, a big finale where Picard doesn't make it. Picards' Machine Monotone as Locutus also indicated that Picard himself was not so much The Stoic as people thought (he was always compared to the charismatic Kirk), and inspired both the series renewal and Stewart's contract renewal.
• Recycled Set: The shot of Admiral Hanson on the bridge of his flagship during the battle was filmed with the Enterprise battle bridge set.
• What Could Have Been: In the original outline◊ for the story, the climax would have featured the cube attacking Paris.
  • Based on some production drawings it was originally intended for Picard to have lasting permanent damage from his assimilation, notably that his arm would have been completely replaced with the Borg mechanical one which Data would end up snapping off entirely (in the episode Data simply breaks off the claw piece) and upon being restored Picard would have a bionic arm with a notably artificial looking skin tone for the rest of the series. For ease in production, this obviously did not happen and Picard only has some minor scarring in the final scene which would be gone the next episode.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Part 1 was written with no idea of how anything would be resolved. It worked out amazingly well, which unfortunately encouraged the crew to keep doing this across the whole franchise, with increasingly diminishing returns.
• Written-In Infirmity: Viewers paying careful attention during Part II will notice that Geordi only appears in close-ups and not in group shots with the rest of the Cast. The reason is LeVar Burton ended up in the hospital for emergency surgery just as shooting was beginning on the episode. Geordi's scenes were thus shot later to seamlessly work him into the final cut (and mandatory lines requiring his presence in the climax were instead rewritten for O'Brien).
• You Look Familiar: George Murdock (Admiral Hanson) previously appeared as "God" in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

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