YMMV / Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E19 "The First Duty"

• Canon Fodder:
  • According to The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, the incident that got the Kolvoord Starburst banned at the Academy occurred while Kirk was a cadet. He was even leading his own squadron that witnessed the explosion and got caught in the blast, nearly being killed themselves.
  • In one of the Expanded Universe Novels set after this episode, Wesley, after a very bad day, vents to his room-mate. Wesley wouldn't — and knows he couldn't — say this to anyone but his friend, but the accident in this episode was, in fact, actually caused by Joshua Albert's pilot error, (though if not for the dangerous and illegal maneuver, it wouldn't have mattered) and Joshua would have survived like the rest of Nova Squadron if he had simply stayed calm instead of panicking.
• Epileptic Trees: Due to the near identical nature of their backstories and the fact that they are both played by Robert Duncan McNeill, some fans believe that Nicholas Locarno is really Tom Paris, having gone to the Academy under a pseudonym rather than appear to have been admitted due to Admiral Paris' influence. This was ultimately Jossed by Locarno's appearance in Star Trek: Lower Decks.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While Wesley still has his detractors, this is a story that could have only involved him and made full use of Wil Wheaton's acting talents.
• Take That, Scrappy!: The episode is one long piece of it—especially the famous chewing out in Picard's ready room—showing that Wesley is no longer in any way a Creator's Pet who can never do any wrong, and for whom the scripts will no longer bend over backwards to make look better.

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