Parallels

This Story: Season 7 Episode 11 (production code 263)
TNG Overall: Episode 163
Trek Overall: Story 255, Episode 265
Airdate: 29 Nov 1993
Written by Brannon Braga
Directed by Robert Wiemer

Notes

• The “Worf & Troi are a couple” stuff started here.  Bleargh.
• Originally the Worf character here was supposed to be Picard, but it was changed (I wonder if they had the idea for the finale yet, so it was changed because of similarities?)
• Tasha Yar was originally scripted to be on one of the alternate Enterprises, but that was abandoned when they realized it was too similar to “Yesterday’s Enterprise“, so it was changed to Wesley Crusher.
• The original script had the crew singing “Happy Birthday” to Worf in Klingonese, but they opted not to do it so they didn’t have to pay a fee to the rights holder of that song.
• One of the realities has a Cardassian wearing a Starfleet uniform – the first time this ever happens (the next time was Star Trek Discovery’s “Scavengers” – which was one of the 32nd century episodes.
• The Stardate for this episode is identical to the DS9 episode “Sanctuary“.
• The late Roberto Orci stated that this episode was the basis for the “Kelvin universe” concept started in the 2009 “Star Trek” film.
• Another DS9 reference with a callout of “Deep Space Five”.
• The last episode to air in 1993.

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