
transwarp
I’ve always thought the Romulans weren’t just the Vulcans who rejected Surak’s teachings, but also any who didn’t have the physical ability to follow them.
Originally it was just based on Romulans not expressing any psychic abilities, but Picard also established that sharing personal details publicly as a major taboo. That would track with them being a mix of former enemies who are concerned with suppressing the rivalries that lead to nuclear war.
Boimler is prone to exaggerating and has strange perspectives. It could be some obscure holiday on a planet he saved, or a Starfleet tradition to commemorate just on ships named Enterprise. Or there’s another major holiday which coincides with Pike’s birthday.
He reacted as if it was an actual Federation holiday, which would be stronger evidence if he wasn’t already terrified he’d altered time.
Yeah, the first scene where Riker is in awe of the holodeck also says Data was in the class of 78, Riker is reluctant to accept Data’s personhood (as initially planned), and since they hadn’t introduced the replicators yet, Data describes the holodeck as using transporter tech in a way that sounds very clumsy and patronizing now.
After that they mostly stick to holodecks just being new on ships, and not usually controlled by a computer as sophisticated as the Enterprise’s.
Wesley’s mom, a main character, was initially going to be the ship’s teacher. They shifted her over to the empty doctor position without changing much about her. Then they made a new teacher who was also changed to be a bridge character, as the ship’s pilot.
While Riker and Troi are adapted from Decker and Ilea, Beverly was more extrapolated from yeomen Colt, Smith, and Rand.
Edit: specifically, their bios were mostly about a potential relationship with the captain, how competent they were (making them reasonable mates for him), and having the “walk of a striptease queen.”
With one barely mentioned planet, this episode reframed the plot originally designed to hold together TNG, DS9, and Voyager.
Federation authorities insisted the DMZ colonies were recent and had been warned they were disputed territory. They painted a picture like Israeli settlers in Gaza refusing to obey their own government and leave.
But now we have a Federation affiliated colony on Setlik 2 a century earlier.
The UFP’s failure to stop the Maquis terrorists always seemed like command wanted the war restarted with plausible deniability. Now the Maquis arguments are stronger. Ceding long-held territory is much easier to call abandonment.
There was a spinoff pitched during TOS called Hopeship featuring M’benga. The pitch for NBC/RCA was that instead of introducing expensive colorful sets, they could stay shipboard and have expensive alien makeup and costumes.