Production
The writer for this episode, David A. Goodman, states in the DVD audio commentary that making this episode was a "dream come true" for many members of the crew including himself. Pat Shinagawa, who directed the episode, also states that there was a certain amount of jealousy that she had gotten to do this episode whereas Matt Groening states that while he is a fan of the Star Trek franchise he has never seen an episode of the original series all the way through, but he has seen the first movie.
All of the living members of the original Star Trek cast agreed to appear in the episode with the exception of James Doohan, whose agent replied with "No way." Because of this, the episode's working title was jokingly named "We got everybody but Scotty" and the character Montgomery Scott was replaced with "Welshy". DeForest Kelley was physically portrayed in the episode but had no lines due to his death in 1999.
Multiple designs for the energy being were considered for this episode; however, the final version was decided upon due to a desire to keep the design simple. Despite this effort, Shinagawa still notes that the final design for Melllvar is more sophisticated than some energy beings featured in the original series.
Read more about this topic: Where No Fan Has Gone Before
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)