10 Other Times Star Trek Used The Vasquez Rocks

6. Who Watches The Waters? – Star Trek: The Next Generation

Fast forward to The Next Generation era, and one ambitious script early in Season 3 was actually going to spend money for an early-season location shoot and build a small alien village. We’re talking about this tale about incognito Federation anthropologists studying a humanoid proto-Vulcan society from a duck blind until they’re exposed. It needed a lot of scope to tell it well.

So why not go to Vasquez Rocks for the first time on a series in over 20 years? Only this time, tilt the camera up and use the full height of that rocky peak for “Mintaka III.” The Next Generation crew spent two days at the site in August 1989, midway through their 8-day shoot, and I’m guessing none of them realized at the time what a spiritual impact the final location scene of the script would bring.

That heartfelt moment, when the Mintakan leader Nuria gifts Picard with their tapestry scroll he will drape over the back of his desk chair for the rest of his career, would serve as a pivotal moment in his journey.

And yes, we know exactly where “Tapestry Rock” is located.

Authored by Larry Nemecek

Contributor

Back when nerds and geeks were just called "hobbyists," Larry's ninth-grade science teacher ended a bewildering conversations with him about Halkans by finally saying, "Oh Larry — don't tell me you don't know Star Trek!"— along with a commandment to go home and begins watching the daily after-school rerun. The rest is history — well, future history, anyway. Larry had always been a NASA kid and a history fan (not so much sci-fi), so Star Trek fit right in: for the phenomenon that was worldbuilding before the term was invented, Larry felt passion-called to take up "backgrounding" and gap-filling before the term "retcon" was invented. Star Trek is fun and inspiring, but it doesn't pay the bills —at least in those days— but after college and work in theatre and print news, Larry somehow managed to combine both fields with his non-fiction Trek fandom and created the monster that today is Dr. Trek. His self-published, pre-Internet star charts and TNG Concordance were precursors to the official Stellar Cartography map set and the bestseller TNG Companion, after a move to Hollywood /SoCal in the 1990s boom years. Add in a stint as managing editor of official ST Communicator magazine, the first editor and later content producer of the original startrek.com, and the franchise consultant for everything from the Star Trek World Tour to the storied Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. When Star Trek went wandering in the wilderness for the first time in 18 years amid the "Paramount divorce" of 2005-06, so did Larry — until, finally, the entrepreneur web world eventually found a path and a way to stay afloat. Since then, Larry's "Trekland" has come to mean more media projects and podcast/streaming alongside the old standbys like convention guest speaking and even text writing. Sure, there's The Trek Files for Roddenberry, his own Trekland Tuesdays Live, and Dr. Trek;s Second Opinion reaction shows — but that passion for spotlighting and archiving the creatives of Trek across all arenas and eras still drives him to pioneer experiences like the monthly backstage Portal 47 features, and the Trekland Treks day tours of Trek location sights. And now ... in-depth Dr. Trek turns for TrekCulture, too!

Posted On: 25th Feb 2026

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