10 Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes That Were Almost Completely Different

It won't shock any of you that, when coming up with your season-ending time-travel cliffhanger episode, a lot of ideas get passed around the writer's room. In fact, Time's Arrow enjoyed a relatively short production window because the idea to make it a two-part bridge between seasons 5 and 6 was made relatively late on. A response, of sorts, to the continuing rumours that the show was set to end following the launch of Deep Space Nine.

The writers wanted something that simultaneously cemented the idea that the show would definitely be returning, but also a setting whereby the threat of everything being over was still quite real. Inevitably, time travel was settled upon, but the precise point in history it would involve was tossed around for weeks. At one point - and how serious this idea was varies depending on whose account of it you read - Data was going to be involved in the Kennedy Assassination. Naturally, this was dropped because it is incredibly lame.

Other suggested points in time were the 1930s, '60s, and '90s, with the latter being dismissed because it had just "been done" in The Voyage Home. In the end, they went for Mark Twain, and the rest is... well, you get the idea.