Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Enterprise D You Need To Know

Question! Who's the only character to appear in every episode of both the original series of Star Trek and the Next Generation?

Time's up! The answer is... the Starship Enterprise, of course. Granted it was played by two different actors across both shows (and a third, if you include the slender young thing in the movies) but it was the only fully recurring element in the franchise for the better part of 30 years. Don't get angry, that's a good joke.

Despite the ship being arguably the most important element of making a Star Trek show a Star Trek show - every offshoot of the franchise since has named the show itself after the vessel at the heart of it - it was often the most overlooked aspect of it, especially in the Next Generation. Grand sweeping ideas that would have changed its identity forever were normally consigned to the cutting room floor.

Thankfully though, while these ideas might have been left out for budgetary of narrative reasons, they didn't slip for Star Trek legend. Going through the old technical manuals and picking up some old head-in-the-clouds interviewers reveals there was so much more to the old 1701-D that even the show's biggest fans ever knew...