Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Will Riker

For all its promise, there were certainly some clunky elements to TNG’s first season. Including the botched character arc and death of Lieutenant Yar, the groan-inducing racial insensitivity of ‘Code of Honour’ and that episode where everybody including the android gets a bit frisky. It's fair to say that the show was not firing on all cylinders going into season two, but two keys things about the show were about to change.

Whilst ‘Jumping The Shark’ is a popular phrase for describing a failing show running out of ideas (coined from Happy Days when Fonzie literally stunt jumped over a shark), the phrase ‘Growing The Beard’ is less well known, as a concept for when a perceived increase in quality corresponds with a character growing a beard. Sure enough Season 2 onwards proved to be a roaring success for the new Trek show, and all of these episodes included a now bearded Riker.

Whilst we can’t guarantee that the two events are related, their concurrences has led to many people referring to ‘Growing The Beard’ as ‘Riker’s Beard’. In-Universe Riker explains that he thinks it makes him look more his own age, but Frakes has gone on to say that he simply dislikes shaving, and that Roddenberry liked the look so much on day one filming Season 2 that he decided to write it in. Did this beard save the show? Maybe. Does anybody prefer the beardless Riker? No.