Here's a fun one from a story told at a panel from a con:
Siddig (Dr Bashir) was asked when he believed his character was replaced by the changelings, and did he make any acting choices related to that. His response was utter confusion and surprise, because he never knew that Dr Bashir had ever been replaced in the storyline. During the time of filming, he hadn't been reading the full scripts, only memorizing his lines, because he was playing too much Ultima Online.
There is a toilet off the bridge of the Enterprise D. I think it's between the turbolift doors and Picard's ready room, if memory serves. Occasionally you'll see people coming in or out of the door. But the show never tells us this, it's only known thanks to the old Star Trek TNG Technical Manual (which I'm angry I still don't own a copy of)
The King of Jordan is a huge Trekkie and actually had a cameo in Voyager. I'll admit it isn't much. But it did happen.
-The TOS episode The Naked Time originally called for Sulu to use a katana, George Takei thought a rapier would be a better idea.
Sulu, Takei figured, was raised in the 23rd century, and wouldn't necessarily be inspired by samurai either, so he suggested to Black that Sulu have a rapier instead. Takei, game and energized, would duel his way into one of the series' more notable scenes
https://www.slashfilm.com/727375/the-lie-that-led-to-george-takeis-favorite-star-trek-scene/
-In the 2009 movie called Star Trek All of this was ignored and they gave Sulu a Katana.
-The 2009 movie decide to make Sulu gay
The idea came from Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty in the new films and penned the Beyond screenplay, and director Justin Lin, both of whom wanted to pay homage to Takei’s legacy as both a sci-fi icon and beloved LGBT activist.
-George Takei did not love this
George Takei Reacts to Gay Sulu News: “I Think It’s Really Unfortunate”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/george-takei-reacts-gay-sulu-909154/
-The director of 2009 Star Trek said he didn't like Star Trek when he was chosen to direct it.
At the time TOS was produced there was a rival TV series made in West Germany. It's as nerdy and niche as you could ever wish for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumpatrouille_%E2%80%93_Die_phantastischen_Abenteuer_des_Raumschiffes_Orion
Surely any similarities to TOS are purely coincidental.
The Internet Archive has all the episodes with English subs: https://archive.org/details/raumpatrouille-orion/1+Attack+from+Outer+Space.mp4
EDIT: Added picture and archive link
The Enterprise was originaly designed the wrong way up. But Gene saw the mistake and went: that's cool, we're keeping it. Totally impractical for planetary landings, obviously fragile, but damn it looks cool still 60 years on
Morn actor Mark Allen Shepherd's credits include only one non-trek role in what appears to be a shelved film called Babylon Vista.
Because the doors in the set of TOS were manually opened and closed by stage hands, they would frequently not open on cue leading to the actors barreling straight into a closed door.
The Traveller wasn't an actor playing a character. He actually could do that shit.
(you never said the trivia had to be true)
The scene where Quark and Garak are discussing how the Federation is over root beer was supposed to have originally been performed with a comedic tone. However, both Armin Shimmerman and Andrew Robinson insisted on playing it deadly serious. And thus we got one of the most legendary scenes in the franchise.
The gold/yellow shirts in the original series were actually green. The three Starfleet colors were supposed to be RGB. It was just a weird fabric that appeared yellow thanks to odd '60s light/film quirks. Eventually, they decided to just go with it and actually make it yellow.
Spock/Kirk porn novella are still the best selling Star Trek novella series of all time.
The success of the TNG episode "Conspiracy" (the one with the parasites that take over Starfleet) led, through a strange chain of events, to the election of President Barack Obama.
So, "Conspiracy" was aired in 1988 and was very well-received. It had been intended as the introduction of an insectoid race to replace the Ferengi as the "big bads" of TNG. A cliffhanger laid the groundwork for the idea: the insect race would essentially "assimilate" crews and be overall very scary.
But when they started working on a continuation of the story (a story which would eventually become "Q Who"), they ran into a problem: on a 1989 budget, there's no way they could realistically show humanoid insect aliens scary enough to be the series villains. Sticking random googies and jimjaws to people's faces was a lot cheaper, so the Borg were born, and they were an immediate hit.
Now we need to jump ahead eight years to the release of Voyager's season 3 episode "Unity." Producer Brannon Braga apparently saw a TV promo for this episode, and decided that Voyager needed a Borg crewperson, a decision which would eventually result in Jennifer Lien being fired from the production and a new cast member being hired.
The actress they hired for the role of Seven of Nine, Jeri Ryan, was married to Illinois politician Jack Ryan, but their marriage was apparently on the rocks already when she was cast, and they were divorced in 1999.
Then, Jack Ryan (a Republican) decided that he wanted to run for Senate in 2004. An investigation by Illinois journalists led to the unsealing of the Ryans' divorce settlement, which detailed some... let's say Republican-unfriendly sexual preferences, as well as some sexual abuse perpetrated toward Jeri. He dropped out with only four months until the election, and his replacement never stood a chance. Which meant that Democratic challenger Barack Obama, who had already been favored, dominated the Republican competition dramatically. This blowout led to some very glowing news coverage for Obama, which started him on his meteoric rise to the presidency only four years later.
The ability to do a Vulcan salute is genetic, and I always wonder what Trek would have looked like if Nimoy didn’t have the gene for it. Or if he hadn’t been Jewish, since peeking at the priestly blessing as a kid is what he said inspired it.
That one is probably too well known. Umm, do we all know about the officially licensed TOS novel Killing Time by Van Hise that had a reprint issued because it was too gay? (Kirk/Spock) I have one of the original versions around the house somewhere.
Romulus isn't there anymore. It's literally gone.
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