This episode was made during the writers strike, and the idea was taken from an old unused Star Trek II series script. Of course in the Star Trek II premise, Troi was Navigator Ilia, and, although the fast-growing child idea was the same, the Enterprise's hull was supposed to be turning to "powder".
	Director Rob Bowman gained permission from Paramount to use extra cameras and equipment for this season opener which enable him to accomplish such spectacles as the opening shot. He was also a big proponent of giving Marina Sirtis more to do.
	Seymour Cassel (Hester Dealt) also starred in "Dick Tracy", "Honeymoon to Vegas" and "Indecent Proposal".
	Epsilon Indi, the star spotted by Wesley in Ten Forward, was a tip of the hat to the 1960's Trek episode "And the Children Shall Lead".
	This episode sees the first appearance of Diana Muldaur as Doctor Katherine Pulaski. Gates McFadden didn't return for the second season as the producers felt the character of Beverly Crusher had not developed as well as they had hoped.  However, thanks to a letter-writing campaign by fans, support from Patrick Stewart (Picard) and a personal invitation from Co-Executive Producer Rick Berman, Gates was invited back for the third season.
	Gates spoke about the reasons she was in absentia from TNG in the second season during the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention on Thursday August 9, 2007. "The reason I didn't come back [after the first season] was that I disagreed with one of the writers. We had a difference in how mothers are perceived. I think that parenting, whether you're a mother or a father, is a very complex business ... I felt that someone who is the chief medical officer can have a heart-to-heart talk with her child [but] the lines were tending more toward 'Here's your lunchbox, honey.' He [the writer] stayed and I went. Then he went and I came back."
	The panel that Dr. Katherine Pulaski brings up to research the origins of the plasma plague contains the names of TNG staff Rob Bowman, Maurice Hurley, Jaron Sommers, Jon Povill, Robert Legato, and Gary Hutzel.
	During the first scene of the episode, a tan handbag or purse is noticeably sitting on the floor of the Enterprise bridge.
	This episode is in fact a rewrite of an episode with the same title written for Star Trek: Phase II, a series that was scrapped in favor of producing Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. In the Phase II script, the Deltan navigator Ilia was "impregnated." The episode was flagged for possible reusage for Star Trek: The Next Generation, in anticipation of what became a lengthy Screen Writers' Guild strike which delayed production on Season Two during 1988. In the Phase II script, Ilia gives birth to a baby girl, Irska.
	Academy Award winning actress Whoopi Goldberg asked Gene Roddenberry to create a recurring role for her because she was a big fan of the show and felt strongly motivated by Nichelle Nichols' portrayal of Uhura.
	This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore - Dennis McCarthy).
	The communicator Wesley wears in the first scene is the standard silver delta on gold ellipse insignia, however for all remaining scenes, the communicator is a silver delta on silver ellipse, more often used on extras. The change takes place while Commander Riker steps in to the Captain's Ready Room.
	The warp speed visual effect is shown from inside the Enterprise for the first time in this episode. On spin-off Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it will go on to be modified to include a "flash" at the end of the sequence.

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