She played the captain of the Lakota later in DS9, Captain Benteen.

The first time they introduced the Eugenics Wars set in the 1990s, Spock called it the last world war. Pike in SNW elaborated that it was part of the escalating conflict that went nuclear as WW3 decades later.

I’d say TNG mostly stopped exploring new frontiers halfway through season 1. Farpoint promised exploration, but soon the ship is ferrying diplomats and scientists and answering Federation distress calls. The worlds are new to the audience, but not the characters.

TNG also had Vulcan extremists (trying to recover ancient psyonic weapons) and Sela must have expected a fifth column ready to defect once her thousand troops landed and gave them an excuse.

She directed episodes of both “Enterprise” and Star Trek: Enterprise", which each lasted two seasons. The stealth name change was surprising back then.

The idea was that the Klingons had joined the Federation and we’d see Klingon Starfleet personnel in the background. When they did add Worf, he was to be more frequently Data’s relief than Yar’s.

If you read the initial material, Data is drastically different. There is no explicit mention of being unemotional, just that he tends to speak more formally. He’s supposed to be more like the Ilia probe than Spock.

Worf didn’t exist at first, so Geordi the teacher with bionic vision would be the most “other” character. If they’d seen any of the early press material for Phase II, Spock’s replacement there was a very junior officer.

There was a spinoff pitched during TOS called Hopeship featuring M’benga. The pitch for NBC/RCA was that instead of introducing expensive colorful sets, they could stay shipboard and have expensive alien makeup and costumes.

A Quality of Mercy also showed Una in prison, and Those Old Scientists implied she’s revered. Did sending that letter prevent Pike from recruiting her lawyer? Things are already not heading down the exact timeline we saw Ortegas alive in.

It’s definitely an industry change. Frakes has talked about how when he directs an episode now, the show’s director of photography tells him to keep the camera moving.

With one barely mentioned planet, this episode reframed the plot originally designed to hold together TNG, DS9, and Voyager.

Federation authorities insisted the DMZ colonies were recent and had been warned they were disputed territory. They painted a picture like Israeli settlers in Gaza refusing to obey their own government and leave.

But now we have a Federation affiliated colony on Setlik 2 a century earlier.

The UFP’s failure to stop the Maquis terrorists always seemed like command wanted the war restarted with plausible deniability. Now the Maquis arguments are stronger. Ceding long-held territory is much easier to call abandonment.

Wesley’s mom, a main character, was initially going to be the ship’s teacher. They shifted her over to the empty doctor position without changing much about her. Then they made a new teacher who was also changed to be a bridge character, as the ship’s pilot.

While Riker and Troi are adapted from Decker and Ilea, Beverly was more extrapolated from yeomen Colt, Smith, and Rand.

Edit: specifically, their bios were mostly about a potential relationship with the captain, how competent they were (making them reasonable mates for him), and having the “walk of a striptease queen.”

I’ve always thought the Romulans weren’t just the Vulcans who rejected Surak’s teachings, but also any who didn’t have the physical ability to follow them.

Originally it was just based on Romulans not expressing any psychic abilities, but Picard also established that sharing personal details publicly as a major taboo. That would track with them being a mix of former enemies who are concerned with suppressing the rivalries that lead to nuclear war.