This episode went through a very troubled production history because the staff couldn't figure out what to do with it. They commented: "When the script was written, it was too short. So then we started adding scenes about Data's cat. By luck (or by bad luck), all of those scenes came at the beginning of the show. So you had an episode that started fitfully, with an unrelated cat subplot. Then it took a turn and seemed to be about Geordi's rivalry with the other guy. Then back to the cat and finally in the third act, the real story began. By that point, people were hopelessly lost. It never got back on track, even if its intentions were good." Michael Piller: "I think this is the worst show I worked on this season. It inspired us to have several meetings over where the season was going. I felt we were letting it slip away." Brannon Braga: "There were preposterous moments. And we knew the risks, which is why we thought it important to do an environmental show. We struggled with making it a personal story and in the end it just didn't work as well as we wanted to. We couldn't find a personal angle. And when you limit warp drive, the rug is pulled out from under Star Trek. I wish more time had been spent with that, and less time with Spot the cat."
In this episode, a Federation-wide speed limit is put in place because of the harmful effects that traveling at high warp has on subspace. While it is never mentioned in any of the TV series or movies, it was mentioned in a book that the new class 9 warp drive being tested in the new Intrepid-class star-ships, such as the U.S.S. Voyager, had been designed to not have those harmful effects on subspace. So, after the new class 9 warp drive tests were successful all Starfleet vessels had their warp cores replaced with new ones with similar modifications to the class 9 warp drive, which is why the Federation-wide speed limit is never brought up again.
The episode derived from a premise Joe Menosky had created back in the sixth season, known as "Limits". Menosky's allegory for modern-day environmental problems was dropped as an element from several episodes that season, including Suspicions (1993).
Data's attempts to keep training Spot from not jumping onto his desk would still be unsuccessful going into 2371, as shown in Star Trek: Generations (1994).
The first mention of bio-mimetic gel, an extremely valuable substance often employed in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995). The USS Voyager's computers are regulated by bio-neural gel packs. Science consultant André Bormanis based this element on news that Cambridge researchers had developed material that could create small tubules that mimic certain cellular-level biological activities and structures.