Observations in TNG: "Family"

Another shot of the USS Enterprise-D docked inside Earth Station McKinley.

"Family" is the first episode in which only the 4-foot model of the ship is seen and the 6-foot model does not appear, apart from the opening credits.

A beautiful matte painting of the vineyards in La Barre, France.

The real La Barre, at least the best real-life candidate, is a small village in the department of Haute-Saône in eastern France. Looking from the present-day village is eastern direction, we can see a small château in the center and some hills, similar as on the matte painting. The river Ognon flows right in front of the château. Well, the château is not quite as impressive in our time, the hills are lower and there are meadows and corn fields in the place of the 24th century vineyards, but overall it seems close enough. (Well, we would have to ignore that in the 24th century the sun would be in the northern sky).

The area of La Barre currently isn't known for its wine anyway. The famous wine region Côte d'Or is located about 50km to the west.
Fictional Places on Earth

The unchanged matte painting in HD.

"The matte painting of the Picard vineyard was created on film by Illusion Arts, so the remastered version uses those film elements, recomposited slightly differently."

A look at the Picard family home in La Barre at night. The stars were added in post production.

"The night version of the Picard home has quite a few painted elements, including the trees and the lit windows. The house was filmed during the day, and it was altered to become a night shot in postproduction."

Picard looks at an animation illustrating the Atlantis Project on a new desktop monitor, created for this episode.

The same monitor was also used by Data in Dr. Crusher's office in "Identity Crisis" and was turned into a Klingon monitor for "Unification I+II".

In the close-up shots of the monitor, the graphic was added in post production. In the wider shot, the graphic is a practical effect on set, created by backlighting. There is a discrepancy, because in the wide shot the continent has moved to the south.

The label on the bottle of the wine commonly known as Château Picard (actually: "Château Labarre") can be clearly seen in this shot. The bottle would later be seen in Picard's quarters and the captain would drink the wine with Chancellor Durken in the episode "First Contact".

The special features on the "Star Trek Generations" DVD show a close-up of the label and reveal that it reads "Château Labarre". The label contains several errors. It should read as follows: "Château La Barre - 2294 - Appellation (d'Origine) Contrôlée - Marque Déposée - Mis en bouteille au château - Grand Cru Classé". If the classification for French red wine is still the same in the 24th century, the Château Labarre (coming from a region where no significant vineyards are located today) belongs into the highest category (grand cru), just like the few best appellations of the nearby wine region of Burgundy today.

The wine, however, was reported to be named "Château Picard", and an according new label was created and is clearly visible on the bottle that Picard shares with his officers after Data's death in "Star Trek Nemesis".

This shot illustrates, how small the holodeck set really is. This clearly cannot be the same holodeck seen in "The Defector" and "Hollow Pursuits", as it was much larger.

Jack Crusher is not wearing a communicator in this wide shot.

René Picard sitting under a tree, gazing at the stars. The constellation of Orion can be clearly seen in the night sky.

"The constellation Orion was originally done under the supervision of VFX coordinator Ronald B. Moore, who wanted an authentic, recognizable Earth constellation in the sky. He brought in an astronomy text, and the stars were directly digitized from a diagram. However, after the episode aired, we got a note from an astronomer from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, who informed us that given the latitude of France, and given the time of year (as determined by the growth of the grapes in the vineyard), Orion would not be visible in the sky at that time."

For TNG-R, the matte painting was slightly modified and now includes a spire to the left of René's knee. It corresponds with the mast visible in the daytime matte.

"Although the astronomer was, of course, correct, we decided to honor the original work in the HD remastered version."