Star Trek: The Next Generation gag reel from season 7 is fantastic

Star Trek: The Next Generation gag reel from season seven is fantastic.

Making Star Trek: The Next Generation, or really any television show must be hard. There are long hours, you often shoot the same scenes over and over again, and oftentimes you’re on set for every waking hour, even if you’re not being used. It can cause some minor mistakes while shooting. Some genius, a long time ago, categorized those mistakes into a highlight package of sorts for people to get a good laugh at. We call these outtakes a gag reel.

Created specifically to make people laugh. The content in these gag reels is often humorous and puts people in a good mood. After all, fans love seeing their favorite characters and actors break from their on-screen persona to show everyone a real glimpse of who they are.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has its own slew of gag reels and today we’re looking at their short, but funny, season 7 reel.

William Riker even steals Star Trek: The Next Generation’s gag reel scenes

William Riker, played brilliantly by Jonathan Frakes, was always a bit of a scene-stealer during the heydey of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whether it was with his charisma, his good looks, that beard (what a beard), or just the fact he didn’t hesitate to open fire on his own captain after Jean-Luc Picard was captured by the Borg.

Riker stole scenes.

He did so again in this gag reel. It was a scene where Riker was speaking to Worf (Michael Dorn), but Worf was off-screen and only saying his lines so Riker/Frakes could play off him. You can tell somewhere along the way of saying Riker’s lines, Frakes flubs something and begins over-acting. It doesn’t take long for everything to fall apart for the scene and laughter to erupt.

It’s a nice little touch to include these things, as it helps fans attach themselves better to the actors. Seeing someone’s sense of humor really helps a person get a sense of who that other person is.

Which is part of the reason gag reels are so great.

That and they’re usually pretty funny.