Watch: Entertainment Tonight report on Star Trek: The Next Generation’s premiere

Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987.

Before Star Trek: The Next Generation made its official debut, Entertaintment Tonight went behind the scenes to show Trekkies what to expect on the new series, but they did manage to leave a few things out and get a couple of things wrong. In the video, posted by firstcontact19771, Emmy winner John Tesh shared details about the new Enterprise and its crew as well as a few of the updated props, including new phasers.

All of the stars’ positions were introduced except there was no mention of a ship’s counselor nor a ship’s doctor. They did, however, mention there was a female chief of security and managed to get a quote from Denise Crosby who portrayed Tasha Yar for one season.

One thing Star Trek: The Next Generation didn’t have

A particularly laughable mistake is when Tesh is introducing some of the crew’s positions aboard the Enterprise. He names a stern captain, a tough executive officer, a powerful android, a female security officer, and a friendly Klingon. A friendly Klingon???? Apparently, no one behind-the-scenes at Entertainment Tonight knew much about Klingons. Describing Worf (at the time a lieutenant) as friendly is both amusing and so very wrong. There are many ways to describe the Klingon warrior, but friendly is never an adjective that would be applicable to him.

Still, it’s a nice little look back at the beginnings of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yes, they get the pronunciation of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s name wrong, but that certainly isn’t any worse than setting fans up for a friendly Klingon or the ommision of Marina Sirtis’ and Gates McFadden’s roles aboard the ship. 

It’s a quick trip back to 1987 when, thirty-five years ago, a new Star Trek series was launched, and Trekkies fell in love with the franchise all over again.