For fans of Star Trek, we’d reckon that @trekdocs is something of a must-follow Twitter account. It concerns itself with old documentation from the archives of the show and the people concerned with it; it is a never-short of interesting, and oft-fascinating look into the thinking behind one of the most popular franchises in entertainment.

One such document was tweeted out by the account recently, and immediately caught our eye. It is a memo between Bob Justman – a producer on both the Original Series (TOS) and TNG, with a career going back as far as the fifties and the classic Adventures of Superman – and none other than Gene Roddenbury itself. It is, apparently, one of the first mentions of an android character in TNG, which would become Brent Spiner’s Data, and the first mention of Patrick Stewart’s involvement. However, he was not in the running for the Captain’s chair just yet. Have a read…

The most defining TNG memo we have. Bob Justman suggests adding an android character, then mentions a little-known British actor named Patrick Stewart as a possibility for the role. October 17, 1986. pic.twitter.com/fperSEPXBo

— trekdocs (@trekdocs) 21 January 2018

Of course, it didn’t work out quite how Mr. Justman envisaged, and the little less than a year between this document being sent and Encounter At Farpoint appearing on our screens saw an awful lot of refinement. However, it does serves as a reminder of how serendipity can play a part in creating things that we can often consider to be pretty close to perfect.