Goodman Talks Family Guy “TNG” Reunion

If you haven’t made plans or set your DVRs for this Sunday’s episode of “Family Guy” and you’re a “Star Trek” fan, you need to go and do it right now.

Following in the steps of “Futurama,” which reunited the cast of classic “Trek” in animated form, this week’s “Family Guy” will reunite the “Next Generation” crew in animated form.  And it will even include everyone’s favorite on-line geek and friend of Slice of SciFi, Wil Wheaton.

Titled “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven,” the episodes finds the Griffin family attending a local “Star Trek” convention.  When Stewie isn’t able to ask his question of the cast, he kidnaps them.

“Family Guy” executive producer and self-professed “Trek” fan David Goodman told io9 that he and “Family Guy” creator Seth McFarland realized that there were a lot of classic “Trek” reunions, but not many of “TNG.”

“Seth and I are huge fans of Star Trek, and we realized that while there have been plenty of episodic television that brought back the cast of the original series,” he said.  “Seth and I realized that nobody had really reunited The Next Generation, and many of them had appeared on our show. Next Generation was a hugely popular show. We’re not going to reference the most popular and current shows. Our stock in trade are our own memories of those shows we watched when we were younger.”

Goodman said the best part of working on the show was being able to create an animated version of himself in the story.

“An artist drew a version of me and I voiced the character dressed as a Star Trek… some might say fan, some might say geek. And I have a little bit of a run in later with Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes, so that’s probably my favorite scene,” he said. “

Goodman also said there will be a lot of in-jokes for fans of “Trek.”

“There is a Tasha Yar joke in the episode, it’s pretty obvious from the minute she opens her mouth,” he said. “Denise was very game about it, and anyone who is familiar with the series will get it right away. Anybody who is not, it’s just funny as a joke on its own.”

Goodman went on to say that unlike a lot of other actors, the “TNG” were good spirited about the spoofing and jokes.  “As a group, they could not have had a better sense of humor. Which you don’t always find with actors. A lot of actors don’t like to play themselves, they don’t like to spoof themselves. But this group was just the opposite – they were all just terrific.”

The episode airs this Sunday night on FOX at 9 p.m. EST