The story was conceived as a way to keep as much action as possible off the bridge, as the Deck 1 sets had suffered smoke and sprinkler damage as a result of a small fire on 2 October 1998. The bridge scenes were actually shot weeks after the rest of the show.
Dr. Chaotica is based on Ming the Merciless, the main antagonist from the "Flash Gordon" comic strip.
In the teaser, Harry Kim comments to Paris that the surface of Planet X looks suspiciously like the "Mines of Mercury" they had seen in a previous chapter. There is a little bit of 4th-wall breaking here, as this scene was filmed on the "Planet Hell" set used to depict many different subterranean or "cave" scenes since the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). A similar role was played by the natural formation of Vasquez Rocks throughout the original Star Trek (1966).