According to this episode's writer Mike Sussman, the name "Lorian" was an homage to the Elvish forest Lórien found in J.R.R. Tolkien's novel "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring".
The vest worn by Lorian is a reuse of the vest often worn by Jake Sisko in the final seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993).
This episode was directed by Roxann Dawson, who played B'Elanna Torres in Star Trek: Voyager (1995).
When Trip and Lorian are working in engineering (14:30), one of the tools that Trip takes from the toolbox and puts back is actually a Radio Shack decibel (or sound level) meter. It has a short cylindrical protrusion and upper curved edges. This carries on a tradition of using Radio Shack gadgets for Star Trek props. In the original series one of the props was a Radio Shack tape head demagnetizer - having a long, thin light-up wand of clear plastic so you could see into a dark area around recessed tape heads.
The squared representation in the episode's name (²) can be visually considered as half a character, making "E²" visually shorter than Q2 (2001) by only half a character and the shortest episode title in the "Star Trek" franchise.