The sand in the cavern was infested with fleas, which made the shoot an utterly miserable experience for Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden, who were under constant attack by the minute bloodthirsty creatures.
The miniature of the Echo Papa 607 was built by visual effects supervisor Dan Curry, using an old L'Eggs pantyhose container and a discarded shampoo bottle.
This is the second time the saucer separation sequence is used for the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D. The saucer is only shown being separated two more times, in The Best of Both Worlds: Part 2 (1990) to help distract the Borg cube and in Star Trek: Generations (1994) to evacuate the crew of the drive section before it is destroyed by a warp core breech. Gene Roddenberry originally intended for the ship to be separated more often, namely prior to the ship going into combat, but the special effects for the separation proved to be too expensive and the idea was shelved.
Director Les Landau, whose first assignment as director was this episode, remembered, "...the episode..., was in creative turmoil and going through a massive, last-minute rewrite. In five years, that was the only time the company had to shut down because there was no shooting script to be shot. I was familiar with the sets, cast and crew, so although the script was late in appearing, I had all the knowledge and background to go ahead and do my job. To this day, 'Arsenal' still stands out as one of the better shows, certainly one of the shows with the most production value of any we've ever done. Fortunately, all the elements fell together on that first day. I had the total support of the cast, crew and company to go ahead and do the best job possible. The cast was, and has always been, totally supportive of working with and for me, and I can't say enough about their cooperation."
Footage of Riker from the scene with Rice was later used as a flashback in the series finale All Good Things... (1994), so he could appear younger and beardless.