20 Things You Never Knew About Star Trek: Insurrection
12. Roddenberry's Box
When writing about the process by which Michael Piller was assigned the film, the writer spoke of the problem of 'Roddenberry's Box,' as he called it. This was the set of rules that each and every writer on Star Trek had to fight with when they came on board. Piller himself got his first experience of this with The Bonding.
Back in TNG's third season, Ronald D. Moore submitted The Bonding, an episode dealing with grief. Roddenberry flatly rejected it, as humans didn't grieve in his 24th century. Piller wrote that while many writers could and did balk at these kinds of restrictions, he simply took it as a challenge, and reworked the script.
If there is one consistent complaint about Insurrection, it's that it feels like an extra-long episode of Star Trek. In a way, this is completely accurate. Piller wrote the film with Roddenberry's Box in mind, allowing the process to speed through the editors, without the slog of trying to find new writers to take on the challenge.