Star Trek: 10 Times You Asked 'WHAT Were They Thinking?!'
3. The High Ground
This is by no means a bad episode. The High Ground has some very intriguing comments on the nature of terror attacks, their use, and how they both serve and harm the cause. In many ways, The Next Generation was the perfect show to have these philosophical discussions on in the early 90s.
The issue, of course, is the reference to Irish Unification in 2024. It is perhaps a little difficult for newcomers to understand why this reference was so controversial at the time. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were very much a present-day issue at the time of writing, with terrorist attacks dating back decades. This stemmed from Sectarian Divisions, and deep bitterness between the parties affected.
It was as much a political issue as a personal one, as the Good Friday Agreement was still years away, and the Irish and British Governments remained at loggerheads over their policy in the North. So, to have Data, standing on the bridge of the Utopian Enterprise-D claim that armed rebellion had served to reunify Ireland some thirty years after the episode was written seemed at best a dangerously naive statement, and at worst an incitement to continue violence in the North.
The episode was immediately banned on both BBC and RTE, with the former only airing it some fifteen years after its initial broadcast. Though this description may not give the topic the gravity it deserves, the advice to the writers at the time would be this:
Read the room folks. This was a bad call.