11 Times Star Trek The Next Generation DID Have Conflict
1. Starfleet Was A Pain In The Tuches
The Federation may be a utopia, but Starfleet is still a hierarchical quasi-military organization that has both discipline and bureaucracy. Both lead to ample amounts of human-on-human strife.
In Where No One Has Gone Before, the crew was saddled with a flimflam artist named Kosinski who supposedly had the key to greater engine efficiency. Riker didn’t trust him, Data said his methods were unsound, and even Wesley seemed cool in comparison. He was arrogant and pushy and no one trusted him. But Starfleet brass insisted he do the work.
Lt. Commander Remmick was a JAG officer brought in to interrogate the Enterprise crew about all the weirdness they experienced over the course of the first season. Questioning both the crew’s competence and Picard’s loyalty, it’s clear Remmick was out for blood and everyone vocally hated him for it.
Finally, in the classic Measure of a Man, the crew is hit with a double-whammy from Starfleet: the slimy Commander Maddox who wanted to tear Data down in order to make an army of androids, and Captain Louvois who has to try Data’s case when the android refuses to be dissected.
The crew’s dislike of Maddox was immediate. After all he wanted to steal away their pet robot. Picard’s history with Louvois was deeper with her having lead his court martial after the Stargazer was lost. Louvois suspected Picard wanted to "bust a chair across her teeth" when they first ran into each other.