11 Times Star Trek The Next Generation DID Have Conflict

Data annoyed everyone in the first season, rambling off facts and minutia until he received many a disgruntled outburst. Telling Data to shut up in one way or another was a more frequent event than it was with “the boy”.

When Riker first met Data in Encounter at Farpoint he couldn’t believe Starfleet would award a machine anything but an honorary rank. His initial mistrust of Data’s artificiality was so strong Data actually called him on it.

“Prejudice is very human,” Data told his commander, flying in the face of everything we’ve been told Roddenberry felt about his flawless crew. Riker’s response was even more hostile, suggesting Data’s sense of superiority was "troubling".

It’s unfortunate that this conflict was totally dropped by the end of the episode. The Enterprise crew may have been blindly accepting of the technology that surrounded them, but a walking computer with desires and the ability to bend steel rods was something else altogether.