Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek out of his utopian ideals, but it didn’t take long for those ideals to cause a problem in the early days of The Next Generation. The creator infamously didn’t want to portray any kind of conflict between humans (especially between the Enterprise crew) because he wanted to drive home that humanity had evolved past such petty bickering. This edict made it difficult to write and direct for the show and nearly made one TNG episode impossible: “The Icarus Factor” director Robert Iscove hated being unable to dive into the conflict between Riker and his deadbeat dad and turned down later Trek directing jobs.