Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get by?

[Navaros]

Berman has admitted that he made sure TNG had 'no conflict among humans' because that was a rule that GR wanted in the show.

However, the Maquis is a violation of this rule.

So, how did the Maquis end up in the show?

Did Berman forget to stifle the writers regarding the Maquis concept?

Did Berman abandon this rule on purpose regarding the Maquis concept? If so, why?

And if he was going to allow the rule to be violated once, why didn't he just discard it completely, and thus free the writers to write more conflicts with other characters?

Has Berman ever commented on how the inclusion of the Maquis blatantly violates the very rule to which he admits to holding TNG?

[Marten]

Wasn't it more "No conflict among Star Fleet members"?

[DevilEyes]

Marten wrote:

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Wasn't it more "No conflict among Star Fleet members"?

Fortunately, that one was discarded quite a few times as well ("The Best of Both Worlds" with the Riker/Shelby tension, "Chain of Command", and of course "The Pegasus" are some that some to mind).

[Navaros]

Marten wrote:

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Wasn't it more "No conflict among Star Fleet members"?

I'm pretty sure I remember hearing Berman say 'humans' as well as 'Starfleet', and he definitely referred to the rule as 'not having conflict between our characters' (I just skimmed an interview before writing that to be sure of it) when discussing this issue; although the 'humans' phrasing is from memory so it may not be 100% accurate.

But Maquis were SF anyway so it's still a violation of the rule in either case.

[Takeru]

They probably realised that this rule is beyond stupid.

[RyuRoots]

GR, while a genius and a visionary in some ways, is a loon that shouldn't be allowed to make important decisions in others.

And he was dead by S5 of TNG, which was (as far as I remember) a fair bit before we see/hear of the Maquis or the treaty that caused the whole mess.

[C.E. Evans]

IIRC, it was more an idea that "most conflicts came from outside." This doesn't mean that there were no conflicts among Humans--because there were indeed disagreements among the Enterprise-D crew--but it was just that they weren't generally resolved with a right hook or someone being tossed over a table. I think it was supposed to be a thing in which our heroes were too busy dealing with an outside threat to waste time and energy fighting among themselves.

But I do believe that Roddenberry was really only heavily involved with TNG during its first two seasons before his failing health forced him to step back and assume a more supervisory role. If anything, one could blame Berman for taking Roddenberry's ideals to extremes from that point forward...

[AdmiralGarak]

Berman had a hand in the Maquis' creation. They (and the DMZ conflict) were invented for Voyager, and seeded into TNG and DS9.

Another way of looking at things is that the creation of the Maquis and the allowance for more internal conflicts on Trek emerged shortly after Roddenberry's death. Perhaps Berman felt he had a bit more freedom at that point.

[Anwar]

There was to be no conflict between the characters themselves (and even that was loosened as time went on). They had guest characters creating conflict on the ENT-D as early as the first season. It's hardly that different from TOS where most of the conflict came from external sources as well.

[Finn]

There was conflict between humans on TOS...complete with a bar brawl. That consititues conflict between human...

[Anwar]

And was said brawl one entirely between the TOS characters themselves, or was it between them and guest characters?

[Navaros]

Anwar wrote:

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It's hardly that different from TOS where most of the conflict came from external sources as well.

Actually, it's drastically different than TOS. Every single episode of TOS, or just about, is built around conflict and tension between Spock vs. McCoy, or Spock vs. Kirk, or Spock vs. both McCoy and Kirk.

Granted, Spock was an alien. I'm not sure if GR had that rule back then and got around it in TOS with the excuse that Spock was an alien.

Nonetheless, TOS remains a drastically different show than TNG because TOS is constantly heavily laden with internal conflict among the main characters, which btw, is great!

There can be no question that TNG is a radical departure from TOS, and nothing like TOS when it comes to conflict dynamics.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Anwar wrote:

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And was said brawl one entirely between the TOS characters themselves, or was it between them and guest characters?

Guest characters. In this case, Klingons (the bar brawl in question was from "The Trouble With Tribbles").

[Anwar]

Again, the majority of TOS' conflict came from those external guest characters. Same with TNG.

The internal conflict came from McCoy being a racist, Spock being a racist/hypocrite and Kirk having to mediate between the two. Or some weird alien thing affecting their minds. That would've just been annoying in TNG+ and left you wondering why the hell Picard would pic a crew who couldn't agree on anything without some big argument in every situation. Seriously, a lot of this "TOS was loaded with conflict" stuff is revisionist BS cooked up by TNG Haters.

[I am not Spock]

Because the 'no conflict' rule was just stupid, and it prevents good drama from being made. Lots of TNG writers complained about how hard it was to write for characters that weren't allowed to butt heads with each other.