Star Trek has always been about human drama more than "scifi ideas". The "scifi ideas" are there to propel the human drama.
True, but Trek tended and usually tried to make technobabble feel like real technology. While using real science where possible. At least until DS9 and especially VOY, where the quality of technobabble went down.
Looking at TNG episodes like "Time Squared" and "Contagion", both used sci-fi ideas wonderfully to complement the human condition and vice-versa.
"Time Squared" is high concept, in terms of seeing one's self from the future due to an anomaly that may have been created due to an accident as ordered by the person who has managed to slip back in time. Add in Picard who is very confident and usually right, sees this strange set of events, and falters. Not a bad episode for Troi, too. we never get an actual explanation for the space tornado thingy, only guesses, as to why it took a fascination to the ship - but for Picard it did sense two of them and may have had a rudimentary intelligence. Or a being lived in the tornado, we don't know. But it's not a story about space tornadoes and critters living inside as much as Troi can figure out what's inside, but of Picard and what happens to a person if they make a mistake and actually see proof of it before it happens. Again, it's high concept stuff but with Picard's character it's all explored rather well.
"Contagion" had an allegory on computer viruses, though the Ikonian sensors were not
malicious as such so it's not a direct parallel being made, assuming if it's possible - I can't connect my Commodore 64 to my smartphone and see the C64's ROM being reprogrammed. Mostly because the C64 has only ROM and no EEPROM or other form of reprogrammable storage for critical operational processes, but that's just a technicality. But having Picard there to counter Worf's idea that the portal door (and yes, it's closer to magic than technology right now) was used for escape as opposed to conquest was mind-opening and rather good and very Trekkish, as well as the crew figuring out the probes - the characters interact with the events without always knowing what other characters do, in front of the TV screen we see what they all do so naturally the answers come quicker to the viewer. It's why "reality is stranger than fiction". Anyway, Picard might still have been wrong but his reasoning to make a hypothesis was entertaining, and sufficient to counter Worf's belief. That and how the Yamato's logs were copied over to spread - that was brilliant. Showing not just the Yamato's captain frustrated with the ship "malfunctions" but the tie-in to the planet and the Romulan threat. It almost has a proto-DS9 vibe but "Contagion" goes in a completely different and self-contained direction...
