Part of the challenges of early TNG is that it tries to make the federation perfect. The writing suffers because of it because there appear to be no true internal conflicts. It’s not until Roddenberry takes a back seat in the creative process that the writing starts to get really good. Though that might also in part be the departure of Maurice Hurley as show runner.

When Paramount released the HD remaster of TNG on Blu-ray, I really enjoyed watching the lengthy (like 2 hours per season) documentary they did on the making of the show. And sadly, one thing was abundantly clear watching that documentary: TNG was good despite Roddenberry, not because of him. The writers all talk about how hard it was to write any sort of interesting story when you were forbidden from showing conflict between the main cast of characters.

> The writers all talk about how hard it was to write any sort of interesting story when you were forbidden from showing conflict between the main cast of characters.

And the show was all the better for it. Writers are lazy, too, and conflict between main characters is by far the cheapest way of creating drama, and the main way fiction differs from reality. Being strongly discouraged from using this shortcut is what gave TNG-era Star Trek another unique feature, that's almost unseen in shows and movies (sci-fi or otherwise): the main cast, and Starfleet in general, are portrayed as competent professionals who are good at their jobs and work well together. It's kind of what you'd expect from people whose dayjob is flying around on FTL-capable WMD platforms.

But yeah, Roddenberry had various peculiarities that needed pushback on. Constraints breed creativity, I guess?

Even TNG didn't always follow through with utopian ideals, because that doesn't make for compelling drama. Tasha Yar came from a failed Federation colony where society had collapsed, and spent her childhood avoiding roving rape gangs.