I liked Insurrection…
Me too. It feels like a long TNG episode, which for many people is a problem, and it contradicts an episode of TNG, but compared to Nemesis it’s a masterpiece.
Which episode did Insurrection contradict?
I don’t remember the English titles of the episodes, but there was the last episode with Wesley, I think season 7 - the situation was similar - the Federation has decided to forcefully remove a colony of American Indians because somebody else wanted it. Picard’s attitude was “I don’t like it, but it’s an order”. In Insurrection the situation is very similar, but now for some reason Picard decides to do a small insurrection to defend them.
Wil Wheaton has a cameo at Troi and Riker’s wedding, in a starfleet dress uniform. It contradicts Wesley leaving Starfleet to follow the Traveler. (The episode is called Journey’s End.)
Insurrection doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially considering that the people living on the planet were not originally from there. And this is not even the second time the Enterprise has been told to move colonists. The colonists in Journey’s End are among those who form the Maquis, due to the borders between the Federation and Cardassian territories being redrawn—but also there was The Ensigns of Command, where Data alone has to convince a large colony to move rather than be exterminated by the Sheliak.
So Picard’s decision to defy Starfleet in Insurrection does indeed seem really arbitrary.
In both Ensigns of Command and Journey’s End, the situation is of a Federation species in Non-Federation space, which in both cases may be destroyed if they are not evacuated. The situation in Insurrection is very different, since the colony is not under imminent threat of destruction from a non-Federation force.
The argument that the colonists aren’t originally from that planet is sort of a non-sequitur, since the same situation applies in Journey’s End and Picard recognizes that their new home is just as legitimate as Earth.