When TNG originally aired I watched a few episodes and recall thinking it was like a soap opera (as opposed to Star Wars' "space opera"). DS9 was even worse, because it was static, as a soap (or a sit-com) where most of the interactions occur in a common meeting place like a pub. It was Cheers in space.
I gave TNG a chance much later, due to QMx 1/6, and watched it all from beginning to end. I fell for it. Loved the ship and the interaction between the characters. I also watched all of Enterprise, Voyager and DS9 around that time, but TNG remained the clear favourite out of them.
Then a little while back I got the TNG Blu-ray set and made it to the end of season 6 before giving up. I found the characters had largely become irritating, and apart from the holodeck and Q episodes it was a chore to get through.
Maybe the TNG crew were too chummy? It was too touchy feely, emphasised by having a Counsellor on the bridge. The on-hand therapist was actually at odds with Roddenberry's utopian vision. Some things never made any sense. The crew aren't paid in cash, yet the Federation has to use cash to interact with aliens who don't share the same communist values, especially the capitalist Ferengi.
In Rodenberry's future no one will go without, so things are magically conjured from energy by replicators. But they can't create money or the means to power a starship, because that would break the universe.
The holodeck is fun, but also ridiculous due to the scale, level of detail and realism, and the amount of a starship's power you'd expect it would need just to often act as amusement for the crew. The reality of such a utopian future would more likely end up like the opium dens that lured addicts to lives of drug-addled hedonism!
The ultra idealism of TNG renders it less effective than TOS, which was a more basic, workmanlike SF tale of space exploration and moral dilemmas.
and we are no longer the driving force behind Trek)
