It’s so bizarre to read this in the present, knowing how incredible TNG was, but I get it - the original crew WAS Star Trek to them.
The dedicated fans revived this series in syndication, well after it had gone off the air in 1969, and felt attached to the characters that they had obsessed over between then and the 1980s. Like modern fans, they thought that departure from what they knew would ruin it.
I wish I could go back in time and tell them that TNG is going to rock.
I remember when it first aired. I was not a fan. Having re-watched the entire series in a loop since the first airing (I recorded the broadcasts on VHS), I can comfortably say that the first season is pretty shit. Once it finds its stride though…
I watched it as an impressionable 6 year old and loved every minute of it, but yeah, watching through it again, the first season was rough.
My feelings exactly.
I saw TOS when I was 9-10 years old and it was mindblowingly good compared to almost anything else you could see on TV at the time in my backwater country.
Few years later I learned that this new series TNG will start airing and I was very excited. My disappointment was endless when I saw the pilot.
I strongly disliked the general production aesthetics and Enterprise-D looked just stupid compared to the iconic original/refit Enterprise of TOS era. The characters felt so empty compared to the old crew and the first season scripts weren’t so great, so I gave up on the series after seeing few episodes. This was in the early 90’s.
15 years later I saw a few episodes from the later seasons and to my surprise found that they were good. So I watched the entire series and enjoyed it. I still prefer TOS and love the new SNW, there’s something about the older era setting that just hits me in the feels.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
Really fond memories tend to hit the right Spock.
I rewatched it recently and I found it better than I remembered. My partner who watched it with me for the first time loved it from the start.