Agree on the Bonding. The commentary is really interesting and really telling how restrictive and un-relatable the "box" was. Picard was never liked until they showed he had a human side to him in Best of Both Worlds, and I think from that point forward Picard was a better character. Picard came off like a bureaucrat in a lot of episodes. He would also spout off how great they were, etc. In the original series it was about ideas, and the characters could argue over them, in TNG there was really no other opinion allowed to where it would reach to a major conflict between characters. It just made it hard for the writers to flesh out the various characters. I remember seeing "All good things" and at the end when Picard joins the poker game, my reaction was WTF!! why the hell didn't they do this 4 seasons ago. I think its one reason why the TNG movies don't work, they had to change the dynamics of the characters to work on the big screen, and fans complained the characters were not the same as on the TV series. TOS just aged the characters, gave them some additional insights based on their pasts and took it from there. They amped up the relationship angle between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. They didn't have to change the entire dynamic between all of the characters.
-Chris