Every new incarnation of Star Trek since 1973 has been dismissed by a segment of fandom as "NOT Star Trek." It's always the same rhetoric every time -- "It's not exactly like what came before, therefore it's wrong." But TNG in particular had a major uphill battle for acceptance, since it was the first time anyone had tried doing Trek that wasn't about Kirk, Spock, etc., that was in a different century with different characters. It was always popular with general audiences, but hardcore TOS purists resisted it for years, and a number of the TOS actors were hostile to it as well, since they were afraid the new cast would replace them in the movies.
Couldn't agree more with that statement. As iI have already said elsewhere, every new incarnation of star trek is generally different in its on unique ways but as long as it holds true to the basic core philosophy of star trek, then its star trek whichever way you happen to look at it.
The thing you have to keep in mind about early TNG is that, for all its weaknesses in writing and production values, most of '80s SFTV was much, much worse. This was the decade of Knight Rider, Automan, Voyagers!, and Manimal. There were a few worthwhile SF shows in that decade -- the original V miniseries (though not its dumber sequels), the Twilight Zone revival, The Ray Bradbury Theater on cable, the heartfelt Starman in '86, and Max Headroom the same year TNG premiered. But most SFTV at the time was dumb and cheesy. So when TNG came along, it seemed brilliant in comparison -- smart, well-written, well-produced, with a top-notch cast. But it paved the way for a major improvement in SFTV over the years ahead -- its own writing improved massively by season 3, and the rest of SFTV started to improve alongside it, with shows like Quantum Leap and Alien Nation and Babylon 5 coming along, and so those first two seasons of TNG that looked so good at the time ended up seeming much weaker in retrospect.
