I grew up with TOS reruns, since I wasn't around for their original airing. Even remembering those photocopies of coloring book pages featuring Kirk and Spock, a shuttlecraft, the phrase "RED ALERT"... so out-there and adventure, it was real wondrous escapism for a kid... kids of all ages, which I didn't really fathom at the time how big Trek was...
Without home video either, there was the photonovel of TMP I'd picked up used, of which the speech therapist had me recite: I was trying to emulate the inflection and she she was stuck on pronunciation.
(May have been better materials to use, but whatever, I wasn't asking to recite it...)
Saw TSFS in the theater and yummed it all up. It was Trek! Big screen! Something new! Some of the continuity wasn't quite there, and for some of that I never picked up on at the time. It was just an action-packed roller coaster adventure - circa 1984. Obviously, rewatches can augment or alter one's impression over time, the only thing set in stone is the embedded fossil of some bug that thought the stone was an elephant's hind, but that's not important right now. (It's my top-3 Trek film so it's more than the sum of its parts, and more than the sum of the elephant's farts too...)
I recall summer camp (ick) where talk of IV was made. People mocked by bringing up a DeLorean, flux capacitor, TARDIS, you name it. At the time, it was phenomenal. Of course, it's dated the most but DOES make a cozy time capsule of 1986, and fans of the Commodore Amiga used for some viewscreen effects can always rewatch this film and yell brusquely at the screen every time the Mac appears - but that too isn't important right now.
Then came TNG.
I recall those laminated book covers handed out to students... wish I'd kept mine as it'd fetch a frippin' ransom on auction sites nowadays. Not sure why they were given out, most of us had brown paper bags or some had laminated covers with kittens or hot air balloons or what not, or some had them protected with thick cowhide surrounded by lead to ensure no fees would be accrued...
Season 1 started out mixed, had ups and downs, the only competition I recall were The 6 Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman reruns, Buck Rigers reruns that felt more dated than the Doctor Who reruns also occurring that were made several years earlier and not the event television it was for the 5th and 6th Doctor eras! Apart from the month when the new season came out, even if it was overly campy crap, but that's also been reevaluated over time (stories not living to potential) not important right now... Blake's 7 and The Prisoner also got re-aired on PBS, but not as often... but TNG? TOS it was not, even if some of the set designs and superficial trappings like the Captain's Log were used. It wasn't TOS but still hooked into it, just different.
TNG thankfully found a new and tight style of storytelling (seasons 1 and 2 are good but season 3 excels and became its definitive and iconic own, became event television instead of being just another show, having 20+ episodes per year helps nail down format and characters a lot faster too). If I wasn't an avid fan before, I was by season 4 - the pinnacle of the run.
I've been able to sit through some modern television, even the latest seasons of Red Dwarf with the goofy color grading (even the trite-since-2005 teal/orange, but the script and tone always supersede what palette is being used. Then again, after b&w television was replaced with color, why not make use of color? It's goofy when TOS, despite being a unicorn-puke palette, still holds up in some ways more than its successors, despite being dated more than the others in others.)
