When TNG tried to be TOS in the 80s, it was a bad show, it only became a good show when it got out of TOS' shadow. I think a new show will have to adapt to the current TV landscape, rather then trying to be an 1980s show today.
The flaw with TNG's early seasons wasn't structure or format. The flaw was execution. GR didn't trust anyone in knowing what they were doing to get things done right. He was constantly overriding others and shooting down their ideas thinking he was the only one who knew best. He had become a shadow of his younger self when he could trust in others' abilities and talents to delivery good work. Things didn't get better for TNG until GR started to step away. This had a subsequent effect, though, because even though he didn't know well enough to leave alone whatever positive influence he had was also taken away and the show began to take on an identity that was not
Star Trek anymore.
I know it's an old argument and fans of given shows will protest, but the later work did reinterpret GR's idea into something else. This isn't a new issue because it started to happen way back during TOS' second season and then throughout much of the films. While Gene Coon brought a lot to
Star Trek he also had more conventional impulses than GR (and others) did in the day. Coon could be less forward thinking as GR on many things and he wasn't as forward thinking as even D.C. Fontana. Even so GR was there to reign things in when he felt they went too far. Roddenberry and Coon certainly didn't agree on the degree and type of humour to be used in
Star Trek. Coon wanted more and Roddenberry wanted it dialed back. TOS' third season is a further example of the loss of Roddenberry's positive influence to properly polish things off before going before the camera.
GR might have been thinking this during the early years of TNG, but by then he wasn't the man he was. During TOS he could guide while still being able to recognize and trust the good ideas of others. Later he could recognize and trust others' good ideas. He took it all on himself and he wasn't up to it.
In the old days GR liked to make NBC look like villians even though they were (initially) supportive and could have good suggestions. That issue got worse later on during TNG because now GR resisted input from others besides the suits. A case in point could have been the exploding Remick in TNG's "Conspiracy" episode. The studio wanted caution exercised in showing Remick's death and his remains with the creature inside. In protest GR made the post production team make the scene more and more intense than it needed to be. It wasn't about who was right, but about Roddenberry making a point about who was in charge.
The early seasons were also plagued by cast and crew's lack of familiarity with what they were doing. This might also be traced back to conflicting messages on what they were trying to do. Too bad Roddenberry alienated key people (like D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold) who could have helped things go more smoothly.
So again TNG's problem in the early goings wasn't format, but execution.
