Kirk was dynamic and an intelligent man of action, with great supporting officers and crew.
The show had charisma, alien life and beautiful women.
TNG was touchy-feely, PC and gay. And that annoying teen fucker Wesley????
Even to this day I am thrilled when I watch an old original 1960s episode. Action, high adventure, great characters, a vivid color palette and so much imagination. Even the chintzy effects don't get in my way of enjoying it. I never got into TNG at all. I don't even bother to watch reruns. The characters were limp and ineffectual. The stories were dull. Hate TNG, love TOS.
shareIndeed.
shareSixty-six years old, and have loved "Star Trek" (the actual title of the original series, believe it or not) since I saw all its episodes in their first run on NBC. I also am a big fan of "Star Trek, the Next Generation", and liked it from its very first episode. Both are great, and have slightly different things to offer, while overlapping quite a bit. I watched all of "Voyager" and "Deep Space 9" and thought they were okay, but I can't stand any of the subsequent ST series.
Also, I liked Wesley.
I've enjoyed a lot about both shows.
But, if you feel like TNG being too politically correct was bad, I have some bad news for you about how progressive and (for its time) "PC" Captain Kirk's adventures were...
TNG was a good show but yes there were some really annoying flaws in the vision of the 24th Century being too perfect. Funny how later shows managed to do somewhat better regarding those characteristics that limited the freedom writers had with TNG.
I used to share the OP's sentiment, but when re-evaluating all this, I have changed my mind a little bit.
The Original Series has lots of greatness to it that will probably never be surpassed by any show, and TNG certainly has very boring, agonizingly tedious sections that slowly plod through a dull and politically-correct social landscape instead of bringing us something exciting and interesting.
However, from another point of view, you could see that TNG has sometimes a bit more cerebral atmosphere and thought-provoking, almost philosophical dilemmas that force the viewer to think, reflect and form their own opinions about these deeper issues in life.
Of course all this is limited to the typically nihilistic, materialistic and almost utilitarian viewpoint of the physical body instead of soul, and muscles instead of meridians, and so on. For a 'cosmic' show like this, it's a bit appalling that life is basically still only appreciated when it has a 'physical form', unless it's some kind of 'interesting alien' - but in any case, no thought is given to what life really is, where soul goes when the body dies, and so on.
Data is a sore point in this manner; it is considered 'alive', just because it's a COMPLEX physical form. But complexity does not equal life.
Because the writers and people in general on this planet do not seem to know what life ACTUALLY is, they always have this dusty viewpoint that anything complex enough is life. Thus, Enterprise's A.I. can be alive, a holodeck character can be alive, Data can be alive, and so on.
I would actually be happy to see that a soul actually incarnated into Data, and THAT makes Data alive. In 'reality' (of the show), however, Data is no more alive than a laptop or a USB memory stick. It's just a complex, autonomously active machine, that should never have been accepted into Starfleet as an officer just because it can look like a human, it can mimic human behaviour, speech and thought, and..
..it has vast 'databanks' (as these TV shows often call it, and no pun intended).
Data can't, because it's not alive, have any 'morals', and that makes it potentially (and as we've seen, also actually) dangerous. It has no humanity to stop it from doing any kind of actions against living beings, and it has no capacity for regret, guilt, etc.
For these reasons, a machine like this should not have been let freely roam in an advanced spaceship, no matter how 'well-meaning' it 'thinks' it is. It can be turned off, it can be reprogrammed, it can be 'remote-controlled', it has the power to swiftly take over the Enterprise in such a situation (proven in certain episodes)..
Data's existence, although understandable from the writer's viewpoint of wanting to re-create Spock in some more 'futuristic' way, is really telling about how limited this show's viewpoint of life is. For a show about a spaceship, whose mission supposedly IS to seek life, this is quite appalling.
Also, in Star Trek, even in the old series, their MISSION is completely disregarded for the most part, except for some throwaway lines here and there.
When does the Enterprise ACTUALLY seek out new life and new civilizations? Isn't it almost ALWAYS on some 'medical mission' or 'doing a survey' or 'helping to delay a moon's orbit decay' or some such thing? Rarely it just 'seeks out new life and new civilizations'. Which is a pity, because I'd watch THAT show..