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TNG opened up more complex storylines, drama and ensemble acting to go along with the better special effects ...

...none of which could alter the fact that STTNG was incredibly boring, politically naive, and with the exception of the lead had a leaden bunch of actors. It turned the original show--which was nothing but a fun adventure story, with likable characters and colorful adventures--into a dull-looking UN in space. The racism of the original show was still present--all Klingons warlike, all Vulcans logical, etc.--but the underlying message was nauseatingly liberal.

The cheesy effects (nothing ever looked gritty or believable) weren't as fun as the cheesy FX of the original. The music was trite, as opposed to the meaty dramatic scores of the original. It was like watching a lecture in space every week. The few good episodes went back to the values of the original--interesting (as opposed to merely clever and tricky) stories, exciting action, people in peril.

Farscape and even the somewhat overrated Firefly are far superior to TNG, with Firefly being more old-fashioned and having interesting characters, while Farscape was truly out there.

TNG never took chances, the characters were dull (a robot that wants to be human--yeah, ok, ok, we get it, we get it!), and I can't figure out its popularity.

Farscape was great. Much better than TNG especially in the beginning. TNG did come around if you could get past the tacit lectures about socialism. Some of the characters grew and became palatable.

The Crushers were horrendously obnoxious. Wesley and his boy genius and Beverly constantly lecturing. Yuck.

My favorite was always Tasha Yar.

...none of which could alter the fact that STTNG was incredibly boring, politically naive, and with the exception of the lead had a leaden bunch of actors. It turned the original show--which was nothing but a fun adventure story, with likable characters and colorful adventures--into a dull-looking UN in space. The racism of the original show was still present--all Klingons warlike, all Vulcans logical, etc.--but the underlying message was nauseatingly liberal.

Note the bolded portion. This is a problem that has plagued the Star Trek franchise since the end of the original series (even Voyager is overbearingly leftwing if definitely a cut above TNG). And it's also why, IMO, Deep Space 9 was by far the best of the different series, excepting the original. In DS9 there was less pie in sky idealism; the lead character lived in a truly God awful world and it was mainly a story about how he had to deal with it as best as an imperfect human can. Not to mention the whole Bajor vs Cardassia thing had an Islam vs Jews flavor to it where the religious people (the Bajorans, or the Jews if you will) were actually the goodguys.

In general, the original series was good guys vs badguys; the newer material is liberals in space (with the notable exception of DS9). This paradigm even applies to the movies. The original cast movies were much more grounded in reality as opposed to the TNG cast movies. Just think about the flavor of movies like Generations, First Contact, and Insurrection. Compare those to Star Trek VI. ST VI was definitely the best of all the ST movies with ST II being a very close second. Why? ST VI described a political situation that was utterly believable. When I watched it the first time, I realized it was a great movie because it's exactly the sort of thing that would really happen. The very best scifi is not scifi that has interesting technologies, strange new worlds, odd environments, or the coolest rayguns. The best scifi is about people and how they deal with the very different world they live in. It's also about the great longings of the human heart. For example, I really enjoyed the movie IRobot. People will tell you that IRobot was about the future and robots, but nothing could be further than the truth. Future technology and robots were only the backdrop; that movie was about the burning desire in the heart of every person for freedom.

These reasons are why the original Star Trek series, the original cast Star Trek movies, Stargate, Babylon 5, Firefly, Serenity, IRobot, and anything Heinlein wrote is outstanding science fiction, and STTNG is only average science fiction.