It’s so bizarre to read this in the present, knowing how incredible TNG was, but I get it - the original crew WAS Star Trek to them.
The dedicated fans revived this series in syndication, well after it had gone off the air in 1969, and felt attached to the characters that they had obsessed over between then and the 1980s. Like modern fans, they thought that departure from what they knew would ruin it.
I wish I could go back in time and tell them that TNG is going to rock.
I love the first few episodes, I prefer babyface riker, and I think Dick Picard was a cool badass who I fully support.
But they should have kept Crusher, and the political conflicts were a ridiculous joke epitomized by the cartoonish ferengi. S3 gave us much better aesthetics and politics (though the new character driven storytelling might be a matter of taste).