STRO

Yes I did. Benji assumed I didn't know about and just brought it up. Because that's what Benji does: bring up factoids. But because he brought up the fact about the mandate doesn't mean I didn't know about the mandate.
Because it's one of my biggest criticisms of TNG and clearly said pages ago that contrary to what people say about TNG, it never truly recovered because of problems tied to the series structure. The mandate is included in that structure.
The mandate was in even more full force in TOS, but you like that more. Just confused over here. Seems like contrarianism because TNG is so beloved and DS9 is more overlooked. Should that be the state of the Trek fandom? Maybe not. But, and benji may or may not back me up here, TNG was just that much of a quantum leap at the time. Khan led to TNG getting greenlit (with a lot of s1 scripts copied wholesale from TOS's scrapped Phase II, hence a lot of the wonkiness in that season), but it was really TNG that set the franchise on a long-term sustainable path. TNG was huge. It expanded the serialized format as much as it could within the confines of early 90s TV. As nacho said, DS9 wouldn't exist without it.
In my opinion, TNG is a great mix of TOS old-style adventure-ism and DS9 character development and arcs.
But like you said, there's a Trek for everyone. But please understand (

) why feathers are ruffled when you stomp into a Star Trek discussion with
that said, TNG does suck
I've brought this up the last time you had a hot take but you have this constant habit of saying something you know for a fact is controversial but don't expound on it at all, then make yourself out to be the attacked party when people call you out for more than a shitpost.
