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.
It’s fair to have expected TNG to be a cash grab. I’m sure TNG was a cash grab among all the other things it was. We all want to get paid, after all. I’m just glad it turned out to be so much more as well.
I’m reminded of the letters page of Aquaman in the issue after he lost his hand.
“To those of you saying we did it for the shock value, we have this to say for ourselves: we sure didn’t do it for the boredom value.”