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.
There is one legit worry in the article, that the new show would impact TOS movies. But the rest of the article is spent talking about how it would be impossible for the new show to be good. It’s wild to read it with the benefit of hindsight lol
But also, so what if it turns out to not be good? You can’t know ahead of time in the same way no one knew TOS would be good. Plus, if being progressive was remotely anything these fans valued in Trek, there was plenty of room for improvement. Like, how has Trek fared against the Bechdel test? I’d imagine it takes up until Voyager that you start to get consistent episodes that pass (I’m not sure how often Jadzia-Kira and Troy-Crusher conversations happened)
Especially knowing that they went on to make 6 movies!
Two of them were made after this article came out (he mentions four movies being made. Star Trek IV came out in 1986, TNG premiered in 1987). So Star Trek V 😬 and Star Trek VI 👍 were yet to be made.