I'm probably one of the few people here who can remember seeing TOS when it was still in first-run mode (though barely). It really wasn't until the early '70s that I became a fanatic about the show, however. Star Trek became my favorite show of my childhood and William Shatner was the greatest actor of them all in my book by the mid-'70s. In retrospect, I might have been a little hasty about the latter opinion , though I still think he's good and is unfairly maligned in some quarters.

Having said all of that, I thing TNG is now my favorite of them all and Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard is the captain to beat.