Eh, for me, TNG has not aged well. I never had any particular attachment to it despite my mom being a big trekkie, so I'm in the odd spot of having seen literally every episode at least once, while still being more or less objective about it.
From where I sit, it was a heavily plot driven, entirely episodic show with a whole lot of deus ex machina driving the resolution to each story - which is a sort of catchy, pulp paperback page turning sort of storytelling, but it's pretty superficial. The writing was often enormously cheesy, and aside from the generally good and occasionally excellent work from Patrick Stewart, the acting is... bad. The technical stuff - sound design, lighting, is typical 90's drama. As for the characters themselves, other than Data and Picard, I'm not sure if anyone actually develops throughout the series. The thing it did well was telling what were basically simple, easily digestible morality tales, but they were playing to a pretty low common denominator even there.
I honestly think the popularity in retrospect is a product of how bad 90's TV was in general. Once BSG came along it became clear what sci fi shows could have been all that time.
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