I'm trying to think of what was around in the late 90s and it was stuff like Buffy and X-files and Stargate, which was just doing much more interesting things than Star Trek at the time.
I found this list of episodes watched on Netflix:
https://nerdist.com/article/star-trek-netflix-most-rewatched/
And it's like the big standalone episodes that were somewhat decent that people like, which makes sense because Voyager was essentially trying to remake TNG at some point (I have no fucking clue why Endgame would be the most watched thing though. lol)
But at that time, the Voyager premise was seen as wasted, there was much hay made about Ron D Moore joining and quitting the show after one episode to go on to make BSG. The failure there was that Voyager wasn't keeping up with the trends of television that was clearly developing, including the launch of serialized television and Lost-style series arcs. Incidentally it's probably why DS9 is seen was forward thinking and perhaps the constant bickering between Behr and Berman actually made it a better show by forcing them to include episodic stories alongside a highly serialized story arc.
I can't divorce myself from like 30 years of Star Trek nerdery (other than the fact that I don't care about the franchise anymore), so I'll always be coloured by the fact that TNG was quality television and Voyager was a complete and utter disappointment where I started watching what I considered better SF television at the time. But I accept the fact that people 10 years younger than me might not care that the Kazon story line was a pointless exercise or that Q went from an interesting antagonist for Picard to a horny alien who wants to bang Janeway. That's fine and maybe Voyager is the best Trek after all.
All that said, I have no idea what this new Picard show is supposed to be in the current context of TV shows. Is it supposed to be like Game of Thrones or The Expanse and fit within that type of genre serialized storytelling? Is it supposed to be a serious character study like Better Call Saul or Fargo or Chernobyl? I think it's fair to actually compare this show to what's currently airing now, because it's not like it exists in a complete vacuum.
TNG fit in very well with the late 80s/early 90s television, producing extremely strong episodic television that wasn't recognized because it was genre television. DS9 alienated a lot of people because it was 5-10 years too early for long form serialized storytelling... and when Voyager came around, people were already invested in shows like Buffy and X-Files where they had a perfect mix of story arcs and stand-alone episodes. When Enterprise finally came around, the old style of Star Trek was completely dead and people were into 24 and Lost and the Wire and Sopranos and all this much better TV that it couldn't compete with. I actually think it's useful to put Discovery and Picard into the same TV context, because it should be judged against the best of the medium if we want to take these things seriously as "art".
