The whole "bad acting/wooden acting" thing is, for the most part,
something that came out of a lot of unfair (in my view) criticisms of the
show, because we're not doing hysterics, not doing "here's all of our
character's history in five seconds," and not playing archetypes; they
are people who you have to get to know. And in some cases, it was just to
find something to slam. Same thing happened to many of the early reviews
of TNG, and many of the net discussions of TNG. It just becomes something
everybody repeats, a shibboleth, something they can throw into the pot
without fully understanding what they're saying.

jms