While I love TNG (even though the cast can’t shut up) and that was the first Star Trek I was familiar with since I was 6 and a fan of reading rainbow when it came out I would say that the original series is my favorite (can happily watch Trek through Enterprise). My dad watched Original Series reruns since as long as I can remember.
The sendoff for the original crew always gets to to me and it just contrast that with writers today who live to crap on or deconstruct the works of better writers. I saw they are making a new blade runner with a delusional man, Disney is making a new Neverending Story, and Netflix is butchering… I mean remaking the Chronicles of Narnia.
One good thing about Star Trek is that I have a lot of books to read. I was at a convention once and a guy had a bunch of Star Trek books for a quarter a piece so I left with a bunch.
It's absolutely a culture thing.
Enterprise has an early episode, s01e17 'Fusion', which involves the ship meeting some very friendly Vulcans who don't follow the teachings of Surak and therefore not only don't suppress their emotions but don't adhere to logic as the rest of the culture do. In general this leads to some very Romulan like Vulcans and while dining with the ships captain he asks Archer if he may try some of the chicken the Enterprise chef has prepared.
It also includes the staple telepathic mindrape scene that almost all Star Trek series have when involving telepaths, but then a lot of sci-fi shows go that route for analogous reasons.