ElTerprise: Yes - i forgot about Undiscovered Country which was actually the first Star Trek i watched. That was a good one. Have you ever watched the DC of it?
Yeah most of the Q episodes are rubbish although some of them are quite important like the Borg episode.
The episodes you mentioned were okayish imho but i liked the idea of Picard feeling uncomfortable around children.
I always had problems with shiny perfect Federation - that's why i really liked the darker episodes in the later seasons of TNG (after Gene Roddenberry died) and DS9 :)
not that i recall the version of 6 i have is around 106 minutes
i didnt really like the borg episode mostly because it moved so slow
that is a problem i have with tng there is no urgency everything is squeeky clean and leasurly
there is very little tension
when it does things it does it well but when it slips it slips up badly
well my opinion is suspect anyway ;p
i like the royale and peak performance from season 2 ;p
yes i always disliked the shiny perfect depiction of the federation it just rings hollow thats not how humans are not now and i doubt that we wil be in 400 years either