Despite the silly (terrible?) humor, it is clearly not intended to be a parody. "Inferior copy" is more accurate, but having seen 11 episodes now, I'd say that

Despite the silly (terrible?) humor, it is clearly not intended to be a parody. "Inferior copy" is more accurate, but having seen 11 episodes now, I'd say that it's only a little bit inferior, not a lot. It seems that the people involved really loved Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Keep in mind that Star Trek TNG was pretty spotty the first season, itself.) If the humor is just not your thing, then you made the right call to abandon it in the second episode. On the other hand, the third episode seems to be the first one that people really liked. That one really felt like a TNG episode and the plot had a couple of surprises in it that I think made the story better. It was also kind of heavy-handed, but then none of the Star Trek series were known for subtlety.