Just to get the subject of Picard (who my sister always calls The Egg!) out of the way: it did make sense really for him not to beam down all the time. After all, he was the captain and although Kirk went on nearly every landing party he risked capture, injury or death in many of them. To compound matters, his second in command, Spock, often joined him. So if something happened and they got captured (as they often did) it meant that a large slice of the command structure of the Enterprise was out of commission. Riker often made the point that Picard's first duty was to the ship and crew, and indeed was reminded of same by Deanna later, in I think "Best of both worlds"? The captain had a responsibility and couldn't be just joyriding off with the boys whenever he felt like it. More realistic that way.
I also think Frakes really grew into the role of Riker from season two onwards. Remember "Frame of mind"?
Now, on to character development. Doctor Who is a good example of good character development --- what I've seen of it --- but the point I was making is not that other shows don't do this, not that NextGen or DS9 did it, but that Voyager did not. No one character, bar the Doctor and to some extent Seven of Nine, grew, learned or changed over the course of the series. I've already said it once, I don't think I need to repeat do I? Season one Voyager characters = season seven Voyager characters. Look at the difference in NexGen, Babylon 5 --- hell, Red Dwarf even by the end. If your characters don't grow and develop that's a combination of lousy acting (check) and crap writing (check).
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Oh, and Wrath of Khan? Great movie but definitely carried by Montalban, RIP. With apologies to Herman Melville, of course...