I avoided watching this for 20 (!) years, because the reviews were ambivalent. But it's really fun. It's not awesome, like the Kirk/Spock series, but it's also (thus far) not excessively moralizing like TNG.
This is the only Star Trek (for me) that captures the wonder of the original series. The writing isn't great, but that was never a thing with Star Trek. They're also a bit kinetic, say, with discovering new Warp-Civilizations.
I also really appreciate that the crew is basically white, except for one black guy that's not blackity-black.
Even the chicks are fine. The writing for the Asian chick is a bit insipid, but it accurately reflects the chick version of the 'hero's journey'.
Unfortunately, they've introduced Time Travel, so I guess a few of the episodes are going to be tedious.
The species thing isn't too far removed from how often Star Trek's played up small but powerful empires that in the end, almost never actually appear at any point in TNG, DS9, or Voyager.
The Tellarites and Andorians for example were fairly prominent in a TOS episode, indicating that they were major players within the Federation (Journey to Babel). Then of course there's the Tholians and the Gorn Hegemony.
If anything, Enterprise managed to bridge the gap in some ways by reintroducing some of these former cast offs and giving them some new life and attention.