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.
No thank you. They redid all of the exterior shots with CGI for the Blu-ray release, and it's jarring when compared to the scenes with actors. At least they had the decency to give you the choice between watching that version or the one filmed with little models.
I think we have to accept media as a product of its time, especially science fiction. There's really no way to "modernize" a show where they are feeding physical cards into a computer to program it without reshooting the whole thing, and then it wouldn't be TOS anymore.