Understand with all my criticism I still love Trek, but as a QA person I look at warts, it’s my job and I’m good at it.
The primary problem TOS had is that it was really two different shows. There’s the show that built the legend, it really could tell very good thought provoking SF when they took the time to actually write it, and there’s even good less thought provoking episodes. Then there’s the other show, the cheeseball SF show that cranked out some really dumb SF poorly. I will often sing the praises of Gene Coon (aka “the other Gene”) for being the guy that gave us a lot of what makes Trek great (he gave us Khan and Klingons, nuff said). But it’s often times telling that his previous gig was Wild Wild West, a show I also love but people from the show admit there was an onset rule “if the story is thin have Bob take his shirt off”. You can see a lot of that mentality in Trek, Bill takes his shirt in most of the worst eps.
TNG was held back by a lot of things, Roddenberry killed the writers room with his “no conflict” edict. And appeasing the obsessive fans was a major mistake, that really began the canon problems that shackled 3 more shows and a bunch of movies.
Reboots are primarily to free the writers from the obligations of an unmanageable canon. It re-opens the universe of infinite possibility. There’s a reason why in the old days Hollywood didn’t do canon, it’s limiting, it winds up being a list of reason you can’t do that. All the writers that worked on late era Trek talk about that, canon constantly cutting off stories. It’s a much freer Trek world if Phase 2 had gotten off the ground, part of Phase 2 was the revelation that TOS was a TV show in the Trek universe, that’s a reboot. Should have been another reboot after Voyager for Enterprise, leave that 21 seasons behind and go forth with a more open universe. I find it interesting, and creative, that JJ did his reboot on camera, most of the time when that decision is made they just punt it, put out word that it’s a new world all that old stuff doesn’t apply and just tell their story.
I never saw much character development in 3 and 4. 2 had quite a bit, but 3 and 4 were just bad.
Too many movies are made these days for blanket statements. Yeah Michael Bay has never met dialog he wouldn’t replace with an explosion. But there’s a lot of character development in JJs first Trek, Kirk evolves dramatically, and I really love the conflict between him and Spock. Things still get blown up, but it’s no Bay movie. I think JJ brings a lot fun in, his Trek is a fun movie, with stuff. Trek had become very not fun.
but 3 and 4 were just bad.
The replacement Saavak was acted like a liberal vulcan. I couldn't stand her. I liked McCoy's part but three need to be played out for number 4. I hated the artsy farts part where they went back in time but over all I liked 4. Main reason, they got a chance to get off the set.
I like Gene Coon also. The other Gene tried to put too much of himself into Kirk. I think he must of like the shirt being pulled off more than Shatner.
I've been watching other shows by Abrams and sometimes he scores and in other he flops badly. I had high hopes for Super 8 but if was terrible.