Agreed the execution was horrible - not to put too fine a point on it, but there was no real story continuity between episodes. Each episode was more or less self-contained: what happened in the last episode was either totally “forgotten” by the characters or no longer relevant - no matter how over-ridingly important it was previously.
Worse, there was no serious theme to the whole thing: exploring for the sake of exploring may work in real life, but is boring on paper or screen. Just a travel log without the depth of most travel logs. In the end simply mindless entertainment.
All of which is why any remake holds little interest for me.
Babylon 5 is still the best Scifi TV/movie ever made and was what Star Trek could have been.
So? The original Star Trek series did the same thing in the 1960s. I don't see people bashing it because there was no overall "arc" each season and the purpose of the show was "exploring for the sake of exploring". Let's get back to basics of what Star Trek is.
I'm fine with stand-alone, self-contained episodes that take place at an unspecified time after the previous episode, as long as they have a compelling, memorable story. Some of the greatest sci-fi series in history were anthology stories, like The Twilight Zone. To use a more recent example, JJ Abrams own successful sci-fi TV series, Fringe (2008-2013) was mostly "Stand alone" mystery-of-the-week stories.
Again, there is where I'd say the movies and TV version of the franchise should differ. Doing a direct followup on the big screen that furthers what happened in the last film works well. Its been 2-3 years and films are big "event" showpieces, unlike American TV where you get 22+ episodes a season. Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek Into Darkness would have definitely been strengthened by following up and tying into the events of their predecessor film.
Seems to me that Star Trek has gotten it backwards lately:
On television, the 60s & 80s Star Trek worked great as anthology stories, but on film, The Wrath of Khan - The Voyage Home worked great as a tight-knit trilogy that flowed seamlessly from film to film. On the other hand, "stand alone" films since the late 90s, and boring, drawn-out story arcs on TV like the "Xindi war" on Enterprise, really exasperated audiences.