A little more Star Trek has been watched in the last month. The show's got ups and downs but is a lot more respectable than it looks at first. Still I'd agree based on just the few episodes I've seen that Next Generation does the same thing a lot better.

Still, certainly some stuff of merit here.

"Miri" is bad on a couple of different levels, which is a pity because it actually has a number of qualities that would make it a very good episode. The plotline involves the ship finding an exact copy of earth in the 60's-70's, except with an alternate history that makes it post-apocalyptic. This is a really resonant idea and was probably even more so back IN the 60's-70's, but the episode immediately catches a separate plot and then fails to resolve why an alternate earth is floating out in the middle of space. That's, you know, kind of a big deal. That kind of shit rearranges your entire theology.

The other plot is pretty solid but somewhat marred by a pack of feral children who have enacted an entirely dim new society. One of the kids looks a lot like John C Reilly but isn't, and none of the kids can act. Which is really par for the course for child actors, especially when their writing sucks. Still, cool things happen here.

"The Menagerie" is a two-parter, which takes the very interesting concept of Spock hijacking the Enterprise to help a former space captain and mixes it with the extremely dull footage of the pilot episode. I mostly skipped through this, as it's literally that entire episode with mild interjections from the real world and a barely modified ending. The actual interesting bits end with a combination of "it was all a dream" and deliberate ignorance of plot.

"The Conscience of the King" pulls off a neatly complicated plot with a few good turns, and it's the first episode that really kind of hurts emotionally. It feels like an episode where Captain Kirk loses, and those are pretty important to have. He's human in this episode. And this episode is about humans. And that's really why it shines.