Looking Back Upon the Future

I’m binge watching Star Trek, the original series, and here are my observations, about halfway through season two.
I’m surprised at how well it holds up as entertainment – the plots are interesting, the suspense is all there, and of course we owe it a debt of gratitude because it was the beginning of all that followed….but damn.
It’s not just the cheesiness of the effects, they did what they could with what was available at the time. It’s the cheesiness of the dialog, and the acting. Of course, T’Pol on Enterprise and Tuvok on Voyager took some good natured ribbing from the crew, but Bones was a downright asshole to Spock most of the time. It was like a prediction that we would take our bigotry and racism into space with us. And the women’s roles. Not only are the female crew members totally objectified, but apparently women of every other species throughout the galaxy are satisfied with serving their menfolk slavishly, and in short skirts. Yes, I’ve seen them bringing coffee to the bridge.
The later iterations did a much better job with that.
On the plus side, they hadn’t invented the holodeck yet, because nobody was even talking about virtual reality, and that got totally abused as a plot device. (Voyager was the worst with that, especially Paris and Kim with their stupid Flash Gordon fantasies)
Bottom line, although it has a special and honored place in the Trek universe, it is my least favorite of all of them – except Discovery, which I may try and give another shot, but the three episodes I saw failed to engage me in any way. I don’t count it at all.