I think part of the difference is while Kirk was sometimes completely befuddled by the shit he was put through, he always treated his missions with deadly seriousness.
Pike, in contrast, is very clearly not a serious captain. At this point, I'd take Season 1-2 Archer over him. He's just a chill guy who lets everything slide and half-asses the missions, because it's all in good fun, right?
Yeah. He just isn't the captain Hunter made him out to be in The Cage. I much prefer Hunters performance. The whole tattoo scene and him making a fool of himself to the alien delegation was just too much. Yeah when Kirk had a similar think happen in The Naked Time the safety of his ship and crew knocked him back to his senses right quick.
Also most of the crew acted like morons on the planet. Just a whole farcical episode. We still have the puppet comedy episide coming up. That two in a season of 10 episodes again.
SNW started out pretty decent but descended into too much weird comedy and relationship stuff. N I thought we would see a ton of strange things out there in deep space like we got in TOS but so far we get little of that. Its all relationship stuff and how everyone feels about eachother or loves their job. I've given up seeing anything as good as The Doomsday Machine or The Cornimite Maneuver. That is brilliant Star Trek. But there is good news.
To paraphrase picard
SynthaStar Trek just heightens my appreciation for the real thing TOS.


