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Maybe that's why I'm the most fond of Trek when Nicholas Meyer is at the helm and Gene Roddenberry is as far away as the bounds of this planet will allow from the production.
I'll grant you that most of your post is well-written, even if I disagree with at least 80 % of it.
But you DO realize that THIS particular comment pretty much locks you in with TUC as the trek you're most fond? Trek with zero science fiction content, characters not merely drastically altered, but drastically altered for mere effect, and Trek that doesn't even work on a basic whodunit level.
It's all worth it to see Kirk exclaim "Let them die!" I'd waited
two movies for him to grieve over his dead son. The image of a worn-out Kirk and Spock serving aboard an equally worn-out
Enterprise as they realized just how out-of-touch they'd become is just so compelling.
It's human and it speaks to me.
I've never really cared much for the Valeris sub-plot and viewed the fairly trite 'Cold War' setting as merely a vehicle to allow us to see our heroes at the end: bitter and used up.
You could say the same about various bits of TOS as well, but those aren't the reasons folks made an institution out of the thing. Part of it is characters, part of it is the overly-lauded optimism, and part of it is the presentation -- that is the look and the sound and the feel of the thing.
I like TOS the most when Kirk is filled with self-doubt privately but is unable to express that doubt, lest it damage his command, or when Spock wrestles with his dual nature while attempting to appear impassive. It's those character beats that make it all work. Was the design and the idea of a working ship in space compelling for the time? Sure, but that's not why
I tuned in. That concept has been done so often, and many times better than
Trek that hanging your hat on it now for the new production doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In any case,
Star Trek means Kirk, Spock and (sometimes) McCoy to the vast majority of the uninitiated. This movie aims to give them what they expect, but hopefully in a novel fashion.
Folks can rattle on about matte lines and plywood if they choose, but they ought to acknowledge all the good in TOS design with the bad -- the set layouts in some instances, the expressionist cinematography, the use of largely black frames (go to when the bomb goes off outside in BALANCE OF TERROR for a great example) in an era of bright brighter brightest -- all of this is part of what made it endure, whether you choose to acknowledge its relevance or not (note I am distinguishing this from all the 'if you go warp 10 you becoms a toad' stuff from ModernTrek.)
I'm no student of cinema and I have to admit that many of the artistic choices of camera angle and framing go right over my head. That said, I think that much of what made Trek endure during the ten-year drought between TOS and TMP was the fan-fic: even the Kirk/Spock slash served to keep the fans aquainted with the people on the
Starship Enterprise that they missed seeing every week on the small screen.
I think it is very good! 
