The latest star trek series (not counting movies) takes place in the past, before the federation. It's always hard to do prequels, and very much so in this case, since the first star trek is from like 1970 but takes place after this one. So obviously this one is going to look better and have cooler stuff, even though its before the other one.

Well, it's not a big problem for me anyhow. The story is mostly entertaining, the first and second seasons starts out with mostly episodic content with a few hints about a "temporal cold war" between various factions that have access to time travel.

Season three is a bit episodic, but mostly focusing on a single storyline and a definite goal in mind (not just exploring strange new worlds). In season four the change the format again to a "mini-arc" variation, with 2-3 episodes for each arc. It works really well and the stories are interesting. Maybe the best season. Unfortunately the show got canceled after that one though :(