Though "Enterprise" is by no means the best Star Trek series, its pilot was undoubtedly of very high quality. It took up an interesting position in the world of Star Trek between Cochrane's invention of the warp drive, portrayed in "First Contact" and the events in the original series. It made a valiant attempt to connect various dots, and was at least in part successful.
To begin with, the series lived up to its promise, but by Season Three fatigue had set in. Story lines had to be pinched from previous Star Trek episodes, and the series became infected by the prevailing desire of TV companies to stretch stories across several episodes, or even a whole season.. The decision to cancel was sad but inevitable.

Of course, The Cage was not originally aired at all. The network, NBC, commissioned another pilot, and the series got under way. The episode is interesting because of what might have been. Instead of Kirk we have Pike, and another first officer was also on the bridge. The story itself is not remarkable, but it's well done, and illuminating, as it shows us what Roddenberry intended.

This pilot attempted to bring Star Trek back to its origins. Deep Space Nine was underway, but had changed the "universe" fairly radically. Many fans wanted something closer to Roddenberry's vision, rather than the synthesized violence of DS9. And rather than humanity finding new enemies everywhere, Voyager showed how the humanity we had known since the original series could work together. Only problem was that they were stranded a long way from home, but you cannot have everything.

This was Star Trek at the height of its television career. The Next Generation was mature by then, and the creators hit on the idea of setting this on a space station. Since that was a fairly static setting, a worm hole was conveniently nearby, giving access to another quadrant. Unfortunately, it did not take long for the series to get bogged down. In a vain attempt to attract new viewers, the positive vision of the future, portrayed earlier, became tainted and dull. Humanity was in constant conflict with a variety of other villains - a good excuse for even more landing parties with phasers. It was life, but not as we know it.

The Next Generation got off to a nervous start. We had Marina Sirtis feeling the pain of alien species, but not very convincingly. In truth, this was a terrible pilot. And it took TNG a couple of seasons before the best episodes appeared. But it was worth the wait. Here, the creators made a deliberate attempt to be different from the original series and the feature films, by moving forward to the 24th century.

The wait for Discovery was a long one. The new films, started in 2009, were a little disappointing, and took Star Trek in a different direction. Fortunately, Discovery was worth waiting for. It was clear from the beginning that it was the best Star Trek series since Voyager. It was decided to keep faith with the original Star Trek, and that is even reflected in the theme music.To be sure, the opening double episode was something of a slow burner. And it did not introduce all the main characters. So Captain Lorca is not there until later. But it does explain the premise, and the status of Michael Burnham.