The special effects have actually been updated in the current syndication package- apparently, it’s so well-done that most people don’t notice it.
CBS has put Star Trek episodes on YouTube with limited commercial interruption.
I just finished watching “The Menagerie” on Youtube, and damned if it doesn’t hold up as well as anything produced in the last forty years.
The final scene with Kirk in the briefing room, and the Talosians show him a (albeit illusory) rejuvenated Pike reunited with Vina… “Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.”
Excellent.
I don’t understand how anyone who’s seen Star Trek before can help but notice the new effects. They’re obviously not 1960’s quality anymore.
I find them a bit jarring, myself, and for the most part entirely unnecessary.
The plot was in a sense simple, with a much deeper meaning, very obvious in the middle of the Vietnam War. Not many shows at the time had anything to say about the war at all, so this one stood out. And I totally agree with you about the power of the absence of a simple resolution.
Don’t forget the scene in Bread and Circuses where Spock and McCoy are in jail together wondering how Kirk was faring (rather well actually 
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I saw that episode in a movie theater recently with the updated SFx, etc. Even though I’ve been a fan since the original TV airing and have seen that episode dozens of times, I was riveted to my seat. Each time the episode came back to the ship with the ongoing trial I was desperate for the story to continue. That episode was so well done, especially considering its history (original pilot remade into a two-part episode) that it even held up great on the big screen. It was a fantastic experience.
Okay, but you do recognize them as different, right?
Well, yes, and that recognition is a distraction. I suppose if I watched each episode several times, I’d gradually stop noticing.
Likewise, the “space hippies” episode was not (quite) as bad as people remember. Buried deep amid all the counterculture silliness, there are a couple of scenes that raise pertinent questions about the responsibilities of leaders and followers.
These are some good, thoughtful answers. I also wonder if TOS had an advantage in being closer, in time and in inspiration, to written science fiction, especially of the action-and-adventure-and-space-exploration sort, when that was in its prime.
More important in my mind is the fact that, at the time, it was one of only a small handful of shows that tackled science fiction, and there weren’t that many movies that did so in a realistic way, either. So we ate it up as science fiction fans, because it was OUR show, and in a way that Lost In Space never was.
Even by the time of TNG, that wasn’t the case. The Star Wars movies, and all that they had spawned, made science fiction less of a wonderous thing on either screen. So while Trekkers ate up TNG, for the most part, science fiction fans were much more blasé about it. And by the time we had gotten through seven seasons of TNG, several seasons of DS9, and uncounted seasons of Voyager, we began to be heartily sick of the overdoing of science fiction, and the Trek premise.
About the only reason I watched Enterprise the first season was because it offered something truly new: a look at the very beginnings of Earth space exploration. I had long since ceased watching Voyager, and have ignored almost all other science fiction on TV, which is mostly useless. BSG as re-imaged was an exception at first, but then it began to get quite average and mundane, too.