I think the modern writers have forgotten that some of those gimmick episodes of TOS happened because they had a shoestring budget and had to reuse whatever cowboy or city set was available.
I like this season. Star trek always has this premise of "crazy ass shit happens in space all the time," but instead of leaning into the science mumbo jumbo to fix the crazy shit like most series do, the crazy is a narrative tool to tell these like genre bender stories. SNW was becoming way too serial. The two seasons of Gorning became so sucky, like I am so sick of the "endless waves of un-human enemies that have to be killed in order to be survived" trope. And then the final episode of season 3 where Batel like transcends no real good reason, with no explanation or basis, was such a weird cop out.
I was also so fucking over all the lovey dovey eyes and kissy faces in the first 3 seasons, trying to shoehorn in all this romance that just never felt natural. The whole hot Spock/Nurse Chapel epoch felt so fake and lame. Both characters are more believable without the goopy romance forced into every episode.
This season IMO feels really fresh. The horror episode was really good and legit scary, Star Trek noir was fucking badass, even the soap opera episode landed on a really excellent emotional note despite being so cheesy at first blush.