The first Enterprise should have been even more “early” with artificial gravity that didn’t work well and consequentially Velcro everywhere like in the ISS. It might have looked a bit like a bigger ISS. When power came on the bridge display would show a GRUB boot loader and Linux kernel boot output.
Their experiences should have been total immersion in the frontier. Long range subspace had not yet been mastered, so they are cut off after going much beyond our solar system… or maybe they can by stopping and boosting power achieve like 300 baud text links under proper conditions.
No transporters. EVAs and shuttles only. When they wanted to look at something in space it would be like the space walk scene from 2010 (the underrated 2001 sequel).
… and no weapons worth crap against anyone advanced. Maybe a railgun and a primitive phaser. Weak shields.
This is way before the federation so dark forest and Wild West vibes.
The possibility of main power being something other than antimatter also gives a reason why the TOS Romulan warbird was powered by “simple impulse” (which elsewhere seems to be fusion), and how on Earth Lily Sloane and Zefram Cochrane were able to power the Phoenix given the post-WW3 apocalypse and “six months to scrounge up enough titanium just to build a four-meter cockpit”.
I think your worldbuilding would suit something earlier than Enterprise, but Enterprise was just before the foundation of the Federation, so I think they needed roughly the level of imbalance in the show — that said, one of my pet peeves is the way differences in skill/biology/technology/industrial output get squashed in narratives; the usual example I give is that Hawkeye and Thor shouldn’t be in the same battlespace in the same way that an olympic archer and a main battle tank shouldn’t be, but a developmentally realistic depiction of space battle with Vulcans and NX-01 (given time since becoming interstellar) ought to be similar to putting King Polydorus and his army in a fight with the entirety of all branches of the USA armed forces.
They could have gone the long road and let the series play over the course of multiple decades. Showing longterm development, skip some years every episode and display how people, relationships and technology evolve over time. Could even started with a freshmen boarding the NX-01 and ending it with him becoming captain, Admiral and finally dying after an fullfilled live at the dawn of the new federation. With the long live of the vulcans, time-dillitation and the occasional timetravel they would have even enough tools to hold some characters fresh enough for the whole series.
They moved in this direction a bit, particularly in S4, which was ultimately my favorite and makes me wish the show continued on. In particular, the evolution of Earth-Vulcan relationship was some deep worldbuilding.
I do agree though - it could have been a very interesting show if they went earlier. There have been a number of anime in particular (such as Planetes) that capture that near-future space exploration vibe really well, and it could work well in the Star Trek universe.
But it, like the show itself, only works in context of prior Star Treks. If this was the first show I've ever seen, I'd have balked at the intro and would probably be disappointed by the series.
The Burn was a really good idea. It fundamentally changed the rules of space travel in the Trek world and provided a great mystery and possible existential threat that could lurk in the background for several seasons. It also gave future!starfleet a reason to take the main cast with their 1k-years-out-of-date ship seriously (even though I think the spore drive is kinda stupid in general). Instead it was all the power of some child's grief and we fixed it already.
Osyraa could have been the next Dukat. She was introduced as a 1 dimensional villain, but her plan to unite the Emerald Chain and federation showed us that there was more to her. Maybe she was only as cruel as she was because that's what it took for her to attain enough power to make meaningful change for the betterment of the galaxy? If Admiral wossname had accepted the plan it would have been interesting to see federation idealists struggle with having to compromise those ideals if they want to achieve their goals, and to have to work with someone they think of as a monster to do it. There could have been several In The Pale Moonlight moments, and maybe not all of them end with "I can live with it". Instead we kill off Osyraa (death by Burnham even) and hit the fucking reset button on the Emerald Chain.
Burnham could have been Han Solo. She was never Starfleet material: she can't follow orders, has no discipline, and displays no leadership abilities whatsoever. She can't motivate people, she doesn't inspire confidence, and she does her best work alone. She even had her own Millennium Falcon and Chewbacca, plus Grudge. Tilly is clearly the better leader: she projects confidence even when terrified, she keeps her cool under pressure, she inspires loyalty, she can motivate people, and her crew knows she cares about them. Yeah, she's an Ensign so it's a little wild she ended up in the chair at all, but you know what? Those people have been through some shit and when it comes right down to it, chain of command or no, people are going to follow the person who can lead them and Tilly can do that. Burnham can't do that, she spent 2 seasons and change proving it. So what do we get? Burnham in the captain's chair and Tilly edited into a Science uniform. What the fuck?
...I could go on, probably for several hours, but I'll just say one more thing:
The hack writers working on this show are actually a great fit for the Mirror Universe stuff. Their brand of ridiculous just works in that place. They should hire replacements who can actually write to do Discovery and have this group do a Mirror Universe series.