Re: Nahh, the old Star Trek was for nerds...
If you look at what remained of the original pilot, actually TOS could have been even better. No miniskirts uniforms, a female first officer, etc. etc.
But Roddenberry to get on air had to accept some compromises with the network - and its dinosaur executives - some of them fixed in later series, although to make the most vocal fans happy, for example even TNG became too much Picard-Data oriented.
Anyway we shouldn't forget ST was still a design of the mid-60s, sometimes even the best sci-fi finds hard to get past some main cultural topoi of its own epoch.
Moreover, in TV without a public you can't go nowhere, to boldy go where no one has been before, you may need some compromises to find a public... and then feed them something new.
