There is no way anyone can convince me this is prime universe, because it absolutely wasn't. It was JJ universe from start to finish. Had they simply admitted that, I might have been a little more forgiving of its numerous transgressions.
The ship designs bore no relation to prime universe Starfleet design, and the bridges were full of random lens flares out of nowhere. The ships also straight up used the JJ warp effect. The flashback of Michael was the same Vulcan setting used in Star Trek 11. The Shenzhou was supposed to be an old design, hence the random transporter room, yet it looks FC era and had holograms.
Speaking of which, they didn't use viewscreens for conversations, it was all Star Wars holograms. Since when did TOS era have holograms? Even in the Voyager era, they usually didn't have that many holo-emitters on a ship. And the holograms were actually interacting with desks and stairs in the place they were being projected. :facepalm
How does a spaceship see footprints in a sand storm drawing the starfleet logo? Why would anyone do this? How does anyone do this? Her navigating skills are impressive, as are the scanning abilities of the ship.
Since when is a Vulcan's katra a long range communications device? And then the scene only got dumber from there with shooting through space unprotected thing.
The Klingons. Don't get me started on those things. It was nice that all of the dialogue was in Klingon, but it would have been nice if they resembled Klingons at all.
The acting from the captain was very wooden. Doug Jones was great. The rest of the cast was average.
Even judging it as a standalone piece, I could only call this mediocre at best so far.