I think having the Enterprise be higher tech than the 60's version is fine. This is supposed to be an alternate timeline after all. But I do wish the Kelvin had been very retro. TOS style on the big screen would have been beautiful.
And I prefer to see the Abramsverse sizes, because at least then Starfleet can fit lots of shuttles that can hold more than a dozen people into their ships, as opposed to the half-dozen tiny shuttles most non-Galaxy class ships got
The Kelvin bridge was a fine representation of what the actual TOS-era Enterprise would have looked like. And fitting, too, because that was supposed to BE the Enterprise before JJ was ordered to change it.
Which is good. Because then it would have stomped all over April's appearance in Final Frontier in the Prime Universe.
Final Frontier was a fantastic novel by Diane Carey. No relation to the fifth movie, and incompatible with the Enterprise TV series. The version of George Kirk in Star Trek was based on the version in this and it's sequel, Best Destiny.
^ I have read that novel, I'm just wondering what it has to do with having April in STXI (instead of Robau). I mean, Final Frontier isn't even consistent with current Treklit, and of course an actual film wouldn't need to be consistent with any novel...of course FF is indeed a very good novel, but even the best novels can and do get stomped on quite a bit.
I was thinking in terms of how it would have the Enterprise in service a decade early... I'd forgotten that it wasn't compatible with Enterprise (and am not sure how it's not compatible with other TrekLit, unless it's for reasons deriving from that). Mostly, that was a (perhaps misguided) attempt to bring the conversation back to Countdown to Darkness.
Yeah, I think the given year is 2188. But using relative dating (i.e. Jim Kirk's age), it adjusts to 2244 - an almost perfect fit for the conjectural TOS Enterprise launch date of 2245. I think the problem vs. the original movie opening would have been, the Enterprise in service earlier than that adjusted date, in 2233. The problems vs. Enterprise and the rest of post-1988 Trek are numerous. Technology, the way the pre-TOS Federation is described, and even the idea that April, as much as I liked the character, would ever become captain (he was such a pacifict he turned command of the ship over to George during battle because he couldn't bear to fire at a living being)
Ah, the things you forget when you haven't read a book in a decade because there's no ebook version yet.
Back to all this talk of Robert April and him being former Captain of a starship called Enterprise. The NX-01 did fly around the Expanse for a hundred years once... so it's not a question of the ship not being spaceworthy. Generations onboard once kept it going, even if it did look in a right old state. But there's no way that Enterprise would still be in Starfleet service by the 23rd Century. It would be in the Fleet Museum like visitors going to see a space shuttle today and stay there well-preserved until the 24th, so that Deanna Troi can get it mixed up with all the other historical ships. Unless it were another NX class, or a replica and not the original. That would be a crazier reference than a joke about a beagle, to try and squeeze in with any credibility. April looks to be in an earlier Starfleet uniform and presumably had a fresh off the production line Enterprise to command. Even if he were in charge of a trainee cadet vessel, that would still require something newer than the NX-01. So no sticking to anything we've seen established before... except Kirk's Enterprise was more than a decade later getting into space. It'll be interesting what, if any of this makes it into Star Trek Into Darkness. Conspiracy theories and a cover-up involving a previous Enterprise being kept out of the history books, would be interesting as the plot alone. I hope this isn't going to involve coming across a three-hundred year old Botany Bay. That would begin to read more like convenient fan-fiction than bringing the NX-01 into all of this!
April's wearing the 2258 duty uniform - just without the undershirt. Either he wants to show off his man clevage or perhaps Mr. Harrison stole it... As for the NX-01, it seems an updated version of the ship may have been designed and used as set decoration at Starfleet Academy. Here's a post I made about it in the XI+ forum: