The only true Star Trek consists of the 3rd, 17th, and (of course) 47th minutes of the episode "The Cloud Minders." Nothing else is real. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. Period.
Hey, to the guy who posted that *BRILLIANT* Sgt. Pepper parody cover: do you have that in any sort of larger image file? I love that, would like to see it bigger, maybe add it to the collection of oddball art on the walls of my workshop. HATS OFF to you, sir!
They should also recognize that without the other series Trek would have died after original cast got too old for the big screen. I think some are just bitter that the other series lasted longer
From the first airing of The Man Trap in September of 1966, through the last movie appearance of Kirk and two others of the main TOS cast in Generations in November of 1994, it was 28 years. On the other hand, between Encounter At Farpoint (September of 1987) and the end of the TNG era with Nemesis (December of 2002), it was 15 years. TOS might not be the only "true" Star Trek, but it is undeniably the heart and core of the Star Trek world. When Spock appeared on TNG it was a event, when Riker appeared on VOY it was a blip. When DS9's crew time travel into one of a previous series episodes, instead of the Tribbles episode, they could have been inserted into a TNG adventure, but they weren't. When the ENT mirror universe got their hands on a future starship it was a Connie, and not a Galaxy/Intrepid/Defiant.
There is no such thing as "true" Trek. I'm an old-school TOS partisan myself, but that doesn't mean I didn't watch all of later shows when they were on the air. (And have fun writing books based on most of them.) And if somebody grows up on the Next Generation or NuTrek instead. I'm not going to tell them that "my" Trek is the only "real" Trek. Trek is not a religion, nor should it be treated as such.
I foresee a future where the world is populated entirely of Trekfans, each wearing the costume from their favorite series or film, and mass warfare breaks out with them firing prop replica phasers at each other to determine who are the True Believers and Worshippers of the Great Bird of the Galaxy's Vision.
They'd been thinking of recasting the TOS crew since 1977, when Paramount were concerned the TV actors weren't big enough to carry a big budget movie. It nearly happened again in 1993 with Harve Bennett's The Academy Years prequel movie.
I thought Bennett's prequel movie pitch, and the development work that occurred on it, were a bit earlier than that. As I recall, it was his pitch for Star Trek VI, prior to any development work on what we know today as TUC. That would put it around 1989 or so. By 1993, I'm fairly certain the wheels were solidly in motion for TNG to make the leap to the big screen. Frankly, in retrospect, I wish they had gone with Bennett's plan. As much as I love TNG on TV, the TNG movies were, IMHO, nowhere near the quality of their TOS predecessors. Rather than kicking TNG to the big screen and changing the formula that made it work, I would have rather seen the silver screen adventures continue to be TOS-based with Bennett using his prequel plans. And I daresay that Bennett, who I think "gets" the core of Star Trek better than J.J. Abrams, would have produced better prequel films than Abrams has. YMMV, of course.
TNG was a massively popular show by the early nineties. Despite what eventually happened with the movie series, moving the cast to the big screen was the logical thing to do, and I don't think they would have ignored the TNG cast in order to focus on a bunch of newcomers in a risky academy series.
It is the most popular version, not that surprising due to its being the original and also not being overly exploited (79 episodes and 6 films plus "Unification" over 25 years, callbacks in "Relics", Generations and "Trials" and now two remakes vs. hundreds of 24th century episodes and four films in 15 years). Doesn't mean the others are poor, let alone inauthentic, and most people enjoy TNG as much or a lot more when it is not calling back to the original.
I never get into this "true fan" crap. There is no criteria for being a false fan or a true fan. It is generally a term fans use against other fans to dismiss or discount the views and opinions of fans they disagree with.