I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. It's not necessarily the "traditions" or the continuity that define a given property. A Dracula movie is still a Dracula movie even if Bela Lugosi doesn't make a cameo to hand things off to Christopher Lee or whomever. And STAR TREK doesn't become DARK MATTER just because nobody from
Enterprise shows up in first episode. If you've got the Federation, Starfleet, Klingons, transporters, the Prime Directive and all that . . . it's still going to be recognizably STAR TREK.
And "traditions" are often just an excuse to keep doing the same thing over and over again even if there's no longer any purpose to it.
Although I grant that sentiment and nostalgia have their place sometimes.
You are right on the Dark Matter front, though the way that series actually does use a ton of Trek traditions is what brought it to mind. It's really subtle ones mind you. And half its technobabble.
Dracula though isn't comparing apples and apples though, since it's canon consists of one and a bit stories, plus one sort of different version in the stage play. After that it's mutated...things like Nosferatu creep in, and the traditions become the traditions of the Vampire literary figure, and not necessarily the traditions of Dracula itself, whenever things like anniversaries start being talked about. The biggest influence on Vampire fiction since then is of course Anne Rice, and you see her influence particularly in every recent attempt to 'go back to the original Dracula'.
Trek is 700 hour plus visual media canon, with the original creator basically naming his successor and all of it following from there...the only mutation and divergence comes through the Bennet iteration in the films, which even then maintained the original cast, and the three Bad Robot films. The vast majority of Trek very consciously is one continuity. (Occasional gaffes and retcons aside) McCoy trod the decks of three enterprises on screen, as did Scott, who met Picard as did Spock..Picard met Sisko, who met Kirk, and Janeways crew left from his station....etc etc. Many see it as a curse these days, God knows why, but this is Star Treks greatest strength more than its weakness. Even with Fuller we have a guy in charge who in some ways is a successor to Berman, by virtue of his days on Voyager. There's a line of a succession behind the scenes and on the screen.
In some ways Trek is a form of Monarchy rather than a Republic...it isn't the same idea being redone in different ways and being reborn, it's one idea always growing from each generation into the next. The lack of disruption makes it probably the richest imagined universe in existence, and to break that would be a real shame.
I suppose I am something of a Trek cavalier...I may not even have liked enterprise, but it is not the Cromwellian rebellion of a reboot, overseen by a rump producer of the original. In Discovery, there is a return to the broken line that starts way back with The Cage/ Where No Man Has gone before/ The Man Trap/ The Corbomite Manuevre. Trek has so many beginnings, but it has always somehow kept that through line. I am hoping that remains the case.
