That's what lack of evidence is all about, right? It's possible and, given past experience with this franchise and fandom, considerably more likely than expectations that this continuity boondoggle ends well.
News Harberts: Reconciling Discovery With The Original Series
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I think it's stupid to explain why Discovery looks different than TOS. They're two shows made 50 years apart, things have changed since then. It's absurd to think there is some in-universe explanation because it's utterly meaningless. It's just pandering to the fans who can't tell the difference between reality and fiction.
Yeah. I think "giving explanations" for visual reboots is one of the worst possible outcomes. It worked great as a joke with the klingons in "Tribbles". And ENT gave a canonical explanation, because now this change had already been canonically referenced once before, and ENT was a bit between a rock and a hard place, being a prequel but using canonical later looks and all. That was fine. IMO unnecessary, but fine.
For DIS, I want the klingons to look more like traditional klingons in the future: With beards, hair, and real D7-starships. But do I want an explanation on why they looked so different in the first season? Hell no! At most seeing a klingon shave himself. But only if it doesn't distract from the rest of the scene. For the rest? Just change the look gradually, without explanation. A starship with round nacelles here, a new more colorful uniform there... But don't try to give elaborate explanations.
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Which is exactly why they're likely to bungle the handoff. They feel pressure to force it all to fit together in the end, while showing no indications that they're interested or have any plan to do so. Recipe for just irritating the fuck out of the viewership. Familiar at this point.
Spock kept forgetting to turn down his airpods. It was a phase he was going through.
To be fair DS9 only made a joke out of it that lasted only 30 seconds. The writers then knew it would be silly either way to ignore it or explain it, so instead the poked fun at it, and that's all it should have been.
ENT, as clever as it was handled, was definitely unnecessary.
I’m fine with jokes about changes. Maybe say the Enterprise had budget cuts.
In 2235 archeologists discovered an ancient TV studio from the 1960s. They found a perfectly usable fictional bridge set that quickly became a phenomenon in social networks so popular demand forced Starfleet to at least fit out some vessels with 1960s cosplay.
A reboot of Mad Men became popular in the late 2250s. This lead to an increased popularity in 1960s designs and sexism. Later the 1980s became popular and perms came back into fashion.
I'm an advocate of the view that the Wrath of Khan ship is what the TOS ship always would have looked like with a higher budget, and is in fact that same ship [which is why it's now a "20 years old" (TSFS) training ship, and not the "almost entirely new" refit ship from TMP that happens to look the same]. By the same token, I think that ships seen on Discovery aren't constrained to look like proto-TOS ships. However, aspects of these ships such as the enormous floor area of the bridge (versus the TOS Enterprise bridge) are just absurd. Internal logic lends credibility, and this series has precious little of it.
Tis the problem of shared connectivity in an established universe. Despite what some think about how unimportant "canon" is to the show clearly enough people care to make the producers and writers care.
They've done it in Doctor Who quite a few times (recreating past looks) and honestly its never looked silly to me. If/when DSC actually starts looking like TOS it won't be made with cardboard and glue sticks and it very likely wont be 100% screen accurate but rather an updated version of that particular look.
But the subject at hand, the way TOS "looked" (production-wise) as opposed to the way (same era) DSC looks, is not a matter of canon. Canon would be in-universe and the way the shows look (with respect to production values) are out of universe. As pointed out, TOS looked the way it did (with respect to production) ONLY because it was produced in the mid 1960's. And, as others have pointed out, TOS wasn't "set" in the 60's, it was a 60's representation of the 23rd century. DSC is a 2017 representation of that same era.
This why I could never understand why some people got upset about the remastering(?) or updating TOS some years ago.
If Doctor Who did an episode where it affected a retro look, that's fine, but DSC need never do this, because there is just no reason.
Doctor Who has a different tone than Trek as well. It’s always been cheesy and isn’t afraid to embrace it.
I think a better comparison is the newer Star Wars films. In Rogue One, the stormtrooper armor was slightly redesigned. The venting on the helmets are now vents and not painted on, the other details are sharper too. Mainly because it can be done now on a mass scale and it looks better on screen. The old ones were made by hand and molded causing a lot of imperfections that few, besides the prop and costuming community, would notice. Still both are supposed to be the same suits.
On the other hand, they kept Vader's Helmet "cheeks bones" asymmetrical instead of fixing it like they did in ROTS.
It is an interesting contrast.
I don’t know what it is, but it looked weird in ROTS. Human faces are slightly asymmetrical, perfectly symmetrical faces look weird to us. I wonder if Vader’s mask has somehow taken on the same qualities to our brains.
It's actually an interesting test in to the "uncanny valley" of something that isn't human. Apparently, when casting the mold for ROTS they discovered that one cheek was different, and making it perfectly symmetrical looked all kinds of wrong. More details here if you're interested
Well maybe. But Enterprise has kind of ruined any notion of that. They showed a TOS period bridge on their (not all that long ago) show. They could have re-imagined it or went the Rogue One route or the TOS remaster route and touch things up but they didn't. In the 2000's a modern day Trek show portrayed a future ship in that way. To me that is visual continuity. Now I personally don't mind a bit of tinkering for the sake of modernization so that doesn't bug me (I thought the remasters enhanced TOS).
The producers and writers of this show sure seem to think realigning with established canon (including the looks of things) needs to be explained so it seems there is little you can do to stop it from occurring at this point.
Personally (while I appreciate good continuity) this seems like a big hassle and it would have been easier to set the show in the future, or an alternate timeline, or just say they're rebooting the prime timeline or something.
I still fucking hate the new CGI external shots for the TOS Remaster 
I prefer watching a grainy, unsharp picture f the crew to a sharper image that frequently switches to CARTOONS every few minutes. Srsly, the space scenes look that bad. They are the first, unfinished CG I have ever seen in a science fiction show, even Babylon 5 still looks better today. They also added a whole lot of unnecessary zooms, camera pans and movements to every single space shot as well, which clashes HARD with the fixed camera directing TOS had.
You need to watch more recent Doctor Who! Beginning with their switch to HD (when Moffat took over) with the 11th doctor (Matt Smith), the production design was heavily upgraded. Literally every prop and every alien was redone, even the classic ones. And the tone of the series became much more mature as well. But stilll: A Dalek still looks like a Dalek, a Cyberman like a Cyberman, and even more obscure classic monsters like the Zygons are recreated faithfully (if the budget allows it). Star Trek really can take a leaf out of it's book in terms of continuing a classic franchise while BOTH creating something completely new (mostly narrative, acting and writing), while still honoring the original in looks and backstories.
I prefer watching a grainy, unsharp picture f the crew to a sharper image that frequently switches to CARTOONS every few minutes. Srsly, the space scenes look that bad. They are the first, unfinished CG I have ever seen in a science fiction show, even Babylon 5 still looks better today. They also added a whole lot of unnecessary zooms, camera pans and movements to every single space shot as well, which clashes HARD with the fixed camera directing TOS had.
You need to watch more recent Doctor Who! Beginning with their switch to HD (when Moffat took over) with the 11th doctor (Matt Smith), the production design was heavily upgraded. Literally every prop and every alien was redone, even the classic ones. And the tone of the series became much more mature as well. But stilll: A Dalek still looks like a Dalek, a Cyberman like a Cyberman, and even more obscure classic monsters like the Zygons are recreated faithfully (if the budget allows it). Star Trek really can take a leaf out of it's book in terms of continuing a classic franchise while BOTH creating something completely new (mostly narrative, acting and writing), while still honoring the original in looks and backstories.
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