Trying to adhere to an after-the-fact aesthetic so that there's the appearance of consistency doesn't actually count as consistency.
Plenty of time. Like the second five year mission, I’ve often wished we could have seen the Enterprise earlier missions. Though I’d imagined it more as a bunch of 1960s lost episodes discovered than a 21st century instalment. Maybe my cosmic order is to be delivered nonetheless.
Yep. I think somewhere buried in this whole canon vs. non-canon debate is the ability to judge a design on its own merits regardless of time-period and the coming and going of various fashion-trends. There has always been a way to update a look without committing what I would consider to be universal aesthetic sins. My problem is that I feel that today's crop of Millennial artists have been fully indoctrinated into a more-is-more philosophy of gaudy self-indulgence. This is what infected the Kelvin-verse and and then buried its way into the Discovery production design. This revised Enterprise is intricate in a way one would expect, but does not, from what I can see, go completely overboard. God knows how difficult it must have been for the artists to restrain themselves from taking it over the top because I am sure they were chomping at the bit to do so, but they were reigned in. So I feel the show dodged a bullet. I bet they would have loved to make the nacelle struts "bow-legged" or invert the taper into chicken-leg territory the way the Kelvin version did, but somewhere someone with some good sense prevented it. The problem now is what is the interior going to look like??? The set design and costumes on Discovery have been a massive train-wreck from the start. Are we going to see half-collars, joysticks, and a literal transparent bridge window on the sacred 1701? Yet another steampunk transporter room? I sure as hell hope not, but for the sake of internal consistency I'm thinking we will.
You can't go back and refinish the look of a building so that it looks like the surrounding buildings and then claim that it's always been consistent with said buildings.
Dax actually mentions something about mid-23rd century style when she's fawning over a tricoder casing. There IS some kind of special unified style, though I don't think it's universal, just a peculiarity of a specific time. I liked how Desperate Hours handled it, briefly. Connies had their own design aesthetic, even including uniforms. Burnham has also intimated that there's something career-rewarding to serve on one. I don't think the minidresses and color coordinated underwear are coming back, but I could see Pike's crew in very different uniforms next season. The awards ceremony kind of set the tone, albeit blurred, that not everyone wears dark-blue and piping.
But that is exactly what Discovery is doing. Refinishing the look of a building (the Enterprise) to make it look like it is consistent with the rest of their design philosophy. Then claiming this is the way it always looked.
If it is a visual reboot, then this is the way it is supposed to look in universe. This is the way Klingons are supposed to look going forward, the way a D-7 looks going forward, the way the Enterprise looks going forward.
You're right. The producers of Trek haven't tried to make that claim; fans like you and others are/have.
Yeah, she's all over the "classic 23rd century design", when it was at most a five to ten year period* in the 2360s. It's like saying "I love that 20th century look" when you specifically mean 60s futurism. Dax was just a surrogate for Trek fans in that epsiode, nostalgic for TOS. She gets a line to that effect, which Sisko gently slaps down with "you're having too much fun!" *Incidentally that's partly why the DIS look doesn't bother me. The TOS look was apparently a very fleeting fashion for Starfleet.
It would be much easier if the producers would just come out and say, one way or another, if this is supposed to be the case.
Wait. WAIT!!! You mean, THEY’RE NOT THE SAME THING?!!! Man. Why does no one ever tell me anything important?!!!