Actually, I think this is a great comparison. A great novel series or a great TV series create a rich universe the the reader/viewer takes part in discovering and enjoying. Now taker my favorite novel series, the Foundation series by Asimov. The first books were written in the 1940's. In subsequent decades he wrote books that took place well before and well after, but they were always consistent with one another and built upon the the universe and 'history' that he created that spans hundreds of years. Now admittedly, he did have to retcon dates of some events in other series when he merged them with Foundation, but if someone wrote a new Foundation novel that ignored or changed that established history, I don't think that would be very well received.
Ehhhh... I'd say earlier than that. In the 2009 film, if Nero hadn't shown up, I don't buy the idea that you go from the way the bridge of the USS Kelvin looked in 2233 to the way the bridge of the USS Enterprise looked in 2254. I also don't care for the idea that the Earth Starfleet's NX-01 looks so much like a Federation Starfleet ship. If the Federation is made up of other worlds, it implies that those other worlds had limited to no input into the look of Starfleet ships once the UFP was founded. I'd have had the NX-01 (note that I never, ever call it the Enterprise, I always call it the NX-01) look more like a super-advanced NASA ship with warp nacelles and then go into what we usually think of as Starfleet ships after the Federation was actually founded. The USS Discovery, I can buy as a Movie Era ship. Because it was designed in the '70s when they were trying to get a Star Trek movie off the ground, before it was dropped in favor of Phase II which then became TMP. The other reason I have no problem with Disco being more of a Movie Era ship is because the Enterprise was commissioned in 2245, which makes Discovery newer than the Enterprise. As for why the Enterprise looks different in DSC? Yeah. It was a creative choice. I won't try to argue otherwise. It's something they chose to do. Whether or not it was right or wrong can pretty much be debated forever and ever. What's going on with DSC, I already went though before. The change of the look doesn't effect whether I like the finished product (DSC), don't like it (ENT), or am somewhere in-between (Kelvin Films). That comes down to the writing, directing, and acting.
I just come back to an important point. How could anyone in the modern day expect the original 60s Enterprise to exist with the modern CGI of today? Even with a few tweaks here and there to make it look a little better, it would still look old. Now for Trekkies like most of us here, we wouldn't mind. But if anyone wants to get a new audience, to draw them in to the franchise, then you make the ships look good to the modern standards. It's really quite as simple as that.
What plot-wise has been ignored or changed from canon? The only thing I can think of is that the look has been updated, but that’s not a plot point.
The difference is between one author (Asimov) vs. a TV series with multiple writers (Roddenberry, Fontana, Coon) and production considerations. Also, there is also the necessity to recognize that Star Trek was to imagine our humanity's future, with reinvention expected by GR, and done by him as well. This is a world that is not standalone like many novels but impacted by the era in which it is written and produced.
The level of consistency you're looking for is an illusion and never existed in Star Trek. The closest we got was TNG through VOY when the same production team, show runners, designers, etc were all writing and creating Star Trek shows consecutively and with overlap. Otherwise, it has always been a mess. But this whole idea of a "consistent Star Trek" is nothing but rose-colored glasses, I'm afraid. Star Trek was never intended to be one giant interconnected saga (like Star Wars). It's a loosely associated universe that has been interpreted and re-interpreted by many different artists and writers over 50+ years. It's actually amazing that it holds up as well as it does, despite all that.
That was kind of what I meant. As you go from one series to the next, there was good sense of continuity with what became before (or after), I would even include ENT in there as they made definite tie-ins to events in other series. Certainly that wasn't the intent, but it became one nonetheless, largely because of the efforts of the follow-on series to build upon and maintain that consistency. Growing up on TOS, and then watching subsequent series as they came out, they always felt connected and that these were stories taking place in the same universe - I never felt a sense of discontinuity or "wait, that doesn't make sense based on what I have previously seen." Just my personal experience.
I think you're just talking about the aspects of Trek that you find important, like the tech design or uniforms. There was actually lots of discontinuity, even during the 90s. The Ferengi got retconned. The Trill got retconned. A Klingon woman's ability to serve on the High Council went from "yes" to "no" the same TNG season in episodes written by the same writer.
Plus, for most of TNGs run TOS was treated like the embarrassing uncle who gets drunk at family get togethers. Probably because it didn’t jibe well with Roddenberry’s later new age views. It wasn’t until he passed and fans of the original show started to run things that they made any effort to tie things up more closely.
Dead accurate. It was even worse among people I knew. Later on, it wasn't just TOS they dismissed but DS9 and VOY too. As if there was no other Star Trek that mattered besides TNG.
The Borg went from growing their own children to assimilating other species. The Borg also went from a completely unknown species to a species being studied by Federation anthropologists.
It also didn't jibe well with Roddenberry himself as he really wanted to portray an extremely positive view of humanity. That distancing from TOS and the more militaristic aspects is evidenced from Encounter at Farpoint on.
Probably why he had Picard surrender twice in the first five episodes, people went apeshit over that in the fanzines.