I have no idea because I never watched it. It's a reboot, isn't it? But in terms of Trek, this seems to be the accepted practice. If it's meant to be in the prime timeline and the newest series contradicts something, that's the *new* canon. Until it's changed again or re-contextualized in a later produced series. Fans obviously don't have to accept the new continuity if they don't want to but it is what it is.
There's only one rule with canon (whether it's Star Trek or anything else): Canon is what the people currently in charge of the 'franchise' in question says it is. Which is in and of itself a non-sequitor. Of course whoever is presently in charge will decide that whatever they're making at the moment is what's 'canon.' That's not even debatable. What is debatable, however, is what the people currently in charge decide about any
past iterations of the show.
Let's take
Knight Rider for example. After the original show ended, there were like 5 different sequels in the form of TV shows and TV movies, each one basically invalidating the previous one. There were also some which ignored the fourth or fifth of the previous iterations but was in continuity with, say, the second. So in the case of Star Trek, in 2030 there may be yet another show that comes along where the people in charge of
that could say that anything that came before it is invalidated, or only DS9 is now canon, or only the movies TWOK, TSFS, and TVH are now canon even though the show that they were based on, TOS, isn't. (Keep in mind, however, that this is different from a
reboot, in which whatever is being produced at present has no bearing on past iterations because it doesn't take place in the same universe/continuity/canon/whatever to the past.)
What DSC is basically doing now in season 2 (I won't go into how I felt about season 1, since I've already done that ad infinitum) is that they are finally clearly acknowledging "The Cage\The Menagerie" while at the same time still being in a bit of a gray area as far as trying to be a legitimate prequel to TOS in general, thanks to what they started with in S1. However, I suspect that as the show continues through the second season and into the third, that that comparison will start to become more distinct. Just like what happened with ENT, where the producers at the time finally realized by the fourth season that the show needed to be more like TOS (although they were too late and went way overboard with the TOS references anyway...did we really need a two part episode to explain why the Klingons went from bumpy foreheads to smooth?)
