Think about it.
- The visual aesthetic is awesome. It has all the retro class of the original series but with real-life set design and special effects. It still captures the romantic, naval, Napoleonic ethos that was established by Nicholas Meyer. The unforms are friggen awesome. The ship designs (Excelsior class, Constitution refit, Miranda, etc.) are great.
- We only got to see this world for a few films. We got the original series, which has great storytelling and characters but is in a dated (though still charming) environment, and then we jumped right into the 24th century with TNG. The 23rd century hasn't gotten the full treatment yet.
- Prequels will only disappoint: This is because everyone has an imagination of how they see that things came to be. This approach avoids all that.
- there's tons of storytelling material: the Klingons are new allies, but an uneasy one. The Romulans are still a mysterious force and they imerge as the main rival (like the Dominion in DS9). And here again there is so much in Romulan culture that can be fleshed out and explored.
1. They definitely nailed the sets' look in 1979 and made augments since. Would they have done more had LED strip lighting and other shiny distracting bling existed? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It's easy to fathom examples for both options. Meyer was spot-on with uniform choices. It was also good they eschewed the RGB motif, which was great in 1966 when RGB color TV sets were new, but TOS wasn't too strict with uniform color designations (engineering people had blue at times, some security had yellow, etc) and I was disappointed initially in 1987 with the return of RGB. At least they didn't go CMYK-upchuck like the 6th Doctor's costume, though I warmed to that fast enough as well. But that's another story.
2. Good point. So much is left open to interpretation by the viewer, if desired. "Yesterday's Enterprise" fills in some of the gap with a critical event. "Generations", despite being a po-faced self-parody with the 1701-B scenes and even getting Stuart Bondek there playing it serious (thankfully), also fleshes out another gap - albeit via the beginning of a ship's run, rather than its last voyage.
3. Good point, but it also depends on the scripting for the gaps being filled. More detail has to be paid attention to. Look at "Rogue One" - they turned a 20 second bit of exposition from the miracle known as "Star Wars" into a 2 hour film. One whose ending doesn't begin to mesh with the (1977 original/chapter 4/ANH/etc) film due to anachronous technological improvements in the immediate prequel to ANH's events. (With the prequel trilogy, one can swallow the idea that the paradigm shift in the Empire's creation led to a different aesthetic and reduction of technology, scale of troops, etc. Probably. )
4. Except we all know the Klingons will be allies in TNG. We already had a great episode with "Heart of Glory", which kept a shroud of mystery while keeping a dichotomy going with success. I'd argue it'd be more difficult to slip on a banana peel than to write a prequel fleshing out the post-TUC events without screwing up the major elements in TNG. Smaller things aren't an issue, but the main points are key to keep consistent. I know that reading novels is passe, but if you're reading a 16-chapter book and chapter 6 contradicts chapter 2, and chapter 14 just rewrites what was already done in chapters 4-6, how would you feel?
If memory serves, there was a lot of talk several years ago about there being a TV show about Star Trek: Excelsior starring Takei as Sulu, to which Takei was quotes as wanting to do. That would have been great.
I remember the rumors vaguely and, at the time, would have preferred it to VOY. The same challenges would still exist, but VOY was decided on because - in part - they wouldn't have to risk mucking up major continuity as it'd be easier to move forward. Also considering "Flashback" and how many of the cast sleepwalked through it and all while inserting characters who shouldn't be there*, it may have been for the best...
* Unless Tuvok, whom I grew to like more than Spock, was imagining his being on the Excelsior rather than misremembering things due to the effects of the nebula's plotdeviceium and treknobabbleium... never mind Janeway's bizarre speech at the end.
If the emphasis is on character and story, if action and special effects are greatly scalled back and more of a focus is on adventure and diplomacy, and if it were run right, it is exactly the kind of thing to really bring back Star Trek into the popular imagination and bring a new golden age like the time of the late 80s and 90s.
Possibly. There's still the risk of relying on nostalgia excessively. Lower Decks skates on it at times, but it had wisely built up its own story in the process and uses the callbacks for comedic intent, rather than empty mimicry.
