Not that much change? Entire ships changed, not just by addition, but even down to shapes as well. Rather than a flying triangle or a Tholian vessel with wings, you'd get an Eaves-esque freighter or such, completely drastic changes.
They changed ships from not being seen, or being specks of light, or being obvious re-uses of previous models that don't make sense to something that makes more sense yet fits the design ethic of the series. Nothing they did looked out of place. You seem to have a very all or nothing attitude, and you seem to be assuming that I share it. I don't, I agree with changes if they are within reason, even if I would've gone a different direction myself.
The stories are the same, the morals are the same, the lessons are the same, the acting is the same. Isn't the success of a show focused and based on the success of the actual people you see?
As I've said before, you can have an awesome story, but if your visuals suck, so will your show, because it's taking place in a visual medium, and if your story sucks, it won't matter how flashy your visuals look, because there is no story at its foundation.
-Friendship One: More buttons of a more contemporary design rather than jelly-bean candies (which are what some of the buttons really were made of on the TOS set), layered environmental suits that looked tough and durable as opposed to the shower-curtain environmental suits of TOS
-the Phoenix: touch-screen interface, moving graphics, (for that matter) visible graphics, CD rather than wooden insert disks, TNG-era warp stretch & flash complete with streaking stars, seat-belts
Different eras are going to have different designs for pretty much everything. Both the examples you cite were designed to look like they were much closer to modern day.
And would that really get rid of the Trek you've loved for so long? Does that invalidate all the hours of produced television and 10 films?
It wouldn't get rid of it, but it would invalidate it, and it would put an end to it as far as adding anything new to it.
I highly doubt that, especially since Trek also has parallel universe stories. That's the wonderful thing about Trek: You bring up one thing, and the franchise has probably brought up something before hand for just such an occasion.
Parallel universe stories have always been weak, IMO, because more often than not, there is no effect on the regular continuity of the show. Reset buttons, in other words, but that's another rant. Sufficed to say, I'd rather not do parallel universe stories at all.
I just find it very odd that a legend like King Arthur can and has been reshaped so many times but Trek isn't allowed to. The King Arthur legend, in all of its hundreds of incarnations, helped shape an entire nation, and later an entire Empire that had nearly conquered most of the known world, and yet Star Trek, which hasn't conquered a state let alone an empire, can't change the shape of one ship. King Arthur is very much a period piece, sometimes with dragons and sometimes without, sometimes with pieces of tech that are anachronistic and not, sometimes contemporized or not, often with tales of magic that don't fit the legends of the time period.
You're talking about a story that's based on another, older story from another part of the world. And as I've said before, previous mistakes do not excuse making those same mistakes again - just because other stories are constantly "rebooted" for a lack of a better term, does not mean Star Trek has to be. And to be frank, nothing sucks more than a story that's been "contemporized".
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