It's an altered timeline used as a mechanism to reboot the franchise. Period. The possibility of seeing any NEW Trek on screen (big or small) that compllies with the original Rodenberrian universe is virtually ZERO at this point.
You, however, I'll ask: Source (reliable) for that assertion, please?
Simple observation, both of what Paramount SAID, and what it DID vis a vis the existing Trek organization. Paramount took the position (backed by numbers) that the existing franchise was no longer "a going concern".
The Trek "office" (in existence since the early 80s) was closed, the "brain trust" vis a vis Trek was let go, and the entire inventory of production materials was either sold or destroyed.
Rodenberrian trek is as dead as a Monty Python parrot.
You'll admit, however, that it would be entirely possible to draw other, equally reasonable, conclusions from the details you have given here?
Right you are.
Until I see any real reason to believe otherwise, I'll continue to operate as if most (if not all) of the original stuff (and, by extension, the overwhelming majority of modern Trek as well, including Data's head) still exists. Nothing I've seen so far gives any clear indication that what has been shown or said on-screen prior to this movie is going to be erased, cancelled or overwritten in any major way; any claims I've seen to the contrary have been unconvincing, to say the least.
Entire command crew on board when Kirk was a CADET, including Checkov. Said crew are all of similar age
You don't know that, and the age range of the actors involved in this movie, while admittedly not an exact match, is a lot closer to that of the actors in the Original Series than to being "of similar age".
See here (ages of the current cast are as of today; ages of the TOS cast are as of September 1966; this was done in a hurry and may contain errors, but any age will at most be off by only one year -- you're welcome to verify them yourself):
Comparative Cast Ages
Pine - 28, Shatner - 34
Quinto - 31, Nimoy - 35
Urban - 37, Kelley - 46
Pegg - 38, Doohan - 44
Saldana - 30, Nichols - 33
Yelchin - 20, Koenig - 30
Only Yelchin is not a very close match to the age range, but since Koenig was
playing a lot younger, I don't see the problem.
No Lt. Kirk at the Academy
Where does it say that? Probably just not covered in the story this movie is telling.
So what? Not in this story.
No Capt Garrovick and the Farragut
So?
No Finney and the Republic
So?
Sorry, there is AMPLE evidence that this is a severely altered timeline. There's just no way around it. The very PREMISE of the movie demonstrates it.
None of that is evidence (ample or otherwise) of anything at all except that those people, ships, events
don't figure directly in this story. For all we know, they could still be there, doing the same things we know from TOS that they do, but
we'll simply be looking somewhere else while they do it. No big deal.
Why not defend the movie on it's OWN merits, rather than engaging in a futile attempt to hammer it into a non-conforming hole in the "old" Trek univers?
I haven't seen the movie yet. I'm not making claims that the movie causes such-and-such to no longer exist, or to continue to exist,
because I haven't seen it yet. As to how well it fits into the old Trek universe -- or whether it fits at all -- well, we don't really
know that, do we? It remains to be seen. And that's what I intend to do: I'll see it, and then -- and
only then -- will I be in a position to decide what I think about the movie.
All of the noise from people like the good
Captain about "this just proves that _______ don't know what _______ they're doing" or "this movie overwrites the existing canon and erases everything we knew about Trek" is just that: empty noise, based upon nothing of substance, and intended primarily to annoy. If you really want to prove something, then you go right ahead and do so, but don't wave a handful of details around and expect me to believe that they prove anything; you'll need to work a little harder than that.
