It could work just as fine. The Spanish empire knew about the mughal empire, without being in direct conflict.
Yes, make the Klingons the cunning and efficient Cold War military machine that they once were. In my head canon, the Klingons of the TOS era had also taken a more secular or atheistic turn, as Communist regimes generally did. This would explain Kang's definitive statement that "we have no devil," despite TNG's depiction of Fek'lhr, an obviously devil-like creature. The viking biker Klingons who valued their ancient mythology had a devil, but after the Klingon Empire's cultural revolution sometime in the 23rd century, they didn't have one any more. Am I right, or what? Kor
If you *knew* from the start that Kirk and Spock would manage to restore the Federation and the Enterprise they were from to the timeline the first time you ever saw "City on the Edge of Forever", then I feel like your suspension of disbelief might be broken. But very well, it isn't a thing for you. It is for me, and for others, and I'd appreciate you not calling it "nonsense". It just means that Your Mileage May Vary. PS: I'd like to emphasize that my "worst thing" in no way means that I'm not going to watch Discovery, or try to enjoy hell out of it, just because it isn't in "the present" of the Prime timeline. It's been 10 years since Trek on TV, so I'll be honest - they could probably go with the concept I dislike most for a Trek series (Starfleet Academy) and still get my guaranteed viewership for at least 4 seasons. PPS: I'd like everyone to try to remember that critiquing Trek is how some of the fandom enjoys Trek. So don't assume they're being negative just because they're being, well, negative. Pretend they're Tellarites, and realize that if they're kvetching about fine details, that just means they're really into it!
That ad truly is The Business. That said (he whispered sacrilegiously), I don't really miss the TOS Klingons all that much. I mean, I love them and all for their day, but they suffered from a syndrome a lot of Cold War / WWII-inspired villains in skiffy shows did, which is that there really wasn't much to them other than "be evil and crush other people under my boot." Your typical communist or fascist movement at least has some utopian and genuinely appealing-to-someone objective driving its membership, but American writers were always shy about giving this sort of villain that sort of due (or maybe had trouble imagining their way into it, or something, I'm not sure what the exact problem was), and without that it's all just hollow generic bad guy-ism. At least Klingons of the Space Viking era were given some kind of rationale for their actions, cheesy though it was, that could actually plausibly inspire them to do something. And that rationale drove lots of great conflicts and episodes even if it did eventually grow stale. It might be interesting to take that in an entirely different direction, for example to work out the implications of the aristocratic social order that's implied by the "warrior ethos" and give it an added edge of sophistication (Space Knyghtes instead of Space Vikings, maybe). I'll be interested to see what they do.
One of the "worst things" is that the series is not being filmed at the Paramount lot like the previous five. That's been "home base" since the Desilu days. I suppose it is because filming in Toronto is cheaper; will the writing staff stay in Los Angeles? Most likely.