If we were only 50 years out from the original stage performance of Hamlet, it's quite conceivable that there could be just one Hamlet. Even the most diehard fan must recognize that we all grow old, and if the stories are to continue, the character will be recast. Besides, maybe the Bard himself would have loved Branagh's interpretation! They do? They must be quite upset that Bond's first adventure took place in the early 21st century, despite the fact that his earlier adventures were in the 1960s.
Yeah, that's why they say it's a code name (ie - THIS person codenamed James Bond's first adventure took place in the early 21st century, while some other person codenamed James Bond had adventures in the 1960s, etc), not that he's literally the same guy. Otherwise it would be exactly like the DSC issue of jamming things together that are not the same and then claiming they are the same. Anyways, this was meant to be illustrative, not a topic of this thread, so let's keep back to the main focus: reconciling the unreconcilable!
I went to my first convention in 1972. I remember clearly what fandom was trying to achieve in the 1970s - the return of something that looked and felt like TOS. I loved TMP, but it was hard to reconcile it with TOS as one continuous universe. And it just got worse from there. Not that later treks were bad. Just that they failed in that one way - as continuations of TOS. To me. And at this stage of my life, almost 50 years after my first convention, I’m long past expecting it to happen. The writers are gone. The artists are gone. The production people are gone. So even if you could someday recreate TOS in believable cgi, it would not be to depict anything that would feel like a real extension and/or fleshing out of that universe. Except, maybe… just maybe, in some decades’ time, an AI that has absorbed all of TOS and everything knowable about all the people who made it, just might do it. And some of us might still be around to see this weird, anachronistic thing that we enjoyed as children, just in time to die from old age. And maybe this transcendent AI will tell stories that embody why we would even want such a thing as our childhood stories retold to us in our senescence. And those Klingons and starships etc won’t need to be rationalized. They will make sense just as they are, verisimilitude and childhood predilections be praised.
Actually, for the first few seasons TNG was the closest Star Trek came to returning to TOS. It was almost like the movies never happened, and TOS segued right into TNG despite a 100 year span of time between the two shows. This was undoubtedly due to Roddenberry’s influence and his knack for rehiring former TOS production staff.
Other than TMP, which had the original crew, too. the similarity of both TMP and early TNG to TOS is no doubt because both were strongly influenced in their conceptions by the plans to revive TOS - Phase II.
I was referring mainly to the visual style, but yes, you’re correct. Early TNG was more of a mishmash between TOS and the TMP films, but swayed more toward TOS, as Roddenberry detested the films post-TMP.
Visually TMP is a skin over the TOS designs. Check out the Phase II sets. The corridor set is nearly identical to TOS.... and all they did for TMP was to line it with the angled pieces. The only cabin we see is on the other side of the hall way from where Kirk's original cabin was and they are about the same size. A lot of visual overlays, but underneath most everything is the same. The Klingon ridges where the most jarring change, but over time they worked that in and explained it. The Klingon cruiser is almost literally the D-7 from the series. The Enterprise herself was redesigned by Matt Jefferies and while it went through a couple of stages, the final ship in TMP was still mostly Jefferies design. And it was nearly identical to what we would have seen on Phase II.