Chekov's age

[Timo]

...Of course, Kirk wears Commander braid in that very episode.

And yeah, he wears Captain braid at the conclusion of STXI. And Pike wears three-stripe Admiral. So there were a couple of insanely fast promotions there.

Assuming, of course, that there wasn't a period of five years between the penultimate and ultimate scenes of STXI. Which is possible, but perhaps a bit unlikely given that Kirk and Pike's promotion scene featured the very same cadets as Kirk's trial scene on the background...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

...Of course, Kirk wears Commander braid in that very episode.

No, the rank stripes were different then.

 

[Timo]

But were they? That exact same uniform pops up in "Charlie X", and it just isn't reasonable that Starfleet would have two different rank systems in use simultaneously - one where two braid means Commander, another where it means Captain.

There's nothing in the plot of "Where No Man" that would preclude Kirk from holding Commander rank, and Spock and Scotty from holding Lieutenant, as per the TOS system. The only bump on the road is the idea that Mitchell would be a LtCmdr even though he only wears a single braid - but similar one-off rank braid errors were common all across TOS...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

WNMHGB was the second pilot. They still hadn't decided what kind of stripes to use. Hell, not too much earlier (The Cage), they didn't even know what RANK system Starfleet used. That was way too early in the game for anyone to care about little things like rank stripes.

AFAIK, it was like this:

Cage - One stripe (officers), No stripes (everyone else)

WNMHGB - Two stripes (the captain), One stripe (all other officers), No stripes (everyone else)

All other TOS episodes - The rank system we're familiar with

Nobody really cared about this kind of stuff back then anyway.

 

[Timo]

That's not the issue here, though - the issue is how we view this episode after four decades of Star Trek.

Various movies and spinoff shows have established that two solid braid meant Commander in the 2160s, in the 2230s and in the late 2250s, as well as in the late 2260s and the 2270s. The two TOS pilot episodes may seem to differ - but they need not. It's quite possible for Kirk to be Commander in his pilot and for everybody else to be Lieutenant (save for one or two "costuming errors"), or for everybody in "The Cage" to be Lieutenant save for Garrison who'd be Lieutenant (jg).

...Perhaps not likely, but certainly possible.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Aragorn]

Another case of the guy in the movie not being the same character, only having the same name.

"My name is Captain Robert April, and I hate the new Star Trek movie. Thank you, and have a good day."

I'm pretty sure "thank you" isn't even in his vocabulary.

 

[A beaker full of death]

That's not the issue here, though - the issue is how we view this episode after four decades of Star Trek.

Oh hell no. That may be fine for the continuity mavens, but the episode stands on its own. It was a complete, fully integrated work when it was in the can, and nothing that came afterward -- certainly nothing made by different people -- is authoritative about it.