Most viewers didn't care that Klingons in TMP looked different. Most don't care that DISCO does from TOS.
There is absolutely no way to validate a statement like that. All you're really saying is that
you don't care, which we've already established.
(And even if it were true, who gives a damn? Shows made merely to satisfy the expectations of "most viewers" tend to be lowest-common-denominator crap. Granted, lowest-common-denominator crap can be very commercially successful, but I'd hope we want Star Trek to live up to higher standards. It's more interesting to talk about what
discriminating viewers think.)
So continuity isn't your bag; that's fine. Why take it away from people who
do care about it?
And on a related note...
They are? I'm sorry, but I'm a viewer I get it. I might be in the miniority, but genuinely, I don't require them to tell me it's "Prime" or what-have-you. I watch the show, and thus far it lines up with the larger events of TOS, even if the details are not explained. ... I meet them half-way. The production team made changes in the visuals that haven't undermined the larger narrative of the world. Sorry, they have not.
You're being very generous to the production team, though, and setting the bar fairly low. As you previously posted,
Honestly, I don't expect the effects in any production to match perfectly from one production to another, regardless of the universe. The real world nature of production is too well known to me I guess...
For my part, I'm coming at this strictly as an audience member. Either the show is doing something that works for me, or it's not. I don't expect perfection either, of course, but I do expect the best approximation of it that the production team can achieve. That precludes giving them a pass for pushing things in the direction of
less plausible continuity.
Now, is it my preference? No, not really...
Again, very generous of you. For my part, I'm content talking about my preference as
what I would like to see from the show. To the extent it falls short of that, it's less enjoyable. (It falls short of that in lots of ways; this particular thread just happens to focus on the continuity.) If the show is doing something to satisfy other people, I guess that's great for those other people, but it doesn't do diddly for me.
(By way of analogy, there's lots of criticism the last couple of years about how
Game of Thrones has taken a noticeable dip in writing quality, including but hardly limited to issues of internal consistency, since it went past the source material of the published GRRM books. I find most of that criticism to be fairly sound and persuasive. In my estimation the show is a shadow of its former self, which is sad, though it's still watchable. Now, the show continues to get great ratings, which means a lot of people are watching and presumably mostly enjoying it. Nevertheless, that
doesn't mean the show is actually maintaining the level of quality it hit in earlier seasons. It just means a lot of viewers aren't very discriminating.)
...though I can see it working within the narrative that has been established post-TOS, post ENT, post Kelvin. Building upon those elements that are featured and added to Star Trek over the past 20 years is just as important in the world building as acknowledging TOS.
I can't really agree about that. For one thing, in my book, with the exception of a handful of episodes in ENT's fourth season, literally
nothing has been added to Star Trek over the past 20 years that adds anything meaningful to it at all. You could take away all of VOY, almost all of ENT, the last two TNG films, and all three Abramsverse films, and Trek as a fictional property would not be diminished one iota. (In fact, I think on balance it would be improved.)
TOS, on the other hand, is absolutely indispensable. It is the reason that Trek exists as a franchise, and the wellspring of a really disproportionate amount of what is good and interesting and entertaining and even inspiring about it.
