sure, but you don’t insist they are the same thing.
Absolutely not relevant to the question of whether or not they respect the prior artists.
Musicians who cover songs in new arrangements can respect the songs' original artists, and the artists who make
Star Trek: Discovery have said over and over again how much they respect the artists on prior
Star Trek productions. Doing something different does not mean you're not respecting the artists who came before.
bad example, as he kept mostly the same chords and the same basic melody, only elaborating on what was already there and adding his own arrangement.
And again, he never said it’s supposed to be the same thing. There isn’t a continuity in music like there is in television.
That's the point: The people making DIS made a conscious decision not to have as much continuity in certain areas. That is a legitimate creative choice, just like doing a new arrangement of a song you're covering is a legitimate creative choice. Just because
you want continuity does not mean that those who chose not to retain continuity did not respect the artists who came before.
says who? It’s absurd to think that Starfleet isn’t open to women, even with the evidence we have in that single episode.
It's absurd
today, but the idea of women serving in the military was new when Roddenberry wrote "The Cage," and his depiction of women in that episode is still incredibly misogynistic and regressive. Remember, it wasn't until the 1990s that women began serving aboard U.S. Navy ships, etc.
Pike's line makes no sense unless the space service has been discriminating against women. If Starfleet
has not been discriminating against women, then there is no way that only one woman would be serving on the bridge and therefore no way for Pike not to be used to having women other than Number One on the bridge. The
only way his line makes any sense is if Starfleet has been discriminating against women.
Since we all agree that depicting Starfleet as discriminating against women is a bad idea, it's a better idea to just ignore that line and retcon Starfleet as having never discriminated against women, to assume that women have always served aboard Pike's bridge, and to pretend that Pike never delivered that line and is perfectly used to serving alongside women.
Which was my original point -- that a lot of stuff in "The Cage" is contradicted by later canon and/or outdated and contradicted by the value systems we have today that the creators didn't have in 1964, and that therefore it's a better idea to just ignore some elements from "The Cage" and retcon them away instead of trying to find ways to rationalize them.