I really don't understand that position (esp. as TWOK builds on stuff, like the refitted Enterprise, Kirk's promotion to the brass). It always felt like a followup to me, IMHO.
Of course it used the same sets and miniatures, because it was a low-budget followup to a hugely expensive movie. They even considered doing it as a TV movie at first, which is why they gave it to the producer of
The Six Million Dollar Man. They had to use the same sets and miniatures and the like, because they didn't have the budget to replace them. That's got nothing to do with story continuity, any more than "The City on the Edge of Forever" using the same backlot as
The Andy Griffith Show means that Andy and Opie existed in the Trek universe. But they did change as much as they could. They replaced the uniforms, they rearranged several of the bridge stations, they redressed main engineering with a bunch of stock prop consoles from Modern Props (that also showed up in
Airplane 2, The Incredible Hulk's "Prometheus," and a ton of other '80s productions), they constructed the radiation room for Spock's death scene out of leftover bits of the Klingon bridge set, they totally redecorated the crew quarters, they changed the lighting and the sound effects to give the ship a different ambience, etc.
And yes, it kept the whole "Admiral Kirk" thing, but ignored the fact that he'd gone back to starship command at the end of TMP. It cherrypicked what it could use and ignored the rest. It kept it ambiguous enough that the viewers could choose to believe they were consistent -- and maybe that was intentional -- but it basically told its own story that stood apart from any of TMP's events.
I'm not exactly tickled to hear that they're planning to reimagine some things (tech makes perfect sense, aliens do not), although I suppose we'll have to wait and see what they have in mind, though, before making our judgements.
Trek has been reimagining its aliens for decades. Every time a new makeup artist comes in, they put their own stamp on the alien designs, just like a new comic-book artist will bring their own style to how a superhero is drawn. Even aside from the sea change from TOS-style Klingons (which themselves had two different makeups) to the ridged version, we've seen several substantially different designs of ridged Klingon -- the Fred Phillips version from TMP with a single central spine and ridged nose, the Burman Studios version from TSFS with individualized head plates and smooth noses, the Michael Westmore TV version with head plates and ridged noses, the Richard Snell version from TVH onward with the smaller head plates and smooth noses, and the distinctive Neville Page version from STID with the bald heads, pointed ears, and bright eyes. We've also seen several radically different Andorian designs which I'm sure
Therin can show you a collage of -- the TOS version with the thick rear-mounted antennae, the TMP redesign with thin, forehead-mounted antennae, the weird tall-headed design briefly glimpsed in TNG, and the Westmore version with forward-mounted animatronic antennae. Westmore himself completely redesigned the Trill from "The Host" to DS9 and the Ktarians from "The Game" to VGR.
Of course it doesn't make sense in-universe, but sometimes you just have to remember that this is fiction. It's an artistic creation approximating a conjectural reality. And that means there's a degree of artistic license involved, and that different creators will interpret the same thing in different ways according to their individual styles. Heck, you're the one who keeps arguing that we
should accept the design inconsistencies in the Kelvin timeline as artistic license rather than timeline changes.
I don't know, I thought it looked cool and am sorry to hear that the producers are backing down and redesigning it just because a few people were complaining online.
Don't believe Internet rumors. That one's exceptionally ignorant, ludicrous, and easily disproven. We were told outright from the beginning that the video released a while back was just an FX test that did not represent the final design of the ship (which is no doubt why they were willing to release it at all). They were already modifying the design back then, long before the fans got a look at it. And the recent announcement of a production delay probably has more to do with the fact that Bryan Fuller is producing both this and
American Gods at the same time and needs the extra time to do a good enough job with both. Or it's possible that there are delays in the writing process, casting, production development, or any number of other factors. Productions get delayed all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with uninformed fans' premature opinions.
ENT's tech was too advanced?! The show went out of its way to show just how primitive it was compared to TOS/TAS's, much less TNG/DS9/VOY's!
Yes, exactly. That's clear to a reasonable observer. But some fans mistook the fact that it
looked more complex and detailed, that it was depicted using sophisticated 21st-century production techniques instead of cruder 1960s production techniques, for an actual greater advancement in-universe. Again, they mistook differences in artistic style for differences in the thing the different artists were depicting.
