I doubt we will see a restoration of the familiar TOS timeline at the end of this movie. I think there will be a distinction made between history changes that are important, like the destruction of Vulcan, and history changes that are unimportant, like the appearance of the Enterprise. With the help of Old Spock, Kirk and company will succeed in setting right the former while judging the latter to be "close enough" and not worth the trouble--and further risk to the timeline--of going back and trying to fix them.
In other words, my expectation at this point is that the Trek history we have known for the last 40 years is going to be permenantly supplanted by a new history and visual style. We will probably be left to assume that larger events still played out more or less the way they did before, but the details are wide open for reinterpretation by future sequels. This allows Orci et al to say this movie exists within the same continuity; it simply fails to mention that that continuity doubles back on itself and then takes off at a somewhat different angle. It can even be argued that the original continuity and timeline still exists, it's just not the one we happen to be on anymore.
If true, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I think I would rather they had simply stated at the outset that they were rebooting the franchise instead of trying to work in some kind of back door rationalization. On the other hand, I have always tried to keep Star Trek in perspective as a fictional universe, unlike some people who seem to be more grounded in it and more obsessive about it than they are the real world, so I give the same answer now that I gave when the new Enterprise was first revealed: I can live with it.
As long as the story is good and the characters are compelling and they don't change too many of the things that made me a fan of Star Trek in the first place, I'll be able to enjoy it and look forward to more installments, even if some things are not exactly the same. If they change the shape of the bottle too much and the lightning escapes, I'll be disappointed and future installments probably will not be forthcoming, but life goes on either way.
In other words, my expectation at this point is that the Trek history we have known for the last 40 years is going to be permenantly supplanted by a new history and visual style. We will probably be left to assume that larger events still played out more or less the way they did before, but the details are wide open for reinterpretation by future sequels. This allows Orci et al to say this movie exists within the same continuity; it simply fails to mention that that continuity doubles back on itself and then takes off at a somewhat different angle. It can even be argued that the original continuity and timeline still exists, it's just not the one we happen to be on anymore.
If true, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I think I would rather they had simply stated at the outset that they were rebooting the franchise instead of trying to work in some kind of back door rationalization. On the other hand, I have always tried to keep Star Trek in perspective as a fictional universe, unlike some people who seem to be more grounded in it and more obsessive about it than they are the real world, so I give the same answer now that I gave when the new Enterprise was first revealed: I can live with it.
As long as the story is good and the characters are compelling and they don't change too many of the things that made me a fan of Star Trek in the first place, I'll be able to enjoy it and look forward to more installments, even if some things are not exactly the same. If they change the shape of the bottle too much and the lightning escapes, I'll be disappointed and future installments probably will not be forthcoming, but life goes on either way.
We just have to think it either always looked like this or it always looked like TOS.
