True. I'd have been interesting if the Kzinti arc had been done to attempt to explain how Earth had an intergalactic conflict within a few years of having warp drive.
In all honesty, the only things from TAS I did like was the Caitians and Amanda getting a last name.
I get to be cranky about how amazing and unappreciated TMP is AND how amazing and unappreciated TAS is ALL IN THE SAME THREAD. This is a paradise of nerdy crankiness!
BTW, this has led me to make a spreadsheet (which I'm sure many/some people before me have done - no really, it's a thing) trying to tie in lots of the "known" dates (like "haven't logged a single star hour in two and a half years" and "a man I haven't seen in fifteen years"). I'm mostly ignoring later data points given by other shows. If it came second then it's a mistake and I don't have to consider it.
I'm assuming that Kirk is 49 in TWOK. It's what the writers intended and it matches the times given on screen. (Which is unusual. So why the heck did Generations feel the need to change it?!?) It also keeps Kirk consistently two years younger than Shatner. Or I can just assume that TWOK is 15 years after Space Seen / The Deadly Years as stated which makes Kirk 49. Tomato/tomato.
I have to come to the following conclusions (and a couple of opinions).
1) If Kirk gives up the Enterprise / is made to give up the Enterprise after TMP it's 9-10 years between TWOK and TMP. If you put TOS later in the Five Year Mission then it's a year or two longer. I went with the on screen assumption that The Corbomite Maneuver is one year into the FYM. (Yes, I used a Voyager data point.)
This is terrific for a lot of the narrative (Kirk desperately unhappy, crew getting on with their lives.) It kind of clashes with the end of Roddenberry's TMP novel where there is no way Kirk has to be an Admiral again. Which leads us to:
2) If Kirk and crew get another FYM post TMP then it's somewhere around 3-5 years which is a reasonable amount of time for Kirk to get antsy again. It also allows Spock, Chekov, and Sulu to move on with their careers (even assuming that Chekov and Sulu stayed with the Enterprise for the entire mission). That all falls apart after TVH, but what can you do?
Whether Kirk commands again after TMP or not, it still puts TWOK ~10 years after TMP. So an issue is that if the Enterprise is newly refit in TMP then why is she a training vessel so soon? (The movie states it's because there is not an available crew, which I knew was silly when I was 13.)
If we DO take out TMP and assume that everything is just like it was in TOS only with a movie budget (ship, uniforms, etc.) then the E is a training ship just because she's hella old. So there is that. That's the sturdiest reason for assuming TMP and TWOK aren't compatible.
Not on topic: The one data point I've run across that just doesn't work without a serious tweak is Kirk knowing Mitchell for 15 years AND meeting at the Academy when Kirk was instructing. You can change some of those details, but if you keep them all the Kirk was at most 17 years old. I know Jimmy is a wunderkind, but that would be pushing it.
Also Kirk and Spock are the same age and I have the CANON references to back it up.
tl;dr: NO we don't ignore TMP! (Or TAS!)
