They should've went with their original idea of having Worf appear in a TOS Klingon make-up in the past and no one from his crew commenting on it. It would've saved us all a lot of trouble. Yeah, fans would've still grumbled about things looking different, but there was no reason to explain a change in production design.
Wouldn't it have created more 'trouble' instead? It would've made people wonder and speculate and question it even more.
Mind you, I don't have a problem with providing explanations for "apparent contradictions." What I have a problem with is the idea that everything that seems incongruous must need a definite explanation.
Many episodes have story elements that seem unnecessary to some people, while other people like them. Was the whole Control/S31 stuff in Disco S2 necessary, was there a good reason for it? Were warp 10 salamanders necessary, or the Borg appearing in ENT? Some people hate Q and find him absolutely unnecessary. Still, all these things are part of the in-universe history.
It was a hole that didn't need filling. It was a retcon, the Klingon makeup changes in TMP were intended to be retroactive.
Behind the scenes comments are just as canonical as the novels
Isn't it worse that TOS was inconsistent with itself? After all, there was far less material back then for them to have to review and make sure it was consistent. Hell, even when TNG started, all they had to review was 79 episodes and four movies. As opposed to today where there's 800 episodes and thirteen movies. If they couldn't stay consistent back when the franchise had fewer than a hundred episodes and movies total, why should they be expected to be consistent now when that number is within spitting distance of a thousand?
Memory Alpha. The Encyclopedia. The technical manuals. They all didn't exist back then, but do exist now.
TOS was so inconsistent with itself it couldn't even decided on what the Federation and Starfleet were called for most of the first, oh, 18 or 19 episodes. I know it was 1966 and 1967 and expecting a series to have ironclad first-year continuity is difficult even in our age but Gene really needed to decide before "Arena" that it was called the Federation and stick to it.
At least it was settled by season's end.
Which was at the beginning of a new show with no previously established elements in that universe.
Nah, just go with the way they actually did it. ENT's explanation might be dumb to some but Trek is full of things that either go unexplained or don't make sense until future writers or the fans solve the mysteries. The fact that the Klingon head ridge explanation is still so controversial nearly 18 years later tells me that the producers made a good and a fun decision and I still like the explanation.
It's Trek. It doesn't
have to make sense to everyone in order for it to work. And the best thing is it doesn't violate in-universe continuity in either direction.
And it does make sense in-universe, connecting the augments and the Klingon desire to be stronger, and answering a mystery on the side.
Hell, they couldn't even keep straight which time period the show was supposed to take place in, with various episodes placing things as early as 22nd century or as late as the 28th.
Which episode was in the 28th?
Huh? TOS was the only Star Trek series that started not knowing when it actually took place?
That, like TOS, was at the very beginning of a new show that didn't have anything to contradict yet.
It's a mistake, not a major change.
They did go out of their way to film it as much like a TOS episode as possible, and specifically hired a director who could film it as if it was 1967. They would've included a retro soundtrack if Rick Berman hadn't vetoed it. Ronald D. Moore even wanted to redo both the opening and end credits in TOS style, complete with still frames and the TOS end credits theme in the latter one, until cooler heads prevailed. The sets were purposefully built to blend into the TOS episode down to the lighting scheme, the additions to the bar brawl used a retro '60s fight choreography instead of a Hong Kong-influenced modern one, and they even went as far as to film the whole thing on a different than usual, '60s style, slower speed film stock with finer grain and different color saturation properties and retro lenses on the cameras because the new inserts would've visibly contrasted with the original TOS scenes otherwise.
All of which was great! But some people would've preferred a totally 'modern' look with new sets, costumes, actors, lighting, props (nullifying the Dax scene)... right?
