So you want rigid adherence to Prime continuity, but no reliance on Prime continuity? Those poor CBS executives.
You do get a distinct feeling that Alex Kurtzman is on a fools errand as far as fandom is concerned. There is simply nothing he can do to make a lot of fandom happy.
The noise probably mostly started on September 28, 1987 with the first US airing of TNG. That's also about when a friend of mine started calling it "Wimps in Space." No, he wasn't referring to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. I liked it fine, and every series and episode since then, except "Threshold."
At this point I assume that most of the studios realize that any time you tackle some beloved "geek" property, be it STAR TREK or X-MEN or GODZILLA or whatever, you're inevitably going to have outbreaks of "nerd rage" on the internet every time some new bit of info is leaked or released. "Ben Affleck as Batman? Boycott!" It just comes with the territory these days.
Wait until the first non-white actor is cast as, say, James Bond. It'll make the feelings about the nuTrek timeline and the new Batman or Superman look like a quiet picnic in a spring meadow.
Nope. He's been facing down the fans for years. But I can imagine a meeting that went something like this ... Staffer: "Two items, Mr. Moonves. First, CBS All Access is tanking, it's bleeding money. No one wants to watch reruns of CSI and NCIS and pay extra for the privilege. We need to shut it down and move on. Second, the 50th anniversary of Star Trek is next year. We'd like to do something for the fans." LM: "Bleeding money? I'll tell you what bleeds money, it's those damn Trekkies. They'll buy anything with Star Trek in the title. Here's what you do: Make a new Trek show and put it on All Access. Exclusive. We'll be in the black in no time, and I still won't have to put Star Trek in prime time." Staffer: "Brilliant!" LM: "It's good to be da king."
If tvTrek is "gritty realism" and shaky cam, I'm not watching. Well, I'm already not paying, so I guess that's a given anyway, but DVDs would otherwise be a possibility.
Based on TNG, the pilot was in Sep 1997, so about 8 months later in the year than Trek 17. The first script for TNG was ready in Feb 87, so that could be in about June 2016. Final draft was April, so make that August 2016 for a script. filming began June 87 so make that October 2016. Taking a more recent series that bypassed a pilot. Gotham was broadcast in October 2014, and the filming started in Feb 2014, so backtracking that would mean May 2016 for filming on Trek 17. I wouldn't expect much for the next 3 months.
I novelized the comic books where Batwoman was rebooted as a gay woman. Some of the comments I saw were . . . discouraging.
I don't doubt it. Comic book and sci-fi nerds and fanatics can be some of the least tolerant and open-minded people who claim to be otherwise. Upset their image of the perfect superhero or villain and you're suddenly worse than 1940s comic book Hitler.
Went through the same thing when Michael Clark Duncan was cast as the Kingpin in the first DAREDEVIL movie, which I also novelized. "Nerd rage" is nothing new. Probably why I can be a little impatient sometimes when it comes to purists who want everything to be exactly the way it used to be when it comes to old comic books and TV shows.
Even the Star Trek (Prime) and Star Wars film universes aren't completely consistent within themselves and those are meant to depict a linear series of historical events involving the same realities (for the most part, anyways). You can't always cast a new actor or reboot a franchise and have things be the same. If you're lucky, as with the James Bond film reboot, it can look remarkably the same right down to the same actress playing M and having more or less the identical office she did in the previous films. But that's about all you can reasonably do and still expect it to be taken as a fresh restart and not just more of the same, only with a few new actors.
The first thing I thought of when I saw that link was: "Wait, what about the MACO soldiers in Enterprise?" Those guys were heavily-armed commandos and at least some of them went to West Point.