Well, if Trek 09's goal was to get rid of all the 'baggage', they utterly failed! (despite making a fun movie)
At this point, the prime universe and the JJverse have an equally complicated backstory. The fun thing is: The basic set of rules are the same in each universe! ("no beaming through shields!", "Warp engines for interstellar travel, impulse engines for battle maneuvers", "Tricorders", "Phaserss set on stun").
In fact: The JJverse is already more muddled! (Transwarp beaming? Seriously, there will never ever be excitement on any away mission again, if the landing party can beam straight back to EARTH if they are in danger!)
If you watch the pilot episodes of TNG, VOY or ENT you can dive right into, without needing to have ever seen any episode of previous Star Trek before.
To completely understand Star Trek into Darkness you need extensive knowledge of plot points from episodes and movies more than 30 years ago...
I personally disagree. My wife finds Abrams Trek more accessible and to her liking than most other films and series that I have shown her.
By that argument, one cannot really enjoy TWOK without seeing Space Seed first-which was GR's own argument against how Khan was presented in the film. I personally enjoy STID because I can look at the deeper aspects of it while still sharing it with my wife and others who are less familiar with Star Trek.
Also, transwarp beaming is an issue? What ever happened to all the other game changing tech of the week? Trek has had transporters reverse aging, separate people in to their good and evil selves and then back again, as well as that interphasing cloak-that sounded promising.
Sorry, transwarp beaming is right there with the rest of the Trek tech.
Nope. Transwarp-beaming is
much worse, because it changes the
basic story telling rules of Star Trek. All these other instances just "reversed" one-off problems.
Basically: After Transwarp it would make much more sense a new series would have the basic approach of
Stargate: A small away team beaming to a new planet every week.
Every fictional universe starts to crack if it's own rules are disbanded. This is especially baffling considering they could have easily made Khan beaming to a small
starship that is then being tracked to Kronos.
That being said, the new movies are wildy entertaining movies! They are basically action movies with a
slight dose of space opera, which is
WAY more easy to get into for someone who is unfamiliar with science fiction.
And basically that's exactly what the movies should be: Entertaining. And in the best case, introducing new people to the genre.
My biggest complaint about those movies basically is: At a time when all major Studios try to emulate a cohesive multi-media universe like Marvel, they split a perfectly funtioning one in half on purpose, splitting the core fanbase and confusing new audiences.
(Seriously! I can easily explain my friends: "this takes place
before the original series, but looks more modern because it was made recently". It's much harder to explain why an older Spock dies and gets resurrected on Vulcan, while a younger Spock lives and sees Vulcan explode.)
Discounting all the other different plot loopes, like what happened to unaffected events like V'ger and the whale probe, and the need to make
another first encounter with basically all known species like the Borg or the Dominion... Really, they should have either made a prequel (because honestly, they will
never change the status quo enough to justifiy the alternate timeline - like letting major well known character like Sulu or Uhura die) or they should have made a clean reboot. This
neither fish nor meat- approach has resulted in two entertaining movies, and serious brand confusion for everyone who isn't a hardcore nerd...
I could have watched scenes like that all day.
