Controversial Opinion
Star Trek history is not our history, there’s no requirement for it be so and continued attempts to make it so actively weaken the verisimilitude of the Star Trek universe itself.
I agree. I think it would be better if the powers that be just went with the position that acknowledges the reality; it's fiction.
Star Trek exists in a fictional universe and the events in that fictional universe are similar, but not our history ... unless you really believe the Vulcans gave us velcro instead of the Swiss engineer who actually came up with it, or NASA was shooting nuclear weapon platforms into orbit in the 1960s.
There's scores of other works, both in the science-fiction and speculative-fiction genres, that are significant commentaries on the human condition which don't align with our real-world timeline. The fact these stories are in a setting not exactly like our world doesn't make the themes in those story any less relevant, the warnings any less powerful, or limit the ability of them to make people think and be inspired by what they're saying about issues, people, and society.
Controversial opinion: While history in the Trek universe can be fun to speculate and argue over, in the end it does not matter. Any Trek show is about what’s happening now in the actual story. Pretending too hard that it’s “supposed to be an alternate universe!” is just as silly as pretending too hard that it’s “the real actual future!”, because neither is true. The Wrath of Khan is about Kirk and Spock et al and what they’ll do for each other; it’s not about The Fact That Khan Left Earth In 1996. That stuff’s just trivia. It’s the same reason the various X-isn’t-canon people completely miss the point: any of these stories is about the story, not the color of the toothpaste.
I would have no problem with this position *IF* the people in charge didn't insist this is one comprehensive continuity.
My problem is that if you're going to make a point of saying this all happens within the same timeline, which is basically all of the series and movies being multiple different stories patched together as a huge saga stretching across roughly a thousand years, I think at the very least it has to be internally consistent if that's your position. It would be like reading a book series where the publisher insists they're all connected and getting to book#6 and the description of some characters and events that happened back in book#2 doesn't match.
Otherwise, just say this is a
Star Trek story, and it either exists in its own continuity or its up to the viewer to decide whether or how it fits in continuity. I mean other series have done that.
The West Wing famously had an episode after the 9/11 attacks where they specifically tell the audience in the intro of the episode it doesn't exactly fit within the continuity of the series, but it's a story they wanted to tell in that setting and it doesn't really matter where it's supposed to fit in their timeline.
I have no problem with your position that these are the stories the people involved want to tell, and we (as the audience) can just roll with what they're trying to do on their own terms, while not getting bogged down in details. But I think that position requires a floating definition of continuity which allows for some of the shows to be off in their own separate spaces from the others that Kurtzman, Goldsman, Paramount and some fans don't want to acknowledge.
