I’ll never understand why it’s treated by some people as some ridiculous expectation that things that couldn’t change so drastically over the course of 5-10 years (the entire biology of a species, for example) shouldn’t do so, and that we’re the odd ones for saying “but wait how is this supposed to take place in the same timeline?”
If the former, how far do you take it? Instead of Picard’s complicated, diplomatic solutions to complex problems, what if he just used mind control to resolve every conflict? What if they just made the Enterprise’s shields invincible to damage so there’s never a risk of the ship getting damaged? The show has to exist within a framework of rules and ‘truths,’ for lack of a better word, or everything becomes meaningless because nothing matters and there are no stakes.
If the latter, I’d have to agree. It has to be difficult to jump into a franchise with so much history, but it feels like they changed the Klingons just so they could put their own “stamp” on the show. What reason is there to change them in the first place? Humans and Vulcans still look the same.
I mean, I can IMAGINE plenty of workarounds, the problem is that even the most practical way to explain them is illogical. It made far more sense that the NCC-1701 looked like how it did in the Cage (2254) up until sometime after Where No Man Has Gone Before (2265), before getting a refit for how it looks the rest of TOS (and again for the movies). Now, if I’m supposed to take the show at it’s word, the ship went through a massive, complete refit by 3 years later in Will You Take My Hand? (2257), only to revert one time to it’s 2254 appearance for 2265, and go through another refit by the Corbomite Maneuver (2266)? Is it really a lack of imagination here or is it actually that my imagination thinks about these things and fictional implications?
it seems like the kind of thing that’s obviously an out of universe design choice. it’s like asking for a lore reason why the male Enterprise crew members stopped wearing eyeshadow after Kirk’s five year mission.