CP3S said:

ray_afraid said:

Johnny Ringo said:

We just don't know how things will play out yet, maybe humanity is plunged into a sort of technological dark age?

Riddley has stated that the difference in tech is there because he didn't want to make a movie that looks like it's from the 70's. Simple as that.

I think this is perfectly reasonable.

In TOS Klingon's had smooth heads. Then once the movies and TNG came along they stepped it up with the alien makeup and they had ridged foreheads. I liked the ridged foreheads and am glad they decided to make one of the more prominent alien species in the series more alien looking than they were in TOS. Having Klingons forever be brown people with goatees would have been kind of lame. Unfortunately, this made overly anal Trek fans spend years sitting around with wrinkled brows trying to come up with the most reasonable in universe explanation for this discrepancy. To me, it always felt that the real life explanation of different time periods the series were made in, along with tech and budget restraints, should have been more than reasonable enough for anyone. But fans continued to agonize over this issue until Enterprise wrote a really dumb explanation that soothed their aching sphincters.

With all due respect, Deep Space Nine opened that can of worms the minute Koloth, Kang, and Kor showed up with ridges. I was perfectly happy to overlook the issue until the Tribble episode made a big deal of it. So don't go blaming Enterprise for trying to clean up that mess. ;)