Gene was by no means a perfect man, but you have to take what guys like Harlan Ellison say with a large amount of salt. ;)

Remove TOS references? McCoy was in the pilot, and in the very first regular episode The Naked Now, they reference the events of The Naked Time. Kirk is even mentioned.

Not to mention that wall of ships that was in the briefing room the first couple seasons had the original 1701.

IIRC, there was a conscious decision later to avoid too many TOS references for a couple seasons, so TNG could stand on it's own without using the original series as a crutch.