I think the whole new reality is necessary. It would be like treading on broken glass trying to get things right. Fans will get upset - and you don’t really want to upset Star Trek fans too much. The new movie made much of the time line shift and had the old guard handing over to the new.

As for Enterprise - you have to ask yourself questions like “what about the huge gash on the Earth’s surface the Xindi cut - why wasn’t that mentioned in story ones that followed?”. Simple answer - they could not because you can’t go and retrospectively fix stuff like that. This is the problem Enterprise suffered from. Retrofitting is not an option.

the final episode where it's all revealed to be a history lesson in the 24th century remains one of the all time cop outs.

It was cool to see the holodec though, right? (and the counsellor)

No it wasn't. It was a cheap, nasty and horrible end to a show that had great possibilities ahead of it.

Mark

You clearly missed the sarcasm in my post. (8+p

Mark

No, I think it was a "special episode" and they made the last episode into a video that Riker from TNG was watching. Or at least that's what I gleaned from wikipedia. I stopped watching it after S2.

In hopes of receiving some help before making a difficult personal decision, Commander William T. Riker of the Enterprise-D observes a holodeck simulation of the final mission of the original Enterprise, as commanded by Jonathan Archer, in the days immediately preceding the birth of the Federation over two centuries earlier.

Mark's wrong.

No. Alex is correct. It was all a holo-story.