Well, whatever one may think of the revisionism r.e the Eugenics Wars, it is cool that they took a concept from a one-off episode and actually used it again. Kinda forgot how much I missed those deep cuts after the new
Trek shows have mostly done their own thing.
I'm one of those weird ENT lovers, actually, so I don't have a problem with it, canon-wise (if anything, it's the most consistent prequel to date).
I take them as canon overall (that's kind of the point) and I have enjoyed what I've seen of the new shows (not
Prodigy or SNW yet). However, I do find I need to ignore how they do or do not fit into the larger franchise to not be bugged by all the retcons and continuity errors in the moment. What I'm trying to accept is that
Star Trek canon is broken, the shows cannot (and will not) fit together like they used to, so just take them for what they are on their own terms for entertainment purposes. Maybe that's the same as you do, but I guess I'm willing to accept the overall timeline from all the shows and movies, just understanding that the details are a mess.
Wait, both of the current shows tried to retcon the Eugenics Wars but can't even agree on where they want to stick it? Wow.
2024 would practically make the Eugenics Wars overlap with WWIII (started in 2026), which doesn't work even if you ignore the holes that removing it from its factual placement in 1993 - 1996 creates.
DS9 was actually an accident (based on a character describing the wars as happening 200 years before): Ronald D. Moore, who wrote the episode in question,
explained in an interview: "This is my personal screw-up. When I was writing that speech, I was thinking about Khan and somehow his dialog from "Wrath" started floating through my brain: "
On EarthÂ… 200 years agoÂ… I was a PrinceÂ…" The number 200 just stuck in my head and I put it in the script without making the necessary adjustment for the fact that "Wrath" took place almost a hundred years prior to "Dr. Bashir." I wrote it, I get the blame."
I suppose there is some irony that the original Khan episode and movie placed the Eugenics Wars 200 years before TOS, which was retconned to 300 when TOS was formally pegged in place, and now, the show runners want to change it all over again. All things considered, maybe
Star Trek needed a hard reboot if the Powers That Be really don't want to have to deal with the canon baggage that comes with the original continuity?
(It's hardly an official source, but it looks like Memory Alpha is assuming that the Eugenics Wars retcon is just a flareup long after the original '90s war we know from "Space Seed" and the rest still happened. We'll have to see if any of the future shows make it impossible to reconcile things by erasing the '90s version entirely, but I think this's a perfectly acceptable way to handle it.)