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>>What’s more, since TOS, continuity has been played with. <<

Well, I don’t want to go all Sheldon on your Penny ;), but even in TNG they mentioned (or maybe that was Voyager) Code 4 is the only death penalty statute on all the books in the UFP.

When they started ST:TOS it never occurred to them there would be canon (in those days no one kept track — for example Lucy and Ricky have 2 separate anniversary dates and I Dream of Jeannie has 2 birthdates).

But eventually they really tried — Kirk’s brother dying is consistent and TNG references the original Enterprise pretty frequently.

I guess I feel about the time travel “get out of jail free” card like Annie Wilkes felt in Misery about easy exits from cliffhangers: someone should be hobbled!

Trek canon is more a myth than a reality. They broke it frequently and often. And eventually it grew too huge, which was a big version for the reboot. With almost 1000 hours of TV and movie to deal with, some all or none of which was canon at any given moment it was just too big an albatross, it needed to die. Then there’s this:
http://www.postmodernbarney.com/category/star-trek/

but even in TNG they mentioned (or maybe that was Voyager) Code 4 is the only death penalty statute on all the books in the UFP.

Which is kind of silly, as going to Talos IV just doesn't seem as bad as, say using photon torpedoes on a large civilian population, for example.

Anyway, in that first TNG episode, Picard did not acknowledge the Code 4 violation, so they must have mopped up afterwards.

As at best, a casual TOS viewer, who has seen maybe four of the TNG movies, and only a handful of TNG episodes, I had no problem spotting continuity errors and anachronisms. I remember one episode where a tombstone st up for Kirk had his middle initial as "S." rather than the "T." which would be used later.

Regarding "I Love Lucy", Lucy would be easily conceived of throwing multiple anniversary dates at a busy and easily confused Ricky to get more anniversary presents. Jeannie's birthdate might change depending on whether you are using Gregorian, Julian, or Djinn calendars!

While I am no trekkie, I was a silver age DC comic book fan in my youth. Time travel was a constant device. Back in the weird Mort Weisinger era, time travel, interdimensional travel, alternate earth travel, was all a constant. However, back then it followed one simple rule: you CANNOT change the past. If Superman goes back to deal with Al Capone, the stuff already happened and even winds up in the existing history books. If (the biggie) Superman goes back to Krypton before it exploded (he did), whatever he would do to try to make people behave differently would be to no end. You couldn't even go back into pre-historic time and change the time stream by stepping on an ant, or whatever. It already all happened.

Now, that was done away with in a very big way, because idiot Warner bought DC, and thought it would be a good idea to get a mob story writer, Mario Puzo, to tackle Superman. BAD IDEA. Puzo writes himself into a corner, doesn't let Superman use the full extent of his silver age powers until he has to "push back the clock" to save Lois Lane. Puzo can write great stories. He cannot write great superhero stories. And Marlon Brando was a dumbo choice to play Jor-El. Ad, yet they keep on recycling that crap because they paid him the big bucks for 15 minutes of work back in the 70s. Sort of like Universal making all of theose King Kong movies because the mechanical monkey cost so much, I guess.

Of course the DC approach ran into problems, because it wrote extensively about the future, including the near future, which before long would become the present (see World's Finest, featuring Superman's and Batman's sons). Superboy would go to the 30th cenutry to pal around with the Legion of Superheroes, and never asks anybody, "So how do I finally wind up dying? Or do I?"

For TNG, it was the Holodeck, NOT the time travel, which made for too many cheap episodes.