As I mentioned previously original canon works just fine, for the reason stated by the Romulan agent.
Yeah, in my opinion there was never any reason to change the Eugenics Wars from being in the '90s anyway. Khan didn't take over the entire world, and previous Treks have handled time travel to the relative present just fine.
The whole "secret wars in the 90s" thing never really sat well with how it was described in Space Seed, and even with superior intellect, it doesn't jibe well with Khan and his followers having blasted off in a fully-equipped sleeper ship in that time frame.
It's not secret, its just not part of the time travel stories we've had, most of whom were based in the US. Khan's empire was on the other side of the world.
We must define timelines differently then. To me, any actual change results in a different timeline. Timeline 1: Eugenics Wars in 1992-1996. Timeline 2: Eugenics Wars in 2040s(?). When they pull the "it was meant to be this way all along" card like they do in some episodes, like the DS9 episode "Past Tense" where Sisko and Bashir turn out to be the cause of the "Bell Riots," an historical event to Sisko and Bashir. When they look it up, they see a picture of Sisko as Bell. That works infinitely better than whatever "time asserts itself" explanation was given. But I'm a huge fan of Doctor Who so I probably think about time travel way more than most nerds.
It would be so much easier if they just accepted that it is an alt-history that leads to an alt-future. Every 20-30 years they'll just need to update the timeline so things that the show says happened in years the real world has already passed are now some little distance in the future.
So basically, yes, Star Trek is an alt-history, and in that alt-history the timeline of the USA ticks along just exactly the way it did in our timeline despite massive wars across half the planet. That seems like the least satisfactory possible version.
Of course Star Trek is an alt-history. You allow for it in your stories and make adjustments to the stories you're telling now, you don't just keep changing that lore to suit your current short-term episode needs. It's a disservice to the history of the franchise. 2063 isn't as far away as it used to be, closer to now than 1966 is. Are they going to push back First Contact when 2063 becomes "the present"?
Maybe, and it won't hurt anything. It's made up fiction. Let's just hope people are still enjoying good tvs, or 3d holodecks then, instead of trying to find water.
