You're using real world issues to account for what happened within the Trek canon.
But we have two different in-universe realities that are at issue.
Khan predated Nero's incursion and therefore could not have in some measurable way been affected by that event in the first Abrams film. Hence, he is a different character, with traits all his own, separate and apart from the original played by Ricardo Montalban.
I think we've reached a place in fiction where 'multiverse' scenarios are in play and are therefore a reality whether we like it or not, frankly.
Take, for example, the
Planet of the Apes movies.
We have the original films that featured Charlton Heston in the first two, and carried on from there without him, and with notable inconsistencies that make the canon of those original series of films jagged and notably inconsistent regarding their own mythology. (That's what happens when you have a studio more interested in making money off of one of their properties than also doing it creative justice by hiring more competent writers that could more adequately get the job done, but we'll leave that aside here, as it would only serve as a distraction from the point I'm attempting to make right now.)
Then you have the Tim Burton movie, widely considered a disappointment for obvious reasons, which was itself a
reboot, followed by the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" film of a few years ago that starred James Franco, and which was itself yet another
reboot.
So we have three different
Apes universes that are in play, regardless of whether viewers would like to shut at least one of them out entirely and exclude it from the
franchise (the Tim Burton
remake, of course).
Well, it stands to reason that all three exist, and that one has not somehow
replaced or superseded the other. In the sense that the most current is what the studio is looking to sell and make their money off of, you could probably say that we're being asked to accept it as a
replacement being that it's the most current feature put out there, but that doesn't mean the prior films didn't happen. It can't mean that since they too still exist obviously, and the studio still makes them available to stations for airing, and for people to buy and add to their own personal home video collections. They're not
promoted as they once were, but that's just because they're older, and the studio hasn't disavowed them, hence, in an official capacity also, they still exist.
Likewise, if the studio that owns the rights to Superman were to decide to make a film
rebooting everything, and chose to depict the character as a black or Indian man instead, they would be significantly altering the character in a way not previously shown, and the audience would be expected to go along with it, at least for that film or series of films, but that wouldn't erase the history of that character and who he was previously. It by definition simply can't because the character originated from somewhere specific, and that history, and those properties, still exist. Some are of course more popular than others, and therefore more well known, and the productions are a reflection of the period in which they're produced, but the genesis of a character and/or property happened according to a specific historical chain of events that can't be undone.
So waving
an invisible magic wand, so to speak, and thereby
excluding a prior production or series of productions because a studio creates something new based on an existing property, and has completely
revamped it?
Well, according to that logic then, the Will Ferrell "Land of the Lost" flop has erased the original Saturday morning TV series from the 70s that you're so fond of.
Is that what you believe?
Or have you rather maintained the right and dignity to still think for yourself, without ruling out the original TV series simply because the studio has produced a stupid semi-comedy film based on that prior television series?
Aside from which, in the case of Nu-Trek, we also have the powers that be
affirming that the original timeline still exists and that it has not been erased/
replaced despite trying to have their cake and eat it too on that point. Regardless of that though, they're actually leaving it up to us, the viewers, to decide for ourselves. We're being given the okay --an official
pass, if you will, to look at the new universe one of two ways, depending on how we feel. How often does that happen?
It doesn't.
So my mind is
officially made up on this. The Abrams universe is an entirely different universe, whether an
offshoot of the original, or already existing independently in its own right, and whether you care to look at Spock Prime as the Spock we already knew, or a different Bizarro Spock who came from somewhere similar to the original prime universe also, which is in itself beside the point.
They haven't
erased anything, and the two different Khans definitively proves it.
