Star Trek Continuity in the 32nd Century

Before the premiere of Star Trek Discovery season 3, pretty much every article about the series was saying words to the effect of "the producers are no longer bound by Star Trek continuity."  The theory seemed to be that conforming to 50+ plus years of "facts" within the Star Trek universe is limiting. 

But the first two episodes of the season laid this claim to rest.  Previously-established continuity was all over the place in these episodes. 

What do we mean by continuity?  The term comes from "continue" and in a TV series, it means doing things the same way.  In Star Trek, it refers to what has been said before about the backstories of the characters, the timeline of events in Federation history, how the technology works, and more generally just remembering what was done in previous episodes so that it isn't contradicted later.

Orions and Andorians ran the Exchange, and another exchange run by Tellerites is mentioned.  Dilithium, rubindium, benamite crystals, warp drive, and slipstream drive are plot points. Previews and advance episode blurbs indicate we will be seeing more established Federation species. In 3189, they use transporters, use transtaters, know what tricorders are, and know the characteristics of temporal wormholes established previously in Trek. Their Federation flag has a different number of stars, but it would still be recognizable to Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and even to Archer.   

Discovery still deep-dives into established continuity.  

What is different is that we are in a different time. The writers are free to create the timeline of what happened in the intervening 931 years, or the 789 years since Star Trek Picard. But they do it by projecting known continuity ahead, which is essentially what all science fiction does.

Discovery Season One sort of did this, situating itself ten years before Kirk and Spock.  The writers and producers invented a war that had only been vaguely hinted at, but they still kept bumping up against things that could not be known by characters in the TOS era, because they weren't known about in TOS.

It's clear that Discovery Season 3 is still deeply situated in Star Trek continuity, but they also have a "cushion" of years that allows them to extend the continuity in new ways.  Everyone who said "Discovery is now free from established continuity" was wrong-o. 😊