Hopefully this will be a look forward beyond Voyager rather than going back again..
Oh god, that would be tragic.
That being said I thought it was quite good when you didn't think of it as 'star trek'
Sure, every movie is going to be action-packed for film screens, but those two I felt stuck to Star Trek's ideals more than the rest, where the movie focused on stopping a specific evil villain.
Spock was okay at times. Kirk was okay at times. Scotty was comic relief, with very little of him being a badass
>The new television series is not related to the upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond which is scheduled to be distributed by Paramount Pictures in summer 2016.
...they'd have to some serious retconning to place it anywhere before Voyager. Too much existing canon to take into account when writing the scripts.
It could be that they need to be clear that they aren't associated with the next film. Different characters, etc.
What is "tired" about existing canon? What stops people from writing new stories with new characters in the "old" canon? How, for example, was Voyager burdened by the old, tired canon in TNG or DS9?
As best I can tell, the only reason they don't do it is because they would prefer to cash in on the popularity of the pre-existing characters and the pre-existing stories without actually having to write as though they exist.
Star Trek is a series based on exploration. There are plenty of new worlds and new peoples to see, without throwing away the old canon, while at the same time not relying on it very much.
I honestly can't understand why people like the idea of resets and reboots. To me, it just feels lazy and unsatisfying.
You may be right, a new team of writers may be able to author a new show that adheres to these stories and still comes off as fresh and exciting.
To my mind, the Voyager series (which I did enjoy) was meant to do what you recommend: use exploration of new worlds as a way to introduce new storylines and, to some degree, to distance the show from the storylines of the past. While I enjoyed that show, I don't think it was entirely successful. Specifically, it didn't appear to generate enough interest to warrrant more films, which seem to be what keeps this series alive.
The last series, Enterprise, seemed to be trying to accomplish the same goal by going back into the past, before many of these storylines took place. To my mind, it was wholly unsuccessful. I watched every episode and felt unsatisfied after the majority of them.
In my opinion, the failure of the last two series to generate enough interest for more films was a big reason why the "reboot" idea is more attractive.
The big joy of Star Trek is speculating about the future, in these times especially I think we could use more optimism about a future we haven't thought of yet, not just a dramatic retcon of stories we already know.
Sure, they could leave it vague and have us all guessing what happened in those intermediate years, but that wouldn't be the StarTrek we know as we'd have no idea how they got to that point.
Also, they'd essentially lock themselves into an intermediate storyline that somehow leads to the universe they portray.
Hopefully ,if they do decide to make the setting "post" all the other shows by a long stretch of time, they work around some of these pitfalls and come up with a great story and addition to the franchise.