She played the captain of the Lakota later in DS9, Captain Benteen.

The first time they introduced the Eugenics Wars set in the 1990s, Spock called it the last world war. Pike in SNW elaborated that it was part of the escalating conflict that went nuclear as WW3 decades later.

TNG also had Vulcan extremists (trying to recover ancient psyonic weapons) and Sela must have expected a fifth column ready to defect once her thousand troops landed and gave them an excuse.

He wrote a book about making it. The section on studio interference implies that it was all egregious, but it lists Paramount trying to fix most of the problems that were still in the final film.

The idea was that the Klingons had joined the Federation and we'd see Klingon Starfleet personnel in the background. When they did add Worf, he was to be more frequently Data's relief than Yar's.

If you read the initial material, Data is drastically different. There is no explicit mention of being unemotional, just that he tends to speak more formally. He's supposed to be more like the Ilia probe than Spock.

Worf didn't exist at first, so Geordi the teacher with bionic vision would be the most "other" character. If they'd seen any of the early press material for Phase II, Spock's replacement there was a very junior officer.

A Quality of Mercy also showed Una in prison, and Those Old Scientists implied she's revered. Did sending that letter prevent Pike from recruiting her lawyer? Things are already not heading down the exact timeline we saw Ortegas alive in.

It's definitely an industry change. Frakes has talked about how when he directs an episode now, the show's director of photography tells him to keep the camera moving.

Wesley's mom, a main character, was initially going to be the ship's teacher. They shifted her over to the empty doctor position without changing much about her. Then they made a new teacher who was also changed to be a bridge character, as the ship's pilot.

While Riker and Troi are adapted from Decker and Ilea, Beverly was more extrapolated from yeomen Colt, Smith, and Rand.

Edit: specifically, their bios were mostly about a potential relationship with the captain, how competent they were (making them reasonable mates for him), and having the "walk of a striptease queen."

Yeah, the first scene where Riker is in awe of the holodeck also says Data was in the class of 78, Riker is reluctant to accept Data's personhood (as initially planned), and since they hadn't introduced the replicators yet, Data describes the holodeck as using transporter tech in a way that sounds very clumsy and patronizing now.

After that they mostly stick to holodecks just being new on ships, and not usually controlled by a computer as sophisticated as the Enterprise's.

TOS had a proposed spin off for him, which would have ended up about his brother (played by the same actor) as first officer of a medical ship.

It would be astoundingly different after SNW.

Boimler is prone to exaggerating and has strange perspectives. It could be some obscure holiday on a planet he saved, or a Starfleet tradition to commemorate just on ships named Enterprise. Or there's another major holiday which coincides with Pike's birthday.

He reacted as if it was an actual Federation holiday, which would be stronger evidence if he wasn't already terrified he'd altered time.