The Rushed Timeline
I dunno. I think I'd have preferred the whole Rebellion / Collapse / Virus / TNE thing to be a bit further away in the future then just 11 years from the 1105 baseline from which CT (and MGT) originated.
Personally, I think the ideal timeline would have been for the Third Imperium to have continued, creaking and straining, under Strephon Alkhalikoi for a long time (until the old man's death from natural causes in, say, 1170), and for the assassination plot to have taken place in his son's lifetime, late in the 1100s - I dunno, 1185, 1190, some time like that - followed then by the Rebellion / Collapse / TNE line.
The delay would have allowed time for the Virus to develop - remember, the chip life form that spawned Virus was not discovered until 1108 on Cymbeline (as part of the LBB adventure Signal GK)- if it is ever discovered at all in the MGT version of the OTU, making its release as part of any Rebellion storyline much more gradual and dangerous (imagine if, instead of Virus being what it was, Vampire ships and insane robots, instead it was a gradual erosion of the power of technology as the chips supporting all the tech simply <i>died</i>. Instead of Vampire ships, dead ships and tech, and sentient species everywhere thrust back to the Stone Age until someone develops computer technology that is immune to Virus and interstellar travel can begin again).
However, if Mongoose hold the current license for Traveller and publishing stories in OTU canon, the fact that they've chosen Milieu 1105 as their baseline is a good sign. Perhaps the whole 1248 thing, and the history thereof, could be written up as a Psion's fever dream, and a warning that some futures should never be allowed to happen.
