DS9 S7 is very light on stardates, but I was wondering if there was a concensus on roughly when the Dominion War came to an end in 2375? No date was given and the last one heard on screen was 52861.3 (November 11th) in "The Dogs Of War". How long after this is "What You Leave Behind"? I ask as I am thinking of taking a crack at writing my own spin on DS9, using my own relaunch characters, but am needing an approximate date to work from. Any thoughts or help on this would be appreciated.
Well unspoken rule is that the finale of a season ends quite close to rolling over to the next thousand number, so in this case Stardate 53000. One would think they did spend a bit of time preparing for that invasion before the big battle is initiated, and of course there's some time between it and their return to DS9 to celebrate, so you could argue as much as a month went by. Then again Winn and Dukat were in the Fire Caves before the invasion was launched, and still there afterward for the showdown between Dukat and Sisko... so yeah.
I'm kinda thinking early-December, but just wanted to see what others thought. Actually started work on it, working title is "47"
I think the novels said it was around Thanksgiving, so that would be end of November. Which is actually pretty consistent if Dogs of War really is November 11.
...That's assuming that a stardate year begins in January. But Paramount seasons begin at the end of the summer, and the few times we do hear Earth holidays mentioned, they don't seem to fall on their proper places if SD XX001=January 1st is assumed. Rather, they fall more or less on the places they hold in a Paramount season, for obvious reasons (that is, an episode mentioning the Hindu Festival of Lights is aired around the time of said festival, in autumn - towards the beginning of the stardate year rather than towards its end). As for the original question, it seems the fleet takes but one day to cross from Bajor to Cardassia, in accordance with earlier such crossings. The battle is probably over in a matter of hours. So our heroes could well be back at Vic's within just three days of their original departure, of which merely the "return trip day" would involve Winn and Dukat camping in the caves. Not a major continuity problem, then. But I, too, like to think that it took some preparing after Worf and Ezri's triumphant return and whatnot before the final invasion was launched; anything is possible, including the series-concluding episode actually taking place past the season border, that is, well into the next stardate year. Stardates and seasons didn't synch in early VOY, either, suggesting a season need not describe a full year or vice versa. (And let's remember that TOS gave us about 5,000 stardates and a supposed five-year mission, all in three seasons..) Timo Saloniemi