Watching Homefront and Paradise Lost today and was actually paying attention to the dates given. Specifically, Paradise Lost begins four days after Earth's power grid was knocked out, which was supposed to be on the 23rd of an unspecified month, meaning the date as of the beginning of PL is the 27th. At the end, Admiral Leyton is getting ready to usurp the the President's speech planned for the 14th. It is definately the 14th at the end since Captail Benteen was in command of the Lakota, a command she was to be given on the 14th. So, 27th to 14th means at most the episode covers 18 days if the month ending was a 31 day month and no less than 16 if the month ending was February (the episode is set in 2372, which will be a leap year). I don't know, for some reason I always thought the episode only covers a week or so. It certainly doens't feel like over two weeks and almost three. This just really jumped out at me while watching the episode today, this timespan really seem wrong, but I guess there's nothing saying it can't be. Thoughts, anyone? EDIT TO ADD: I just checked out this Stardate calculator which claims the stardate given in Paradise Lost (49482.3) corresponds with June 25th, 2372. So if we adjust this to the date given in dialogue and assume that it covers June 27th to July 14th, that's 17 days this episode covers.
TOS episode Paradise Syndrome covered about three months. TNG episode Data's Day is about sixteen hours.
I meant I thought this particular episode just covered a week or so, due to how fast things seem to move. I am aware the time period covered in an episode varies from episode to episode.
Stardates were never really an accurate way of measuring time beyond what order things happen in. They just plug in numbers to make sure it's later than the last log entry really.
Still, this episode gives actual calendar dates that make it a logt longer than it seems, at least to me, anyway.
Given you have different writers setting the bar every week it is going to fluctuate from episode to episode how much it varies. As for the episode itself, given the material we have, I'd say they were gone a few days, perhaps a week just based on the material and not a Stardate calculator.
Paradise Lost starts four days after "the 23rd" making it the 27th and ends on the 14th. This is stated very clearly in dailogue in the actual episode. I only pulled out the Stardate calculator to determine if it was supposed to be in a month with 30 or 31 days so I could get an exact day count. So depending on whether or not we accept the Stardate calculator we should only have a one day difference in the day count. Or two if you want to argue that it's in February.
The episode only documents the incidents that are plot-relevant, obviously. The days when Sisko goes to his office and does paperwork aren't plot relevant, so they're skipped. That must be why it "seems" faster to you.