TOS set during the 22nd Century!?

[newtontomato539]

When and where did this start?

When and where did this continue?

When and where did it end?

[Myko]

Tomorrow is Yesterday

[OneBuckFilms]

"They aught to lock you up for 200 years !!!"
"That ought to be about right ..."

I think that's the dialog. Since contradicted, of course. Not uncommon for Star Trek

[Anwar]

I think we can assume Kirk was just making a joke out of an awkward situation.

[BillJ]

Didn't Khan also say something about being a prince on Earth "200 hundred years ago" in The Wrath of Khan?

[Christopher]

I don't find the question entirely clear, but...

The makers of TOS were deliberately vague about how far in the future the series was set; the original proposal said it could be anywhere from 1999 to 2999. And references in the series conflicted. "The Squire of Gothos" implied that the series was somewhere around the early 28th century (since light from events in the early 1800s was only just reaching Trelane 900 light-years away); but "Space Seed" suggested that the series was more like 200 years after the late 1990s, and "Tomorrow is Yesterday" hinted that it was roughly 200 years ahead of the then-present. But "Metamorphosis" established that Zefram Cochrane had been lost 150 years earlier at the age of 85 -- which means, given that scientists' great breakthroughs usually come early in life, that warp drive had probably been around for at least 200 years at that point, suggesting a date further in the future.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture bumped it forward a bit as well, having Decker say that the Voyager 6 probe was lost over 300 years earlier, which would've put the movie in the late 23rd century at the earliest. The Wrath of Khan was the first Trek production to explicitly state (in the opening caption) that the series took place in the 23rd century.

But where in the 23rd century was still an open question. There were two schools of thought among fans and tie-in authors at the time. Some just assumed the series took place exactly 300 years ahead of when it aired, putting it in 2266-69. Others tried to reconcile the 23rd-century reference with the "200 years" references, and put it in the first decade of the 23rd century, typically 2206-09 -- which would be only about 210 years after the Eugenics Wars, fitting the "Space Seed" reference (though requiring Cochrane's warp breakthrough to happen relatively early, like in the first decade or two of the 2000s). This latter assumption was used by the 1979 book Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology (interestingly, predating TWOK), and was followed by a number of Pocket Books' novels in subsequent years.

When TNG came along, it was initially relatively vague about the timing, stating only that it was in the 24th century, with behind-the-scenes materials claiming it was some 78 years after the TOS movie era (consistent with Admiral McCoy's age in the pilot). But in the first-season finale, "The Neutral Zone," we got our first explicit Gregorian calendar date for any Trek production: the current year was stated to be 2364. Which blew the Spaceflight Chronology dating scheme out of the water, since it was consistent with the other theory that TOS had taken place in the 2260s and the movies in the 2270s-90s. But that was canonical now, so ever since 1988, that's been the official dating scheme for Star Trek.

[mb22]

I think the first semi-official source mentioning the 23rd century was The Making of Star Trek from 1968.

[jayrath]

I prefer it all vague. When I was a kid in the 1960s, with NASA's Apollo missions enjoying such great success, I honestly thought we might be living in the TOS era by now.

What's wrong with not knowing? I really don't like, for example, having an explanation for every last part of the warp engines today. Mystery is a big part of what attracted we first TOSers.

I don't know how I can explain the feeling back then. You might be familiar with modern sit-coms with two characters who contemplate a relationship, such as "30 Rock." That adds a "will they or won't they" dynamic. When TOS first aired, we had a similar dynamic: how soon? Will we live to see it? Will our children?

TMoST makes this very clear; there were some fans who even thought TOS was secretly underwritten by the government to prepare us for pending alien contact. Looking back, that was pure crazy. But it's how some thought of TOS at the time. We were that hopeful about the future of humanity in space.

Sigh . . . "were."

[ToddPence]

"The Savage Curtain" - Scotty's quote "Lincoln died three centuries ago . . ." Twenty second century minus thee hundred years equals nineteenth century.

[Christopher]

^Or it equals one Scotsman who doesn't know his American history very well.

[Navigator_NCC2120]

In a trailer for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", the narrator Orson Welles states that a living object of infinite proportions is about to encounter a 23rd Century starship from Earth called Enterprise.

Here is the link to that trailer.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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[Christopher]

But that was a trailer. I didn't say TWOK was the first thing that ever proposed the idea in any context, simply that it was the first production to state canonically what the century was.

[Navigator_NCC2120]

Christopher,

No offense was intended. I was offering the Original Poster (Member Newtontomato539) additional information.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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[BillJ]

Christopher wrote:

---

But that was a trailer. I didn't say TWOK was the first thing that ever proposed the idea in any context, simply that it was the first production to state canonically what the century was.

But then in the same film you had Khan stating that he was a prince on Earth "200 hundred years ago".

[throwback]

The connection between TOS and the late 22nd century was established in the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Tarbolde wrote a poem in 1996, and Gary Mitchell said something about it being one of the most passionate sonnets written in the past couple of centuries.

The Wrath of Khan was two-faced on the dating - the title card identified the time period as the 23rd century, yet Khan said that he ruled a large part of Earth two centuries before, which would place his rule in the late 21st century.