Do any of you erudite types know if there is a solid canonical reference to the amount of time that passes DURING The Undiscovered Country?
Short answer: According to IMDB, 110 minutes for the theatrical release, 113 minutes for home video. Long answer: We can estimate that it's between 2 and 3 months, perhaps longer depending on how long it takes for travel times between destinations, and the tendency for theatrical presentations to compress time for storytelling. Praxis explodes. Two months later, Starfleet assigns Kirk to rendezvous with Gorkon. After the assassination, Azetbur indicates the Khitomer conference will occur in a week. So Kirk and McCoy's trial, imprisonment and rescue all must have occurred during that week.
But for an extremely rare once, "Flashback" is explicitly a dream sequence, and a feverish dream at that. And you know what happens to the flow of time in dreams... I guess the slot where you can insert extra time in ST6 would be between Kirk launching from Earth and rendezvousing with Gorkon's ship. Supposedly, this time interval takes Kirk far away from UFP authorities (the Romulan ale thing) - if we take him literally, at least 1,000 ly away. Klingons supposedly aren't that far away as such: they are hated next-door neighbors in dramatic terms. But perhaps Gorkon is sailing from the Klingon homeworld to the human homeworld the long way around, rather than blatantly across the most hotly contested section of the border between the empires. He is a politician with eye to the psychological aspects of politics, after all (or else he would have been dead much earlier in the game, for daring to talk peace!). Imagine North Koreans sending an envoy to Seoul in a ship that first goes around Japan, then loops around the peninsula at a great distance, and approaches from the far southwest, for the psychological impact of her not coming from the direction of Pyongyang at all. Even then, how much time could we insert? A few days of extra sailing, perhaps a week. Timo Saloniemi
The Klingon Empire is on the Alpha/Beta Quadrant border, so they can't be that close to the core of the Federation.
Melakon, your short answer puts you in league with the dastardly Frank Drebbin... The long answer does well with giving a good estimate of the time from 1701-A leaving spacedock to the 'sign-off' at the end, which has always eluded me. Then again, I don't pay attention as closely as I used to. Nor have I invested the time in V and VI that I did in II through IV. Thank you all for the replies.
Unfortunately Enterprise established that it's only four days away at warp 4, which would mean it's at least as close to Earth as Vulcan is (at the end of TMP Scotty says they can get Spock back to Vulcan in four days, and I doubt he meant puttering around at a measly warp 4).
Basically, the core of the Federation is defined as being on the A/B border - the idea is that the border runs through Earth. Or Sol. Or something. None of the plots really pose problems vis-รก-vis the idea that Klingons sit right next door to Earth. They are the Federation arch-enemies, after all. It's more difficult to rationalize why Romulans would be far away from Earth, considering they are even older enemies, from back when humans supposedly didn't travel all that far. Well, he might have. After all, the ship had just been through all sorts of hell - "We can get you to Vulcan in four days" might be an essentially apologetic statement. Timo Saloniemi
Thanks, I was trying to emulate his thinking with that short answer. I liked him better on the original Police Squad! television show over the movies, but they only did 6 episodes or so.
It must be. After all, Spock got from Vulcan to Earth in the time between the Klingon encounter with Vejur and (a couple hours after) the Enterprise's launching, and that certainly wasn't four days.
Spock got to Earth? I thought he met Kirk sort of halfway to the destination - after that wormhole ride, the Enterprise could have been just about anywhere. I think the real question is, how did Spock even manage to locate the ship after that incident? In any case, when I did the Star Charts Alpha/Beta Quadrant maps, I did take care to choose the route of V'Ger so that it would come from Earth's "lower right", which is where 40 Eri A is also located. It sort of dictated certain things about the Klingon Empire in that book, but the Klingons were already to the lower right in many Okuda/Sternbach onscreen maps, too. Those maps don't provide an easy answer to how Kirk could be a thousand ly from the authorities in ST6, but there I evoke poetic license. Timo Saloniemi
Well, they're in the vicinity of Earth. The Enterprise starts from somewhere in the outer parts of the solar system, and jumps to warp one, but doesn't spend more than maybe a minute at it. Decker says explicitly, ``Negative control from inertial lag will continue twenty-two point five seconds before forward velocity slows to sub-light speed.'' [^1] If we take warp one to be light speed, then, they're in the outskirts of Earth's system, plus one light-minute, which is still the outskirts of Earth's system. Spock undoubtedly found the Enterprise by ordinary sensors; the Enterprise had no particular reason to be running silent, so its ``air traffic control'' transponders would be signaling; and the abortive jump to warp, and falling back out, and explosion of the asteroid would be obvious things to normal sensor scans. (Note that even modern-day sensors could detect a space shuttle launch from as far away as the asteroid belt. You really can't hide in space, unless you have a cloaking device.) [^1] Thanks, http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie1.html
Hmm, this map does show Earth is on the Alpha/Beta border, and that the Klingons and Romulans are both pretty close. http://www.sttff.net/images/AST_MAP000.jpg
You are correct. Quinn Martin style opening (even with the QM announcer), Peter Lupus as Norberg (excellent as a comic actor) , and the "freeze frame" ending done by the actors just stopping dead in their motions. "Cigarette?" "Yes, I know." Play it on the holodeck...Data would have fit right in.
I think these guys nailed it. Approximately two months between Praxis exploding and the launch of the Enterprise to escort Kronos One. Then it's one week (plus a day or so potentially) from the capture of Kirk and McCoy to the climactic battle over Khitomer. So, 9-10 weeks.
But we don't know that Spock went all the way to Earth, as he's shown meeting the Enterprise in a shuttle, which could have launched from Vulcan. And there's no indication of how much time passed between the Klingons encountering V'Ger and Kirk's arriving at Starfleet HQ, shortly after which he tells Scotty that V'Ger is less than three days from Earth. --Sran
Well, the center of the galaxy is only a few hours from Nimbus III. So I'd guess the Klingon border is about 48 minutes from Earth.
Given that the entire ordeal was brought on by the alien entity's manipulation of Sybok, I'm inclined to think that the Enterprise never really went to the center of the galaxy but instead traveled to a predetermined set of coordinates designated by the entity as a means of facilitating its escape. What Sybok and the other experienced was a merely a hallucination. --Sran