Hello there, Long time lurker, first time poster. I've been following this thread with interest and my question to you is are you absolutely certain that the second five-year-mission started in 2273? It seems to me that there would be a bit of a 'run-in/shakedown' period following the events of 'TMP'. Think about it, you have, as Captain Decker put it 'an almost completely new ship', that three of your senior officers haven't been on in nearly three years. Remember Kirk got lost on his way from engineering and didn't know that the phasers were tied to the warp drive. Spock was on Vulcan and McCoy was retired. I don't think this is a ship and crew you want to send out right away without at least a couple of times around the block as it were. Personally I have the second five year mission starting in early 2274 and ending in late-September/early-October 2278. Then having the Enterprise return home and embarking on the 'Belle Terre' mission in late-October/early-November 2278 and returning in late-2280/early-2281. What do you guys think?
^Interesting thought. However, a number of books in the novel continuity reference The Captain's Daughter, so that must be part of it; and that book establishes that the post-TMP 5-year mission ends before the Bozeman disappears, which was in 2278. So it pretty much has to run from 2273-78. Besides, if you do count New Earth, it doesn't really fit as part of a general 5-year exploration/patrol tour, since it's a dedicated long-term colonization mission in its own right. So it'd have to be a separate mission from the 5YM. I think, as far as I can remember, that it fits fairly well with what I established in The Darkness Drops Again about the post-2278 service of the Enterprise -- Admiral Kirk having the E as his flagship and occasionally taking it out on special missions with Spock as its captain.
Good to see you join the board Darren. Darren is the one who wrote up the detailed chronology of the John Byrne comics. He's added several good points to this discussion behind the scenes and I look forward to more insight from him in the future.
Hello Ryan, hello Christopher. Christopher my question to you then is do you consider the second five year mission starting after your novel 'Ex Machina', which you have in Oct.-Nov. 2273? That would put the start sometime in December.
You just reminded me of something, Christopher. Has it been established when Chekov leaves the Enterprise for Reliant? Your novella The Darkness Drops Again establishes that Chekov was a member of Reliant's crew as early as 2279, at which time the ship was patrolling the Klingon border, but it's not clear how long he'd been there or how long the vessel had been in service. --Sran
@Sran, I'm doing this by memory because I don't have my notes handy but the novel 'Deep Domain' which shows the end of the second five year mission takes place in 2278 and shows Chekov's promotion to the Reliant. However the 'New Earth' series which spans 2279-2280 also has Chekov onboard awaiting transfer to the Reliant which I think occurs in the novel 'Flaming Arrow'.
While we're on the subject of Chekov and the Reliant here's a question I've sometimes wondered: is it possible that McCoy served with Chekov onboard the Reliant at some point? The reason I ask is that in TWoK novel when Kirk and McCoy find Chekov and Terrell on Regula 1 one of the first things McCoy says, and I'm paraphrasing, is that he knows Terrell and that they served together. Now McCoy doesn't say that they served together on the Reliant, they could have met before McCoy served on the Enterprise; however do you think it's possible that McCoy did a short stint as Reliant's CMO before they went in search of a planet for use in Project Genesis? There's certainly enough time for it to have happened; 7-8 years if we go by the 2278 end date of the second five year mission.
^McCoy and Terrell's service together happened when Terrell was a lieutenant, if I remember correctly. It's not clear where they were when said service occurred. --Sran
Something like that, I guess. I think maybe there was some question in ExM about whether they'd get another 5-year tour, but I figured it was more a matter of just being able to continue the mission they'd alredy started, which would mean it pretty much began with ExM. Or with "Out there... thataway," depending on how you look at it.
Have the Vanguard or Seekers novels established anything about Terrell's service record before the Sagittarius? I don't remember anything in any of the Vanguard books before the last one and the epilogue novella, but my memory isn't that great when it comes to minor trivia and references. Ryan123450, have you thought about putting a reference to what kind of media the stories are? I don't recognize a lot of the titles, and it would take forever to try to look every one of them up on Memories Alpha and Beta, and there are a lot of comics and short stories that don't have pages.
^Only that he was a double-major (xenobiology and impulse propulsion systems) who could have come up through either command or the sciences. Memory Beta suggests he was an expert at first contact proceedings, but that information has been overridden by the events of Vanguard. What I've always found interesting is that Terrell's apparent birth year suggests he was the same age as James Kirk and was likely his classmate at the Academy (although the two never met during that time). --Sran
Ryan, I think that I’ve discovered a problem with the 2270 section of the Lit-Based Chronology. I know that you wanted to keep the Animated Series evenly spaced along with certain novels. However I was reading Christopher’s annotations for ‘Forgotten History’ and when I got to Chapter 4 I saw this note: ‘This chapter takes place between TAS and the end of the 5-year mission’. The chapter opens with interviews with Kirk and the other Enterprise senior officers regarding time travel, then on page 89, which is dated May-July 2270 we have Admiral Delgado watching those interviews in front of the Science Council. That means that the interviews must have been recorded sometime in April of 2270 after the last episode of the Animated Series. Since the debates regarding time travel took place May-July 2270 that means that ‘The Ambergris Element’, and ‘How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth’ which you have in June and July of 2270, must now come before April/May 2270 as they were part of the Animated Series. Also the events of ‘Yesterday’s Son’, which you have in May 2270, probably occur after the debates started and were one of the reasons for the creation of the Department Of Temporal Investigations on July 22, 2270. I hope this helps. Darren
Once I get time to work more on the actual page on the STLVRG, there will be hover text like on my other lists so the info there should be enough to explain what each story is. I agree with you about Yesterday's Son. Especially considering the fact that you would have to squint at a few of the details in Yesterday's Son to make it fit with Forgotten History anyway, I would assume that it was the last time Kirk and Spock used the Guardian before it being declared totally off limits. I don't think I will be moving the two TAS episodes though, since they were removed from the rest of the TAS era and placed there specifically to fill in those two months without Sulu. If it were a more concrete reason, I'd be open too it but as it stands, a annotation not even actually in the book which doesn't even say after "every single episode of TAS" isn't enough for me to take it too definitively. It's still after all the other TAS episodes. Finally back to the post-TOS discussion... 2279 New Earth: Wagon Train to the Stars (Note 1) New Earth: Belle Terre Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again (Part 2) New Earth: Rough Trails 2280 New Earth: Flaming Arrow New Earth: Thin Air New Earth: Challenger Gateways: Challenger- Chain Mail Gateways: Challenger- Exodus SCE: Foundations, Book Three 2281 The Pandora Principle Dwellers in the Crucible (Original Litverse) 2282 Just Another Little Training Cruise Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again (Part 3) 2284 Strangers From the Sky (Original Litverse) 2285 Time For Yesterday (Original Litverse) The Lives of Dax: Infinity The Wrath of Khan DC Comics Volume 1 Issues 1-8 (DC Continuity) (Note 2) The Search For Spock (Note 3) 2285-/2286 DC Comics Volume 1 Issues 9-17 and 20-36 (DC Continuity) (Note 4) 2286 The Needs of the One (DC Continuity) (Part 2 of DC Comics Vol 2 Special #1) The Voyage Home Unspoken Truth(Note 5) Debt of Honor (DC Continuity) (Note 6) Choices (DC Comics Volume 1 Issue 38) (DC Continuity) (Note 7) Probe (Note 8) Retrospect (DC Comics Volume 1 Ann #3) (DC Continuity) (Note 9) DC Comics Volume 1 Issues 39-55 (DC Continuity) (Note 7) 2287 Timetrap (Note 10) To Reign in Hell The Final Frontier Though the New Earth series was written with the idea in mind that these are the events following The Motion Picture, it has been commonly retconned to a post-second-five-year-mission timeframe. DC Volume 1 has some links to the Original Lit-verse, so that's why I even mention it here. As far as continuity goes, taken as a whole they could be a major stretch to fit. The first 8 issues aren't any more outrageous than alot of the other Original Lit-verse novels as far as being in continuity goes. The fact that there are adventures between STII and STIII is the most problematic for me, but ignoring that, the events themselves I have no major problem with. I really like the characters introduced here as well, and we follow them in the comics for several years. Having these extra adventures also helps cover some time so that the TOS movies can take place from Kirk's birthday 2285 all the way to STV in 2287. If hard pressed, I'd say I would have these eight issues in my personal continuity. Allowing those eight issues to exist lets STIII more easily take place 7-9 months after STII, allowing STIV to take place 3 months later in 2286. (Although in the DC continuity STIV only has to take place 3 months after another 28 issues.) Issues 18 and 19 don't explicitly link to the others, so I have them omitted in the Reading Guide. These to me are the most controversial of the DC comics. They depict Kirk commanding the Excelsior between STIII and STIV and Spock recovering from his resurrection experience and then reverting to his STIII state in the end. They also feature a Mirror Universe out of continuity with the Lit-verse. I would probably not accept these in my personal continuity. Weather a person accepted them or not would basically effect when exactly you considered ST III and IV to take place and the 2285/2286 year break would take place at some point during this run. If you don't accept these, then STIV would have to take place in early 86, 3 months after STIII in late 85. If you do accept these then things get alot more flexible as to what month ST IV could take place in. I'm in the middle of reading this, so I don't know exactly when it ends or how it might fit with any of Saavik's other appearances yet. It starts right after STIV though. Seems to take place before the Enterprise has any other official adventures post STIV. The rest of DC comics Volume 1 run takes place between STIV and V showing the first missions of the Enterprise-A. This also helps stretch out the time claimed to take place between ST II and ST V. I would accept these in my personal continuity along with the first 8 issues. Weather I'd miss anything in the personal arcs of the crew during those issues I'd like to throw out is something I need to look back on. This book was originally written with a post-STIV setting in mind and all but one line makes you think that is the case. An oblique reference to the Enterprise-A's recent mission being a success was tossed in to refer to the events of STV, but if you accept (as I do) the events of Debt of Honor, this could just as easily be referring to that. That allows me to move this book from it's position in VotI to here, fitting better with the seemingly original setting of the story. Not sure why I placed this specifically here, but when I read it that's what I concluded. I can't recall the specifics right now (maybe one of you can) but we had discussed in another thread recently how this novel actually should take place in this era as opposed to when VotI claims. The end of the DC run seems like a good place to put the 2286/2287 break but it could really take place at any point in this area. Alot of specifics to discuss in this section if anyone else wants to dig deep into some older stuff.
^You might want to put in Dayton Ward's upcoming From History's Shadow sequel Elusive Salvation. The solicitation blurb puts the "present day" portions in 2283.
Agreed -- this, plus the additional onscreen battle-damage visible on the Enterprise in the opening moments of TSFS (well beyond what was visible at the end of TWoK) seems to suggest that further events transpired offscreen between films -- and much of what occurs in the first eight DC issues could account for this extended damage, if one were so inclined. The STIII novelization I think has only a few days elapsing between movies, but it all comes pretty much down to personal preference in the end. Spoilers: Spoiler: Unspoken Truth From what I can remember, there isn't really a hard, firm timeframe given in the novel (Unspoken Truth) as to exactly when in 2286 it occurs, but it does seem to span several months, and we get several glimpses aboard the Enterprise-A during those months at various points in the book across that year, along with Saavik's own personal storyline tying it all together. Regarding Debt of Honor, the majority of references within the story seem to place it late in 2289, with Spock mentioning that he and McCoy first served together under Kirk's command "twenty-five years, one hundred seventeen days, [and] three hours" ago (around 2264, during the events of Enterprise: The First Adventure), and the implication is that it's right before Sulu takes command of the Excelsior (plus the presence of the pre-Albino vaccine Kor and Stephen Garrovick, who was rescued from the Pao'la prison facility in 2287). There is, from what I can remember, one quick reference to Gracie's humpback infant being "the first humpback born [in 300 years] on Earth" (or words to that effect), which is about the only real possible reference to an immediate post-TVH timeframe (humpback whales having a 12-15 month gestation period), but this is pretty much outnumbered by all the other references pointing to several years post-TVH. It's definitely not a cleanly-set story, to be sure, and appears to follow the early-'90s continuity assumption that Star Trek V immediately followed Star Trek IV by only a few weeks, but again, whether one prefers one placement or another, something probably has to get "fudged" in the end, continuity-wise, there. Mitigating a bit against a pre-TFF placement for Probe, there's also a direct mention made of the El Capitan-incident in the fifth film, along with mentions throughout of the Enterprise-A's various systems breakdowns from the movie having now been fixed. This is another novel that uses those early-'90s continuity assumptions surrounding Star Trek V (at the beginning, the Probe is mentioned to have visited Earth just "a few weeks" earlier), but the preponderance of other dating-referents do seem to push this novel to after TFF. "Retrospect" (the DC Vol. 1 annual) actually appears to take place in 2286 (not long after the NCC-1701-A's launch), as Glynnis only very recently passed away during the crew's exile on Vulcan, and Scotty is just receiving news of this event in the framing-story. It seems to occur both not long after the launch, but also after a bit of time has elapsed for the crew, enough for them to require a bit of shore-leave time in deep space. (I think Christopher made reference to this tale in Forgotten History too, IIRC.) Definitely, there are a bunch of references placing Timetrap after The Voyage Home throughout the novel, among them references to the eyeglasses McCoy gave Kirk in The Wrath of Khan (and Kirk needing a replacement pair after pawning them in the fourth movie), along with references to Peter Kirk now being a much older, accomplished Federation research scientist (which connects with Wildstorm's "Bloodlines" tale), and mentions of Kirk approaching his sixtieth birthday during the events of the novel. Personally, I've tended to place Timetrap immediately preceding DC Vol. 1, #39 ("When You Wish Upon a Star"), due to that latter story's opening mention of the Enterprise being "out on the frontier" in order to provide intelligence-briefings to ships there regarding recent occurrences; the Klingon frontier is where the events of Timetrap occur, and form a nice (if quite probably unintentional) continuity-bond with one another. I also noticed that The Rift (largely set following Star Trek V), In the Name of Honor (the 2287 novel where Stephen Garrovick is rescued, and the Enterprise-A's first mission following Nimbus III) and "Scotty's Song" (from SNW IV) are absent from this chronology. "Scotty's Song" is another interesting case in particular, since it appears to be a modern-day throwback to those early-'90s continuity attitudes, one the one hand seemingly set not long after TVH, but on the other implying that the events of TFF are only a week or so away. Thinking about it a bit more, "Scotty's Song" might provide us with a continuity "out" regarding the Gracie-issue from Debt of Honor -- in that short story, both whales have to be beamed aboard the Enterprise-A for medical reasons (not enough pollutants in Earth's oceans), and the implication is that she's nearly due. What if Gracie's first calf was born in space aboard the starship, and the one seen in the graphic novel was her second, and also the first "true" humpback planetside-birth in the 23rd Century?
I tend to think that it was written with the intention of being a fair number of years after TMP, but the historian's note inexplicably went with the boilerplate "shortly after ST:TMP" used for so many other movie-era books. Aside from that note, everything about NE points to a time frame much closer to TWOK. Unspoken Truth pretty much spans the entire year after TVH, as I recall. Since Margaret's writing style is so chronologically non-linear, though, I've never tried to break it down scene-by-scene. I've always assumed that Debt of Honor was meant to be not long after TVH. As for its date references, it predated the ST Chronology by about a year, so it wouldn't have been written with the Okudas' assumptions about the movie dating in mind. So you can't read too much into the mentioned time intervals. That's because the original version, Music of the Spheres, was written to be post-TVH, but it was delayed so long by rewrites that it came out after TFF and had a couple of token nods to TFF's events grafted onto what was obviously intended as a post-TVH novel. Yes, I did make a very subtle reference to Glynnis.
Leto, you bring up good points about both Debt of Honor and Probe. In the end there's not really a perfect solution to either of their placements. I think I prefer the interpretations I originally used in both cases, but it's really just up to which data points a person wants to focus on and which they want to gloss over. I like your idea about the exact placement of Timetrap. I think it was you that originally pointed out in another thread that it was misplaced in VotI. I didn't include the other books you mentioned yet because this is just part 2 of 3 of the movie era. For this section I just went from the end of the second five year mission to the end of The Final Frontier. The big TFF-TUC gap and beyond is still left to talk about.
If it's any help the dates for TWOK, TSfS and TVH come from the following sources: The eBook 'Seasons of Light and Darkness', prologue pages 7-12 are concurrent with Chapter 2 pages 36-41 of the 'Wrath of Khan' novel and are dated Stardate 8130.4 (March 22, 2285) (Kirk's meeting with McCoy). The novella ends on Stardate 8131 (March 23, 2285), with Kirk taking over command of the Enterprise. 'To Reign in Hell' - Chapter 26 is concurrent with Chapter 2 pages 41-49 of the 'Wrath of Khan' novel and shows Khan observing Chekov and Terrell entering the Botany Bay. The 'Genesis Wave' by John Vorrnholt gives the dates in The Genesis Report in Chapter 4 as the following: Khan hijacks the Reliant, March 22, 2285. Khan steals the Genesis torpedo, March 25, 2285. Khan detonates the Genesis device and the death of Spock, March 26, 2285 (the diary entry by Amanda in the novel 'Sarek' gives the date as March 11, 2285). The Genesis planet is declared 'off-limits', March 28, 2285. The destruction of the Grissom is dated April 28, 2285. The death of David Marcus and the destruction of the Genesis planet, April 29, 2285. The prologue for the novel 'The Voyage Home' is set on Vulcan three days after the end of 'The Search for Spock' so c. May 2-5, 2285 depending upon how long it took to travel to Vulcan and the ceremony took up late afternoon until the early morning. The rest of the story is set three months after that so late July/early August 2285. Interestingly in Chapter 13 of the novel 'The Search for Spock', Saavik mentions that this is the first time she's been on Vulcan which is contradicted in the novel 'The Pandora Principle'. The 'Genesis Wave' dates the trial and subsequent demotion of Captain Kirk to August 7, 2285. 'To Reign in Hell', the framing portions of the story are set on Stardate 8415.9. (2287) and is set between the epilogue of 'The Voyage Home', and the start of 'The Final Frontier'. 'In the Name of Honor', is set one month after 'The Final Frontier'. That's all I have for now. I'll post more later.
JD I suppose I will go to the Generations prologue. Darren, thanks for posting those references. It's odd that The Genesis Wave didn't follow the Okuda date for The Voyage Home, but since it doesn't make much sense if you just take the films at face value, it's understandable. If TVH did take place in late 85 that would make TFF being in 87 even more of a stretch. All in all I think we're locked into the Okuda dates, and there are definitly ways to make them make sense if one wants to (and if you ignore the Genesis Wave's date.