I mean, it was already gone into why it's better to ignore the references to IDIC Epidemic and Vulcan Academy Murders anyway, and like I said before your post, "What Judgments Come" takes place over the course of many months as it stands anyway. On my own timeline I've got it as spanning about 5 or 6 from April to around August or September 2268, starting after "Assignment: Earth" and only overlapping 9 episodes including the two-month span of "Paradise Syndrome".
I respectfully disagree about
IE and
VAM. The thread discussed why it's
possible to ignore them, but hardly established it as "better." I'll grant that authorial intent is never the be-all and end-all of textual interpretation, but given how much of this discussion is devoted to taking Trek authors' chronological references at face value, it seems odd to dismiss their actual
story references... and the clear intent behind M'Benga's description of events during his stay on Vulcan is to reference those novels. If we ignore that, then that whole passage is reduced to meaninglessness, and we're left with no in-story account of how M'Benga met the Enterprise crew and wound up serving on board.
As for
WJC, true enough, it spans months, but
how many months is important, since there seems to be no dispute that it ends shortly before Tholian Web. Ryan was going (at first) on the assumption that it ended only about three months after
Precipice; you clearly disagree, which does provide a lot more time to spread things out plausibly.
The mere fact that both interpretations struck you and he (respectively) as plausible, though, I think underscores my larger point. Even when I was reading the
Vanguard series, and doing my best to make sense of its internal chronology, it just didn't all hang together. Some books seem to have given the pacing considerable thought; others focus narrowly on the events of a few days here, then skip lightly across months over there; often it's far from clear, nor does it all dovetail plausibly in terms of either the events being chronicled, or the TOS background being referenced. All of which is fair enough — one has to make allowances for a series written by multiple authors across several years — but it goes back to why I would never use it as the spine of a timeline like this.
I remembered that the original issue I found about MTMT is that in "The Unhappy Ones" from Seven Deadly Sins Kang's ship is called the Voh'Tahk. This short story is supposed to be before "Day of the Dove" in which the Voh'Tahk is destroyed. But the story is also after "More Tribbles, More Troubles". ... there must have been two Voh'Tahks. Problem solved. ... So I'm getting rid of the idea of any TAS during TOS.
Yay to that conclusion!
The underlying reasoning about Kor's ship may be more complicated than necessary, though. Because not only...
What, has Pawns and Symbols's naming of Kang's ship as the Klolode been ignored? I mean, I know that the novel is totally incompatible with the TNG+ Klingons, but it's excellent and deserves to be referenced.
...but there's also a more recent reference point; to quote from Memory Alpha,
"The non-canon comic book "Blood Reign O'er Me" names [Kor's] ship as the Voh'Tahk, while the novel Excelsior: Forged in Fire gives the name as Klolode."
IOW, the ship has no canonical name, and TrekLit is inconsistent. It's easy enough to assume
Klolode was his first ship, and
Voh'Tahk his second.
And my final version of 2268. You guys talked me in to giving up on the ideas of moving any TAS episodes. And I fixed the placement of What Judgments Come and The Tholian Web.
I like this version a lot better!... although it still runs about 5 months or so later than where I prefer to place things. In my head, 2268 is pretty much all about TOS S3.
Where would the fun be without a quibble or two, though?...
February 2268
...4. [The First Peer] Ends several months after The Deadly Years, as pointed out by Idran.
I'm not sure that's quite what Idran indicated, although he can certainly clarify. He did write that
WJC Ch.18 falls "nearly a year" after the story "First Peer," which marks the start of the Romulan/Klingon alliance; meanwhile the "Historian's Note" that starts the story itself sets it "less than a month" after Deadly Years. (And it specifies "2267," but not necessarily September.)
April 2268
...5. [VAN: The Stars Look Down] Ends around three months after the end of Precipice.
But the story itself starts off with a heading reading "February 2268." You're specified you're working with endpoints here; do you figure the story spans two months?
And rolling on along!...
February 2269
... VAN: Storming Heaven ...Seekers: Second Nature sets this story in February.
But hold on, the prefatory material in
V:SH itself clearly states that it's set in 2268! (Plus all the framing material with Tim and Diego is consistently described as "two years" after the station's destruction.)
June 2269
...[Turnabout Intruder] Set in June by Second Nature. Placed in early June to give the most time to the rest of the 5YM.
Stipulating that I haven't read any of the
Seekers books yet, the previous comment probably makes clear why one might take this with a grain of salt.
Besides, I'm skeptical that 18 months (at most) is enough time to accommodate TAS and all the other stories clambering over each other to fit into the final stretch of the FYM. (I've tried. And found that an extra few months help a whole lot! Especially when you choose to incorporate things like
Prime Directive, which is a time hog, but also a great novel that I'd hate to "lose.")
FWIW, since you're taking a TrekLit-focused approach to all this, note that Alan Dean Foster's prose adaptation of this TAS episode explicitly sets it around Christmas.
I didn't bother changing the placement of anything based on info from the Original Litverse books. Since their inclusion has caused so much comment during this thread, prrhaps I should have just left them out. I simply left them in place when I pulled the books from my TOS reading list, which includes both continuities mixed together.
...
I know the " include everything possible" idea isn't your preference, but it's the format that I've chisen for my website, and this timeline is an outgrowth of that.
Hey, remember that at least some of us appreciate it! Glad you didn't leave them out.
