Star Trek II, III, IV movie Timeline question...

[Jedi Marso]

Just finished re-watching Star Trek V - The Final Frontier, and it's said the shakedown has been going on for 3 weeks.

Presumably the shakedown occurred before they undertook any other missions. Shakedowns by definition are done before maiden voyages of a ship to work out kinks/problems, so STV likely occurs around 3 weeks after STIV.

Seriously, the official timeline placing ST IV and V a year apart makes no sense in that regard.

Why do you assume the court martial end of ST IV occurred immediately after their return from the past? Think about the shambles Earth was in. There needed to be reports filed, debriefs conducted, an investigation of the temporal ramifications of the mission, and that's all before the JAG officers are assigned and start ramping up for court dates. Realistically, you could argue that the last few scenes of STIV occurred MORE than a year after the beginning. Just some food for thought.

 

[DIrishB]

Why do you assume the court martial end of ST IV occurred immediately after their return from the past? Think about the shambles Earth was in. There needed to be reports filed, debriefs conducted, an investigation of the temporal ramifications of the mission, and that's all before the JAG officers are assigned and start ramping up for court dates. Realistically, you could argue that the last few scenes of STIV occurred MORE than a year after the beginning. Just some food for thought.

There is no way a year passed between them returning and the trial.

Also, Earth wasn't exactly in shambles. As soon as the probe left in IV the electronics all started working again, etc, least in Starfleet HQ. All the probe did was drain power and ionize atmosphere some, not destroy anything. It wasn't in shambles.

Further, as I said, the trial had been going on since at least the beginning of the film, even before Kirk and his crew returned.

Finally, as I said on previous page, if Stardates are to be believed (a big "if" given the unspecific and fluid nature of them) only about 19 days passed from beginning of the film to the launch of Enterprise-A. Granted that may not be valid, but not much time passes based on the Stardates. It's also a static location (Earth) not traveling through space at warp speeds like the ships do, so location/warp speed shouldn't alter the Stardates any.

But most key is the fact the film definitively starts on Stardate 8390 and ends on 8442 with launch of Enterprise-A. There's no way that's a year, and if we are to believe every 1000 units of a Stardate equal a year, that'd equate to the entirety of ST IV occurring over 19 days. Less than 3 weeks. The majority of the film occurs over around 2-4 days (in terms of them leaving Vulcan, traveling to Earth in the film's present time since their time travel had them return immediately after leaving), and there must be around a 2 week break between their return and the trial.

Even if we don't take the Stardates as that solid, still very little time passes at all during ST IV. Just as very little time passes over the course of ST II and III, and later V.

 

[BillJ]

Also, Earth wasn't exactly in shambles. As soon as the probe left in IV the electronics all started working again, etc, least in Starfleet HQ. All the probe did was drain power and ionize atmosphere some, not destroy anything. It wasn't in shambles.

We see torrential rain and strong winds in San Francisco. What snippets we hear has Leningrad with no power.

Look to the southern US as to what damage torrential rain can do.

 

[DIrishB]

We see torrential rain and strong winds in San Francisco. What snippets we hear has Leningrad with no power.

Look to the southern US as to what damage torrential rain can do.

I live in Florida so trust me, I know what torrential rain can do. But again, we need to acknowledge that not much time passed between when the rain starts and ends. Maybe a day at most between probe's arrival and the Enterprise crew's arrival at Earth in HMS Bounty. They return from past the exact moment they leave.

Further, San Francisco isn't exactly a lowland area, which is where the trial was taking place. Further, we're talking about legal proceedings. Emergency services have little or no bearing on that. Two completely separate things. I could see it taking awhile of buildings that housed the proceedings were destroyed, etc, but that wasn't the case.

Leningrad not having power was no different from the rest of the world not having power. Once the probe left, all power was restored.

It's beside the point anyway as the established Stardates given at beginning of film and the ending's with launch of Enterprise-A show not much time passed at all in ST IV.

 

[Tomalak]

The other question would be, was Kirk giving the year or the stardate. McCoy's line about it taking time to ferment makes more sense if Kirk was giving a stardate.

Bingo. As I see it, there are four ways of looking at it:

1. Earth year 2283 was "a while" ago.
2. Earth year 2283 is not "a while ago".
3. Stardate 2283 is "a while" ago.
4. Stardate 283 is not "a while" ago.

Fortunately, the line readings from Kelley and Shatner are good enough that we can interpret it a few ways. Perhaps they're being straight, and it's the year, and the ale really is an old vintage. More likely, knowing those guys, 2283 is very recent, making Kirk think Bones has given him a shitty young vintage, prompting a sarky comeback from Bones.

But why would a smuggled Romulan drink have an earth year on the bottle? I suppose it could be dodgy hooch brewed close to the border, marketed directly at the Federation export market.

Stardates are notoriously not much use - that was literally the whole point of them. If SD 8130 is Kirk's birthday, which is apparently March, 1000 stardate units can't equal 1 Earth year. 130 is 13% of 1000, which would be about mid-February. Close, but not enough to prove anything.

As @Timo rightly pointed out, TOS stardates can be used in a few different ways, but there's no reason to place Space Seed definitely in 2267. All we know is the five year mission ended at some point in 2270, anything else is up for debate. Equally Khan's "fifteen years" is suitably nebulous to be anything from 12-18 years.

Basically, the references are all so oblique that you can make it fit however you like.

Personally, I'm happy with 2285 for TWOK. The one concrete date we do have comes from TNG, and via Generations we know Kirk was either returning to, or considering leaving, Starfleet in 2284. If we do go for 2283 as a date at some point in the past, I'd put the Antonia episode shortly before TWOK. You could maybe put TWOK back to the later 2280s, to fit the Nimbus III dates, but again there's no real reason to think TFF takes place shortly after TVH. There's Kirk's "you said you'd need two weeks, I gave you three" line, but again it's a joke, and there's no starting point. It could be a year after Kirk's trial, or more. Scotty's replaced the whole bridge in that period after all. In TVH there's clearly some passage of time between crashing the BoP in San Francisco, Kirk's trial (after which Gillian has got herself a posting on a science ship and decidedly moved on from Kirk), and between the end of the trial and the launching of the Enterprise-A. At least enough time for Kirk to change his rank pin!

The Okuda chronology is as good as any for a starting point.

 

[DIrishB]

Bingo. As I see it, there are four ways of looking at it:

1. Earth year 2283 was "a while" ago.
2. Earth year 2283 is not "a while ago".
3. Stardate 2283 is "a while" ago.
4. Stardate 283 is not "a while" ago.

Fortunately, the line readings from Kelley and Shatner are good enough that we can interpret it a few ways. Perhaps they're being straight, and it's the year, and the ale really is an old vintage. More likely, knowing those guys, 2283 is very recent, making Kirk think Bones has given him a shitty young vintage, prompting a sarky comeback from Bones.

But why would a smuggled Romulan drink have an earth year on the bottle? I suppose it could be dodgy hooch brewed close to the border, marketed directly at the Federation export market.

Yeah, it is odd to utilize Earth based dating system for an alien beverage, but I like your idea that it's a human knock off (which would explain the Earth date). Further, 2283 as a Stardate wouldn't apply to an entire year regarding the vintage, would it? 2283 as a Stardate reflects a specific day, does it not? Not an entire year?

Stardates are notoriously not much use - that was literally the whole point of them. If SD 8130 is Kirk's birthday, which is apparently March, 1000 stardate units can't equal 1 Earth year. 130 is 13% of 1000, which would be about mid-February. Close, but not enough to prove anything.

Doesn't it depend on when the Stardate calendar system resets to the new year, though? You're assuming it begins on Jan 1, but isn't that illogical given the Stardate system isn't based on Earth time tables?

As @Timo rightly pointed out, TOS stardates can be used in a few different ways, but there's no reason to place Space Seed definitely in 2267. All we know is the five year mission ended at some point in 2270, anything else is up for debate. Equally Khan's "fifteen years" is suitably nebulous to be anything from 12-18 years.

Quite true.

Basically, the references are all so oblique that you can make it fit however you like.

Personally, I'm happy with 2285 for TWOK. The one concrete date we do have comes from TNG, and via Generations we know Kirk was either returning to, or considering leaving, Starfleet in 2284. If we do go for 2283 as a date at some point in the past, I'd put the Antonia episode shortly before TWOK. You could maybe put TWOK back to the later 2280s, to fit the Nimbus III dates, but again there's no real reason to think TFF takes place shortly after TVH. There's Kirk's "you said you'd need two weeks, I gave you three" line, but again it's a joke, and there's no starting point.

It's a joke, but a joke likely based on actual estimates. There's no reason to believe the "3 weeks" comment isn't accurate.

It could be a year after Kirk's trial, or more. Scotty's replaced the whole bridge in that period after all. In TVH there's clearly some passage of time between crashing the BoP in San Francisco, Kirk's trial (after which Gillian has got herself a posting on a science ship and decidedly moved on from Kirk), and between the end of the trial and the launching of the Enterprise-A. At least enough time for Kirk to change his rank pin!

Right. A few weeks at most. Not a year, though. The Stardates provided, as ambiguous as they are, still reflect very little time passing between opening of ST IV and the end with launch of Enterprise-A. That's the salient point I'm trying to get across.

The Okuda chronology is as good as any for a starting point.

Absolutely, but it desperately needs an update. It's over 20 years old and doesn't account for much of Voyager and some of DS9 if I recall correctly, and some info provided in Voyager forces some minor changes, notably when the 5 year mission ended and when TMP takes place.

I think it's equally important to acknowledge that each season seems to reflect around a year of time. TNG/DS9/Voyager era certainly reflected that, and there's no reason to assume TOS era didn't follow suit. Even though the Stardates are largely ambiguous, there's still a clear pattern of 1:1 for the seasons versus internal chronology of a year passing each season, more or less. If one ignores TAS I suppose an argument could be made that the 3 seasons of the TOS show stretched out over the 5 years, but personally I include TAS in my chronology and view them as being the final couple years of the mission.

Either way it's a safe assumption each season reflects a year or so in their timeline.

 

[Timo]

I think it's equally important to acknowledge that each season seems to reflect around a year of time. TNG/DS9/Voyager era certainly reflected that, and there's no reason to assume TOS era didn't follow suit.

That's it, though - there is explicit reason to assume that TOS seasons did not equate Earth years, either in length or in synchronicity.

Between "Errand of Mercy" and "Day of the Dove", three years of peace and adherence to the Organian Treaty (by the Klingon interpretation anyway) have passed. Yet that's only 1.3 seasons, or 36 episodes, not 2.X seasons or 42+ episodes which would be the minimum requirement for the rounding up. Stardate-wise there is no problem as "Day of the Dove" is free of stardates. Even adhering to airdate order or production order creates no problems there, as the following episode has a stardate that could be taken to indicate more than two years after "Errand of Mercy". But following the theory that a TOS season equals a year is a needless inconvenience that results in contradictions.

We could argue those were Klingon years, I guess. Or that everybody was believing in lies because the monster of the week made them to. But nothing in TOS requires us to think that a season would equal a year, so the counterindication carries special weight.

Interestingly, the only Trek show to feature "annual" events was DS9, and the cycle of Bajoran festivities appeared to follow a year that was shorter than the Earth year or the season. All the other spinoffs had their occasional weirdness, but they generally kept referring to time differences that meshed with the season=year concept, without explicitly establishing that concept; DS9 had the main characters count their important anniversaries (even the age of Molly O'Brien!) in "short years".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Although it's been the fandom interpretation forever that the Enterprise-A was the USS Yorktown/Ti-Ho/Atlantis/Lavant renamed and Kirk and company went immediately from the trial to the new ship, is it possible they built a ship from scratch a la Beyond after the trial? IDW are launching a comic book series about the year-plus of adventures the Enterprise crew get up to during construction of the A, during which they're assigned to different ships.

 

[Timo]

Not sure even the E-A of Beyond was built "from scratch". Some of the construction sequence might have happened before or during the adventure for all we know - but at the very least, the components might have existed long before the Enterprise-nil was lost.

The Abrams E-A is supposedly an upgrade on a brand new design, though. The Nimoy E-A is a rehash of a decades-old has-been. Getting the latter sort constructed might be less likely than the former in any circumstances. Although the specific circumstances might still warrant it, especially if Starfleet knew it was building the ship solely as a monument, devoid of operational value and therefore immune to critique on her design age.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

I always liked the thought that it was the Yorktown, last seen dead in space and running out of life support. Starfleet cleared out the bodies, painted a new hull number, and passed it on to Kirk.

 

[BillJ]

Starfleet cleared out the bodies, painted a new hull number, and passed it on to Kirk.

Eww...

Imagine if they missed one?!?

 

[Tomalak]

Why do you think Scotty needed three weeks?

 

[Terok Nor]

Would something like this work?

Space Seed - 2267
(Khaaaaaaaan!)

TAS - 2270
(end of 5 year mission)

TMP - 2275
(leaves enough time for the refit and for crew to be promoted and for another 5 year mission to potentially take place after TMP)

TWOK/TSFS - 2282
(15 years after Space Seed)

TVH/TFF - 2283
(several months after TSFS)

TUC - 2288
(end of another 5 year mission?)

GEN - 2293
(gives Kirk a few years of retirement before his "death")

GEN - 2371
(78 years later....)

 

[DIrishB]

That's it, though - there is explicit reason to assume that TOS seasons did not equate Earth years, either in length or in synchronicity.

Between "Errand of Mercy" and "Day of the Dove", three years of peace and adherence to the Organian Treaty (by the Klingon interpretation anyway) have passed. Yet that's only 1.3 seasons, or 36 episodes, not 2.X seasons or 42+ episodes which would be the minimum requirement for the rounding up. Stardate-wise there is no problem as "Day of the Dove" is free of stardates. Even adhering to airdate order or production order creates no problems there, as the following episode has a stardate that could be taken to indicate more than two years after "Errand of Mercy". But following the theory that a TOS season equals a year is a needless inconvenience that results in contradictions.

Right, but as you said it's based on Klingon years, not Earth years, so that leaves a lot of wiggle room in terms of the Earth-based time span.

We could argue those were Klingon years, I guess. Or that everybody was believing in lies because the monster of the week made them to. But nothing in TOS requires us to think that a season would equal a year, so the counterindication carries special weight.

Not true. Yes, as said they were presumably Klingon years. But there is AMPLE evidence to reflect the fact each season equates to a year (or around a year), specifically the fact it's a five year mission and we got 3 seasons of TOS and 2 seasons of TAS to cover that five year mission.

Interestingly, the only Trek show to feature "annual" events was DS9, and the cycle of Bajoran festivities appeared to follow a year that was shorter than the Earth year or the season. All the other spinoffs had their occasional weirdness, but they generally kept referring to time differences that meshed with the season=year concept, without explicitly establishing that concept; DS9 had the main characters count their important anniversaries (even the age of Molly O'Brien!) in "short years".

Timo Saloniemi

Very interesting. I just restarted TNG in my rewatch, so it'll be a few months until I get to DS9 unfortunately.

Although it's been the fandom interpretation forever that the Enterprise-A was the USS Yorktown/Ti-Ho/Atlantis/Lavant renamed and Kirk and company went immediately from the trial to the new ship, is it possible they built a ship from scratch a la Beyond after the trial? IDW are launching a comic book series about the year-plus of adventures the Enterprise crew get up to during construction of the A, during which they're assigned to different ships.

I thought it was Roddenberry who confirmed the Enterprise-A was a renamed Yorktown? That's what someone here said so perhaps that isn't accurate? I took their word because the info provided here has been quite accurate.

Would something like this work?

Space Seed - 2267
(Khaaaaaaaan!)

TAS - 2270
(end of 5 year mission)

TMP - 2275
(leaves enough time for the refit and for crew to be promoted and for another 5 year mission to potentially take place after TMP)

Presumably TMP occurs 2 and a half years after the five year mission ends. With it ending in 2270, TMP would occur in 2272 or 2273 (depending on when exactly in 2270 the five year mission ended). I'm pretty sure the 2 and a half years comment is a direct reference to the TOS mission ending as if memory serves Kirk mentions it's been 2 and a half years since he commanded a starship or something to that effect (maybe it was only that he'd been admiral for 2 and a half years and I'm remembering wrong).

TWOK/TSFS - 2282
(15 years after Space Seed)

If we assume the bottle of Romulan Ale McCoy give Kirk for his birthday is in fact utilizing Earth years, it'd have to be 2283 at earliest, and possibly few years later. Given Kirk's reaction to it (he didn't seem to like the taste) perhaps it was quite new and hadn't fermented fully or something.

TVH/TFF - 2283
(several months after TSFS)

If we take into account Kirk's birthday, which occurs March 22 (shown in ST II - TWoK), Star Trek III - TSfS picks up almost immediately after, thus maybe April. ST IV - TVH picks up 3 months after ST III, so July, maybe August depending on if it's an exact 3 months or not.

ST V - TFF picks up an indeterminate amount of time after ST IV, but it's said Scotty has been retrofitting/repairing/getting it into fully operational shape before they head out. It's said he's been working on it for 3 weeks, so presumably STV picks up not long after the ending of STIV, maybe a month or so. I doubt they spent long doing that first test flight shown at end of IV with as many problems and things not working properly as shown at beginning of V. Granted some of that may be due to being in mid-retrofit/repair/update from Scotty, but logic holds he wouldn't bother with much of that if it was working properly and was up to date tech wise as it should've been. That makes me think, in combination with the 3 weeks dialogue comment, that V picks up a month or two max after IV.

TUC - 2288
(end of another 5 year mission?)

STVI doesn't feature any dialogue that disputes the official chronology so I think 2293 for VI is a fair placement.

GEN - 2293
(gives Kirk a few years of retirement before his "death")

GEN - 2371
(78 years later....)

And that's spot on.

 

[BillJ]

Right, but as you said it's based on Klingon years, not Earth years, so that leaves a lot of wiggle room in terms of the Earth-based time span.

For all we know, Klingon years are longer than Earth years...

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Right, but as you said it's based on Klingon years, not Earth years, so that leaves a lot of wiggle room in terms of the Earth-based time span.

Not true. Yes, as said they were presumably Klingon years.

It's never stated in the episode whether the figure that Kang gave was in Klingon years or Earth years. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

But there is AMPLE evidence to reflect the fact each season equates to a year (or around a year), specifically the fact it's a five year mission and we got 3 seasons of TOS and 2 seasons of TAS to cover that five year mission.

Ample evidence? Not really. At no time does anyone make a reference to a previous episode as occurring exactly a year ago. And, as Christopher has pointed out multiple times, a five-year mission is never referred to in TOS, outside of the opening credits. You could make an equally good case that all five years of the mission were covered in the three seasons that we got. After all, the stardates span from the early 1000s up to the high 5000s. That would jibe with the TNG assumption that 1000 dates dates equal one year and gives us just under five years.

Sulu's statement in "The Deadly Years" that he's served under Kirk for two years also lends credence to the theories that we've either not been privy to all of the Enterprise's five-year mission or that each season covers more than one year.

Personally, I believe that the stardates in the 1000s took place during the first year of the mission, the 2000s in the second, and so on. That divides up the series pretty well and jibes with most of the information that we're given.

If we take into account Kirk's birthday, which occurs March 22 (shown in ST II - TWoK)

That's also an assumption. We usually assume that Kirk's birthday falls on the same date as William Shatner's, but the exact date is never mentioned in any episode or movie.

STVI doesn't feature any dialogue that disputes the official chronology

McCoy states during the Klingon trial that he's been ship's surgeon aboard the Enterprise for 27 years (presumably he's just counting from when he was first assigned to the ship, rather than subtracting the times between TOS & TMP and TMP & TWOK, when he wasn't the chief surgeon on the Enterprise). That pretty clearly places TUC in either 2292 or 2293, depending upon when you believe that McCoy was first assigned to the ship.

 

[Trimm]

If we set aside the Okuda chronology for a moment for the sake of argument, including the Generations and Voyager dates given based upon it, we have only a handful of dating references as far as the movies go. We know that TMP is at least TOS plus 2.5, given that Kirk has been chief of Starfleet operations for that long. We know that TWOK takes place no earlier than fifteen years after TOS season 1, from both Kirk and Khan's reference to that length of time. We also know that TWOK is no earlier than 2283, from the Romulan Ale bottle. We know that TVH is 3 months after TSFS, since our crew have been on Vulcan that long. We know TFF is at least 3 weeks after the end of TVH, and TUC is at least 3 years after TFF, given the length of Sulu's tenure as Excelsior's commander. Lastly, we know that TUC is 27 years after McCoy first joined the Enterprise.

Now, to settle upon actual dates for anything beyond that requires us to make some assumptions beyond those stated dates. If we assume that The Man Trap is in 2266, and that Turnabout Intruder is in 2269, then we can come to some broad guesses as to the movies. TMP would have to be set somewhere between 2271 and 2273, depending on how long TAS took. If Space Seed takes place in 2267, then TWOK can be no earlier than 2282, and given the Romulan Ale, we would have to assume Kirk and Khan are rounding the time and TWOK is a little more than 15 years hense and is actually no earlier than 2283 and possibly several years after that. TSFS and TVH are essentially impossible to place exactly given the explicit date references, and can fall anywhere after 2283. If we assume McCoy joined the crew in 2266, then TUC explcitly takes place in 2293, and TFF is no later than 2290.

To summarize, with the assumption that TOS begins in 2266, then TMP is between 2271 and 2273, TWOK is no earlier than 2283, TFF is no later than 2290, and TUC is in 2293. That is without any reference to any Okuda derived dates.

 

[Timo]

Again, we are under no pressure to place TMP anywhere much. We have an earliest possible date, and a latest possible date, and those are basically a decade apart - and affect nothing, because TMP is never referenced elsewhere in Trek.

I'm pretty sure the 2 and a half years comment is a direct reference to the TOS mission ending as if memory serves Kirk mentions it's been 2 and a half years since he commanded a starship or something to that effect (maybe it was only that he'd been admiral for 2 and a half years and I'm remembering wrong).

The exact reference is twofold:

1) Kirk having spent "two and a half years as Chief of Starfleet Operations", a title he did not yet hold in TOS AFAWK.
2) Kir not having logged "a single star hour in two and a half years", suggesting he logged some just before becoming CSFOps; we certainly have a reason to think he logged those till the very end of the five-year mission.

This merely establishes a minimum passage of time since TOS. Since Kirk is a Rear Admiral by the time of the movie, one would assume plenty of time to have passed, if only to allow him to be promoted from Captain to Commodore and then to his current rank, which is already pretty low as flag ranks go; a mere Commodore as CSFOps would be an unattractive interpretation.

We usually assume that Kirk's birthday falls on the same date as William Shatner's, but the exact date is never mentioned in any episode or movie.

Quite. The stardate system of the new movies may not be explicit, but it certainly is making lewd suggestions - and SD 2233.04 is a cat call if I ever heard one. However, whether that would suggest March is far from said. We know from the same movie that there's a SD 2258.42, debunking the idea that the two digits after the full stop would be dedicated to twelve months. And if they are dedicated to one-hundredths of a year instead, .04 ain't March 22. Unless we make assumptions about when during the Earth year the stardate year zeroes roll over. But then all bets are off.

McCoy states during the Klingon trial that he's been ship's surgeon aboard the Enterprise for 27 years

And if we start counting from "Corbomite Maneuver", we get 2293 (or thereabouts) all right. Although McCoy seems to have prehistory with Kirk, and possibly also has prehistory with the Enterprise - enough to amount for those "skipped" years between TOS and TMP (no need to think he skipped anything between TMP and TUC). Alternately, the leeway from the prehistory could be used for adjusting the dating of TUC.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DIrishB]

For all we know, Klingon years are longer than Earth years...

Could be...

It's never stated in the episode whether the figure that Kang gave was in Klingon years or Earth years. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Quite true.

Ample evidence? Not really. At no time does anyone make a reference to a previous episode as occurring exactly a year ago.

No, but beyond TOS every other series have seasons that equate to one year or so passing in their timeline. I'd classify that as ample evidence.

And, as Christopher has pointed out multiple times, a five-year mission is never referred to in TOS, outside of the opening credits.

Presumably the opening credit dialogue is canon and reflects the fact they're on a five year mission. Come on, now you're illogically forcing ambiguity.

You could make an equally good case that all five years of the mission were covered in the three seasons that we got. After all, the stardates span from the early 1000s up to the high 5000s. That would jibe with the TNG assumption that 1000 dates dates equal one year and gives us just under five years.

As was also stated, Stardates, specifically those used in TOS and TAS were completely random.

Sulu's statement in "The Deadly Years" that he's served under Kirk for two years also lends credence to the theories that we've either not been privy to all of the Enterprise's five-year mission or that each season covers more than one year.

The Deadly Years is midway through Season 2. On my personal timeline it's set at very end of 2267. Given "Where No Man Has Gone Before" occurs in 2265 and rest of Season 1 stretches from 2266-2267 (with Charlie X occurring on Thanksgiving 2266). So, 2265-2267 meets the 2 years perfectly. That too lends credence to the Season = Year theory.

Personally, I believe that the stardates in the 1000s took place during the first year of the mission, the 2000s in the second, and so on. That divides up the series pretty well and jibes with most of the information that we're given.

I'd love to be able to utilize Stardates as a logical measure but again, they're chosen completely at random for TOS, as Roddenberry and various others have pointed out. They were intended to be ambiguous.

Further, are we to presume Stardates only began to be utilized the year before those 1000 dates?

As Roddenberry said, Stardates are effected by position in galaxy, speed traveling at, etc, beyond just linear time, which makes them further ambiguous. Most chronologies accept the established airing order as the chronological order for TOS, more or less, which certainly don't match up to the Stardates. Plus how do we explain Chekov appearing in Season 2 episodes whose Stardates are earlier than Season 1 episodes? Was he just assigned to a different position/area of ship?

That's also an assumption. We usually assume that Kirk's birthday falls on the same date as William Shatner's, but the exact date is never mentioned in any episode or movie.

No, but I'm sure a lot of canon info may not be expressly stated or shown in episodes. That doesn't necessarily make it any less canon of valid.

McCoy states during the Klingon trial that he's been ship's surgeon aboard the Enterprise for 27 years (presumably he's just counting from when he was first assigned to the ship, rather than subtracting the times between TOS & TMP and TMP & TWOK, when he wasn't the chief surgeon on the Enterprise). That pretty clearly places TUC in either 2292 or 2293, depending upon when you believe that McCoy was first assigned to the ship.

Yeah I agree with ST VI's placement. I just wonder about ST II-V's placements.

If we set aside the Okuda chronology for a moment for the sake of argument, including the Generations and Voyager dates given based upon it, we have only a handful of dating references as far as the movies go. We know that TMP is at least TOS plus 2.5, given that Kirk has been chief of Starfleet operations for that long. We know that TWOK takes place no earlier than fifteen years after TOS season 1, from both Kirk and Khan's reference to that length of time. We also know that TWOK is no earlier than 2283, from the Romulan Ale bottle. We know that TVH is 3 months after TSFS, since our crew have been on Vulcan that long. We know TFF is at least 3 weeks after the end of TVH, and TUC is at least 3 years after TFF, given the length of Sulu's tenure as Excelsior's commander. Lastly, we know that TUC is 27 years after McCoy first joined the Enterprise.

Now, to settle upon actual dates for anything beyond that requires us to make some assumptions beyond those stated dates. If we assume that The Man Trap is in 2266, and that Turnabout Intruder is in 2269, then we can come to some broad guesses as to the movies. TMP would have to be set somewhere between 2271 and 2273, depending on how long TAS took. If Space Seed takes place in 2267, then TWOK can be no earlier than 2282, and given the Romulan Ale, we would have to assume Kirk and Khan are rounding the time and TWOK is a little more than 15 years hense and is actually no earlier than 2283 and possibly several years after that. TSFS and TVH are essentially impossible to place exactly given the explicit date references, and can fall anywhere after 2283. If we assume McCoy joined the crew in 2266, then TUC explcitly takes place in 2293, and TFF is no later than 2290.

TSfS picks up immediately after TWoK, within days, weeks at most. That's evident based on the damage to the ship and Kirk still struggling with Spock's recent death. TSfS occurs over a few days at most, and that can be partially backed up by the resurrected Spock's aging at an accelerated pace on the Genesis planet (given how he ages from a child to teenager in a few hours).

TVH picks up 3 months later from TSfS.

And TFF seems to pick up 3 weeks (maybe a bit more) after TVH based on the retrofitting and updating Scotty has been doing for 3 weeks.

ST II-V seems to cover a period of time of no more than 5-6 months total, 3 of which occur between TSfS and TVH.

To summarize, with the assumption that TOS begins in 2266, then TMP is between 2271 and 2273, TWOK is no earlier than 2283, TFF is no later than 2290, and TUC is in 2293. That is without any reference to any Okuda derived dates.

Agreed. Though if we take Voyager's retcon of the 5 year mission ending in 2270, that'd place TMP either in 2272 or 2273 depending on exactly when in the year the original 5 year mission ended.

Again, we are under no pressure to place TMP anywhere much. We have an earliest possible date, and a latest possible date, and those are basically a decade apart - and affect nothing, because TMP is never referenced elsewhere in Trek.



The exact reference is twofold:

1) Kirk having spent "two and a half years as Chief of Starfleet Operations", a title he did not yet hold in TOS AFAWK.
2) Kir not having logged "a single star hour in two and a half years", suggesting he logged some just before becoming CSFOps; we certainly have a reason to think he logged those till the very end of the five-year mission.

This merely establishes a minimum passage of time since TOS. Since Kirk is a Rear Admiral by the time of the movie, one would assume plenty of time to have passed, if only to allow him to be promoted from Captain to Commodore and then to his current rank, which is already pretty low as flag ranks go; a mere Commodore as CSFOps would be an unattractive interpretation.



Quite. The stardate system of the new movies may not be explicit, but it certainly is making lewd suggestions - and SD 2233.04 is a cat call if I ever heard one. However, whether that would suggest March is far from said. We know from the same movie that there's a SD 2258.42, debunking the idea that the two digits after the full stop would be dedicated to twelve months. And if they are dedicated to one-hundredths of a year instead, .04 ain't March 22. Unless we make assumptions about when during the Earth year the stardate year zeroes roll over. But then all bets are off.

The Stardate system in the reboot movies is based on year, a decimal, and then day of year. So it ranges from 2258.01 to 2258.365 for the year. 2233.04 means the alternate universe Kirk was born on January 4. That doesn't dispute the Prime Universe Kirk being born on March 22 by any means. It could easily be argued that Kelvin timeline Kirk was born a couple months premature, perhaps due to the stress induced from the space battle between the Narada and Kelvin, something that didn't happen in the Prime timeline thus Kirk was carried to the full nine months and born on March 22 instead of 2 and a half months premature (advanced medical technology of the time also would likely make premature births not a big deal in most cases).

Sorry I thought that was common knowledge. But just to clarify, in the Kelvin/reboot/alternate universe timeline, the first four digits are the year and the numbers after the decimal are the day of the year. That makes dating significantly easier, but makes little sense on the grander, galactic scale of telling time given the multitude of other races with their own timescales likely dependent on their planets' revolutions around their suns, etc.

And if we start counting from "Corbomite Maneuver", we get 2293 (or thereabouts) all right. Although McCoy seems to have prehistory with Kirk, and possibly also has prehistory with the Enterprise - enough to amount for those "skipped" years between TOS and TMP (no need to think he skipped anything between TMP and TUC). Alternately, the leeway from the prehistory could be used for adjusting the dating of TUC.

Timo Saloniemi

Yeah I completely agree with the dating of TUC, never disputed that one, only II-V being spread across a two year period when it seems quite evident from the evidence within the films that those four films cover only around 5-6 months, maximum. Even the building of Enterprise-A doesn't extend that more, as it seems it wasn't a completely new ship but a refit/rename of an existing ship to explain away the necessary time it would take to construct a ship from scratch, and which the internal Stardates don't allow for that much time passing.

 

[DIrishB]

Just for fun, this is a great list that includes all Stardates utilized in the show. Even the first season of TNG had its Stardates a bit out of chronological order in some cases:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/startrek/st-episodes-1.html

I also don't agree with some of the ordering for the TNG/DS9/Voyager era they use, but like I said it's a great resource for checking out the Stardates for the episodes that mention them.