Star Trek Maps (1980)

[Timo]

Of course the Chronology is in error on everything that contradicts onscreen facts; it's just that "contradiction" can be rather complex and indirect. And the timing of TOS is one of the more problematic points. It makes little sense to assume the episodes would be evenly spaced within the five years, say, when there is no plot point calling for this and when the stardates advance in spurts.

Khan sleeping for two centuries rather than three is easy to handwave away: he was traveling at relativistic speeds, and anything past the 0.45 c mark would turn his three centuries into less than 250 subjective years, which is the time he would have spent asleep and the only viewpoint that would matter to the egoist. And we really, really want Khan to do half a cee or even better, to get him out of the way of expanding Earth space travel in time for the "Space Seed" encounter.

The reference to Regulus being 300 ly away from Bajor requires more work. It's Jake Sisko saying it, tho, and in bitter complaint: he would be highly motivated to exaggerate, by an order of magnitude if need be ("Why do we take the hovercar? Houston is like a thousand miles from gramp's place, dad!"), and OTOH he doesn't seem to know much about astrography anyway. Yeah, he may be a Starfleet brat, but all that entails AFAWK is that he zips from A to B at warp while pretending to fish. And Ben wouldn't be inclined to contradict a complaint.

(The other option is that "Science Academy on Regulus Three" is located nowhere near the real star Regulus. Perhaps it's located on the third colonial conquest of the Regulan culture instead, or on a star known by a name that sounds like "Regulus" but refers to a completely different ball of gas. That way lies madness, but it shouldn't stop us from taking a few tentative steps at least.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Idran]

I'm not even going to bother handwaving things away; I'm just going to outright say that those on-screen lines referring to "two hundred years" in "Space Seed" and TWoK, and referring to Regulus being 300 ly away in "Fascination" were incorrect because they contradict other on-screen lines that make things fit together better.

I don't even mean that the characters misspoke, because while that's vaguely possible for Jake, it's not really possible for Khan and Kirk. The time dilation's a good idea, but it doesn't really fit references like "you have two hundred years of catching up to do" or "These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born." Even if Khan's enough of an egoist that he'd only care about personal perspective, those just don't flow from that. Especially since the first was from Kirk. Instead, I just mean that the episodes (and movie) themselves are wrong.

These shows aren't really perfectly consistent since they're made by people, and so in the end any explanation is going to hinge on something being wrong. I'm just going to go straight to that rather than worry about explaining it.

 

[Christopher]

Then you two are in effect claiming that the official star trek chronology is in error.

Saying "in error" is misunderstanding the intent of the work. The authors of the Chronology made it explicitly clear that any extrapolations they made beyond canon were offered merely as conjecture, not holy writ carved in stone. We're not required to agree with their conjectures (well, licensed writers like me are expected to for the most part, but fans like you aren't); they're merely offered as best guesses or handwaves to paper over the inconsistencies that are inevitable in any large fictional universe created by multiple hands. And some of their conjectures stretch logic more than others.

But, yes, every reference work is capable of error. Every reference work can be presumed to contain errors. It isn't blasphemy to acknowledge that; it's simply a fact of life. Any competent, responsible researcher will know better than to treat any single text as infallible and unquestionable. It's the responsibility of a scholar or researcher to question sources of information, to check them against other sources where feasible and to read them critically. We're not required to blindly accept any text's conclusions; rather, we consider the information we gather from multiple sources and form our own conclusions.

Heck, for me, that's always been the fun of Trek fandom -- getting to piece together my own personal chronology and interpretation of the universe by deciding for myself what the most reasonable way was to put the pieces together, and which additional information from tie-ins and fictional reference books to include and which to ignore. My freedom to pick and choose made it a creative exercise that kept it entertaining, and that helped lead to my current career as a Star Trek novelist doing much the same thing professionally. If I'd been told from the start that there were official texts giving me a single, absolute version of the continuity that I was required to obey without question, I would've been a lot less entertained by Star Trek; indeed, I would've probably come to dislike it, because I despise being told what to think. Fortunately, the Chronology and the other Okuda reference works make no such claim of infallibility or absolute authority; they openly admit they're just conjectures and aren't intended to suppress anyone else's freedom to conjecture differently. Which is why I find it so bewildering and sad that so many fans apparently want them to be authoritarian dogma that the audience is forbidden to question.

 

[MAGolding]

I honestly don't think anyone would ever say "300" for anything under 250. Like, I could halfway see someone doing it for something strictly above 350 (though even that's pretty ehhhhh to me), but I can't see any circumstances in which someone would say it for something strictly below 250. I'd need to see actual examples of people purposefully doing something in that vein in practice to believe that, because that's not even rounding at that point, that's just being wrong.

In my post # 237 I discuss the dates of "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. and I sho that if one assumes that all the dates in those movies are given in the Gregorian calendar, and one assumes that the official dates are correct, characters say 200 years when they mean almost 300 years. Thus I deduce that when a character says X hundred of something he might sometimes mean a number between [X minus 1] hundred of something and [X plus 1] hundred of something.

 

[Idran]

In my post # 237 I discuss the dates of "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. and I sho that if one assumes that all the dates in those movies are given in the Gregorian calendar, and one assumes that the official dates are correct, characters say 200 years when they mean almost 300 years. Thus I deduce that when a character says X hundred of something he might sometimes mean a number between [X minus 1] hundred of something and [X plus 1] hundred of something.

I deduce that the writers screwed up.

Either that or this is an example of where their being vague about what time Star Trek was set back then came back to bite them when people tried to get something more solid later on.

When I was asking for an example, I meant a real life example; someone doing it in practice here in the real world.

 

[Christopher]

Sometimes an inconsistency is just an inconsistency. "The Squire of Gothos" said that events from the 19th century were 900 years in the past. Were they somehow rounding up from 400? No, it was just a continuity glitch resulting from the writers not settling on the time frame yet. I realized ages ago that it's best not to sweat numbers in Trek, whether it's dates or stardates or interstellar distances or ship registries or starbase designations or whatever. They're never based on any consistent scheme, they're rarely meant to be more than just placeholders or incidental background details, and they've been devised by countless different people who weren't on the same page, so there's just no way they can ever truly fit together coherently. So sometimes it's best just to ignore the numbers as spoken or shown.

 

[Idran]

Sometimes an inconsistency is just an inconsistency. "The Squire of Gothos" said that events from the 19th century were 900 years in the past. Were they somehow rounding up from 400? No, it was just a continuity glitch resulting from the writers not settling on the time frame yet.

To be fair, De Forest Research actually called the writers out on that one beforehand, they just didn't change it before production.

 

[Richard Baker]

Sometimes an inconsistency is just an inconsistency. "The Squire of Gothos" said that events from the 19th century were 900 years in the past. Were they somehow rounding up from 400? No, it was just a continuity glitch resulting from the writers not settling on the time frame yet. I realized ages ago that it's best not to sweat numbers in Trek, whether it's dates or stardates or interstellar distances or ship registries or starbase designations or whatever. They're never based on any consistent scheme, they're rarely meant to be more than just placeholders or incidental background details, and they've been devised by countless different people who weren't on the same page, so there's just no way they can ever truly fit together coherently. So sometimes it's best just to ignore the numbers as spoken or shown.

Personally I found it to be a bit jarring at times when on the show 'Enterprise' they used actual calendar dates instead of star dates...

 

[Christopher]

Personally I found it to be a bit jarring at times when on the show 'Enterprise' they used actual calendar dates instead of star dates...

I found that kind of a relief, because it made it easy to enter them into my chronology without needing to rely on arbitrary assumptions or guesswork.

 

[Mytran]

Sometimes an inconsistency is just an inconsistency. "The Squire of Gothos" said that events from the 19th century were 900 years in the past. Were they somehow rounding up from 400? No, it was just a continuity glitch resulting from the writers not settling on the time frame yet. I realized ages ago that it's best not to sweat numbers in Trek, whether it's dates or stardates or interstellar distances or ship registries or starbase designations or whatever. They're never based on any consistent scheme, they're rarely meant to be more than just placeholders or incidental background details, and they've been devised by countless different people who weren't on the same page, so there's just no way they can ever truly fit together coherently. So sometimes it's best just to ignore the numbers as spoken or shown.

Luckily, that one is fairly easily to rationalise, given that Trelane is on a mobile planet, coupled with the fact that neither Kirk nor Jaeger are very good historians

 

[Destructor]

Sometimes an inconsistency is just an inconsistency. "The Squire of Gothos" said that events from the 19th century were 900 years in the past. Were they somehow rounding up from 400? No, it was just a continuity glitch resulting from the writers not settling on the time frame yet. I realized ages ago that it's best not to sweat numbers in Trek, whether it's dates or stardates or interstellar distances or ship registries or starbase designations or whatever. They're never based on any consistent scheme, they're rarely meant to be more than just placeholders or incidental background details, and they've been devised by countless different people who weren't on the same page, so there's just no way they can ever truly fit together coherently. So sometimes it's best just to ignore the numbers as spoken or shown.

Also, why can't people just mis-speak? Yes *we* know it's an inconsistency within the episode, but has no-one in our own real world ever said 900 when they meant 400, particularly when it comes to obscure and distant history?

 

[Christopher]

^Look, I'm not going to re-argue the "Squire of Gothos" dating flub for the five millionth time. My point is simply that sometimes you just have to repeat to yourself that it's just a show, etc. Glitches happen.

 

[Mytran]

True, and sometimes we have no choice but to draw the "the character misspoke" card.
However, it is often more fun to retcon a colourful explaination, IMO

 

[Novak Senkovic]

On another note when was the Enterprise D commissioned? The Next Gen Tech Manual states October 4 2363 but a star trek quiz I just took says 2364. Which is it?

 

[Mytran]

Nothing on screen was ever mentioned about the commission date. The 2364 date comes from the episode The Neutral Zone which was right at the end of Season One

 

[jimcat]

Nothing on screen was ever mentioned about the commission date. The 2364 date comes from the episode The Neutral Zone which was right at the end of Season One

Hello everyone,

@Mytran: The reference is in “Data’s Day” (as I’m sure you’ll have remembered for yourself) when Data says it’s the 1,550th day since Enterprise was commissioned. He also helpfully points out that it’s the Hindu Festival of Lights. Going forwards from 4th October, 2363, then “Data’s Day” will be on 31st December, 2367, which doesn’t seem right. Going backwards from Diwali in 2367 gives a date in late July, 2363. (Incidentally, October 4th is the day Sputnik was launched in 1957, and I’ve always assumed that that was why that particular date was picked, rather than it being based on any kind of calculation.)

@Novak Senkovic: My guess is that the balance of probability is that the ship was commissioned in 2363 and launched in 2364; even if that seems odd to people who know anything about commissioning and launching vessels. (I don’t, but I did think it was the other way round.)

Putting precise dates to any of that is a guessing game. (For example: is it 2367 in “Data’s Day”? Are the days Data is referring to the same length as our days? The answers might seem obvious, but is there any hard evidence?) My go at it is in the link at the bottom of the post, but if you change one assumption, you end up with completely different numbers, that are every bit as correct and accurate as the first lot were. It’s intriguing how often it all almost seems to work, but the fact is that there is no underlying correct solution to be discovered. The numbers are semi-random, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun pulling it all apart.

Best wishes,

Timon

 

[Mytran]

@jimcat that Dat's Day date reference had escaped my mind at the time, but I do recall it now.
Thanks for the mental nudge!

 

[Novak Senkovic]

Hello everyone,

@Mytran: The reference is in “Data’s Day” (as I’m sure you’ll have remembered for yourself) when Data says it’s the 1,550th day since Enterprise was commissioned. He also helpfully points out that it’s the Hindu Festival of Lights. Going forwards from 4th October, 2363, then “Data’s Day” will be on 31st December, 2367, which doesn’t seem right. Going backwards from Diwali in 2367 gives a date in late July, 2363. (Incidentally, October 4th is the day Sputnik was launched in 1957, and I’ve always assumed that that was why that particular date was picked, rather than it being based on any kind of calculation.)

@Novak Senkovic: My guess is that the balance of probability is that the ship was commissioned in 2363 and launched in 2364; even if that seems odd to people who know anything about commissioning and launching vessels. (I don’t, but I did think it was the other way round.)

Putting precise dates to any of that is a guessing game. (For example: is it 2367 in “Data’s Day”? Are the days Data is referring to the same length as our days? The answers might seem obvious, but is there any hard evidence?) My go at it is in the link at the bottom of the post, but if you change one assumption, you end up with completely different numbers, that are every bit as correct and accurate as the first lot were. It’s intriguing how often it all almost seems to work, but the fact is that there is no underlying correct solution to be discovered. The numbers are semi-random, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun pulling it all apart.

Best wishes,

Timon

Well I worked out that the commissioning date was 2363 but a star trek quiz I took online says 2364 so I got the answer wrong however I think the quiz's answer is incorrect.

 

[Idran]

Well I worked out that the commissioning date was 2363 but a star trek quiz I took online says 2364 so I got the answer wrong however I think the quiz's answer is incorrect.

It is, yep.

 

[Timo]

One possible to spin the stardates vs. Gregorian dates, often discussed here (and see Timon's link), is to have the stardate year start late in the summer, in synch with the Paramount season. The first season of TNG would thus span 2363-2364, with the latter year mentioned in the season final.

The launch date of SD 40759.5 would then be in the first half of 2363 and the commissioning date of SD 41025.5 in the second half of that year, with Picard taking command on SD 41148 still in 2363. The alternate interpretation where the stardate zeroes roll at New Year's would move the commissioning to early 2364, and the mission launch would be in that year as well.

Timo Saloniemi