Five Year Mission

Most of the people I've talked with assume that each year of TOS corresponds to a year of the Mission. A lot of fan productions appear to operate under this assumption as well. It is my contention that the three season of TOS comprise the entirety of the Five Year Mission. Many episodes take days or weeks to complete. Consider that The Paradise Syndrome takes over a month in it's self. How long where Kirk and Spock trapped on Organia? Seems like a week at least, if not longer.

Is there any internal evidence that supports this one way or another?

 

I believe it's generally accepted that 1000 stardates equals one year so, in that case, yes, the three seasons would cover the full five year mission.

That said, stardates were just used randomly, with no real thought given during the production of the original series. Some folks consider the two seasons of TAS to be the fourth and fifth years so really as there's nothing canon it's just personal interpretation.

 

I agree. The stardates on TOS range from the low 1000s up to the high 5000s. If you assume that 1000 stardates equals one year and you discount TAS, that works out to just under five years total. That's the basic assumption I used on my TOS timeline.

 

MY assumption has long been that the three season of TOS plus the two seasons of TAS = five year mission. Trying to make any sense of the stardates given on-air from those two series is doomed to folly, IMO. They were pretty-much random on purpose.

 

Whatever we think of the TOS Stardates is open to our own conjecture! They do make sense if we don't delve too far into them while the first season of TNG Stardates are virtually impossible to follow! They were better from the second season onwards though!
JB

 

I've done similar reasoning. I differ since I choose to put Charlie X on 11-22-2266. One year off. One other pre-series dating is that I assumed WNM occurred at the end of filming plus 300 years, or 8-7-2265. I also reset the stardate mission clock after ship refit. I kind of prefer the one year earlier, but here's my unedited pre-TOS/first year (purple stuff are my suppositions):

 

The 1000-stardates-per-year rule of thumb was never dreamed up until the TNG era; it can't be applied retroactively to TOS. (And even TNG's internal references violated it more often than not.)

This, I agree with. There's precious little hard evidence to go on within TOS itself... we know that "Charlie X" happened while it was Thanksgiving on Earth (but we don't know which year), we know that "Day of the Dove" took place three years after the Organian peace treaty, there are various bits of pre-FYM character backstory, and... all the rest is interpolation and conjecture. Even production sequence as the order in which events "happened" is purely a matter of fan custom. There's lots of room for interpretation. Heck, in @JonnyQuest037's timeline there are only six episodes set in all of 2266.

 

I never paid any attention to TNG or heard they said on-screen that 1000 stardates is one year. I thought I came up with it retroactively just last year.

 

JQ, I just read your timeline. What an absolutely outstanding piece of work!!! Awesome. Thanks for sharing it.

 

I love the photo album approach.

I tend to focus on the ship technology events since it is something we see, especially changes (vents/spheres, spikes/swirling glow, bridge height, dish size, lithium/dilithium, phasers/torpedoes, DTD, etc.). I like to factor in chronological slots for ship upgrades/repairs to explain them. I also like to assume the ship gets a major refit about every 10 years; launched 2245 (old nacelles with rear panels, 203 crew), 1st refit 2255 (new nacelles with rear vents, crew ?), 2nd refit 2265 (new nacelles with rear spheres, crew 430), 3rd refit 2273 (TMP). Plus time is needed for system upgrades and repairs over the five years: phaser upgrade, photon torpedoes, power system upgrade, dilithium circuits, engine room remodel, DTD, EMM, DTD w pop-up tray, antimatter control room, etc.

 

Yikes, I just noticed that if you use stardates, the S2 and S3 engine rooms flop back and forth several times between DTD with blue heat sink and DTD with pop-up paddle holder. Two rooms? Saucer-engineering hull? Side-by-side? If you use production order, then no continuity issues.

 

The 4372.5 stardate for Elaan of Troyius is the problem child. Too early. It needs to be after The Ultimate Computer, 4729.4. Maybe either the stardate has a transposed number and should be 4732.5. Or an 8 was mistaken as a 3, and it should be 4872.5. Darn confusing.

 

Yeah. I'd give up on star dates. Production order and in universe mentions and physical changes should give a pretty good sequence of events.

 

Not even when it fits almost perfectly? As luck would have it, the stardates in TOS range from the low 1000s to the high 5000s, which, if you assume that 1000 stardate units = one year, works out to five years. I'm sure that if TOS had gotten a 4th season, they would've moved into stardates in the 6000s and 7000s, but why ignore the serendipity if it works in your favor?

That's certainly true. All you can really establish is a rough sequence of events.

It wasn't my first choice, but TOS didn't have that many episodes where the stardates started in the 2000 range. I think they probably realized halfway through the first season that they needed to stay in the 3000s for awhile, just so they didn't burn through the stardate numbers so quickly.

Thanks very much! I'm glad you liked it. I welcome any feedback folks here might have to give. There are certainly lots of ideas I've gotten on the BBS that I've incorporated into it. I'm trying to explain my reasoning wherever I can and also note the places where the data & I disagree with each other. But it's a constant work in progress.

Me too! I enjoy having a visual element to it, and it's fun trying to figure out good representative shots of the various events.

Very cool idea! That makes a lot of sense. That kind of ties in with my rationale that TOS era stardates "reset" every decade or so, which can explain things like Kirk's gravestone in WNM having a birth date in the 1000s, and the movie era having stardates in the 7000s, 8000s, and 9000s.

I'd never thought of that before, but very good point! I arrived at a similar conclusion, but from a character standpoint. When I arranged the episodes in stardate order, "Amok Time" immediately followed "This Side of Paradise," (or vice versa, I forget which). It seemed odd to have two episodes back-to-back where everyone was incredulous that Spock was suddenly acting emotionally, so I went with production order and just accepted that stardates were only roughly sequential. YMMV.

 

There is no mention of The Organian Peace Treaty in Day of The Dove, Kang is probably referencing it I agree but it's not mentioned as such while the only time we do get to hear of it apart from Errand of Mercy is in The Trouble With Tribbles where koloth quotes it to Kirk on Space station K-7!
JB

 

The thing is that both episodes mention Admiral Komack as the head of the sector that the Enterprise is currently travelling through!
JB

 

Indeed. I came to the same conclusion about stardates long ago... but having done so, I gave up on trying impose any rationale on them. You seem to be trying to straddle the fence? (Not a judgment, just an observation!...)

I look for other shreds of evidence from which to interpolate things. We know from "WNMHGB" that Kirk and Mitchell met at the Academy 15 years earlier... and from S1's "Shore Leave" that Kirk was still a "plebe" (i.e., freshman) 15 years before that point... so it's reasonable to assume that those episodes are no more than a year apart.

If we're willing to accept 24th-century evidence, we know from "Q2" (VOY) that the FYM ended at some point in 2270, so logically it must have begun sometime in 2265. Taking "WNMHGB" as the earliest TOS episode, then, it makes sense to place it in '65 (either just before or just after the FYM began; it's a matter of interpretation, but I prefer the former), and "Shore Leave" in '66. That means KIrk entered the Academy in 2250.

We know from TMOST ("quasi-canon") that Kirk entered the Academy at age 17, so that gives us a birth year of 2233. (Making the month and day match Shatner's is pure fanon.) We know that Kirk was 34 in S2's "Deadly Years," placing that one sometime between his 2267 birthday and his 2268 birthday. We know from "Private Little War" later in S2 that Kirk's "first planetary survey mission" was 13 years earlier, so if we make the reasonable inference that said mission came just after his graduation following four years in the Academy, that would be 2254, putting the episode in 2267. That limits the earlier "Deadly Years" to that year too, as well as "Journey to Babel" (marking 18 years since Sarek last spoke to Spock, hence 2249), and presumably most of the rest of S2.

And so it goes, with further interpolations. If S2 mostly occupies 2267, then S1 (the longest season) mostly occupies 2265-'66, putting "Errand of Mercy" in the latter year, which means S3's "Day of the Dove," set "three years" after that episode's peace treaty, falls sometime in 2269. I wind up with room in the back half of '69 for TAS (which really plays havoc with stardates), and 2270 left over for tales never shown on screen (e.g., lots of novels... although a few of them do fit in among earlier episodes, it's not as many as one might expect).

That's the quick-and-dirty version of the logic behind my take. (I have all the details in a spreadsheet.) As you say, YMMV. FWIW, though, I do agree with you about the dating of the movies... specifically, putting STII and STIII in 2283 (even though it still requires a little fudging of the span since "Space Seed"), and ST VI in 2292 (in contrast to the more typical '85 and '93 dates).

Okay, technically that's correct. Kang's exact words were "For three years, the Federation and the Klingon Empire have been at peace. A treaty we have honored to the letter." Given the earlier reference in "TWT," though, and the fact that we've never heard of any other treaty, it does seem reasonable to infer that they're referring to the same one.

 

With the exception of four TAS episodes ("How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth" (SD 6063.4), "The Pirates of Orion" (SD 6334.1), "The Counter-Clock Incident" (SD 6770.3) and the widely out of grouping "Bem" (7403.6)), all the TOS/TAS stardates are between 1000 and 6000. The stardate for "Bem" is really close to TMP's stardate (SD 7412.6).

 

Great thoughts, but disagree on this one item here: C. 1277.1 to 1313.7 can't represent Kirk's birth year. Even with one calendar year to one stardate year conversion, 36.6 years is indicated (Shatner's real age was 34 at filming), but Kirk says about two years later that he is 34. I have suggested that "C" stands for "Captain" or Kirk's term as captain which is only about 13-14 days at this point if 1000 stardates equal one calendar year. This is Kirk's first mission (taken over in mid-mission from Pike), and not part of the Five Year Mission. Since Kirk now wrecked the ship, and its age since the last refit, Enterprise is due for its next refit. Refit ship, new crew, new uniforms, new five year mission.

 

I noted that Matt Decker on the Constellation was using the same (or very close) stardate calendar. This supports that all of Starfleet resets the stardate clock periodically, or that both ships came out of the refit program about the same time. I favor the former.