Five Year Mission

[johnnybear]

The Constellation had been drifting for a while so Decker's last log would have been a few days behind Kirk's!
JB

 

[Henoch]

The Constellation had been drifting for a while so Decker's last log would have been a few days behind Kirk's!
JB

Sure. In DM, only one log entry is given in the entire episode and it was from Decker's recording while actively hunting the DM:

DECKER [OC]: Captain's log, stardate 4202.1.​

I think Starfleet is on the same stardate time line. I also think log entries are made during and sometimes days/weeks/months later after the actual events. The delayed log entries are some times made in blocks close to each other when they are being reviewed during office time. The historic records of the events only pulls relevant logs for display in the show, and not all the mundane crap. Most episodes only have one log entry (who knows when the log was recorded), and some have none. This is why a log entry can place an episode forward in time compared to the actual time of the event. It can set an upper time limit as to when it occurred.

On screen example from The Gamesters Of Triskelion where 47.4 stardates pass in only 2 hours, and the next episode is Metamorphosis on stardate 3219.8.

ANNOTATION: Captain's log, stardate 3211.7. We are entering standard orbit about Gamma Two, an uninhabited planetoid with an automatic communications and astrogation station.
CAPTAINS LOG: Captain's log, stardate 3211.8. While beaming down from the Enterprise to inspect facilities on Gamma Two, the normal transporter sequence has been interrupted, and we find ourselves on a strange and hostile planet, surrounded by creatures belonging to races scattered all through the galaxy.
SPOCK: Captain's log, stardate 3259.2. First Officer Spock in command. The Captain, Lieutenant Uhura, and Ensign Chekov have been missing for nearly two hours. Computer probability projections are useless due to insufficient data.​

Kirk must have recorded the log after the events, sequential on the same day, and Spock 17 days later.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

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 mean, if you want to call the 1000 stardate units = roughly one year thing a "rationale," I guess. I'd just call it following the majority of data, since we have something like 15 seasons of 24th Century Trek that followed that assumption. I think it makes as much sense as anything to assume that the 23rd Century followed the same system.

BTW, to clarify, I don't just assume that a Stardate between 1000 and 2000 automatically equals a date in 2265. Just that it occupies the first year of the five year mission. So it would more properly span from 2265-2266. I originally pegged WNM as happening in April based upon McCoy commenting in the DC Comics Annual #1 version of Kirk's first mission that his daughter Joanna would be graduating from college soon and he'd have to take some some off for that. It's arbitrary, sure, but it gave me a place to have the 5YM start and gave me most of 2265 to play with.

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.

I more or less agree with this logic. I also have Kirk entering the Academy in 2250. I just have WNM taking place in April 2265 and "Shore Leave" happening in early 2267. Since WNM has a Stardate of 1312.4 and Shore Leave's is 3025.3, it seemed to make sense. If Kirk's first year at the Academy ends in the spring of 2251, it still works, IMO.

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.

Frankly, I'm not nuts about the VOY date of 2270 (Since it's mostly just Okuda tossing something into a script to provide retroactive "proof" for his chronology, something he also did on other occasions), but it's only a year or two off from what I'd use anyway, so it's not a big deal.

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.

Right now I still have WNM as part of the 5YM, but I understand the rationales of the people who place it before. I don't want to push Kirk's promotion to Captain all the way back to 2264, though, so the placement of WNM on my timeline would be more or less the same no matter what.

That means KIrk entered the Academy in 2250.

Yep, agreed.

We know from TMOST ("quasi-canon") that Kirk entered the Academy at age 17, so that gives us a birth year of 2233.

I arrived at 2234 for Kirk's birth because Nicholas Meyer said in his TWOK commentary that he originally had Kirk turning 49 in his script, before the specific age was axed at William Shatner's request. Nevertheless, creator intent counts for a lot with me, so Kirk turning 49 it is. And it makes a lot more sense to have a midlife crisis at 49 than at 52, the age Kirk is turning in the Okuda chronology.

49 minus 15 years equals 34, the age that Kirk was in "The Deadly Years."

(Making the month and day match Shatner's is pure fanon.)

I know, but in the absence of any other data, you might as well use the specific date it gives you. And it's a nice tribute to the actors, IMO.

We know that Kirk was 34 in S2's "Deadly Years," placing that one sometime between his 2267 birthday and his 2268 birthday.

If TWOK takes place in 2283, then "Space Seed" would take place in 2268. I unfortunately had to fudge this a bit because of the data of the surrounding episodes, but if "Space Seed" takes place in late 2267 and TWOK takes place as early in the year as March, then I think it still works. It's certainly better than the Okuda Chronology's inexplicable gap of 18 years. (For crying out loud, both Kirk & Khan say that it's been 15 years!)

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.

Since I have "A Private Little War" taking place in 2268, that puts the planetary survey in 2255. I interpreted that line as meaning that Kirk was commanding the survey, as Kirk remembers it as “the brash young Lieutenant Kirk on his first planet survey.” Since I severely disagree with the Okuda version of Kirk graduating the Academy as a Lieutenant, he needs some time to be promoted from Ensign.

Basically, I have Kirk's early career following this framework:

2250 - Enters Academy, meets Gary Mitchell & Ben Finney.
2254 - Age 20. Graduates Academy as Ensign, goes to the USS Republic under Captain Garrovick. ("He was my commanding officer from the day I left the Academy. One of the finest men I ever knew." )
2254 - Logs Ben Finney's mistake on the Republic. ("some years later" after they first met, unlike the Okuda Chronology that has this happening in the same year that they met.)
2255 - Age 22. Transfers to the Farragut with Captain Garrovick. It's Kirk's first deep space assignment. (The Republic's commander is conveniently unnamed in "Court Martial.")
2255 - Commands his first planetary survey on Tyree's planet. (I assume that Kirk is a Lt. J.G. at this point)
2257 - The Farragut is destroyed, 11 years before "Obsession."
2257-2258 - Lt. Kirk (age 23) goes to Starfleet Command School at the Academy & teaches classes to cadets on the side. (Command School conveniently fills in a gap in Kirk's career, and it makes sense of reference to Lt. Kirk teaching classes from WNM. It seems to me that Kirk would want to lick his wounds a bit and contemplate his next career move after blaming himself for the loss of the Farragut.)
2257 - Meets and begins a romance with Carol Marcus. (This timeline of their romance works out much better for David to be in his early 20s in TWOK.)
March/April 2258 - Beats the Kobayashi Maru at Command School on his third attempt.
May/June 2258 - Graduates Command School.
2259 - Promoted to Lt. Commander (age 25).
December 31, 2259 - Proposes to Carol Marcus on New Year's Eve.
Early 2260 - Carol breaks it off with Jim when she discovers that she's pregnant.
September 3, 2260 - David Marcus born.
2262 - Kirk (age 28) promoted to Commander.
c. 2263 - Commands the small destroyer the USS Saladin as a Commander. (I figure he should command something smaller before getting the Enterprise, but the Enterprise can still be his first command as a Captain.)
2265 - Promoted to Captain at age 31, beating the previous record held by Christopher Pike. ("About your age, Jim.")

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.

I fudged this a bit, as I vastly prefer D.C. Fontana's version of Spock's service record from her novel Vulcan's Glory, which has him graduating the Academy early in the accelerated Vulcan course and serving on some other ships before the Enterprise. I really don't like the idea of Spock serving his entire career on a single ship, and Fontana's version seems like a more logical career progression. So Spock enters the Academy at age 16 in 2246, graduates in 2249, and Spock's visit to Vulcan four years before "Journey to Babel" was an attempt by Amanda to get Spock & Sarek to reconcile. So the 18 year gap was from 2246-2264. They had a disastrous reunion, and went back to the silent treatment.

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 have the gap from 2267 to 2270, but I agree with your logic.

I wind up with room in the back half of '69 for TAS (which really plays havoc with stardates),

Yeah, the TAS Stardates get nutty. And frankly, I don't like many of the TAS stories enough to bend over backwards to include them, outside of stuff like "Yesteryear" and "The Counter-Clock Incident" that provide some cool backstories for characters.

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"),

Yeah. I put TWOK in March 2283 based on Kirk's birthday and the year of the Romulan Ale. I put TSFS in October 2283 both because it allows for a gap to include the first few issues of the DC comics series, and because it makes sense to give the crew some time to mourn Spock for a bit. I don't like the idea of Spock coming back to life literally a week after he died, and October is an appropriate time of the year for someone to come back from the dead, anyway.

This also lets us have the crew's three-month Vulcan exile push the events of TVH into January 2284.

...and ST VI in 2292 (in contrast to the more typical '85 and '93 dates).

IIRC, TUC having a Stardate in the 9000s put the notion into my head that it had been around 10 years since TWOK. I put the main events of TUC in May 2292 to allow Sulu the chance to attend his daughter Demora's graduation from Starfleet Academy soon after the movie.

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.

Yeah. Occam's Razor & all that. The simplest explanation is usually the best.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

And honestly, I haven't gotten to the point of assigning specific months to most of TOS's episodes yet. I want to be sure that the year placements I have work pretty well first.

 

[Damian]

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?

Yeah, why not? It's true the intent during the original series was not likely to be 1000=1 year, but it does just happen to work. I don't pay a lot of attention to Stardates in the original series though, at least from episode to episode. Early on it seemed the tried to establish some rough order, but as the show went on it became pretty random. And you have to ignore a few episodes of the animated series to make it work as others have noted.

And of course the movies screwed it all up. TMP in the mid 7000s was probably ok, as it was 2 1/2 years after the end of the 5 YM (though it probably should be mid 8000s I guess, but it's sort of close). But then TWOK through TUC screw it all up. There's close to 10 years between TWOK and TUC for instance, yet only about 1000 stardates have passed.

From TNG on it seemed pretty clear to me 1000=1 year though, esp. from season 2 onward. Season 1 was 'ok' but there were some errors. But each season corresponded to 1000 Stardates and it seemed to me each season was a year on the show. That's confirmed in later episodes that referred to earlier ones and they note the correct number of years based on the seasons. So while it's true no one on the show ever actually came out and said 1000=1 year, I think it's pretty safe to infer that based on the evidence.

But of course when TNG started doesn't quite fit. It's supposedly 78 years after the VH (which was in the 8300s I believe) so TNG should have started 61000 I believe, not 41000. The only thing I can think of in story is sometime during the movie era Starfleet recalibrated their time measurements for several years/decades, and then eventually it went back to 1000=1 year.

 

[Henoch]

The only thing I can think of in story is sometime during the movie era Starfleet recalibrated their time measurements for several years/decades, and then eventually it went back to 1000=1 year.

The Federation is a government bureaucracy. Declarations on time standards can come and go; populations have been know to reject bureaucratic decisions until the next political party reverses or changes the decision, again. I image only Starfleet space travelers (and TrekBBS members) care about stardates. I do.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

There's close to 10 years between TWOK and TUC for instance, yet only about 1000 stardates have passed.

Yeah, but if you assume that in those 10 years, the Stardates cycled through again, it still more or less works.

But of course when TNG started doesn't quite fit. It's supposedly 78 years after the VH (which was in the 8300s I believe) so TNG should have started 61000 I believe, not 41000.

From what I understand, they consciously decided to add another number to the Stardates, as another indicator of how much time had passed since the TOS era. And they decided to place a "4" at the beginning since it was the 24th Century.

 

[Henoch]

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.

Fixed it; no problem. The S2DTD with heat sink was taken out of storage and reinstalled due to the sabotage of the S3DTD with paddle holder in EOT! The S2DTD stayed for a few episodes until the TUC when it was finally replaced with a repaired S3DTD at the same time they were ripping out M5 at starbase. The only other appearances of the older S2DTD after this point were on others ships, namely Exeter and Gideon Faux-Enterprise.

 

[lawman]

Nice meaty reply! Let me take this one chunk at a time...

I mean, if you want to call the 1000 stardate units = roughly one year thing a "rationale," I guess. I'd just call it following the majority of data, since we have something like 15 seasons of 24th Century Trek that followed that assumption. I think it makes as much sense as anything to assume that the 23rd Century followed the same system.

I don't really think it does, for at least two reasons. First, 24th-century stardates (after some hiccups in TNG seasons 1 and 2) almost always proceeded in sequence, whereas during TOS they jumped around as often as not, both forward and backward. Second and even more importantly, the notion of 1000 stardates per calendar year (either Jan-Dec, or just 12 months in general) was always more of a fan inference about TNG, not something ever established onscreen or even followed with any consistency by the stories aired.

The whole timeline hinges on the first Gregorian date given as current in Trek, "2364" in "The Neutral Zone" (at the very end of TNG s1, sd 41986). However, nothing in that episode establishes when in 2364 it takes place, or how long the season took; it could quite reasonably have begun at almost any point in 2363. Quite a few later episodes also violate the 1000sd/year assumption. For instance: "Sarek" in late s3 (sd 43917, hence presumably 2366?) says the title character was age 202... whereas he was 102.4 in TOS "Journey to Babel," which at the earliest falls in 2267, only 99 years earlier, not 100. It's possible to make that work by carefully juggling the months... but then of course there's "Data's Day" in mid-s4 (44390), which isn't consistent with either calendar years or any 12-month periods, as Data states that it's Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights) on Earth, which always falls in mid-Autumn (late Oct/early Nov)... and specifically states it's been 1550 days (i.e., 4.25 years) since the Enterprise-D was commissioned, which we know to have taken place at 41025 (per "Farpoint"), only 3365 sd units earlier. Things also fall apart with "Final Mission" in early s4 (44307), in which Wesley leaves to matriculate at Starfleet Academy, which we've always previously understood runs on an ordinary academic year (fall-spring), but which doesn't dovetail with the stardate here if we assume a Jan-Dec sd year. The academic year issue rears its head again in "First Duty" (45703), when the Ent visits Earth for an Academy commencement ceremony (i.e., presumably in the spring?)... yet it's 1396 sd units since Wesley began, which would supposedly be not quite 17 months, which doesn't fit any plausible academic year.

The later 24th-century shows only compound the problem. Consider DS9 "Emissary" — stardate 46379, yet stated to be "three years" since the Battle of Wolf 359 in TNG "BOBW pt 2" on 44001, only 2378 sd units earlier... or DS9 "Second Sight," on 47329, stated to fall on the fourth anniversary of the battle. Or VOY "Timeless" on 52164, stated with exquisite precision to be "four years, two months, 11 days" since the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant in "Caretaker" on 48315... only 3849 sd units earlier. Or VOY "11:59" (52840) which states that it falls on April 22 of an unspecified year... combined with VOY "Homestead" (54868), stated to be the 315th anniversary of Cochrane's "first contact," hence April 5, 2378... matching neither the time of year one would expect from a pattern of 1000 sd/year, nor even the year one would expect from the number of seasons since TNG began.

I could go on. I've spent way more time than I can really justify wading through these kinds of details. Suffice it to say, I consider stardates to be something with so much variability to them that they're basically useless for situating any given story. (I do accept their use that way in the post-show Litverse, though, as FWIW Trek prose authors seem to have done a much more diligent job of sticking to the system.)

I originally pegged WNM as happening in April based upon McCoy commenting in the DC Comics Annual #1 version of Kirk's first mission that his daughter Joanna would be graduating from college soon and he'd have to take some some off for that. It's arbitrary, sure, but it gave me a place to have the 5YM start and gave me most of 2265 to play with.
...
Right now I still have WNM as part of the 5YM, but I understand the rationales of the people who place it before. I don't want to push Kirk's promotion to Captain all the way back to 2264, though, so the placement of WNM on my timeline would be more or less the same no matter what.

In my timeline I have Kirk taking command in May of 2264, over a year before WNM. IMHO it allows time for some other early stories before WNM (e.g., Seasons of Light and Darkness, the My Brother's Keeper trilogy, etc.), and also kinda nearly fits with Elizabeth Dehner's remark about Spock having worked next to Kirk and Mitchell for "years." Either way, I think '64 or '65 is too early for Joanna McCoy to be graduating college, although high school would be plausible.

I put WNM in midsummer of 2265, which fits roughly with the backstory of Vanguard station (SB 47) as given in Harbinger, although I could willingly flex it a few months either way given more compelling evidence. I start the official FYM shortly afterward, in Sep 2265.

I more or less agree with this logic. I also have Kirk entering the Academy in 2250. I just have WNM taking place in April 2265 and "Shore Leave" happening in early 2267. Since WNM has a Stardate of 1312.4 and Shore Leave's is 3025.3, it seemed to make sense. If Kirk's first year at the Academy ends in the spring of 2251, it still works, IMO.

Not as well as I'd like. References to "15 years" come up regarding both Finnegan and Ruth. I'd rather not stretch that to 16 just to accommodate a stardate.

Frankly, I'm not nuts about the VOY date of 2270 (Since it's mostly just Okuda tossing something into a script to provide retroactive "proof" for his chronology, something he also did on other occasions), but it's only a year or two off from what I'd use anyway, so it's not a big deal.

Didn't the Okudachron originally have the FYM ending in 2269? IMHO that was too early and 2270 makes things a little easier, but YMMV. (Ideally I'd prefer 2266-'71, for various reasons, but that ship has long sailed.)

I arrived at 2234 for Kirk's birth because Nicholas Meyer said in his TWOK commentary that he originally had Kirk turning 49 in his script, before the specific age was axed at William Shatner's request. Nevertheless, creator intent counts for a lot with me, so Kirk turning 49 it is. And it makes a lot more sense to have a midlife crisis at 49 than at 52, the age Kirk is turning in the Okuda chronology.

If you're doing that, why not have him in the Academy from '51-'55? What would it affect?

At any rate, Meyer's apocrypha aside, IMHO it always made the most sense for Kirk's unspecified birthday in the film to be his 50th. It's the sort of milestone that commonly winds up associated with midlife crises.

(Of course it seems a little anachronistic now given how "young" 50 is in contemporary culture, not to mention how Picard's entire on-screen career as captain of the Ent-D took place at a considerably more advanced age... but then, Kirk always did prize his youth.)

I know [March 22 is fanon], but in the absence of any other data, you might as well use the specific date it gives you. And it's a nice tribute to the actors, IMO.

Oh, I agree. All else equal I'd probably rather put STII:TWOK later in the calendar year, but I've come to accept the March date for Kirk's birthday. I was just pointing out that it was never based on hard evidence.

If TWOK takes place in 2283, then "Space Seed" would take place in 2268. I unfortunately had to fudge this a bit because of the data of the surrounding episodes, but if "Space Seed" takes place in late 2267 and TWOK takes place as early in the year as March, then I think it still works. It's certainly better than the Okuda Chronology's inexplicable gap of 18 years. (For crying out loud, both Kirk & Khan say that it's been 15 years!)

I agree completely about every bit of this. As long as it's not yet a full 16 years, IMHO the dialogue about "15" still works. (Khan, in particular, would presumably be keeping obsessive track of the anniversaries!) Unfortunately this means that "Space Seed" is one of exactly two episodes I've wound up displacing from production order (the other being "Day of the Dove"), but in its case that has the added benefit of pushing it into a season when we know Chekov was canonically on board.

Since I have "A Private Little War" taking place in 2268, that puts the planetary survey in 2255. I interpreted that line as meaning that Kirk was commanding the survey, as Kirk remembers it as “the brash young Lieutenant Kirk on his first planet survey.” Since I severely disagree with the Okuda version of Kirk graduating the Academy as a Lieutenant, he needs some time to be promoted from Ensign.

Here's where things get a little tricky — seemingly precise, yet open to interpretation. "PLW" is only two episodes before "Obsession," so basically they're contemporary... and the one describes "Lt. Kirk on his first planet survey" 13 years earlier, while in the latter McCoy describes Lt. Kirk serving on the Farragut under Captain Garrovick 11 years earlier, Spock describes the Farragut as Kirk's "first deep-space assignment," and Kirk himself calls Garrovick "my commanding officer from the day I left the Academy." Putting it all together, that means he was a lieutenant under Garrovick on the Farragut from 13 to 11 years before those events. Both of those episodes fall roughly one season after "Shore Leave," which was 15 years after (the end of) his plebe year. Logically, that means SL was 12 years after he graduated, making PLW 13 years after he graduated, so it does seem reasonable to assume he was a lieutenant as of graduation (or at least, very shortly thereafter).

The only canonical reference I know of to Kirk at a lower rank is to Ensign Kirk serving alongside Ben Finney on the Republic in "Court Martial." Since he was under Garrovick on the Farragut from the day he graduated, it stands to reason that the events on the Republic occurred earlier, on a training mission while still at the Academy... implying he had indeed earned a commission before he graduated, if not necessarily a lieutenancy. I don't necessarily buy Friedman's take on things in MBK v1 that he was promoted to Lt. as of his sophomore year (as we've discussed elsewhere, there are easier ways to explain Kirk's stint teaching at the Academy!), but neither do I think it's warranted to imagine as Goodman does in his Autobiography of Kirk that Garrovick was actually commanding the Republic when Kirk graduated, and then took the young officer with him when he changed ships. (Although I see that's the tack you've taken.)

Basically, I have Kirk's early career following this framework...

We're mostly on the same page. I'd add in the Axanar Peace Mission when Kirk was a "new-fledged cadet" (per "Whom Gods Destroy"), hence IMHO probably in 2251, during the summer between his first and second years. I agree that at least a few years are necessary before the Finney/Republic incident... it has to be late enough for Ben to have had a daughter he named after his friend James, but early enough for Jamie to be an adolescent in "Court Martial" (c. 2266). I think it fits best in 2254, but (as mentioned above) before his graduation. I put the survey of Neural in 2254, and the Farragut's destruction in 2256. I very much agree about Kirk's return to the Academy after that, but I have it beginning in 2256 (placing him on Earth during DSC's "Klingon War," which may be either convenient or inconvenient depending on one's preferences).

I have no firm opinion on when Kirk took the Kobayashi Maru test (i.e., as an undergrad or a grad student), but I do rather like the depiction of his romance with Carol as presented in DC's Star Trek comic #73-74, "Star Crossed," and I agree that David was born in 2260. (There's also the version of the romance presented in SD Perry's novel Inception, but that's hard to reconcile and I'm content to ignore it.) Meanwhile from 2258-'62 he climbed the ranks through Lt. Cmdr to Cmdr, serving as 2nd officer and then XO on various ships (as described in at least half a dozen various novels; take your pick as to which are worth keeping). He also had romances during this period with Janet Wallace (ending "6 years, 4 months" before "Deadly Years") and Areel Shaw (ending "4 years, 7 months" before "Court Martial"), IMHO putting them respectively in 2260 and '61. I'd put his first command in 2262 (I'm content with the references in the comics, although I'm looking forward to reading CLB's take on it when The Captain's Oath is published), and his promotion to the Enterprise in '64, shortly after he turns 31.

As for Spock...

I fudged this a bit, as I vastly prefer D.C. Fontana's version of Spock's service record from her novel Vulcan's Glory, which has him graduating the Academy early in the accelerated Vulcan course and serving on some other ships before the Enterprise. I really don't like the idea of Spock serving his entire career on a single ship, and Fontana's version seems like a more logical career progression. So Spock enters the Academy at age 16 in 2246, graduates in 2249, and Spock's visit to Vulcan four years before "Journey to Babel" was an attempt by Amanda to get Spock & Sarek to reconcile. So the 18 year gap was from 2246-2264. They had a disastrous reunion, and went back to the silent treatment.

I also like Fontana's novel, but the chronology just doesn't work. In JTB Amanda's exact words were that the Vulcan way "has kept Spock and Sarek from speaking as father and son for eighteen years"; that's clearly present tense, as of that moment. Hence the schism was in 2249. Even if Spock graduated in three years, Fontana then has him spend five years on other ships... which would put his move to Pike's Enterprise in '57, far too late. I limit Spock's Academy time to two years and his pre-Enterprise service to another two years, and have him join Pike's crew in early '53 (and then Kirk's in '64... "11 years, five months, four days" later).

Yeah, the TAS Stardates get nutty. And frankly, I don't like many of the TAS stories enough to bend over backwards to include them, outside of stuff like "Yesteryear" and "The Counter-Clock Incident" that provide some cool backstories for characters.

I try not to pick and choose. If I'm going to swallow "Spock's Brain" and STV:TFF, I'm also going to include TAS.

Yeah. I put TWOK in March 2283 based on Kirk's birthday and the year of the Romulan Ale.

Oh, yeah, I forgot the Romulan Ale! (Although, admittedly, the joke is a bit hard to interpret in the scene as played.)

I put TSFS in October 2283 both because it allows for a gap to include the first few issues of the DC comics series, and because it makes sense to give the crew some time to mourn Spock for a bit. I don't like the idea of Spock coming back to life literally a week after he died... This also lets us have the crew's three-month Vulcan exile push the events of TVH into January 2284.

Same exact reasoning here.

IIRC, TUC having a Stardate in the 9000s put the notion into my head that it had been around 10 years since TWOK. I put the main events of TUC in May 2292 to allow Sulu the chance to attend his daughter Demora's graduation from Starfleet Academy soon after the movie.

There's also the reference to McCoy having been CMO of the Enterprise for "27 years"... which, counting from 2265, gives 2292. I put it in Jun-Aug, though (largely because the novel Sarek is set (A) in September, and (B) a month after the events at Khitomer). Where is there a reference to Demora's graduation being just after the events of the film?

Yeah. Occam's Razor & all that. The simplest explanation is usually the best.

When and if there is one. Sometimes Trek continuity makes that next to impossible!...

 

[johnnybear]

I'm wondering was Gary Mitchell with Kirk on the Farragut? I mean they had been friends for years and maybe he was on the planetary survey on Neural as well?
JB

 

[Damian]

The Federation is a government bureaucracy. Declarations on time standards can come and go; populations have been know to reject bureaucratic decisions until the next political party reverses or changes the decision, again. I image only Starfleet space travelers (and TrekBBS members) care about stardates. I do.

True, but in general the government doesn't mess around with time measurements. There is an article on Memory Alpha about Stardates that gives some background, though it isn't that helpful for determining how long a stardate actually is. I do think in the 24th century they did go with the 1000=1 year. In each show from TNG through Voyager a season corresponded roughly to a year, and each season jumped to the next 1000 (DS9 started a little later in their year so the Stardate was further along). I think you can infer that based on referenced officers make to prior events (like in Generations when Geordi tells Data about getting the joke at their Farpoint mission 8 years ago---and there are many such examples of references to prior episodes taking place X number of years ago and we know the Stardates for those episodes).

Now does 1000 Stardates = January to December? That can be very debatable. There's no real references in the series to exact dates, sometimes you get the year, but I don't recall in TNG, DS9 or Voyager an exact date being given. Personally I believe it does, partly just because it's easier. But also because I read the various relaunch novels and it seems they go with the idea of January to December in their dating and the Stardates. Also because it gets incredible complicated if 1000 does not start and end January to December. Say it was July to June, then half would be one year, half the other. So was 5 years ago 2365 or 2366? I honestly don't think by the time they started TNG they wanted to make it that complicated.

It's my believe by TNG the writers and showrunners settled on 1000=1 year and starting at January and ending at December. Starfleet is headquartered on Earth, the Federation Council is on Earth so it actually makes some sense that from a military standpoint they would use Earth time as their basis. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best.

As for the original series. Well I don't think there was much intent on Stardates being meaningful. I think they wanted it just to be some mysterious time keeping. It seemed at the beginning of the show, at least production order wise, the stardates were going in ascending order, but eventually they became much more randomized. But as others have noted except for a couple episodes of the animated series it seems the original series took place between just over 1000 and just under 6000. In retrospect it seemed 1000=1 year. I don't think that was the original intent, but it just happens to work out so why not retroactively make it so?

 

[Damian]

Oh, I just wanted to add about the original question here about the original series, unlike TNG, DS9, Voyager and even Enterprise (not sure about Discovery yet) where 1 season seemed to = year shows time, I'm not sure the original series followed that timeline.

I sort of felt taken the series (and animated series) overall as filling out 5 years. And I always considered the animated series taking place after the original series. But it's possible a season was a bit more or less than an actual year. As far as the animated series, despite it being 2 seasons, it feels more natural to me to be maybe a year duration. There don't seem to be enough episodes to take up 2 full years. That would allow for episodes like "The Paradise Syndrome" that take place over about 3 months, yet other episodes like "The Corbomite Maneuver" that seem at most to be a few days, if not even only a day or two. Then you'd basically have 4 years of on screen shows to fill out 5 years of mission, allowing for some variety in individual episodes.

As an aside, when it comes to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" I actually usually considered that to be pre-5YM and "The Corbomite Maneuver" soon after the start of the 5YM. Partly is because in story the Enterprise obviously underwent some refit between those two episodes so it'd make sense. Maybe Kirk was given command and sent on a couple missions, then sent back for a refit before the long term 5 YM began.

 

[Henoch]

Personally I believe it does, partly just because it's easier. But also because I read the various relaunch novels and it seems they go with the idea of January to December in their dating and the Stardates. Also because it gets incredible complicated if 1000 does not start and end January to December. Say it was July to June, then half would be one year, half the other.

Not Jan. thru Dec.: Charlie X. Even Gene Roddenberry chimed in on-screen for it. Closer to May thru June for a year (if it even is an earth year); probably tied to some galactic cycle/event like an unique series of pulsars.

As an aside, when it comes to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" I actually usually considered that to be pre-5YM and "The Corbomite Maneuver" soon after the start of the 5YM. Partly is because in story the Enterprise obviously underwent some refit between those two episodes so it'd make sense. Maybe Kirk was given command and sent on a couple missions, then sent back for a refit before the long term 5 YM began.

Exactly my thoughts. WNM was before the 5YM, then refit, then 5YM per Kirk's monolog.

 

[Lance]

It's serendipitous also that, on the pre-Remastered version at least, WNMHGB doesn't have a "These are the voyages..." monologue. I can definitely buy it taking place before the 5YM actually began, and "Corbomite" being the first episode taking place during the 5YM. I'm also all over the idea that in TOS at least one year doesn't equal one season, and that we see a time lapse over the three seasons covering the full five years. The stardates moving from 1XXX through 5XXX over the show's run is evidence enough for me.

 

[Thanos007]

But of course when TNG started doesn't quite fit. It's supposedly 78 years after the VH (which was in the 8300s I believe) so TNG should have started 61000 I believe, not 41000. The only thing I can think of in story is sometime during the movie era Starfleet recalibrated their time measurements for several years/decades, and then eventually it went back to 1000=1 year.

Perhaps they re-calibrated time measurements when the re-calibrated warp speeds?

 

[Thanos007]

I try not to pick and choose. If I'm going to swallow "Spock's Brain" and STV:TFF, I'm also going to include TAS.

If that's your standard will you be taking into account all the novels?

 

[lawman]

I do think in the 24th century they did go with the 1000=1 year. In each show from TNG through Voyager a season corresponded roughly to a year, and each season jumped to the next 1000 (DS9 started a little later in their year so the Stardate was further along). I think you can infer that based on referenced officers make to prior events (like in Generations when Geordi tells Data about getting the joke at their Farpoint mission 8 years ago---and there are many such examples of references to prior episodes taking place X number of years ago and we know the Stardates for those episodes).

I think that really only works if you squint and look at things in very broad strokes. Once you get into the details, the references within the episodes actually violate that inference more often than not; I already cited several examples upthread. (And another: even in Generations, Geordi actually referred to Farpoint as "seven years ago," not eight... even though it was over 7600 sd units, and almost certainly eight years in-story.)

Now does 1000 Stardates = January to December? That can be very debatable. There's no real references in the series to exact dates, sometimes you get the year, but I don't recall in TNG, DS9 or Voyager an exact date being given. Personally I believe it does, partly just because it's easier.

Too easy, IMHO. Among other things, it really strains credulity to imagine that events so often converge into high-stakes cliffhangers right around Christmas and New Year's. Must make holiday planning super-extra-stressful!...

If that's your standard will you be taking into account all the novels?

Those aren't "canon," of course, so I feel it's fair if I utilize some extra discretion about what to include. That said, I'm not as picky about it a some (e.g., CLB, who mentally boxes off most of the '80s novels into their own separate continuity). I've done my best at least to find logical space where most of them could fit if one wants them to, although I do exclude a few that simply don't dovetail well with others. (And sometimes it just comes down to personal taste... Enterprise: The First Adventure is pretty easy to place chronologically, for instance, but I think it's a really bad story, so I ignore it.)

 

[Damian]

It's serendipitous also that, on the pre-Remastered version at least, WNMHGB doesn't have a "These are the voyages..." monologue. I can definitely buy it taking place before the 5YM actually began, and "Corbomite" being the first episode taking place during the 5YM. I'm also all over the idea that in TOS at least one year doesn't equal one season, and that we see a time lapse over the three seasons covering the full five years. The stardates moving from 1XXX through 5XXX over the show's run is evidence enough for me.

I was actually kind of upset they put the monologue on WNMHGB. I thought they should have left it off there personally.

But yeah, it kind of works when you think of it that way in story, esp. with the change in appearance of the Enterprise bridge and some sets between that and The Corbomite Maneuver--and even the uniforms. The My Brother's Keeper trilogy goes with that idea. After the events of WNMHGB the Enterprise is on it's way for a refit before it's to go on it's 5 YM.

As for Stardates, well, there's obviously a lot of debate about that. I agree there's no real firm guidance on that, other than that by the time of TNG it appears that 1000=1 year, at least from my perspective. But when does that year start and end? Are there variations to that from year to year? It's hard to say. All I know is the Enterprise-D lasted for 8 years and about 8000 Stardates passed during that time, and each season corresponded to roughly a year and each season flipped 1000 Stardates. The original series had about 5000 stardates in a 5 year mission pass so it seems that applying that retroactively makes sense, even if that wasn't the original intent. But it's not perfect. I frankly never paid a lot of attention to Stardates. I don't find them all that useful really.

One thing I liked about Enterprise was no Stardates . You knew exactly how much time had passed from one episode to the next.

 

[Henoch]

The original series had about 5000 stardates in a 5 year mission pass so it seems that applying that retroactively makes sense, even if that wasn't the original intent. But it's not perfect. I frankly never paid a lot of attention to Stardates. I don't find them all that useful really.

At least most of us agree that airdate order is the worst result... <I'm ducking.>

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I don't really think it does, for at least two reasons. First, 24th-century stardates...

You've obviously put way more thought into TNG stardates than I have. I've honestly never got that deep into a TNG timeline, for two reasons: 1) My version wouldn't look too different from the Okudas', and 2) I frankly don't have enough interest in the show to do all the work necessary to put together a timeline for it. (Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly fine show, I just don't LOVE TNG the way that I do TOS.)

In my timeline I have Kirk taking command in May of 2264, over a year before WNM. IMHO it allows time for some other early stories before WNM (e.g., Seasons of Light and Darkness, the My Brother's Keeper trilogy, etc.), and also kinda nearly fits with Elizabeth Dehner's remark about Spock having worked next to Kirk and Mitchell for "years."

IMO, pushing Kirk taking command back into 2264 (which would be age 30 in my timeline) pushes him too far into implausible wunderkind territory.

I think '64 or '65 is too early for Joanna McCoy to be graduating college, although high school would be plausible.

Do you come to that conclusion through one of the novels? AFAIK, nothing concrete was established about her age in TAS's "The Survivor." McCoy's line is: "My daughter was going to school on Cerberus about ten years ago when the crop failure occurred."

"Going to school" could mean anywhere from grade school to grad school, so I think this is one of those situations where you can believe most anything you want to believe and be as right as the next person. But I'm open to other thoughts on this. I haven't put a precise year for Joanna's birth onto my timeline, after all.

References to "15 years" come up regarding both Finnegan and Ruth. I'd rather not stretch that to 16 just to accommodate a stardate.

Eh, as long as it's closer to 15 years than 16, I'm not going to stress about it too much. People speak colloquially all the time, and Kirk says that he hasn't seen Ruth in 15 years, not that he was dating her exactly 15 years ago. Maybe they dated for two years total and he last saw her during their breakup 15 years before.

Didn't the Okudachron originally have the FYM ending in 2269? IMHO that was too early and 2270 makes things a little easier, but YMMV.

Yeah, I think you're right. I believe I originally had the 5YM ending in 2269 on my timeline to accommodate the events of the Lost Years novels Traitor Winds and A Flag Full of Stars, one of which gave specific Earth dates, and the other of which revolved around the 300th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing in 1969, IIRC.

Since then, I've changed my mind and I try to have the novels and comics fit around the shows and movies, instead of the other way around. Things get too far bent out of shape if you start shifting the live-action stuff around to accommodate the prose stuff, IMO.

If you're doing that, why not have him in the Academy from '51-'55? What would it affect?

IMO, you need as much time as possible between Kirk's graduation from Starfleet Academy and his becoming Captain of the Enterprise to keep his advancement from becoming too implausible, and every year is valuable real estate. It seems like a lot of work to do just to accommodate one stray line from The Making of Star Trek.

At any rate, Meyer's apocrypha aside, IMHO it always made the most sense for Kirk's unspecified birthday in the film to be his 50th. It's the sort of milestone that commonly winds up associated with midlife crises.

Kirk turning 49 is as apocryphal as Saavik being half-Romulan, and that's pretty commonly accepted by fandom.

Besides, midlife crises don't occur on precise timetables, so 49 is just as plausible as 50, IMO. I personally found turning 38 more depressing than turning 40, because I was now no longer in my mid 30s, but instead in my late 30s. YMMV.

All else equal I'd probably rather put STII:TWOK later in the calendar year, but I've come to accept the March date for Kirk's birthday. I was just pointing out that it was never based on hard evidence.

I like the late March date because it also helps us nail down when in the academic year the Kobayashi Maru test is typically administered. Having it in March as the cadets on the command track are starting to wind up their academic year seems right to me.

I agree completely about every bit of this. As long as it's not yet a full 16 years, IMHO the dialogue about "15" still works. (Khan, in particular, would presumably be keeping obsessive track of the anniversaries!)

Yeah, Khan would have it timed down to the second.

Unfortunately this means that "Space Seed" is one of exactly two episodes I've wound up displacing from production order (the other being "Day of the Dove")

I've never thought about pushing any episode out of production order. It seems to me that that would create more problems than it would solve.

...in its case that has the added benefit of pushing it into a season when we know Chekov was canonically on board.

Not a problem for me, as I have Chekov coming aboard at the beginning of year three of the 5YM (around the time of Spock's promotion to full Commander & just before "The Menagerie"). Chekov was just working in the lower decks of the ship until shortly before "Catspaw." He was either one of the engineering ensigns who led resistance against Khan as he took over the ship (a fanon theory I first read in DC's Who's Who in Star Trek), one of the security detail that supervised Khan being dropped off on Ceti Alpha V (the explanation that Greg Cox used in To Reign in Hell), or he was a young ensign in engineering who impressed Kirk when he took over navigation during a crisis (as in John Byrne's recent New Visions story "Ensign Chekov.") I think that all of them are reasonable versions of Chekov's "secret origin."

The only canonical reference I know of to Kirk at a lower rank is to Ensign Kirk serving alongside Ben Finney on the Republic in "Court Martial." Since he was under Garrovick on the Farragut from the day he graduated

I disagree with you here, as Kirk never says that the Farragut was his first ship, or that he was assigned to her right after he graduated. The dialogue runs like this:

MCCOY: Captain Garrovick was very important to you, wasn't he, Jim?
KIRK: Yes. He was my commanding officer from the day I left the Academy. One of the finest men I ever knew.

So all we know for sure is that Garrovick was Kirk's CO from when he left the Academy and that the Farragut was the ship they were both on that was destroyed. We don't know for sure that the Farragut was the ship that Garrovick was commanding when Kirk first served under him.

And elsewhere in the episode, we have this line from Spock:

Among the survivors was a young officer on his first deep-space assignment, James T. Kirk.

Not "first assignment," or "first posting," "first deep-space assignment." That phrasing gives us a bit of wiggle room. And when it comes to deciding whether it's more plausible for Kirk to get his commission before he even graduates the Academy or if Garrovick and Kirk simply transferred from the Republic over to the Farragut, well... I don't have to think about it too hard.

I don't necessarily buy Friedman's take on things in MBK v1 that he was promoted to Lt. as of his sophomore year (as we've discussed elsewhere, there are easier ways to explain Kirk's stint teaching at the Academy!)

Yeah. For me, the Command School explanation solves a number of problems. It makes much more sense for a Lieutenant with actual deep space experience to be teaching classes, rather than someone who's still an undergrad, and it makes the timeline of the Kirk/Carol Marcus relationship make much more sense.

but neither do I think it's warranted to imagine as Goodman does in his Autobiography of Kirk that Garrovick was actually commanding the Republic when Kirk graduated, and then took the young officer with him when he changed ships. (Although I see that's the tack you've taken.)

Yeah. I think it's the simplest, least convoluted explanation. (Although I came up with it before Goodman's book was published. I will admit that I was very pleased to see that we independently came up with the same explanation. It's part of that reason I enjoyed that book so much. I thought that a lot of Goodman's conclusions made much more sense than Okuda's.)

I'd add in the Axanar Peace Mission when Kirk was a "new-fledged cadet" (per "Whom Gods Destroy")

Yeah, I haven't put that into my timeline yet, although I suppose somewhere during or right after Kirk's first year makes the most sense.

I agree that at least a few years are necessary before the Finney/Republic incident... it has to be late enough for Ben to have had a daughter he named after his friend James, but early enough for Jamie to be an adolescent in "Court Martial" (c. 2266).

Jamie's birth I also haven't put into my timeline yet. Does the original script for "Court Martial" establish an exact age for her?

I very much agree about Kirk's return to the Academy after that, but I have it beginning in 2256 (placing him on Earth during DSC's "Klingon War," which may be either convenient or inconvenient depending on one's preferences).

I haven't even begun to think about how I'd possibly incorporate the events of DSC into my timeline. I honestly don't know if I will. I've really enjoyed what I've seen of the series, but it does seem to contradict TOS at times. I'm worried that like, ENT, including it might bend my chronology too far out of shape. (Although maybe I'll just duplicate the one I have, add in the DSC dates as best as I can, and see what it looks like.)

I have no firm opinion on when Kirk took the Kobayashi Maru test (i.e., as an undergrad or a grad student)

For me, the grad student/Command School version makes much more sense. I think the Kobayashi Maru test makes the most sense if it's something that only students on the command track take. It'd be much easier to keep secret, too.

I'd put his first command in 2262 (I'm content with the references in the comics, although I'm looking forward to reading CLB's take on it when The Captain's Oath is published), and his promotion to the Enterprise in '64, shortly after he turns 31.

Oh, I forgot that book was in the works. I'll have to pick that up when it comes out.

In JTB Amanda's exact words were that the Vulcan way "has kept Spock and Sarek from speaking as father and son for eighteen years"; that's clearly present tense, as of that moment.

Yeah. Like I said, I fudged it for the sake of greater plausibility for Spock's career. In any event, in the same episode, Amanda also chides Spock for being away from Vulcan for so long. The exact dialogue:

AMANDA: And you haven't come to see us (emphasis mine) in four years, either.
SPOCK: The situation between my father and myself has not changed.

So obviously something happened during that visit four years before. Amanda trying to get Spock and Sarek to reconcile seems the most logical.

And heck, Fontana herself fudged this in Vulcan's Glory, by having a scene where Amanda had an earpiece and was relaying Sarek's words to Spock. If it's good enough for her...

Hence the schism was in 2249. Even if Spock graduated in three years, Fontana then has him spend five years on other ships... which would put his move to Pike's Enterprise in '57, far too late.

Well, just playing Devil's Advocate here, if you have Spock graduating the Academy in 2249, as I do, the five year service record works. Spock is assigned to Pike's Enterprise in December 2253 (jibing with the very first page of Vulcan's Glory, which mentions "the late December day,") arriving just in time for "The Cage" to occur in 2254. And if you add Spock's statement that he served with Pike for "eleven years, four months, five days" to the Dec. 2253 date, you get Kirk taking command of the Enterprise in April 2265, which would be slightly before Joanna McCoy's college graduation, as per Mike W. Barr's "All Those Years Ago..." in DC's Star Trek Annual #1.

Now, to make this work, you could either assume that Amanda is counting 2246-2264 as the 18-year schism, or that the schism started in 2249, with Spock's graduation from Starfleet Academy. Maybe Sarek thought that Spock might still come to his senses and didn't totally write him off until Spock finished at the Academy?

I try not to pick and choose. If I'm going to swallow "Spock's Brain" and STV:TFF, I'm also going to include TAS

I get that. I personally found that trying to incorporate and make room for the mostly-underwhelming stories of TAS was more trouble than it was worth.

And frankly, I'm treating certain aspects STV and GEN as slightly apocryphal, too. You'll notice that I never mention Antonia, or Sybok being Spock's long-lost brother.

Oh, yeah, I forgot the Romulan Ale! (Although, admittedly, the joke is a bit hard to interpret in the scene as played.)

Yeah, there's certainly a lot of ambiguity in the way Shatner and Kelley played those lines. But hey - Until "the Neutral Zone," it was the closest thing we had to an exact calendar year in the TOS era!

There's also the reference to McCoy having been CMO of the Enterprise for "27 years"... which, counting from 2265, gives 2292.

Oh, you're right. That's where I originally got TUC's 2292 date from! I first came up with a lot of this framework over a decade ago, so that detail was slipping my mind. I should add that into my notes on the Sutori timeline.

Where is there a reference to Demora's graduation being just after the events of the film?

That's a bit of my own personal fanon. She obviously hasn't been out of the Academy for very long in the prologue to GEN.