Five Year Mission

[lawman]

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.)

I've put more thought into it than I'd like, honestly... mostly just to convince myself that the "1000 sd/year" thing is indeed fanon, and is contradicted by actual references from the episodes too often to be relied on for chronology. I don't have a fully detailed TNG-era timeline, though, just the outline of one with key chronological milestones. It takes a back seat to TOS for me, too.

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.

I come to that conclusion through several of the novels, actually. Shadows on the Sun, The Better Man, Crisis on Centaurus, and Choice of Catastrophes all provide McCoy backstory. They're not all entirely consistent about it (big surprise), but none of them suggest he's old enough to have started a family over 20 years before TOS. (And we do know Fontana's original story idea for "The Way to Eden," before it got hacked to bits, had Joanna still college-age at that point.)

FWIW, I have McCoy born in 2226 (consistent with "Farpoint"), starting college at Ole Miss and meeting Jocelyn in '43, starting med school courtesy of Starfleet in '47, starting his internship and working in an inoculation program on Dramia II c. '50 (19 years before TAS "Albatross"), and splitting from his wife and signing up for space duty in '53.

It's not crystal-clear when exactly he married Jocelyn, but it seems reasonable to assume it was around the time he graduated from college. I don't have an exact date for Joanna's birth, but I figure it's around 2248, give or take a year.

(FWIW, from '53 forward McCoy serves for a while on the Republic (per Better Man), then serves as CMO on Starbase 7 in '55 (where he treats a wounded 22-year-old Lt. Kirk, per Crisis on Centaurus), then as CMO on the USS Richard Feynmann c. '56 (Better Man). He joins the crew of the Constitution in '58 (MBK:Constitution), and then the next we hear of him is when he joins the Enterprise crew under Kirk.)

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.

I'm with you there. If there's a conflict between "canon" and licensed work, I'll (almost) always defer to the former.

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.

Not so much, really. Obviously the approach taken in ST09 is outrageous, but still, we know he was the youngest Academy graduate ever assigned command of a Starship. Several years of his early career (between the Farragut and the Enterprise) remain unmentioned in canon, and how exactly he climbed the ranks in those years is open to interpretation.

[Space Seed is] 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."

Mostly seems reasonable, although just as with most of Kirk's, Spock's, and McCoy's backstories, it's all inference and interpolation. The earliest mention of Chekov in Trek fiction AFAIK is in the Janus Gate trilogy, set not long after "The Naked Time," in which he is indeed serving "below decks." Still, in canon, he was never seen until S2.

As an aside, it's interesting how much empty space there is for as-yet-untold stories during the S1 period... even without spacing it out as widely as you have. On my timeline there are lots of novels packed into the back half of the FYM, but surprisingly few in the early part.

BTW, at what point do you have Spock's promotion to Commander? AFAIK the first mention of him at that rank was in S2's "Amok Time," and he was still referred to as a Lt. Cmdr in "Tomorrow is Yesterday," which is several episodes later than "The Menagerie."

Not "first assignment," or "first posting," "first deep-space assignment." That phrasing gives us a bit of wiggle room.

IMHO the intent seems clear, but I guess there's room for debate.

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.

But that sort of thing isn't really uncommon in Trek. (And how would you explain Saavik's rank in TWOK, then?)

I enjoyed that book so much. I thought that a lot of Goodman's conclusions made much more sense than Okuda's...

I can agree with that much. I just didn't enjoy the book... it didn't seem to capture the spirit of the character or to involve much imagination. It mostly just strung together stuff we already knew from backstory references, without fleshing it out any more than absolutely necessary. Maybe those are the instructions Goodman was given... but my reaction was mostly "meh."

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?

Not AFAIK, and it's hard to guess from the actress's appearance. Seems like she could be anywhere from 12 to 16, which really doesn't help narrow things down.

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.

I haven't bothered with an ENT timeline, but FWIW in my headcanon I treat both prequel series pretty much the same way I do licensed fiction. That is to say, they're based on Star Trek and I'll include them when and if they can be reconciled and the story merits it, but when a serious contradiction arises, I defer to the real thing... which is TOS, first, last, and always.

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.

That seems reasonable. But then again, isn't it possible to be a "command track" cadet without necessarily being in a post-graduate program? (And note FWIW that in TWOK McCoy referred to Kirk as "the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario"...)

And here's a question: when do we put the "year we were together at Starfleet" that Janice Lester mentions to Kirk in "Turnabout Intruder"?...

...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...

All of that hangs together pretty well. I just have it all a year earlier. (Well, nearly... I begin Kirk's command in May.)

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

Probably. But the clear implication is that Sarek and Spock still refused to talk.

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?

Hmm. I could maybe see the logic of that latter interpretation! (On the other hand, it would completely rule out any stories in which Spock and Kirk cross paths during their Academy years.)

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

Ah, thanks for clarifying. There's a fair bit of time between the movies, though, so couldn't she just as easily be class of '93? (Indeed, I'd think that would fit her age best if Sulu fathered her after the FYM, as per The Captain's Daughter.)

 

[Damian]

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

Ha-ha, airdate order is awful. I actually watched Star Trek once in airdate order and I didn't care for it at all. I usually watch it in production date order which just 'feels' more right, and am currently doing a series rewatch in production order (a hassle since no where in the Blu-Ray collection does it list the production number--I had to grab my old Compendium so I know what episode to watch next ).

You know, I never actually thought to watch the series in Stardate order. I've never given them a lot of thought in the past as I mentioned, other than what I already noted. I have noticed in my rewatch (I'm up to 'Court Martial') that the early episodes seems to go in ascending order roughly when watching in production date order. I wonder if early on they were just going up in numbers for a while before going completely random. But it'd be an interesting experiment to undertake sometime (though you'd have to estimate episodes where the stardate is unknown).

As for the 5 YM I just go with 2265 to 2270 now. First of all that is a canon reference now as noted on Voyager. And with some of the later references it seems to fit. I figure Kirk was maybe given command sometime in 2264, even late 2264. I do think a few months has passed between when he is given command and WNMHGB so it's possible.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I've put more thought into it than I'd like, honestly... mostly just to convince myself that the "1000 sd/year" thing is indeed fanon, and is contradicted by actual references from the episodes too often to be relied on for chronology.

And it seems like you've certainly done that!

I come to that conclusion through several of the novels, actually. Shadows on the Sun, The Better Man, Crisis on Centaurus, and Choice of Catastrophes all provide McCoy backstory.

Most of those I haven't read fully. I own a copy of Crisis on Centaurus, but I haven't done more than skim it for some of the flashback scenes. I read a lot of Shadows on the Sun, but I disliked its backstory on the McCoy marriage. (I love the name "Jocelyn" for his ex, though.) I personally find the idea of McCoy being the one who cheated on his spouse to be a much more interesting and provocative idea. I came up with this idea when I looked at the dates of Leonard's relationship with the future Nancy Crater and compared them with the year his marriage broke up in the Kelvin Universe. I figure that McCoy's divorce probably happened around the same time in both universes (2257, IIRC?), as the divergences hadn't spread far enough to affect McCoy in a big way yet.

So yeah, despite my timeline starting as me trying to stay as close to TOS canon as possible, some of my own fanon that I've come up with over the years has inevitably crept in there. That's a big part of what makes chronologies fun for me. It's a cool mixture of logic and creativity.

They're not all entirely consistent about it (big surprise), but none of them suggest he's old enough to have started a family over 20 years before TOS. (And we do know Fontana's original story idea for "The Way to Eden," before it got hacked to bits, had Joanna still college-age at that point.)

Well, since I have McCoy as older than the official Okuda Chronology does, that's not as big of a problem for me.

FWIW, I have McCoy born in 2226 (consistent with "Farpoint"), starting college at Ole Miss and meeting Jocelyn in '43, starting med school courtesy of Starfleet in '47, starting his internship and working in an inoculation program on Dramia II c. '50 (19 years before TAS "Albatross"), and splitting from his wife and signing up for space duty in '53.

I have McCoy being born in 2220, as TOS tended to imply that McCoy was a good 10-15 years older than Kirk. The TNG pilot had a 137-year-old Admiral McCoy, which was fine before S1 of TNG got nailed down to a specific year. Then suddenly McCoy was supposed to be something like 38 in season 1 of TOS, and... No. Just no. I've seen 1966-era DeForest Kelley, and that dude does NOT look 38. He was 46 and he looked it. (And I say this as someone who is 46 himself as of this writing.)

This is, quite frankly, one of my biggest problems with the Okuda Chronology. It tends to rewrite and bend TOS out of shape to make it fit with the latter shows, when it should be the other way around. And it's totally absurd that Data's "Starfleet Class of '78" from the exact same episode is thrown out just because it doesn't fit with the TNG timeline established later, but McCoy's age being 137 is somehow carved in stone. Either use both data points, or just say that Data was having a really bad day with numbers and throw them both out.

So as far as I'm concerned, McCoy was born in 2220, the same year as Scotty. He entered med school (& hooked up with Emony Dax) in 2237, graduated in 2245, did the mass inoculation thing from TAS around 2249 (an advantage of my approach is that you don't have to explain why someone who hasn't graduated medical school yet is leading this operation -- He's already got his medical degree in my timeline), hooked up with Nancy in 2253, broke up with her 2255, and entered Starfleet (IIRC the Kelvin timeline correctly) around 2257.

It's not crystal-clear when exactly he married Jocelyn, but it seems reasonable to assume it was around the time he graduated from college. I don't have an exact date for Joanna's birth, but I figure it's around 2248, give or take a year.

Yeah, one of the big frustrations of my timeline is that I just don't have enough data points to even make an educated guess on certain big events in McCoy's life like his marriage, the birth of Joanna, and the death of his father. But I agree that it makes sense for the McCoys to be married fairly young.

(FWIW, from '53 forward McCoy serves for a while on the Republic (per Better Man), then serves as CMO on Starbase 7 in '55 (where he treats a wounded 22-year-old Lt. Kirk, per Crisis on Centaurus), then as CMO on the USS Richard Feynmann c. '56 (Better Man). He joins the crew of the Constitution in '58 (MBK:Constitution), and then the next we hear of him is when he joins the Enterprise crew under Kirk.)

The only previous assignment I have so far for McCoy is his few months on Capella IV, as per "Friday's Child." I may add others if they're stories I like enough. He obviously served with Kirk some time before TOS, IMO. I'd put their first meeting somewhere in 2254 at the latest, considering McCoy teasing Kirk about Bailey reminding Kirk of himself "11 years ago" in "The Corbomite Maneuver." 11 years is a pretty specific time frame to just pull out of thin air if you weren't personally acquainted with the person at the time.

I'm with you there. If there's a conflict between "canon" and licensed work, I'll (almost) always defer to the former.

Agreed. I've detailed a few of my exceptions already, like Spock's pre-Enterprise career.

...but still, we know he was the youngest Academy graduate ever assigned command of a Starship.

Do we know that, though? AFAIK, that's only noted in TMOST, not in TOS itself.

Several years of his early career (between the Farragut and the Enterprise) remain unmentioned in canon, and how exactly he climbed the ranks in those years is open to interpretation.

True. My method there is rather unscientific -- I tend to incorporate the bits of backstory I enjoy the most, using the starship names I like the most. If you've got a dumb or unlikely-sounding starship name to my ear, I'm less inclined to incorporate your idea.

Mostly seems reasonable, although just as with most of Kirk's, Spock's, and McCoy's backstories, it's all inference and interpolation.

Yeah. That's the challenge--and the fun--of it. Another reason I find the TNG era less interesting is because people's backstories are much more nailed down. They kept track of this stuff much more in the 90s and beyond.

The earliest mention of Chekov in Trek fiction AFAIK is in the Janus Gate trilogy, set not long after "The Naked Time," in which he is indeed serving "below decks."

IIRC, he also appears in Vonda McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Adventure.

As an aside, it's interesting how much empty space there is for as-yet-untold stories during the S1 period... even without spacing it out as widely as you have. On my timeline there are lots of novels packed into the back half of the FYM, but surprisingly few in the early part.

Yes. I would guess that it's probably just easiest for authors to set their stories after what we saw on TOS. That way they don't have to worry if a certain adventure has happened yet.

BTW, at what point do you have Spock's promotion to Commander? AFAIK the first mention of him at that rank was in S2's "Amok Time," and he was still referred to as a Lt. Cmdr in "Tomorrow is Yesterday," which is several episodes later than "The Menagerie."

As I recall, I just put it at the same point that the Okudas did in their Chronology, but I believe I just took them at their word and didn't double check all of TOS's Commander/Lt. Commander references for Spock myself. Maybe I should.

IMHO the intent seems clear, but I guess there's room for debate.

Yeah. I think there's enough ambiguity for it work. But I'd say that Ensign Kirk's time on the Republic was also clearly intended to be his first assignment, and obviously, he can only have one. So I have the Ensign stuff before the Lieutenant stuff.

(And how would you explain Saavik's rank in TWOK, then?)

With what's become my stock answer for TOS Chronology Questions: Lt. Saavik is in Command School. But I figure that unlike Kirk, she likely went into the Command track directly after graduating the regular Academy. So I guess, working backwards five years, she'd first enter Starfleet Academy in... 2278? (3 years accelerated Vulcan course + 2 years Command School.) Does that work? I honestly haven't nailed down a lot of the dates in Saavik's backstory yet. I need to go back and consult The Pandora Principle and Unspoken Truth and incorporate the bits I like the most.

(You may have noticed that, unlike you, I take a bit of a salad bar approach to continuity. I use the bits I like and just ignore or forget the bits that I don't. I'm not too inclined to bend over backwards just to incorporate stories I found to be bad. )

I just didn't enjoy the book... it didn't seem to capture the spirit of the character or to involve much imagination. It mostly just strung together stuff we already knew from backstory references, without fleshing it out any more than absolutely necessary. Maybe those are the instructions Goodman was given... but my reaction was mostly "meh."

Funny... That was more of less my reaction to Goodman's The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard. It didn't tell us much that we didn't already know. Like I said, the TNG backstories are pretty well-mined territory, and Christopher L. Bennett already covered most of Picard's unknown years in his novel The Buried Age. Kirk's bio was much more interesting to me because there are a lot more blank areas. I didn't love everything in it, but enough for me to enjoy the book overall. For instance, while I imagine that Kirk and McCoy's first meeting went differently than how Goodman depicted it (partly because I picture the Carol/David backstory differently), I thought that Goodman's version was brilliantly done.

Not AFAIK, and it's hard to guess from the actress's appearance. Seems like she could be anywhere from 12 to 16, which really doesn't help narrow things down.

Yeah, that's a toughie, but I suppose I'd put her at closer to 16 than 12, as long as it works out with Kirk's Academy years.

I haven't bothered with an ENT timeline, but FWIW in my headcanon I treat both prequel series pretty much the same way I do licensed fiction. That is to say, they're based on Star Trek and I'll include them when and if they can be reconciled and the story merits it, but when a serious contradiction arises, I defer to the real thing... which is TOS, first, last, and always.

Agreed. I'll put in that other stuff if I find it neat and it doesn't severely contradict TOS. (My personal fanon, I'm fine with contradicting, as long as the new story is cooler.)

But then again, isn't it possible to be a "command track" cadet without necessarily being in a post-graduate program?

I suppose that depends on how far you want to go with it. I'd think if you want to become a Commander or certainly a Captain, further training would be required.

(And note FWIW that in TWOK McCoy referred to Kirk as "the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario"...)

Yeah. That's the one thing in TWOK that contradicts my Command School theory, dammit. But I think the rest of it fits pretty well.

And here's a question: when do we put the "year we were together at Starfleet" that Janice Lester mentions to Kirk in "Turnabout Intruder"?...

I honestly don't know. Wherever she doesn't trip up against Ruth of Carol Marcus, I suppose. I see Kirk as a serial monogamist, but not somebody who'd cheat on his girlfriends.

All of that hangs together pretty well. I just have it all a year earlier. (Well, nearly... I begin Kirk's command in May.)

SACRILEGE!!! You are NOT of the body! Guards, Seize him!

Probably. But the clear implication is that Sarek and Spock still refused to talk.

Yes, certainly.

Hmm. I could maybe see the logic of that latter interpretation!

Yeah. Now I'm leaning more towards it myself. It's certainly cleaner. I guess I just have to come up with a stronger reason why Sarek would cut off all contact with Spock until after his graduation.

(On the other hand, it would completely rule out any stories in which Spock and Kirk cross paths during their Academy years.)

I'm fine with that. I'm not too nuts about the idea of young Kirk & Spock meeting years before they served together on the Enterprise, as I think it dilutes the gradual getting to know each other period we saw in the first episodes of TOS. A passing meeting might be fine, but more than that seems way too cutesy and contrived to me.

And as my dates worked out, Kirk and Spock just missed each other at the Academy. Spock was there from 2246-2249, and Kirk was there from 2250-2254. This is even backed up by a certain amount of canon -- In "Patterns of Force," Spock says that he studied Earth history from the text that John Gill prepared, and Kirk replies that Gill was his instructor at the Academy. So either they were in different years at Starfleet Academy, or at the very least they weren't in the same history class.

There's a fair bit of time between the movies, though, so couldn't she just as easily be class of '93? (Indeed, I'd think that would fit her age best if Sulu fathered her after the FYM, as per The Captain's Daughter.)

Sure. We're talking about the difference between her being what, 21? 22? Not a big deal to me either way. I just liked the idea of Sulu going to his daughter's graduation shortly after TUC because, from what we saw in The Captain's Daughter, Sulu was a pretty good father. I personally think that Peter David did a damn clever bit of writing in that novel by incorporating all the events of the TOS movies while still having Sulu be a responsible parent. Not easy, but he pulled it off.

 

[Ithekro]

It be interesting if we ever get a record of Kirk's Starfleet service, like Discovery provided for Pike, on screen. Including ships served and all that.

 

[lawman]

I have McCoy being born in 2220, as TOS tended to imply that McCoy was a good 10-15 years older than Kirk. The TNG pilot had a 137-year-old Admiral McCoy, which was fine before S1 of TNG got nailed down to a specific year. Then suddenly McCoy was supposed to be something like 38 in season 1 of TOS, and... No. Just no. I've seen 1966-era DeForest Kelley, and that dude does NOT look 38. He was 46 and he looked it.

Although it was never actually canonized, it was established in the first-season TNG Writer/Director's Guide that TNG begins when "78 years have passed since the time of Kirk and Spock." That's somewhat ambiguous, of course, but at the time the most recent adventures of Kirk and Spock were in the STII/III/IV filmtrilogy, so if you consider the destruction of the original Enterprise as a demarcation point, then it would imply McCoy was 59 at that point. And if that was the same year as TWOK — i.e., 15 years after "Space Seed" — then McCoy would have been about 44 at that point, late in season 1. And we can derive all of that without reference to any Gregorian years.

I'm honestly not sure where you see TOS "implying" anything at all about McCoy's age, though... and people do show their age at different rates, after all. (Roger C. Carmel was only 33 in his initial appearance as Harry Mudd, believe it or not. John Hoyt, who played Dr. Boyce in "The Cage," was 59 at the time, but could have passed for 20 years older.) On the other hand, FWIW, the TOS Writers/Directors Guide (third revision, written in 1967 for season two) does say that "Dr. McCoy is 45 years of age, was married once ... something of a mystery that ended unhappily in a divorce. He has a daughter, 'Joanna', who is 20 and in training as a nurse somewhere." (The same Guide says elsewhere that "Kirk is about thirty-four.") So, if we're looking to creators' intent, it would seem reasonable to me to put McCoy's birthday in 2222.

This is, quite frankly, one of my biggest problems with the Okuda Chronology. It tends to rewrite and bend TOS out of shape to make it fit with the latter shows, when it should be the other way around. And it's totally absurd that Data's "Starfleet Class of '78" from the exact same episode is thrown out just because it doesn't fit with the TNG timeline established later, but McCoy's age being 137 is somehow carved in stone. Either use both data points, or just say that Data was having a really bad day with numbers and throw them both out.

Yeah, the Okudachron annoys me in exactly that same way. (Among several others.) It always seemed fairly clear to me that the "Class of '78" reference in "Farpoint" (especially in conjunction with the backstory that Data had been discovered 26 years before TNG began, and gone straight into the Academy) was intended to situate TNG firmly at the very beginning of the 24th century — where indeed it would be if it followed from the then-widespread Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology, which IIRC placed the FYM c. 2206-11 and STII-III c. 2222.

And, in fact, the TNG writers' bible I mentioned above specifically states (in its opening sentence!) that the show "is dated near the beginning of the 24th century." Indeed, it's hard to imagine how or why they'd have settled on a span as arbitrary as 78 years unless, in fact, they had the year 2300 in mind as a target. I have never yet run across any explanation of who or what was responsible for the change of thinking that gave us "2364" in the final episode of S1.

FWIW, though, if you backdate from that, then what should happen is that you put "Farpoint" in 2363, which would put STII-III in 2285, which would put the FYM in 2269-'74. It frustrated me no end at the time (and honestly still does) that the Okudas insisted on the middle bit of that logic, yet ignored the first bit in favor of having TNG seasons correspond exactly to calendar years, and ignored the final bit in favor of having TOS seasons set exactly 300 years after broadcast... both of which were completely arbitrary assumptions supported by neither canon nor writers' intent.

Don't mind me... I'm just grousing over nearly 30-year-old pet peeves...

So as far as I'm concerned, McCoy was born in 2220, the same year as Scotty. He entered med school (& hooked up with Emony Dax) in 2237, graduated in 2245, did the mass inoculation thing from TAS around 2249 (an advantage of my approach is that you don't have to explain why someone who hasn't graduated medical school yet is leading this operation -- He's already got his medical degree in my timeline), hooked up with Nancy in 2253, broke up with her 2255, and entered Starfleet (IIRC the Kelvin timeline correctly) around 2257.

How about: born in '22, undergrad '40-'44 (married in '44), med school '44-'48 (daughter Joanna born '47), internship/residency '48-'53?, split from wife and space service from '53 forward?

The only previous assignment I have so far for McCoy is his few months on Capella IV, as per "Friday's Child." I may add others if they're stories I like enough.

Where do you place that? The episode doesn't provide the slightest clue. (FWIW, the novel MBK: Constitution places it during Piper's stint as Enterprise CMO, i.e., just before "Corbomite.").

He obviously served with Kirk some time before TOS, IMO. I'd put their first meeting somewhere in 2254 at the latest, considering McCoy teasing Kirk about Bailey reminding Kirk of himself "11 years ago" in "The Corbomite Maneuver." 11 years is a pretty specific time frame to just pull out of thin air if you weren't personally acquainted with the person at the time.

I suspect that was the reasoning behind the flashback about McCoy meeting the 22-year-old Kirk in Crisis On Centaurus.

IIRC, [Chekov] also appears in Vonda McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Adventure.

He does? I've tried to block that novel out of my memory as much as possible. (Wouldn't he have still been a cadet at the time?)

So I guess, working backwards five years, [Saavik would] first enter Starfleet Academy in... 2278? (3 years accelerated Vulcan course + 2 years Command School.) Does that work? I honestly haven't nailed down a lot of the dates in Saavik's backstory yet.

It's tricky, since she really has no backstory on screen, only in the novels. BTW, didn't Fontana establish the "accelerated Vulcan course" as being only two years? And apparently you're thinking of Command School as a two-year program... any particular reason? I keep flipping back and forth between that and a one-year program...

Anyhow, if (for the sake of argument) she was 12 when Spock rescued her from Hellguard in 2274, then she'd be old enough to enter the Academy in '79 or '80, which would work out just about right for finishing up in '83...

(You may have noticed that, unlike you, I take a bit of a salad bar approach to continuity. I use the bits I like and just ignore or forget the bits that I don't. I'm not too inclined to bend over backwards just to incorporate stories I found to be bad. )

Nah, that's not unlike me at all. I'll defer to canon, but beyond that I do get somewhat pickier. (Note my remarks above about E: The First Adventure!...)

I suppose that depends on how far you want to go with it. I'd think if you want to become a Commander or certainly a Captain, further training would be required.

For whatever it's worth, that's not how it works in the modern-day Naval Academy, which is probably the closest analog we have... midshipmen are commissioned straight out of undergrad and progress through the ranks from there, and the institution doesn't actually offer any postgraduate degrees (although the Navy may support postgrad education at other institutions). But, of course, Starfleet is different in many ways, so we do have room to improvise...

I honestly don't know. Wherever she doesn't trip up against Ruth of Carol Marcus, I suppose. I see Kirk as a serial monogamist, but not somebody who'd cheat on his girlfriends.

Yeah, that would be out of character. His year (or first of two?) back on Earth for Command School would seem like the obvious time.

(Although here's a thorny bit... what would Gary Mitchell have been doing at the Academy during Lt. Kirk's return stint there, if he'd first met Kirk c. 2250 and, thus, presumably graduated around the same time? Gary's infamous reminiscence in "WNM" still remains hard to interpret logically...)

I'm not too nuts about the idea of young Kirk & Spock meeting years before they served together on the Enterprise, as I think it dilutes the gradual getting to know each other period we saw in the first episodes of TOS. A passing meeting might be fine, but more than that seems way too cutesy and contrived to me.

It does smack of "small universe syndrome," no argument. Nonetheless, the third Starfleet Academy novel does have them meeting (albeit, technically, while Kirk is a cadet but Spock is already an ensign)...

 

[johnnybear]

Having WNMHGB as the third episode was ridiculous! I know it probably wasn't ready and all that but even the BBC order has that show as the first and that order is way out there!
Production order is the best and I've done a run of that and airdate before! Next time it's gonna be BBC and then perhaps Stardate..maybe?
JB

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I'm honestly not sure where you see TOS "implying" anything at all about McCoy's age, though... and people do show their age at different rates, after all.

Just going by how McCoy seemed to be more the "senior, sage counsel" type of friend for Kirk rather than the "contemporary" friend that Gary Mitchell was. It's more in how they played their scenes together than anything.

On the other hand, FWIW, the TOS Writers/Directors Guide (third revision, written in 1967 for season two) does say that "Dr. McCoy is 45 years of age, was married once ... something of a mystery that ended unhappily in a divorce. He has a daughter, 'Joanna', who is 20 and in training as a nurse somewhere." (The same Guide says elsewhere that "Kirk is about thirty-four.")

So, creator intent. That's good enough for me. Generally speaking, I like to assume that the characters were roughly the same ages as the actors playing them unless we're given evidence to the contrary. (Shatner was playing about four years younger than his actual age, IIRC.)

It always seemed fairly clear to me that the "Class of '78" reference in "Farpoint" (especially in conjunction with the backstory that Data had been discovered 26 years before TNG began, and gone straight into the Academy) was intended to situate TNG firmly at the very beginning of the 24th century — where indeed it would be if it followed from the then-widespread Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology, which IIRC placed the FYM c. 2206-11 and STII-III c. 2222.

I think there was certainly some of that, yeah. I also remember some early reports on TNG stating that the show would be 87 years after the TOS era.

Indeed, it's hard to imagine how or why they'd have settled on a span as arbitrary as 78 years unless, in fact, they had the year 2300 in mind as a target.

I think that they went with the 78 year gap for a couple of story reasons: 1) To give themselves a more or less clean slate (It's so far into the future that the Klingons are our allies now!) and 2) To discourage any potential guest spots from the original cast. Gene Roddenberry & his staff, to their credit, wanted their new show to be its own thing and not have to rely on constant references to the original show.

If you do take Data's "Class of '78" line from "Encounter at Farpoint" as accurate, though, and account for him being found 26 years before "Datalore," that would put the first season of TNG somewhere around 2304 (It's fuzzy because we didn't know that Starfleet Academy was a four-year institution at the point, nor how long it took Data to enter Starfleet). So they probably had the Spaceflight Chronology dates in mind for a good part of the first season.

I have never yet run across any explanation of who or what was responsible for the change of thinking that gave us "2364" in the final episode of S1.

The theory presented in the Okuda Star Trek Chronology book was that they got the "64" from the year "The Cage" was produced and added 400 years to that.

The thing that I really find interesting is that, because "The Neutral Zone" was produced after the 1988 Writer's Guild Strike started, they were basically locked in to shooting the second draft. I have a feeling that the "2264" line would've fallen by the wayside if the script had gone through a few more drafts. So the entire official ST Chronology basically turns on an arbitrary date that only stayed in the script because they weren't allowed to rewrite it.

It frustrated me no end at the time (and honestly still does) that the Okudas insisted on the middle bit of that logic, yet ignored the first bit in favor of having TNG seasons correspond exactly to calendar years, and ignored the final bit in favor of having TOS seasons set exactly 300 years after broadcast... both of which were completely arbitrary assumptions supported by neither canon nor writers' intent.

I think they probably did that to make their jobs of determining the official ST Chronology as easy as possible. If you're figuring out the placement for eight seasons of TV (Three seasons of TOS and Five of TNG at the time of the first edition) and six different feature films, and all of the other events referred to therein, you'd probably want to have as many round numbers as possible. Hell, I might make the same decisions in their shoes.

How about: born in '22, undergrad '40-'44 (married in '44), med school '44-'48 (daughter Joanna born '47), internship/residency '48-'53?, split from wife and space service from '53 forward?

That's not my personal interpretation, but I can't really think of anything in canon to contradict it. If it works for you, go for it!

(EDIT: I just thought about it a bit more, and if the TOS Writer's Guide puts McCoy at 45, and his daughter Joanna at 20, then she would be born when McCoy was 25 years old, which in my timeline would put her birth in 2245. That would put her on track to be "graduating college soon," as in the DC ST Annual version of the first mission that I like so much. Cool. )

Where do you place that? The episode doesn't provide the slightest clue. (FWIW, the novel MBK: Constitution places it during Piper's stint as Enterprise CMO, i.e., just before "Corbomite.").

The MBK: Constitution novel influenced me to put it circa 2265, just before McCoy's assignment to the Enterprise. In "Friday's Child," we have this exchange:

SCOTT: How long were you stationed on the planet, Doctor?
MCCOY: Only a few months. We found them totally uninterested in medical aid or hospitals. They believe only the strong should survive.

And in the flashback seen on the monitor at the beginning of the episode, McCoy is wearing a uniform of the current Starfleet design, which presumably puts it closer in time to "The Corbomite Maneuver" than anything else. (Oh, how I wish that McCoy was wearing one of "The Cage/WNM" style uniforms in that flashback, just to further tag it in time, but I'm sure no one wanted to go to the trouble to give DeForest Kelley an entirely new costume for what was a two-second pickup shot.)

I suspect that was the reasoning behind the flashback about McCoy meeting the 22-year-old Kirk in Crisis On Centaurus.

Probably.

He does? I've tried to block that novel out of my memory as much as possible. (Wouldn't he have still been a cadet at the time?)

I just double checked Enterprise: The First Adventure's entry on Memory Beta, and yep, Chekov is mentioned. He also appears on Boris Vallejo's original wraparound cover.

I'd say he was probably in the book just to have all of the classic seven in there, whether or not it made any sense.

It's tricky, since she really has no backstory on screen, only in the novels. BTW, didn't Fontana establish the "accelerated Vulcan course" as being only two years?

The quote in Vulcan's Glory runs as follows:

"He did the two years in the accelerated Vulcan course and one year in the required cadet training working cruises aboard various ships. Once commissioned, he served for three years as assistant science officer on a space cutter in Sol system. Two years ago, he was promoted to lieutenant (j.g.) and has been serving as third officer and science officer aboard the Artemis--long range cruises."

So I take the "once commissioned" line to mean that the last year of basic Starfleet Academy training is one year of cadet training aboard various ships, and then you graduate commissioned as an ensign. So three years, from 2246-2249. My breakdown of Spock's early years is:

2229 - Vulcan Ambassador Sarek marries teacher Amanda Grayson of Earth.
Friday, March 26, 2230 - Spock is born to Sarek and Amanda in the city of ShiKahr on the planet Vulcan. (Nimoy's birth date.)
2235 - 5-year-old Spock comes home angry after being teased by the Vulcan children over his mixed heritage. Despite his anguish, Spock refuses to display his emotions to his mother. ("Journey to Babel.")
2237 - Spock (age 7) undergoes his kahs-wan ritual one month early, attempting to survive for ten days without food, water, or weapons on Vulcan's Forge. Spock's pet sehlat I-Chaya is mortally injured when it follows him. (TAS: "Yesteryear.")
2237 - Spock and T'Pring (age 7) are telepathically bonded in a ritual Vulcan ceremony arranged by their parents. ("Amok Time.")
2246 - Spock (age 16) declines placement in the Vulcan Science Academy, enlisting in Starfleet against his father's wishes. (I see this as more or less how it was shown to us in 2009's Star Trek. YMMV.)
2248 - Spock (age 18) completes two years at Starfleet Academy in the accelerated Vulcan course and begins one year of the required cadet working cruises aboard various ships. (Vulcan's Glory.)
2249 - Spock (age 19) graduates from Starfleet Academy with the rank of Ensign. (Vulcan's Glory.)
~2249 - 2252 - Ensign Spock serves for three years as Assistant Science Officer on a space cutter in the Sol system. (Vulcan's Glory. William Rotsler's Star Trek II Biographies lists two of Spock's pre-Enterprise ships as the Sirius and the Phardos. I like both of these ship names a lot.)
2252 - Spock is promoted to Lieutenant (J.G.) and begins serving as Third Officer and Science Officer on the U.S.S. Artemis. (Vulcan's Glory.)
December 2253 - Spock (age 23) is promoted to Lieutenant & transfers to the Enterprise as Second Officer and Science Officer. (Vulcan's Glory.)
2261 - On Earth, botanist Leila Kalomi falls in love with Spock, but he is unable to return her feelings. (Six years before "This Side of Paradise." In a neat bit of serendipity, this also lined up with a reference in the novel Strangers From The Sky to Spock volunteering his services to an M.I.T. project in Boston that required an A-5 computer expert. I unfortunately can't access the file with my notes on it right now, though. My new laptop doesn't want to read all of the files from my old computer yet.)

And apparently you're thinking of Command School as a two-year program... any particular reason? I keep flipping back and forth between that and a one-year program...

Me, too. I actually currently have it as a one-year program, spanning from 2257-2258. (Click on "2250-2260" to get to the relevant section at this link. Table on Contents tab on the left.)

I haven't even begun to figure out when folks like Sulu or Chekov would've gone to Command School. Probably in the gap between TOS and TMP for Sulu, although Chekov would probably be doing his security training during that time. So I guess sometime between TMP and TWOK makes the most sense for him.

Spock I'm thinking probably didn't go to Command School, as he never took the KM test. (And I really liked the explanation that ST09 had on that... Spock didn't take the KM test because he's the one who invented it! Very clever extrapolation, IMO.) Scotty I imagine had a bit of command training experience, as per the Kobayashi Maru novel, but I see him as an "up through the ranks" kind of guy.

Anyhow, if (for the sake of argument) she was 12 when Spock rescued her from Hellguard in 2274, then she'd be old enough to enter the Academy in '79 or '80, which would work out just about right for finishing up in '83...

That works pretty well for me. I'll probably go with that or something close to it. So you figure that Saavik is about 21 in TWOK?

Nah, that's not unlike me at all. I'll defer to canon, but beyond that I do get somewhat pickier. (Note my remarks above about E: The First Adventure!...)

Sorry. I was assuming that your attitude on your ultra-comprehensive DC chronology was carrying over.

For whatever it's worth, that's not how it works in the modern-day Naval Academy, which is probably the closest analog we have... midshipmen are commissioned straight out of undergrad and progress through the ranks from there, and the institution doesn't actually offer any postgraduate degrees (although the Navy may support postgrad education at other institutions).

My friend who was in the Navy for six years was telling me that there are officer training programs, although I think those are just a matter of a few months. But I figure that Starfleet can get a bit more complex in its training.

But, of course, Starfleet is different in many ways, so we do have room to improvise...

Certainly true! Artistic license is a wonderful thing.

His year (or first of two?) back on Earth for Command School would seem like the obvious time.

Yes, but that doesn't work great for me, as I have Kirk entering Command School in 2257 and starting up with Carol Marcus in that same year. By my reckoning, Kirk and Carol are together from 2257 until early 2260, when Carol discovers that she's pregnant with David. (I figure if Kirk nearly married "the little blonde lab technician," it should be a longer, more serious relationship than his others.)

Oh, and I'm of the school that Kirk didn't know about David until sometime after TOS. I talk about that a bit in this thread.

Honestly, it's kind of depressing to think of Kirk spending an entire year with that loony Janice Lester. Maybe she started as a rebound girl after Kirk's relationship with Ruth ended? That would put it in 2252 or 53.

(Although here's a thorny bit... what would Gary Mitchell have been doing at the Academy during Lt. Kirk's return stint there, if he'd first met Kirk c. 2250 and, thus, presumably graduated around the same time? Gary's infamous reminiscence in "WNM" still remains hard to interpret logically...)

I'm not entirely certain. Maybe Gary pulled some strings and worked the system to stay close to his friend Jim in his hour of need after the loss of the Farragut? That seems very in character for him.

It does smack of "small universe syndrome," no argument. Nonetheless, the third Starfleet Academy novel does have them meeting (albeit, technically, while Kirk is a cadet but Spock is already an ensign)...

I'm aware of those books, but I've never read them. Maybe if I come across some used copies somewhere...

 

[JonnyQuest037]

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."

I just remembered something that I forgot to comment on earlier: If you believe, as I do, that WNM occurred very early in Kirk's 5YM (like sometime in the first year), that makes Dr. Dehner's remark to Spock about Mitchell being "a man you've worked next to for years" seem odd. Unless... Mitchell actually came aboard the Enterprise before Kirk did, when it was still under the command of Captain Pike.

The only glimpse we get of Pike's Enterprise in TOS is in "The Cage," which takes place in 2254. "WNM" takes place in 2265 or 2266. That's a lot of time we can fill in. And I find it fascinating to think of the possibility that Mitchell had actually known Spock for longer (and perhaps better) than Kirk did at the time of WNM.

Dehner also says to Kirk, "Gary told me that you've been friends since he joined the service, that you asked for him aboard your first command." So what if she's not talking about the Enterprise (although I'm sure that was the intent), but an earlier command by Kirk, say a destroyer like the Saladin that he commanded at the rank of Commander? What if Kirk asked for Mitchell on his first command in say, 2262, but Mitchell wasn't available because he was busy serving on the Enterprise with Pike and Spock?

What do you folks think? Does that work for you?

 

[MAGolding]

I just remembered something that I forgot to comment on earlier: If you believe, like I do, that WNM occurred very early in Kirk's 5YM (like sometime in the first year), that makes Dr. Dehner's remark to Spock about Mitchell being "a man you've worked next to for years" seem odd. Unless... Mitchell actually came aboard the Enterprise before Kirk did, when it was still under the command of Captain Pike.

The only glimpse we get of Pike's Enterprise in TOS is in "The Cage," which takes place in 2254. "WNM" takes place in 2265 or 2266. That's a lot of time we can fill in. And I find it fascinating to think of the possibility that Mitchell had actually known Spock for longer (and perhaps better) than Kirk did at the time of WNM.

Dehner also says to Kirk, "Gary told me that you've been friends since he joined the service, that you asked for him aboard your first command." So what if she's not talking about the Enterprise (although I'm sure that was the intent), but an earlier command by Kirk, say a destroyer like the Saladin that he commanded at the rank of Commander? What if Kirk asked for Mitchell on his first command in say, 2262, but Mitchell wasn't available because he was busy serving on the Enterprise with Pike and Spock?

What do you folks think? Does that work for you?

That works for me because it also happens to be my theory, that either Kirk commanded the Enterprise with both Mitchell and Spock aboard for years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before", or else that Mitchell served aboard the Enterprise with Pike and Spock for years before Kirk became captain of the Enterprise. It seems uncertain whether Mitchell was able to transfer from the Enterprise to Kirk's first command when Kirk asked for Mitchell to be assigned to it, so it is uncertain whether where was a gap in Mitchell's period aboard the Enterprise.

Note that Kirk said:

Star date 1313.1. We're now approaching Delta Vega. Course set for a standard orbit. This planet, completely uninhabited, is slightly smaller than Earth. Desolate, but rich in crystal and minerals. Kelso's task, transport down with a repair party, try to regenerate the main engines, save the ship. Our task, transport down a man I've known for fifteen years, and if we're successful, maroon him there.

And in a different scene Dr. Dehner said:

DEHNER: I don't think so. I understand you least of all. Gary told me that you've been friends since he joined the service, that you asked for him aboard your first command.

And for a long time I have thought that they referred to two different stages in the relationship, that Kirk probably knew Mitchell years before Mitchell entered the service.

"Shore Leave" shows that Kirk's first year at Starfleet Academy was "fifteen years" before the first season, and since "Where No Man Has Gone Before" should be earlier than "Shore Leave" fifteen years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before" should be during Kirk's first year at the Academy or before it.

But Mitchell says:

MITCHELL: Well, I'm getting a chance to read some of that longhair stuff you like. Hey man, I remember you back at the Academy. A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from an upperclassman was, watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink.

So when Mitchell was at the Academy Kirk was already a lieutenant, and upperclassmen warned about the class taught by Kirk, so Kirk should have taught it in a previous academic year. Which does not seem very consistent with this happening during Kirk's first year at the Academy as a lowly plebe which should have been no more than fifteen years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

 

[Henoch]

William Shatner
Born: March 22, 1931
Real Age: 34 during filming for WNM
Est. Character Age: 32 for WNM (34 in the Deadly Years two years later)
Gary Lockwood
Born: February 21, 1937
Real Age: 28 during filming for WNM
Est. Character Age: 28 for WNM (YMMV?)

On-Screen TOS info (with my theorizing):
1. Known Mitchell for 15 years: Kirk is 17; Mitchell is 13. Parents/families become friends; 17 and 13 year olds don't hang out together, so, not "good friends".
2. Ben Finney, Finnegan and Ruth: Kirk is Academy plebe at 18. Add 15 years and Kirk is 33 during Shore Leave. Ruth is an older woman who is Kirk's first love ("Maggie May".) Also, befriends older, married Ben Finney (either instructor or noncommissioned officer with a new commission to Starfleet). Finney's first child is born and named after James. Jamie would be at the oldest 15 during CM even if Mrs. Finney was very pregnant when they met. Jamie's probably 14.
3. Events of the Cage: 13 years prior to The Menagerie, making Kirk about 20. No indication of any recent war, since Pike doesn't sound battle-hardened; moping about losing 3 crew lives. Hell, Kirk loses 3 crew almost every other episode.
4. Kirk is ensign. Junior/Senior year at Academy and serves on U.S.S. Republic as an acting ensign; making him 20-21. Was this a training vessel, or a potential wartime conflict, where they pull up upperclassmen to serve on ships to fill the ranks. Ben Finney serves with Kirk. Something odd is happening. Possibly the "Axanar Peace Mission" reference?
5. Kirk is lieutenant. Graduates from Academy, age 22 with lieutenant commission (rare, something odd has happened) and serves on U.S.S. Farragut under Captain Garrovick. Garrovick gets killed and Kirk blames self.
6. McCoy's Comment: Kirk is lieutenant 11 years prior to TCM; making him still 22, and based on McCoy's comment about Bailey, perhaps a little damaged.
7. Mitchell's Academy comment: Kirk returns to Academy as a lieutenant instructor; probably 23. Mitchell is now at the Academy as a sophomore at 19. Mitchell takes Kirk's class. They get reacquainted then become good friends. Kirk stays on for at least one more year to give time to develop their friendship plus have at least one romance with a blonde lab technician; Carol Marcus, making Kirk 24-25 at David's birth. Kirk leaves the Academy and returns to active duty around this time per Carol Marcus comment.
8. Dehner's comment on Kirk first command: Probably Commander rank, about 28. Asks for Mitchell (probably to be his first officer?). Lieutenant Mitchell already serving along with Spock on Enterprise under Pike. Kirk possibly meets McCoy during this period, maybe under his command.
9. WNM: Kirk promoted to Captain and gets assigned the Enterprise shortly before WNM.
10. WNM: Kirk is now Captain and 32 (two years later he is 34 in the Deadly Years). This must be ~7-8 years after Kirk leaves teaching at the Academy. Spock is first officer. Mitchell is head navigator, Scott is chief engineer. Sulu is botanist?
11. Series: Kirk gets Dr. McCoy about a year later.

 

[Ithekro]

FASA's timeline fits with Data's "Class of 78" line, since they had The Wrath of Khan as 2222 and TNG starting in 2304, with the Five Year Mission from 2207 to 2212.

 

[Henoch]

Kirk inherits Pike's senior staff in WNM:

• Spock, Lt. Cmd., 1st Officer
• Dr. Piper, Lt. Cmd., CMO
• Scott, Lt. Cmd., CEO
• Mitchell, Lt. Cmd., Head Navigator
• Kelso, Lt., Head Helmsman
• Sulu, Lt., Science Officer

On Kirk's first mission, both the head Navigator and head Helmsman are killed, and later, the CMO retires. 50% attrition is rather stiff. (Not figuring in Dehner loss.)

 

[Tenacity]

and later, the CMO retires

Or is killed on a subsequent mission.

 

[Mysterion]

Or is killed on a subsequent mission.

Or moved on to another posting.

 

[Henoch]

Or is killed on a subsequent mission.

Or moved on to another posting.

Dr. Piper had a cushy posting winding down his long career on an older starship under an older experienced captain. (Sounds like Star Trek VI.) What could go wrong? In the end (death, transfer, retirement), he wasn't up to the challenge of running around with the most energetic captain in Starfleet history.

 

[lawman]

Having WNMHGB as the third episode was ridiculous! I know it probably wasn't ready and all that but even the BBC order has that show as the first and that order is way out there!

I've literally never heard of BBC order before! How is it different?

I think that they went with the 78 year gap for a couple of story reasons: 1) To give themselves a more or less clean slate (It's so far into the future that the Klingons are our allies now!) and 2) To discourage any potential guest spots from the original cast. Gene Roddenberry & his staff, to their credit, wanted their new show to be its own thing and not have to rely on constant references to the original show.

The thing is, any multi-generational gap would've met those two goals. A nice round 100 years (or even 80) would have done the trick. 78 is very specific, and just happens to correspond with what would exactly push the show into the next century (on the then-understood timeline), and Ockham's Razor suggests that wasn't coincidence.

If you do take Data's "Class of '78" line from "Encounter at Farpoint" as accurate, though, and account for him being found 26 years before "Datalore," that would put the first season of TNG somewhere around 2304

No... if he went through a standard four-year Academy program, it would mean he was found four years earlier (in 2274), which (adding 26) gives exactly 2300.

And in the flashback seen on the monitor at the beginning of the episode, McCoy is wearing a uniform of the current Starfleet design

Ooh, good catch! Circumstantial yet persuasive reason to believe McCoy's Capella IV posting was just before he (re)joined the Enterprise crew.

Honestly, it's kind of depressing to think of Kirk spending an entire year with that loony Janice Lester.

Well, there's room for interpretation there. The exact dialogue leaves things ambiguous:

JANICE: The year we were together at Starfleet is the only time in my life I was alive.
KIRK: I never stopped you from going on with your space work.
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
KIRK: No, it isn't. And you punished and tortured me because of it.
JANICE: I loved you. We could've roamed among the stars.
KIRK: We'd have killed each other.
JANICE: It might have been better.​

It seems not unreasonable to interpret that as a year in which they worked together (and briefly dated), during which Janice wanted a serious relationship, but KIrk didn't. She tells him she loved him, but he doesn't reciprocate that or express any regrets... he just emphasizes her work and his impression that a relationship would have been destructive. Later, in Janice's body, Kirk does refer to himself as...

"a man who once loved her... but her intense hatred of her own womanhood made life with her impossible."​

...but that still doesn't imply his emotional investment in her was of the same intensity or duration as hers in him. On the contrary, it could be read to suggest that he put distance between them as soon as he got to know her well.

Unless... Mitchell actually came aboard the Enterprise before Kirk did, when it was still under the command of Captain Pike.

Hmm. I suppose that could explain Dehner's line about working alongside Spock...

Dehner also says to Kirk, "Gary told me that you've been friends since he joined the service, that you asked for him aboard your first command." So what if she's not talking about the Enterprise (although I'm sure that was the intent), but an earlier command by Kirk

... and I definitely agree with the intermediate conclusion here (there's no reason she would specify Kirk's first command if she meant the ship they were all currently on)...

but Mitchell wasn't available because he was busy serving on the Enterprise with Pike and Spock?

...but still, I don't so much like this bit. It flies in the face of the apparent intent of the line — and also of our understanding from quite a few other stories that starship captains can generally get the senior crew they want, if those officers are willing — and undermines the backstory of long friendship with Gary forged through shared experience that seems essential to the emotional beats of the episode.

On a related note...

And for a long time I have thought that [Kirk's and Dehner's remarks] referred to two different stages in the relationship, that Kirk probably knew Mitchell years before Mitchell entered the service.

Hmm. On the one hand, I don't really like this idea, since IMHO it undermines the emotional themes of WNM similarly to the other (re)interpretation just discussed...

[Yet] when Mitchell was at the Academy Kirk was already a lieutenant, and upperclassmen warned about the class taught by Kirk, so Kirk should have taught it in a previous academic year. Which does not seem very consistent with this happening during Kirk's first year at the Academy as a lowly plebe which should have been no more than fifteen years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

...but on the other hand, even in a pilot that was understandably full of "early episode weirdness," that bit of dialogue from Gary does remain frustratingly hard to make sense of, in this exact way, even in light of other information in the same episode.

Leaves one annoyed with Roddenberry, honestly. He gave us dialogue strongly implying that Kirk and Gary met and became friends when they entered the service fifteen years earlier, making them contemporaries... yet at another point he implies just as strongly that Kirk was at least a few years older. (And GR knew Kirk's age... he wrote the damn show bible, for heaven's sake!...)

So I don't want to dismiss this possibility out of hand. Hmm. Food for thought.

Also, good insight about the logical implication that Kirk taught for more than one academic year! Guess this answers the question I raised upthread about whether Kirk's graduate studies should occupy one or two years.

Meanwhile...

Finney's first child is born and named after James. Jamie would be at the oldest 15 during CM even if Mrs. Finney was very pregnant when they met. Jamie's probably 14.

Seems entirely reasonable.

[Kirk] serves on U.S.S. Republic as an acting ensign; making him 20-21. Was this a training vessel, or a potential wartime conflict, where they pull up upperclassmen to serve on ships to fill the ranks. Ben Finney serves with Kirk. Something odd is happening. Possibly the "Axanar Peace Mission" reference?

I agree that it was during his Academy years, and have no problem with the "acting Ensign" thing, but I think it was definitely a training vessel. The last thing we need is yet another recent war shoehorned into TOS's backstory.

I don't think it can be the Axanar mission, though. Kirk specified that as being when he was a "new-fledged cadet," which to me says (A) not an Ensign, and (B) probably still a plebe. That's why I like the summer after his first year for that mission.

Kirk returns to Academy as a lieutenant instructor; probably 23. Mitchell is now at the Academy as a sophomore at 19. Mitchell takes Kirk's class. They get reacquainted then become good friends. Kirk stays on for at least one more year to give time to develop their friendship plus have at least one romance with a blonde lab technician

You're on the same page as me and @JonnyQuest037 about the post-Farragut return to the Academy, I see. Even if I run with the idea of Mitchell as attending later than Kirk, though, I still don't see him as a sophomore at this point. Gary's dialogue refers to "the first thing I ever heard from an upperclassman" being about Kirk, strongly implying the very beginning of his plebe year. Per @MAGolding's logic just above, if Kirk spent two years back at the Academy, it makes sense to infer that Mitchell matriculated there during the second of those years. (In my timeline, that puts Kirk there from 2256-'58, so that would mean Gary began in '57.)

However, that doesn't necessarily mean Mitchell was a full six or seven years younger than Kirk. It might just be that he entered the Academy older. The present-day U.S. Naval Academy (for the sake of comparison) accepts new midshipmen aged 17 to 23... and we also know that Starfleet Academy (at least in the 24th century, per TNG "Menage a Troi") allows an applicant to re-take the entrance exams in a subsequent year if he or she doesn't make the cut the first time. So Mitchell might have been as little as a couple of years younger (born, say, c. 2235) and still have entered the Academy in '57, for reasons of his own. (Perhaps he pursued other studies first, or a different career path. Perhaps he tried applying more than once. Perhaps, although I'm loathe to rest anything on evidence originating in DSC, he was motivated to apply by the Klingon War that broke out in '56. Or who knows why?...) I think I prefer this option, as it would make it easier for Kirk's friendship with him to extend back for the full time they've known each other.

Carol Marcus, making Kirk 24-25 at David's birth. Kirk leaves the Academy and returns to active duty around this time per Carol Marcus comment.

What comment are you thinking of? The only one that springs to mind for me is her statement to Kirk in the Genesis cave...

"Were we together? Were we going to be? You had your world and I had mine. And I wanted him in mine, not chasing through the universe with his father."​

...which really provides no clues at all about where Kirk was in his Starfleet career when David was born. I'm still partial to him being born c. 2260, when Kirk was busy climbing the ranks and Carol could clearly see the writing on the wall.

Dehner's comment on Kirk first command: Probably Commander rank, about 28. Asks for Mitchell (probably to be his first officer?). Lieutenant Mitchell already serving along with Spock on Enterprise under Pike.

I'm not partial to this, as described above. But I suppose we can debate it in greater depth once CLB's book comes out about Kirk's first command!...

FASA's timeline fits with Data's "Class of 78" line, since they had The Wrath of Khan as 2222 and TNG starting in 2304, with the Five Year Mission from 2207 to 2212.

Yep, the FASA timeline (pretty much) matched the one from the Goldsteins' Spaceflight Chronology.

 

[johnnybear]

BBC order you can find on the BBC Genome and on Memory Alpha! I'll give you the first thirteen or so in their order which mostly stayed the same from 1969-1982!
WNMHGB, The Naked Time, City On The Edge of Forever, A Taste of Armageddon, Mudd's Women, Tomorrow is Yesterday, The Menagerie, Devil in The Dark, Shore Leave or Charlie X, Space Seed, The Man Trap, Dagger of The Mind and The Corbomite Maneuver! Thing is Alternative Factor usually turns up one from the very end just before Turnabout Intruder!
JB

 

[JonnyQuest037]

No... if he went through a standard four-year Academy program, it would mean he was found four years earlier (in 2274), which (adding 26) gives exactly 2300.

...Which is why I qualified my statement by writing both "somewhere around" and "it's fuzzy" when it came to pinpointing an exact year.

If you do take Data's "Class of '78" line from "Encounter at Farpoint" as accurate, though, and account for him being found 26 years before "Datalore," that would put the first season of TNG somewhere around 2304 (It's fuzzy because we didn't know that Starfleet Academy was a four-year institution at that point, nor how long it took Data to enter Starfleet).

My point was that at the time "Datalore" was written, it hadn't yet been concretely established that Starfleet Academy was a four-year institution, so you couldn't really work out a precise timeline for Data's Starfleet career. The only things we knew for sure was that he was found 26 years before, he graduated in 2278, and he'd apparently been in Starfleet for 17 to 19 years.

LORE: Will I soon have a uniform like that, brother?
DATA: If you get one the way I did, Lore, it will mean four years at the Academy, another three as ensign, ten or twelve on varied space duty in the lieutenant grades.

4 + 3 + 10-12 = Data has spent at least 17 or 19 years in Starfleet by the time of "Datalore."

... and I definitely agree with the intermediate conclusion here (there's no reason she would specify Kirk's first command if she meant the ship they were all currently on)...

Why not, if the Enterprise was in fact Kirk's first command? WNM was a pilot episode, so they'd want to spell things like that out for viewers.

Leaves one annoyed with Roddenberry, honestly. He gave us dialogue strongly implying that Kirk and Gary met and became friends when they entered the service fifteen years earlier, making them contemporaries... yet at another point he implies just as strongly that Kirk was at least a few years older. (And GR knew Kirk's age... he wrote the damn show bible, for heaven's sake!...)

I think you should be annoyed with Samuel A. Peeples. He's the one who wrote that episode. And it's possible that the show's bible hadn't been nailed down yet.

 

[lawman]

Okay, granted, Peebles is the credited writer on WNM. I was just assuming that GR script-doctored it as heavily as he did many other episodes, especially as it was the second pilot for his pet project. One way or the other, whoever is responsible for those lines was definitely guilty of sending mixed signals to the audience!...

 

[mb22]

Peeples.​