TOS Chronology

Continued from post number 160.

Compilation of all evidence of the passage of time in TOS, to find limits on how much of a time skip there could have been between the first part of season one of TOS and the rest of TOS.

In Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan Khan says:

So any time jumps which Kirk and the Enterprise might have made between "Space Seed" and Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan must total less than the total time Khan experienced between "Space Seed" and Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan , which should be less than 16.0 years. Kirk also said it was 15 years since he last saw Khan.

In "Journey to Babel" Spock's joining Starfleet resulted in Spock and Sarek not speaking as father and son for 18 years. So "Journey to Babel" should be either 18 years after Spock entered Starfleet academy or 18 years after Spock graduated and was commissioned an ensign in Starfleet. "Journey to Babel" was probably some time after "The Menagerie".

"The Menagerie" was 13 years after the Talos IV incident, when Spock was apparently senior enough to be third in command of the Enterprise. If it took Spock 4 years to graduate, and he entered 18 years before "Journey to Babel". Spock should have graduated and become commissioned only one year or less before the Talos IV incident. If Spock graduated 18 years before "Journey to Babel", he should have been commissioned only five years or less before the Talos IV incident.

In "The Enterprise Incident" in the 3rd season:

If 18 years refers to the same event in Spock's life in both "Journey to Babel" and "The Enterprise Incident" the two episodes would happen less than one year apart. If "Journey to Babel" was 18 years after Spock entered Starfleet Academy and "The Enterprise Incident" was 18 years after Spock graduated and was commissioned, they might be as much as 4 years apart. But that would give Spock only 1 year of seniority at the most between being commissioned and being 3rd in command at Talos IV, unless the precocious Spock graduated from the Academy and was commissioned in only one year or something.

Or possibly Spock subtracted several years spent in some sort of time warp or something from the total time since he was commissioned when he said he had been a starfleet officer for 18 years.

In the 3rd season episode "The Day of the Dove", which perhaps helpfully has no stardate, Kang says:

This implies that "The Day of the Dove" is about 3 years after "Errand of Mercy", which should be no more than one or two more years than would be expected.

In the second season episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?":

Being 22 indicates that Ensign Chekov probably hasn't been on the Enterprise very long. But in Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan Chekov and Khan apparently recognized each other from the first season episode "Space Seed", indicating that "Who Mourns for Adonais?" probably didn't happen more than a few months after "Space Seed".

Of course "Space seed" would be expected to be after the hypothetical time skip if that happened.

In the 2nd season episode "The Deadly Years" Kirk meets an old girffriend Dr. Janet Wallace:

Those 6 years, 4 months and some days may have been since sometime before Kirk became captain of the Enterprise but was already married to his Starfleet career. Or they might possibly have been since sometime after Kirk already had the Enterprise, perhaps even sometime during the first seasons. But neither mentions Kirk being stuck in a time warp or something as an excuse for not contacting her more often.

In "This Side of Paradise" in the second part of the first season, on planet Omicron Ceti III:

If Lelia met Spock on Earth sometime before the first season of TOS, any time skip between the first and second parts of the first season would have to have been less than six years long.

In "Court Martial" Kirk meets his former girlfriend Areel Shaw:

If Kirk and Shaw last met sometime before the first season of TOS, any time skip between the first and second parts of the first season would have to have been less than 4 years and 7 months long.

In "Amok Time":

KIRK: I'm more interested in your request for shore leave. In all the years
SPOCK: You have my request, Captain. Will you grant it or not?
KIRK: In all the years that I've known you, you've never asked for a leave of any sort. In fact, you've refused them. Why now?

I think that Kirk and Spock would have to be serving together on the same base or vessel for Kirk to keep track of whether Spock was taking leave. And kirk's awareness of Spock's doings goes back at least two years and possibly more. So possibly this indicates that Kirk has been working closely with Spock, on the Enterprise perhaps, for at least two years of time that they experienced, as opposed to time in the outside universe.

In "Journey to Babel":

Together these quotes seem to indicate that the close association of Kirk and Spock (and thus perhaps Krk being in command of the Enterprise) has lasted for at least two years but no more than at most five years by the second season of TOS.

And if there was a time skip sometime during the first season of TOS, it would seem to have been no longer than five or fewer years minus two or more years, and thus three years or less. Unless of course Amanda didn't think it was fair to blame Spock for not visiting when he was stuck in a time warp or something, and so deduced the period of the time
skip from the total time since the last visit to get the four years she said that Spock hand't visited them in.


Still, a time skip of one, two, or three years while the Enterprise was stuck in a time warp or something else science fictional would help to explain the changes between the first and second parts of the first season.

So maybe the Enterprise was transported a few years, and only a few years, into the future between the first and second parts of the first season, and was more or less stuck there, making the changes seem more abrupt than they would be if the viewers had seen the changes happening as they occurred. If there had been an episode when Earth joined the Federation, or rejoined it, or when the Federation adopted a more centralized form of government - the way the USA replaced the Articles of Conferation with the US constitution - the changes in the setting of TOS would not have seemed so great. But if the Enterprise was stuck in a time warp or something off screen when those changes happened there would be no way for the show to show those changes.

To be continued.

 

Continued from post number 161.

Some productions in the era of TNG mentioned the time since specific productions in the era of TOS. There are many references in the era of TNG to the number of ears since previous productions in the eara of TNG. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the lists that I made of such references.

But as a general rule in the era of TNG each season was supposed to be about 1,000 stardate units long and correspond to about one year of an unspecified type. Thus if two productions in the TNG era are X seasons apart they are probably about X years apart - years of an unspecified type.

In 1987, there were statements that TNG would be 78 years after the era of Kirk. And I don't know whether those statements meant that TNG would be 78 years after the first episode of TOS, 78 years after the last episode of TOS, 78 years after TAS, 78 years after TMP, 78 years after WOK, SFS, TVH, and TFF, or 78 years after TUC.

In the first TNG episode "Encounter at Farpoint" Data talks to an elderly Starfleet admiral who looks a lot like Dr. Leonard McCoy.

Assuming that the Admiral is McCoy, and assuming that McCoy was a specific age in a specific Star Trek production, subtracting one age from the other would give the number of years between the two productions. That is assuming, of course, that the number of years McCoy lived and aged between the two productions was the same as the number of years which passed on Earth during the interval, which is not certain to be the case in science fiction.

In the first season of TNG "The Naked Now" was said to be decades after "The Naked Time", in the first season of TOS, and thus probably fewer than one hundred years later. Of course one could always suppose that there was actually more than a century between the two episodes and Picard underestimated the time span. I note that Mr. Scott also mentioned "The Naked Time" in "Relics".

Since "The Naked Time" was probably before the hypothetical time skip in the first season of TOS, being fewer than 100 years before "The Naked Now" limits the lpossible length of that hypothetical time skip.

In the TNG second season episode "The Emissary":

If the T'Ong was sent over 75 years earlier, that should have been between 75 and 80 years earlier. Thus peace which the Klingons should have existed for no more than about 75 to 80 years by the second season of TNG. And that peace should have begun at the Khitomer Conference in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, though that movie hadn't been made yet when "The Emissary" was made.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country should have happened after the T'Ong left on its mission about 75 to 80 years before "The Emissary". Since "Unification" is about 3 years after The Emissary", Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country should have happened after the T'Ong left on its mission about 78 to 83 years before "Unification".

In the second season episode "Journey to Babel" of TOS, Dr. McCoy asked Sarek about his age:

In "Sarek", a third season episode of TNG, Ambassador Sarek visits the ship.

If Sarek gave his age in Earth years in "Journey to Babel" and if he is 202 Earth years old in "Sarek", "Sarek" should be sometime between 99.563 and 100.562 Earth years after "Journey to Babel".

If "The Naked Now is less than 100 years after "The Naked Time", and if "Sarek" is 99.563 to 100.563 years after "Journey to Babel", and probably about two years after "The Naked Now", "The Naked Now" should be about 97.563 to 98.563 years after "Journey to Babel", and thus "Journey to Babel" should less than about 1.437 to 2.437 years after "The Naked Time".

In the fifth season of TNG the episodes "Unification Part 1" and "Unification Part 2", 4 November and 11 November 1991, were tied into the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was released soon afterwards.

If "Unification Part 1" is "barely a year" after "Sarek", that might be between 1.0 and 1.5 Earth years, thus putting "Unification Part 1" about 100.563 to 102.062 years after "Journey to Babel".

When Picard asked Sarek what business Spock could have had on Romulus:

So this indicates that Spock and Pardek probably met at the Khitomer Conference.

When Picard meets Spock:

Later, in "Unificaiton part 2", Pardek says:

So possibly, repeat possibly, Pardek meant that they had met and become friends at the Khitomer Conference sometime between 75 and 85 Earth years earlier, which would determine the time span between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and "Unification", and also the possible time span between "Journey to Babel" and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

If "Unifcation" is about 100.563 to 102.062 years after "Journey to Babel". and about 75 to 85 years after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. should be about 15.563 to 27.062 years after "Journey to Babel". As I wrote above under "The Emissary": since "Unification" is about 3 years after The Emissary", Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country should have happened after the T'Ong left on its mission about 78 to 83 years before "Unification". So combining those two calculations Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. should be about 17.563 to 27.062 years after "Journey to Babel"

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, when Kirk and McCoy are tried by the Klingons:

McCoy does not specify whether he first became surgeon of the Enterprise 27 years earlier, or if he was surgeon on the Enterprise on and off for a total of 27 years spread over a larger number of years. I note that Kirk was not aboard the Enterprise for at least 2.5 years before Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and McCoy was also not aboard the Enterprise for part or all of that at least 2.5 years.

In "Relics", an episode in the 6th season of TNG:

On the Jenolan they find the transporter system is still operating with someone's pattern n the pattern buffer:

It's Montgomery Scott.

If Scott was born 140 years earlier and was suspended in a transporter for 75 or 80 years, he would have been 60 to 65 when the Jenolan was lost.. Subtracting his age at the time of TOS - if it had been mentioned - from 60 to 65 would give the possible interval between TOS and the loss of the Jenolan, unless there were some periods in that interval that Scott did not live or age through due to science fiction events.

And Scott was apparently just recently retired when the Jenolan was lost.

Later:

If Scott was 60 to 65 when lost on the Jenolan and a starfleet engineer for 52 years before that, he would have become a Starfleet Engineer aged 8 to 13. So either he was a really young Starfleet engineer or he was older than 60 to 65 when he was lost on the Jenolan, thus giving more possible time between TOS and the loss of the Jenolan.

Picard tells Scott:

So that makes five statements indicating that the time since the Jenolan was lost was 75 years and one indicating that it was 80 years.

Since the TNG era part of Star Trek Generations is a direct sequel to the TOS era part of Star Trek Generations, where Scott is aboard the Enterprise B when Kirk is seemingly killed, it is strange that Scott assumes that Kirk is alive and came to his rescue. It may be possible to come up with a theory that "Relics" and Star Trek Generations happen in alternate universes where Scott and/or Kirk have different fates. The only other theory I have heard is that Scott's memory of Kirk's loss might have been lost while he was in the transporter pattern buffer for 75 years.

So chronologists should be careful in deciding when the 75 years that Scott was in the pattern buffer began relative to the TOS era movies. I note thatStar Trek Generations should happen about 1 to 2 years after "Relics" and also about 78.2 years after Kirk is lost in the Nexus, which should thus be about 76.2 to 77.2 years before "Relics".

In the beginning of Star Trek Generations several retired Enterprise officers are attending the launch of the new Enterprise B, when Kirk is sucked into the Nexus, which is travelling through the galaxy near Earth.

The new Captain of the Enterprise B, Harriman, tells Kirk:

Harriman was portrayed by Alan Ruck, born 1 July 1956, who was not yet 38 when his scenes were filmed in 1994. If Harriman was the same age as Ruck, he would have been in grade school about 25 to 32 years earlier. So Kirk's missions in command of the Enterprise became publicly known so that grade school kids could read about them at least 25 years before this scene in Star Trek Generations, and they became known an unspecified short or long time after they happened.

If the journalist didn't round off the years, that would be three more years than the 27 years McCoy mentioned he had been surgeon aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Those three years might have been distributed between the time when Kirk was captain of the Enterprise before McCoy became surgeon on the Enterprise, any hypothetical times when Kirk was captain of the Enterprise and McCoy was not the surgeon, and the time between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. and the launch of the Enterprise B.

So there could have been between zero and three years between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and this scene in Star Trek Generations.

I note that Kirk was not aboard the Enterprise for at least 2.5 years before star Trek: The Motion Picture, and McCoy was also not aboard the Enterprise for part or all of that at least 2.5 years. Admiral Kirk was also not the captain of the Enterprise for an unknown period of time stretching from sometime before Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

So did the Journalist mean that Kirk first became captain of the Enterprise about 30 years before that and only a few persons, such as Willard Decker and Spock, had been captain of an Enterprise for periods totally a few yeers during that 30 years? Or did the journalist mean that Kirk had been the captain of the Enterprise for 30 years on and off, and the few years that people like Decker and Spock were captain of the Enterprise were not counted in his thirty years? Or did the Journalist mean that Kirk had been the Captain of the Enterprise A for about 30 years since the ending of Star trek IV: The Voyage Home?.

After they find out that Kirk was sucked into the Nexus, the scene fades and a title card says:

And the TNG era part of Star Trek Generations begins.

Later:

So this should be two passages of the energy ribbon, or 78.2 years after Kirk was lost. And so the creators of Star Trek finally made a specific TNG era production that was clearly 78 years after a specific TOS era production.

In "Trials and Tribble-ations" broadcast on 4 November 1996, in the 5th season of DS9, Dulmer and Lucsly from the Department of Temporal Investigations question Sisko about his recent trip back in time to Space Station K-7 during "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode in the second season of TOS.

So according to Dulmur and Lucsly, they questioned Sisko 105 years, one month, and twelve days after Sisko arrived in the past during "The Trouble with Tribbles" during the second season of TOS.

Since "Trials and Tribble-ations" should have been about 9 years after "The Naked Now", "The Naked Now" should have been about 96 years after "The Trouble with Tribbles" during the second season of TOS. Since "The Naked Now" was said to be "decades" after "The Naked Time", which should be less than 100 years, there should be about 4 years or less between "The Naked Time" and "The Trouble with Tribbles", limiting the possible duration of the hypothetical time skip.

In "Flashback", broadcast on 11 September 1996, an episode of the 3rd season of VOY, Tuvok has flashbacks to being aboard the Excelsior under Captain Sulu during Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

So in "Unification" Pardek says he and Spock have been friends for 80 years, and they probably met in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and in "Flashback" which should be about five years later the more precise Tuvok says it has been approximately 80 years since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. So one might b guess that Pardek said 80 years when it was actually only 77 or 78 years, and Tuvok said approximately 80 years when it was actually 82 or 83 years.

And I think that is all the evidence about the length of time between various TOS era productions and various TNG productions. And also all of the evidence about how many or how few years the TOS productions could be spread out among according to the elapsed time to various TNG era productions.

And I guess that it would be fairly easy to make the 5 year mission be spread out over a ten year span, but much harder to make it spread out over a span of a hundred years.

 

A

But Apollo said that it “did” happen.

 

MAG, either your knowledge is encyclopedic, or you spend an inordinate amount of time researching these, or both. Either way, my hat's off to you.

 

Looking at Stardates, something odd occurred between Balance of Terror (~Stardate 1709) and What Are Little Girls Made Of? (~Stardate 2700). We have about 1000 Stardates or one year with only one episode occurring in the middle of this period, namely The Squire of Gothos (~Stardate 2125). Did it simply take about four months each way to reach Beta Six, or did something else happen to the Enterprise? Perhaps ship damage repair and upgrades in Spacedock after BOT, a quick round trip to Beta Six, then putting the Enterprise on uneventful border patrol for six months due to increased Klingon aggression.

 

@MAGolding I'd not considered that the Enterprise might have time-jumped, that could solve a lot of problems!
The obvious episode to account for such an incident is Tomorrow Is Yesterday but that is Stardate 3113, quite some time after the only absence in SD numbers (assuming they mean anything that is)

SPOCK: ...over ninety eight percent of the known telepathic species send thoughts as well as receive them.

It's probably not what the writer intended, but what if Spock meant that 98% of the populations of known telepathic species send thoughts as well as receive them?

 

I don't believe the writers had any such intention that there was a time jump, nor do I intend to add one to my head canon, but you are certainly into the idea.

 

Alternative sequence for the time travel game:

• Oops. Trip over a black star: go back to 1969.
• Overshoot your time returning from Tomorrow is Yesterday. (Scotty's breaking seemed sloppy to me.)
• Starfleet sends you back into time for a redo in Assignment: Earth: go back to 1968 and do useful investigation while there. (Note: no Stardate is given but I put it over a year after Tomorrow is Yesterday.)
• Return to "proper" timeline after Tomorrow is Yesterday.
• Assignment: Earth events never happen in the prime timeline.

This doesn't add anything useful to the discussion of a time "jump" in the first season, but I thought to throw it out as an alternate season one timeline. YMMV.

 

So would that mean that all the S1 episodes after TIY and all of S2 never happened?

 

No, just Assignment: Earth gets wiped out of existence, but the Enterprise still remembers. Note we start A:E after they travel back in time to 1968, so, we have no idea what Starfleet future they find in an universe without the Enterprise for the period of one+ year it was missing. What Federation dangers occurred after TIY without the Enterprise? Klingon War? Nomad finds Earth? The Doomsday Machine rampages? The space ameba splits and rampages? Tribbles overrun the galaxy? Plus a myriad of miscellaneous lost planets? Without the Enterprise/Kirk, Starfleet could be in shambles and desperate to send the Enterprise back to "fix" the timeline. So, Starfleet keeps the Enterprise isolated and gives they no information that would influence their future missions. Feeds them a cover story to investigate a past event, and arranges for the Enterprise to return to their proper timeline.

I'm just pointing out that something like this could have happened if the Enterprise braked too slow and overshot their timeline in TIY. I don't really support this alternate timeline because there is no on-screen evidence of anything else except they returned to their normal time; I believe Scotty braked the Enterprise perfectly within 0.1 Stardate of their target date.

 

Ah, I had misunderstood just how immediately you were postulating sending the Enterprise back in time on the second occasion.
That's got the making of some fun fan fic!

 

I don't believe the writers intended for there to be any time jump to explain their changes in the society that Kirk & co. represented.

And the TOS writers did a fairl y good job of keeping the passage of time during TOS reasonably self consistent, not leaving any large gaps for such a time skip to happen in.

But such a time skip would explain the rather abrupt changes in what organizations the Enteprise served.and how spac eoperatic the setting was. And there is probablyenough wiggle room for a time skip of a year or two when the Enteprise is caught in atime warp or something which doesn't count as part of their five year mission. And every little bit helps.