TOS Timeline Questions

[ryan123450]

The best explanation of that Day of the Dove “three years” point that I’ve ever come up with is using the Klingon dating system from the novels (which I call the Kenson-Bennett Klingon calendar) and a little imagination.

Under the Klingon calendar, which I explain here (https://startreklitverse.com/klingon-calendar.php) Errand of Mercy happens at the tail end of Year of Kahless 892. Day of the Dove is midway through Year of Kahless 894. Now suppose the Klingons, or at least some of them, count that as three years. 892, 893, and 894.

This idea occurred to me as an equivalent to how the ancient Jews counted days, as per Easter Sunday being the third day from Good Friday.

 

[Christopher]

For the first part, I just assumed it's 3 Earth years. I mean, neither answer is really wrong, but I figure the intent of the writer was probably the specify 3 Earth years.

Of course, but when something is a large shared universe with many creators, the intentions of different individual works can come into conflict, and we need to get creative to try to reconcile them into a consistent whole.

I mean, it was the intent of the writers of "The Squire of Gothos" that TOS took place in the 28th century (900 years after Napoleon at least), but that obviously conflicts with other writers' intentions. It was the intent of the writers of "Encounter at Farpoint" that Data was "class of '78," but that was ignored when "The Neutral Zone" set the calendar date as 2364. Intent is just one factor to be considered.

 

[Damian]

The best explanation of that Day of the Dove “three years” point that I’ve ever come up with is using the Klingon dating system from the novels (which I call the Kenson-Bennett Klingon calendar) and a little imagination.

Under the Klingon calendar, which I explain here (https://startreklitverse.com/klingon-calendar.php) Errand of Mercy happens at the tail end of Year of Kahless 892. Day of the Dove is midway through Year of Kahless 894. Now suppose the Klingons, or at least some of them, count that as three years. 892, 893, and 894.

This idea occurred to me as an equivalent to how the ancient Jews counted days, as per Easter Sunday being the third day from Good Friday.

Probably from the writer's perspective they might have just gotten sloppy. It was the 3rd season which they just equated to literally 3 years. You never know, sometimes the simplest explanation ends up being the right one.

 

[Damian]

Of course, but when something is a large shared universe with many creators, the intentions of different individual works can come into conflict, and we need to get creative to try to reconcile them into a consistent whole.

I mean, it was the intent of the writers of "The Squire of Gothos" that TOS took place in the 28th century (900 years after Napoleon at least), but that obviously conflicts with other writers' intentions. It was the intent of the writers of "Encounter at Farpoint" that Data was "class of '78," but that was ignored when "The Neutral Zone" set the calendar date as 2364. Intent is just one factor to be considered.

Yeah, I know. But in this particular case 3 Earth years really wouldn't conflict with anything else in the series, even with what we know today. If "Errand of Mercy" was during the 1st year of their mission, then "Day of the Dove" could be during the 4th year of their mission (or even 2nd and 5th respectively). In this particular case the writer's intention wouldn't necessarily conflict with other information.

Memory Alpha noted "Errand of Mercy" took place in 2267 and "Day of the Dove" in 2268 and the article notes under continuity notes the following:

• Kang states that the Federation and the Klingon Empire had been at peace for three years prior to this episode, evidently referring to the Treaty of Organia from "Errand of Mercy". However, based on the widely accepted chronology for the original series, this treaty would have just been signed the previous year. He could have meant the amount of time in Klingon years.

So, that would seem to support your supposition. And that's fine with me as well. I tend to think "Errand of Mercy" was more than a year prior to "Day of the Dove" but it certainly could be that the former was early 2267 and the latter late 2268 (I mean, it's unlikely the treaty would have been signed immediately after "Errand of Mercy" anyway).

I'm just saying in this case even if the original writer's intention was 3 years between the 2 episodes, that wouldn't conflict with other information like the other examples you cited.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I know. But in this particular case 3 Earth years really wouldn't conflict with anything else in the series, even with what we know today.

I'm thinking in terms of leaving enough room post-TAS for a fair number of novels. A lot of novels purport to take place in the "fifth year" of the mission, or at least have references that place them after the shows instead of during them. Of course, it's up to the individual to decide which novels they choose to count, but I just want there to be room for at least some of them.

Besides, there are so many time references and other numbers in Trek that make no sense at all that I've gotten into the habit of not expecting them to be literally correct.

 

[Damian]

I'm thinking in terms of leaving enough room post-TAS for a fair number of novels. A lot of novels purport to take place in the "fifth year" of the mission, or at least have references that place them after the shows instead of during them. Of course, it's up to the individual to decide which novels they choose to count, but I just want there to be room for at least some of them.

Besides, there are so many time references and other numbers in Trek that make no sense at all that I've gotten into the habit of not expecting them to be literally correct.

Well that's true enough. There are quite a number of novels that are at the tail end of the 5YM, esp. in the last few years.

Not sure why exactly--I guess the crew has more experience under their belt. But in the novel I just read which was apparently meant to be during the first year it didn't seem to make a difference.

The more I think about Heart of the Sun, the more unusual I realize that it was for their to be a novel that takes place BC (before Chekov in this case ) and not be a very early mission.

 

[Jinn]

In my stardate-based timeline I moved "Day of the Dove" out of order and placed it in early 2270, post TAS.

 

[Stevil2001]

In my stardate-based timeline I moved "Day of the Dove" out of order and placed it in early 2270, post TAS.

That seems like a fair solution. Do you sprinkle TAS among TOS by stardate?

My personal approach to my canon-based timeline is to never move something out of sequence (production order for the original; airdate order for everything else) unless I feel like I have a really compelling reason to. I think maybe there are four episodes I have done that with? ("The Menagerie," "Doctor's Orders," "Past Prologue," "Drive") My timeline for TOS goes:

• Season One: Oct. 2265 - Jan. 2267
• Season Two: Feb. 2267 - Jan. 2269
• Season Three: Feb. 2269 - Dec. 2269
• Cartoon: Jan. 2270 - Oct. 2270

It's true my approach leaves no point for the post-tv five-year mission stories, but, well, that's not the game I am playing here.

 

[Jinn]

That seems like a fair solution. Do you sprinkle TAS among TOS by stardate?

TAS is sort of a weird case for me. I initially went with the stardates from the novelizations, but raised them by 1000 to get above "All Our Yesterdays". That ended up conflicting with some other continuity stuff, most notably a number of stories in that stardate range featuring Chekov, even though he left the ship, as per The Latter Fire. Furthermore The Weight of the Worlds and parts of Allegiance in Exile are set in December of 2269 and feature Chekov, so I had to place TAS either entirely before or after that. (I previously went with a sort of "Chekov came back for a month on leave" head canon, but I find it more satisfying if I don't have to rationalize stuff like that). The 2270 placement would align with the stardate from The Weight of the Worlds (6012.9), but then that would disregard the explicit months given in Forgotten History, so I eventually decided to ignore all TAS stardates and put them in the Ocotber-December 2269 area.

 

[Christopher]

There are quite a number of novels that are at the tail end of the 5YM, esp. in the last few years.

Not sure why exactly--I guess the crew has more experience under their belt.

It's just the natural default. The books were written after the series, so it was natural to set them after the series unless there was a reason to do otherwise. Just as most TNG, DS9, and VGR novels were set at the points in the series when they were written (lagging a season or so behind their publication dates), and moved into post-series stories after the shows ended. And just as the first Marvel and DC comics volumes and most of the second DC volume were set after the most recent movie. The natural place to put a tie-in is the "present" relative to the thing being adapted, or as close as you can get. You want the characters to have the same perspective on events as the audience.

These days, with so many ended series and so many tie-ins going back to fill in the gaps, that thinking isn't as automatic anymore. But for most of the history of TOS novels, it's just been the obvious way to do it. If you do a 5-year mission tale, you want to take advantage of all the established TOS continuity and history, so you put it after the series. Unless you have a reason not to.

And of course, decades ago before the modern obsession with stringent continuity, a couple of TOS novels took a "timeless" approach and were agnostic about the order of events in TOS. Web of the Romulans and Double, Double both purported to be immediately adjacent to first-season episodes -- Web was just after "Tomorrow is Yesterday" with the computer still flirtatiously reprogrammed, and Double was a direct sequel to "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" -- and yet both books featured Chekov and (IIRC) referred to events from third-season episodes (or at least implicitly took place after the cloaking device theft in "The Enterprise Incident"). I presume their authors wanted to use ideas from first-season episodes but didn't want to have to leave out later elements like Chekov. And back then, syndicated episodes weren't always shown in order anyway, so casual fans might not even have recognized the discontinuity.

 

[Damian]

And of course, decades ago before the modern obsession with stringent continuity, a couple of TOS novels took a "timeless" approach and were agnostic about the order of events in TOS.

Yeah, that caused me some confusion when I first started reading novels (and when I was under the mistaken impression they were on the same level as 'canon' Star Trek).

I'd be reading a book and thinking 'oh, must be a movie era book....no wait, a TV series era book....um movie...ugh, I have no idea when this novel takes place ). Being that it was the late 1980s there was no way to really research it and I just wasn't aware about the author's approach. It was late enough to know there was no extended mission between the TV series and TMP, but it was still before the internet so I didn't know that was the thinking that went into some of those novels.

 

[Ronald Held]

If Kang was speaking Klingon, he would use Klingon years which the UT would convert to Standard years. If he spoke Standard, it would be in Standard years.
Could it be 3 years for Kang, but less for Kirk?

 

[ryan123450]

TAS is sort of a weird case for me. I initially went with the stardates from the novelizations, but raised them by 1000 to get above "All Our Yesterdays". That ended up conflicting with some other continuity stuff, most notably a number of stories in that stardate range featuring Chekov, even though he left the ship, as per The Latter Fire. Furthermore The Weight of the Worlds and parts of Allegiance in Exile are set in December of 2269 and feature Chekov, so I had to place TAS either entirely before or after that. (I previously went with a sort of "Chekov came back for a month on leave" head canon, but I find it more satisfying if I don't have to rationalize stuff like that). The 2270 placement would align with the stardate from The Weight of the Worlds (6012.9), but then that would disregard the explicit months given in Forgotten History, so I eventually decided to ignore all TAS stardates and put them in the Ocotber-December 2269 area.

This reminds me Jinn, did you ever post your in depth looks at 2269 and 2270 for the Star Trek Timeliners? The ones you did post were very interesting reads.

 

[Jinn]

This reminds me Jinn, did you ever post your in depth looks at 2269 and 2270 for the Star Trek Timeliners? The ones you did post were very interesting reads.

I never finished 2269 in my "original" read-through, unfortunately. Basically, I ended up being unsatisfied with some aspects of my timeline (particularly the exclusion of comics and SNW stories, but also some placement decisions) and redid the whole thing (which has been going very well. I even figured out somewhat decent day counts for all of TNG and DS9, with relatively little effort). Since my timeline is also my reading order and the rearranging moved stories that I hadn't read into the section that I should have alredy read I decided to just start from the beginning again (VGR: "Death Wish"). In good news, I have already made it to 2152 and am skimming some of the novels I already read and didn't particularly like, so I should be back a bit faster. I will definitely post something about the latter years of the five year mission once I'm there!

 

[Leto_II]

I know this is an older thread but as a follow-up question: has it ever been established how much time passes between the Khitomer Conference in STVI and the Enterprise-B launch in Generations? STVI is apparently Sept 2263 and the Ent-B launch the same year . . . I'd be curious what happened in between. Was it like a three-month gap? A Christmas shakedown?

The "present-day" events of the novel Sarek actually begin on September 16, 2293 (Stardate 9544.6), and are set approximately "one month" after the ending of TUC (whose opening scene takes place two months before the rest of the film). So the bulk of TUC occurs circa mid-August, 2293, with the Praxis-explosion taking place roughly in mid-June or thereabouts -- Sarek's dating of events is basically the linchpin of this entire time-period relative to TUC for me, and using it I can backdate or forward-date other related stories as needed (based on internal dating-cues).

 

[Christopher]

(whose opening scene takes place two months before the rest of the film)

Something Voyager: "Flashback" forgot, but fortunately the Excelsior scenes were a reconstructed memory, so we can assume they were an imperfect memory. (Even Tuvok can forget things.)

 

[Leto_II]

Something Voyager: "Flashback" forgot, but fortunately the Excelsior scenes were a reconstructed memory, so we can assume they were an imperfect memory. (Even Tuvok can forget things.)

And the whole "Valtane-death" thing in the TV episode can pretty much be written off using this assumption, too (since he's definitely standing there alive onscreen during the final "farewell" to Sulu's crew at the film's ending).

 

[Christopher]

And the whole "Valtane-death" thing in the TV episode can pretty much be written off using this assumption, too (since he's definitely standing there alive onscreen during the final "farewell" to Sulu's crew at the film's ending).

No, in that case, I think a crucial plot point in the narrative outweighs an unremarked cameo in a group shot. One must have a sense of proportion about these things. I mean, the whole reason they killed Valtane in "Flashback" is because they didn't even notice him in that group shot in TUC. His presence there is narratively irrelevant and thus can be ignored.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I think it was the My Brother's Keeper trilogy where it was noted after WNMHGB the Enterprise was heading back to Earth for a refit, then it would be after that when the 5 YM would get going (the refit I thing was to explain the difference in appearance of the ship like the bridge, briefing room, etc.).

Similarly, the novel "Prime Directive" features the Enterprise's bridge module being destroyed and needing replacing, which neatly explains any differences in bridge layout (ie, space for a second turboshaft, carried over to TMP, the arrival of Arex & M'Ress, Chekov's departure, etc) between the end of TOS and the beginning of TAS.

 

[Leto_II]

No, in that case, I think a crucial plot point in the narrative outweighs an unremarked cameo in a group shot. One must have a sense of proportion about these things. I mean, the whole reason they killed Valtane in "Flashback" is because they didn't even notice him in that group shot in TUC. His presence there is narratively irrelevant and thus can be ignored.

True (and I take your point), but on the other hand, several stories published after TUC but prior to VOY: "Flashback" (including J.M. Dillard's Star Trek: Generations-novelization) still have Valtane surviving afterwards, and it's possible that one can use this inherent onscreen ambiguity to pick which version of events one prefers, if you're looking to preserve a certain tale or other in one's personal continuity.

Similarly, the novel "Prime Directive" features the Enterprise's bridge module being destroyed and needing replacing, which neatly explains any differences in bridge layout (ie, space for a second turboshaft, carried over to TMP, the arrival of Arex & M'Ress, Chekov's departure, etc) between the end of TOS and the beginning of TAS.

You might be thinking of David R. George III's Crucible-trilogy, there -- in Prime Directive, only the starship's nacelles end up getting entirely replaced following the Talin IV-incident, but in the third (IIRC) Crucible novel there's

Spoiler: Crucible

a massive space-battle with the Klingons at the Guardian of Forever's planet which results in the bridge-module getting destroyed and requiring replacement (which also functionally ends the Enterprise's entire 5YM as well).