Gratitude Festival
- Thread starter Dingo
- Start date
No, as far as I know (and checking Memory Alpha and Beta) it's never specified. The only thing that might give you some clues is that it was traditional to burn the leaves of the Bateret plant during the festival. And even then, the Bateret could be an evergreen that has leaves all year round.
Yes, I think that is a good idea.
And there's nothing in canon that says it isn't a fall festival. (of course, what you might want to consider that, if Bajor has an axial tilt, then a Fall Festival in the Northern Hemisphere will be a Spring Festival in the Southern one, and vice versa)
A harvest festival, if that is what you are interpreting Peldor to be, can happen at any time of the year, depending on latitude and the crops. Assuming it should be fall is a little eurocentric.
Then again, since the Gratitude Festival seldom falls on the same slot in the Paramount season aka Earth year, yet "Fascination" insist that the celebration is annual, we might do well to simply assume the Bajoran year is somewhat shorter than its Earth counterpart.
This would also explain why Sisko feels it has been a longer time since Wolf 359 than the audience does - more of these shorter years have passed. And some of Molly O'Brien's age anomalies could be covered by Miles and Keiko adopting the local calendar (what child would turn down the opportunity to have birthdays more often?).
The pattern we get is "The Nagus", "Fascination", "Rapture" and "Tears of the Prophets", with explication that we're missing one between "The Nagus" and "Fascination" (or, more exactly, that the latter is the third annual celebration aboard the station, rather than the second).
"The Nagus" is mid-season one. "Fascination" is two-fifts into the third season. "Rapture", the same in the fifth (but again we seem to have missed at least one). "Tears", the very end of the sixth. All of the episodes lack stardates or other references to the time of year or temporal distance to specific anchorpoints.
One way to find the pattern is to accept that the distance between "The Nagus" and "Fascination" is two Bajoran years sharp. Since this is 1.9 seasons or Earth years, we get a Bajoran year of 0.95 Earth ones. It's a bit short for the next slot and way too long for the one after that, though, so the best wiggle might be more like 0.425 Earth years so that there would be more of 'em between the first two eps (but only the last three would be "annual" or then only three of the annual ones would be "on DS9", thus meeting the dialogue criteria)... The less-than-six-months year would also best help with the Wolf 359 and Molly issues. That is, we can crunch these numbers, but it's not gonna get any prettier than this.
Timo Saloniemi
This would also explain why Sisko feels it has been a longer time since Wolf 359 than the audience does - more of these shorter years have passed. And some of Molly O'Brien's age anomalies could be covered by Miles and Keiko adopting the local calendar (what child would turn down the opportunity to have birthdays more often?).
The pattern we get is "The Nagus", "Fascination", "Rapture" and "Tears of the Prophets", with explication that we're missing one between "The Nagus" and "Fascination" (or, more exactly, that the latter is the third annual celebration aboard the station, rather than the second).
"The Nagus" is mid-season one. "Fascination" is two-fifts into the third season. "Rapture", the same in the fifth (but again we seem to have missed at least one). "Tears", the very end of the sixth. All of the episodes lack stardates or other references to the time of year or temporal distance to specific anchorpoints.
One way to find the pattern is to accept that the distance between "The Nagus" and "Fascination" is two Bajoran years sharp. Since this is 1.9 seasons or Earth years, we get a Bajoran year of 0.95 Earth ones. It's a bit short for the next slot and way too long for the one after that, though, so the best wiggle might be more like 0.425 Earth years so that there would be more of 'em between the first two eps (but only the last three would be "annual" or then only three of the annual ones would be "on DS9", thus meeting the dialogue criteria)... The less-than-six-months year would also best help with the Wolf 359 and Molly issues. That is, we can crunch these numbers, but it's not gonna get any prettier than this.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, why not consider it the start of the kava harvest? It is the base of Spring Wine, which would put the festival in Spring or early Summer.
Certainly another worthwhile thought.
If Bajor has five moons, how unpredictable are tides?
And not just regular moons, one of them was habitable and was apparently large enough to have normal gravity.
So what you're saying is, flood insurance is a major racket on Bajor.
Nice analysis, but you are forgetting that season 1 of DS9 began roughly 1/3 of the way into the year. So "THE NAGUS" could actually be right smack at the same time as "FASCINATION" and "RAPTURE".
Another tidbit... at least a couple months passed when season 3 begins, since Sisko brought the Defiant after he was at Starfleet.
Really, the Gratitude Festival could be a summer thing.
Stardate-wise, "The Nagus" is loosely sandwiched between 64531 ("Q-Less") and 46729 ("The Storyteller"), but OTOH preceded by 46910 ("Dax")! Not much joy there, except to support the mid-year thing, if we think in terms of "1000 SD = 1 year". Although this generally would put mid-stardate-year episodes in the Earth winter rather than summer, it seems, as the stardate season seems to follow the Paramount season when it comes to Earth-related events...
"Fascination" is much more tightly bracketed in the 48460-48480 range. "Rapture" takes place before 50417. So we might observe a slight springward (really, fallward-from-winter!) creep, consistent with how the episodes are placed in the sequence of adventures within the season, and with the "1 Bajoran year = 0.95 Earth years" idea. That is, the dates would creep but the festival would stay put in relation to Bajoran seasons. Of which we can pick any arbitrary one here!
Timo Saloniemi
"Fascination" is much more tightly bracketed in the 48460-48480 range. "Rapture" takes place before 50417. So we might observe a slight springward (really, fallward-from-winter!) creep, consistent with how the episodes are placed in the sequence of adventures within the season, and with the "1 Bajoran year = 0.95 Earth years" idea. That is, the dates would creep but the festival would stay put in relation to Bajoran seasons. Of which we can pick any arbitrary one here!
Timo Saloniemi
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