TOS questions...

[comsol]

In TOS, at least, they didn't all have bowl cuts, Sarek and at least one of his aides in Journey to Babel had somewhat different haircuts as did Stonn in Amok Time and Mirror-Spock's Vulcan bodyguard in Mirror Mirror. We might not have seen all that much in the way of variations in those episodes, but it was more than we saw in all of TNG era Trek.

Come to think of it, we saw even more variation in TMP with the one male Vulcan Master with hair, he definitely does not have a bowl cut.

 

[ToddPence]

Did they ever in any of the 79 original episodes state that Star Trek was supposed to take place in the twenty-third century, as per Roddenberry's original concept? Onscreen dialogue in at least two episodes suggests the twenty-second. Gary Mitchell says in "Where No Man" that the Nightingale Woman poem was written in 1996 and that it's "one of the most passionate love poems of the last couple of centuries". This suggests that "Where No Man" happens in the twenty-second. Also, when Kirk is trapped back in time in the 1960's in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" the base Colonel tells him he's going to lock him up for two hundred years, and Kirk says that that should be just about right.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Did they ever in any of the 79 original episodes state that Star Trek was supposed to take place in the twenty-third century, as per Roddenberry's original concept?

No. Setting it specifically in the 23rd century didn't happen until The Wraith of Khan. In fact, Squire of Gothos seems to imply that the series is set in the 27th century or there abouts.

For what its worth, Roddenberry's original Star Trek proposal doesn't nail down the date at all: "The time is 'somewhere in the future.' It could 1995 or even 2995."

 

[Timo]

...However, both "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed" seem to go for the idea that the 20th century lies two centuries in Kirk's past. That's two to one on the explicit relative time references in TOS, and we could argue that the titular, highly fallible character in "Squire" was simply in grave error about his dates.

Of course, two centuries beyond the 1960s or 1990s would only be the 22nd century, not 23rd. Or then it would be early 23rd, if we assume Kirk was rounding down from about 250. We first learned that Kirk lived and worked in the late 23rd century in ST:TMP, when it was said that the Voyager VI probe (a 1970s or later Earth construct) was over 300 years old at the time. In that sense, the second movie gave us less definite information than the first. And in retrospect, we could make all the four datapoints mesh, by saying that Kirk rounded down to the full centuries in both those TOS episodes, not up to the closest not-yet-full one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Of course, if we take Decker's mention of Voyager VI having been launched "over 300 years ago" literally it would place TMP in the 2280s at the earliest. Voyagers I & II were launched in 1977, which means there were three probes between them and Voyager VI. I doubt a sixth Voyager could realistically have been launched before the mid-80s (and if we stick to the real world, it hasn't been launched as of 2008!). But I've always just assumed that Will wasn't an expert on NASA history and was guestimating the time frame.

The only time we get a hard date in TOS is the date on McCoy's Romulan Ale in TWOK: 2283. How one uses this date depends on how long we think Romulan Ale actually needs to ferment (and was McCoy being sarcastic about it. Maybe it was less than a year old. Maybe it was 10 years old, who knows?) and if it was an Earth year or a Romulan year (it was Romulan ale after all).

 

[UssGlenn]

I like the theory that it was a Stardate on the Romulan Ale.

 

[Timo]

Voyagers I & II were launched in 1977, which means there were three probes between them and Voyager VI.

Then again, by 1996, our first crewed interplanetary craft were becoming outdated; by 2002, we were launching probes to interstellar space. So Voyagers I and II might have been launched in 1967 for all we know.

Even a couple of years of advantage to the Trek universe would be enough: if humans were going to space that aggressively, then it might be that Voyager was state of the art in, say, 1974 - but the number of Voyagers launched that year was not two, it was twelve.

Since the first Moon shot (which I suppose still was Apollo 11, although it could have been Apollo 6 for all we know) still supposedly took place in the late 1960s and not earlier, we might time the great spurt in Earth's spaceflight capabilities to the early eighties - the time artificial supergeniuses like Khan were reaching their productive years, and Henry Starling's violation of 29th century copyrights was in full swing. There wouldn't be too many spinoffs yet, so ST4 wouldn't show San Francisco teeming with hovercars, but we'd probably be on Mars at that time already.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Voyagers I & II were launched in 1977, which means there were three probes between them and Voyager VI.

Then again, by 1996, our first crewed interplanetary craft were becoming outdated; by 2002, we were launching probes to interstellar space. So Voyagers I and II might have been launched in 1967 for all we know.

Even a couple of years of advantage to the Trek universe would be enough: if humans were going to space that aggressively, then it might be that Voyager was state of the art in, say, 1974 - but the number of Voyagers launched that year was not two, it was twelve.

ok, if we assume Voyager VI was launched in say 1975 and take Decker's comment that it was launched "over 300 years ago" literally it would place TMP in 2276 at the earliest. The problem with that is that we're not given anything on screen to indicate that the Voyager program in the Trek universe was any earlier than in ours. It is only an assumption based on evidence that their space program may have progressed more rapidly than ours. However, it could just as easily have progressed just the same as ours and then advanced very quickly in the 1990s when Khan and his supermen took over, which could place the V VI launched in the mid-90s to early 21st century (around the time Nomad was launched).

 

[Timo]

Yet choosing an earlier launch date for Voyagers I & II wouldn't contradict anything we know of the Trek universe, either...

It seems logical to assume that the original intention was to have TMP take place in 2279, three hundred years after the premiere. TOS would then have taken place exactly 300 years after the respective airdates of the episodes, too. This would e.g. match the aging of the actors, and would also make Decker more or less historically correct.

But later bits of Trek have narrowed down the range of possible dates for TMP: at least 2.5 years after 2270 (VOY "Q2" where Kirk is said to have returned from his TOS mission in 2270), preferably before 2278 (TNG "Cause and Effect" where the crew of at least one starship wears uniforms distinctly different from the TMP ones).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Yet choosing an earlier launch date for Voyagers I & II wouldn't contradict anything we know of the Trek universe, either...

True. I just hesitate to move historical real world events without good reason.

It seems logical to assume that the original intention was to have TMP take place in 2279, three hundred years after the premiere.

Possibly, but there's really not much to back that assumption up either.

TOS would then have taken place exactly 300 years after the respective airdates of the episodes, too. This would e.g. match the aging of the actors, and would also make Decker more or less historically correct.

Not really, since it seems that the intention was that TMP took place 2.5 years after the end of the 5 year mission & TMP was made over a decade after the series ended. Both of them can't be set exactly 300 years after the airdates.