I’m interested in the Star Dates. Given that time itself can be different in different parts of the universe, on what basis did they set up the star dates? Or did they not have any system at all? I know they ( I suppose Gene) took advice from knowledgable people such as cosmologists or astronomers when devising the Original Series, eg. on Warp Drive etc. So I’m wondering about the Star Dates as well. I guess it’s only places within our own galaxy that are involved, so could it be set up using certain known pulsars for instance? Carl Sagan used pulsars as reference points for indicating the location of Earth when he designed the “record” that went out in Voyager, and which is now leaving the solar system.
Star Dates
- Thread starter Carrjan
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Unlike during TNG through VOY, in SNW, stardates are basically gibberish--randomly made up numbers just meant to sound like futuristic timekeeping. Sometimes they're not even sequential, with some later episodes having lower stardates than earlier episodes.
I started to count them up on MA before I got bored and never finished the reply I was doing (and there's been another season of SNW since then), but IIRC, even while TOS was often out of order and had a handful of outliers, it was relatively rare for stardates to be as ostentatiously mixed up as they have been on DSC and SWN, where they can swing backwards and forwards by the thousands with every episode or two.
Yeah. the stardates in SNW are all over the place and are just whatever numbers the writer or script editor of a given episode wants to use. One can try to make some kind of sense out of them, but it really is a case of "whatever sounds good," IMO. To me, it's best to just ignore them.
I love all the thinking that goes in to what amounted to a framing device:
"We invented "Stardate" to avoid continually mentioning Star Trek's century (actually, about two hundred years from now), and getting into arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then. Pick any combination of four numbers plus a percentage point, use it as your story's stardate. For example, 1313.5 is twelve o'clock noon of one day and 1314.5 would be noon of the next day. Each percentage point (sic) is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of one day. The progression of stardates in your script should remain constant but don't worry about whether or not there is a progression from other scripts. Stardates are a mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode."
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
"We invented "Stardate" to avoid continually mentioning Star Trek's century (actually, about two hundred years from now), and getting into arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then. Pick any combination of four numbers plus a percentage point, use it as your story's stardate. For example, 1313.5 is twelve o'clock noon of one day and 1314.5 would be noon of the next day. Each percentage point (sic) is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of one day. The progression of stardates in your script should remain constant but don't worry about whether or not there is a progression from other scripts. Stardates are a mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode."
Captain's Log, Stardate: Unknown
A blog dedicated to untangling 50 years of fact and legend about the making of the original Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69) using primary sources.
startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com
In other words, don't put too much thought into stardates because the writers sure don't.
There was a TOS-era joke that stardates were "the distance from Earth subtracted by the writer's birthday." It was just a joke, but I like the idea that there's a locational component. The go back and forth because the ship goes back and forth.
Star Trekking across the universe
On the Starship Enterprise
Under Captain Kirk.
On the Starship Enterprise
Under Captain Kirk.
Ok so they are fictitious. But has anybody given any serious thought to how you would calculate a time system to be applicable across the galaxy? Trek has been the inspiration for many inventions including the mobile phone and the sliding door. It’s time someone did think about this. Any Astronomers out there with any ideas? Pulsars might be a start. Carl Sagan used them in the record that went out with Voyager but this was to give a geographic location for Earth.
Existed before Trek.
Stardate
A stardate was a date in a variety of systems employed by the United Federation of Planets and other societies. It was usually expressed as a number of digits with a decimal separator, e.g. 5928.5 or 2263.02. Stardate systems were used in certain cultures as early as the 2150s, when the United...
memory-alpha.fandom.com
Indeed. And in 1960s and 1970s television shows, having a car phone (without direct-dial capability, even though that had been invented) was script shorthand for "the dude is rich" (e.g., George Peppard as Thomas Banacek, in Banacek movies), and a shoe phone was script shorthand for "the dude's a spy, and a really silly one."
I think any galactic time system has to be by committee: a majority of worlds deciding to follow this clock instead of that clock. As such, there's always going to be an arbitrary nature to them in regards to when such a calendar started--in what point in time was designated as its "Year One."
In the case of the Federation, it's not implausible that if Earth was chosen as its capital, a time system was developed that correlated with the common Earth calendar (1 Federation year=1 Earth year). No doubt the individual Federation worlds all had their own means of measuring time, but the Federation calendar was chosen as their universal standard. Stardates may simply be the metric way of measuring time in which so many units equal a Federation year.
Otherwise, it's really just what sounds cool or futuristic.
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Absolutely!
Exactly my head canon. 1000 stardates = 1 Earth year.
More theory: Prior to TOS season one (which includes WNMHGB), Starfleet was under United Earth using January 1 as its starting point. Shortly after WNMHGB, Starfleet was moved under the Federation and started using May 11 as its start date (possibly the founding anniversary date for the Federation). Transfer of UE space assets such as Starships, Starbases, Space Stations and Colonies were in "committee" for about three years taking us deep into TOS season one. YMMV
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And it never will. At best, the Federation calendar/stardate system can be looked at as a local clock that most (but not all) Federation worlds agree on. Vulcans may use the Federation calendar when dealing with other Federation worlds and agencies, but for all we know, the 23rd-Century is really their 9th Century (After Surak) with a Vulcan year being much longer than an Earth year.Maybe the question is where to start with day zero.
Because the Federation's calculation of time is still based on the Christian system.
And I doubt the whole galaxy will agree on that
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It is a little frustrating there isn't even a consistent internal system for them. I like the TNG-VOY system of them corresponding to the season the episode was in. I know they're having to slot before TOS, which also wasn't consistent, but it would be nice for them to at least be consecutive
The stardates in TOS weren't quite so random as they are in SNW. Yes, there were definitely instances in which they weren't consecutive, but they generally were as the series progressed, with stardates beginning in 1xxx.x in season one, and then ending in 5xxx.x in season three. In comparison, SNW is worse than TOS in stardate consistency, IMO.
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