I know it's readily accepted by many people, but I have to be honest here, I've never felt comfortable with the idea that Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the Enterprise-B portion of Star Trek: Generations took place within the same year, 2293. For one thing, the Enterpise-A is decommisioned at the end of TUC, and GEN opens with the Enterprise-B on its shakedown cruise fresh from Spacedock. The building of the Ent-B must have begun after the Ent-A was put out to pasteur. Is it really plausible for starship construction to be completed in such a short space of time? I don't think it is; remember the scene in ST XI were young Kirk sees the Enterprise under construction in Iowa, and it isn't ready to launch until three years later? Personally, I'd place the Ent-B sequence in GEN around two years after TUC, in 2295.
ST VI & VII both took place in the same year???
- Thread starter EJA
- Start date
Not necessarily. There could have been an Excelsior-class ship under construction for a few years, and only once it was finished was it then named "Enterprise."
For what it's worth, I do, too. I blame Federation for that; the novel's chronology puts Generations in 2295. And to fit all of the novels that take place in between the two films, you need more than a few months. 2295 makes more sense.
But Scotty went missing in 2294.
Remember, that Gen was supposed to be Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Scotty and Checkov didn't come into play in the story until Nimoy and De Kelly turned them down.
They could have had Scotty and Spock play a major role in the TNG era of the movie, and that way Spock could have also appeared at the beginning since he would be more than just a cameo.
I never had a problem with 2293 being when both Star Treks VI and VII took place--but then I also felt that the Enterprise-A was already scheduled to be decommissioned that year, with the Enterprise-B already near completion at the time of the Khitomer Conference.
The events of Star Trek VI merely accelerated the Enterprise-A's retirement, IMO. But I could see about six months elapsing before the Enterprise-B was commissioned, especially if Star Trek VI took place earlier that year (stardate 9521.6?)...
The events of Star Trek VI merely accelerated the Enterprise-A's retirement, IMO. But I could see about six months elapsing before the Enterprise-B was commissioned, especially if Star Trek VI took place earlier that year (stardate 9521.6?)...
Using the dates of The Wrath of Khan* and Generations** to calculate date changes based on movie-era stardates, I get fifteen months between Kirk's last log entry in The Undiscovered Country*** and the commissioning date of the Enterprise-B****.
*22 March, 2283, Just under sixteen years after Space Seed.
**78 years before the 24th century part of the movie.
***Stardate 9522.6; 13 October, 2292.
****Stardate 9715.5; 21 January, 2294 - a Sunday.
Oddly enough, these calculations also yield roughly three months between The Search For Spock and The Voyage Home, six months between The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier, and a date of 18 April, 2278 for The Motion Picture.
*22 March, 2283, Just under sixteen years after Space Seed.
**78 years before the 24th century part of the movie.
***Stardate 9522.6; 13 October, 2292.
****Stardate 9715.5; 21 January, 2294 - a Sunday.
Oddly enough, these calculations also yield roughly three months between The Search For Spock and The Voyage Home, six months between The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier, and a date of 18 April, 2278 for The Motion Picture.
Pretty consistent, although not quite good enough for TMP dating. The first 5 year mission ends in 2270. We can assume that Kirk's promotion didn't take place immediately after the 5-year mission (e.g. perhaps Enterprise had a couple of local diplomatic assignments) so that not logging a single star hour for 2.5 years could mean that more than 2.5 years had still passed. However, we don't have quite enough time to fit in a second (non-canon?) 5-year mission plus a period of time for the crew to settle into their training assignment. An extra year in there would have been a perfect fit!
Good question, because the stardates in the TOS movies only followed a pattern of being higher than the ones in TOS. Otherwise, they were just randomly chosen numbers.
But we do know what the stardates in TNG were, however. Generations took place during the seventh year of the series (2371), and subtract the 78 years given the movie, it gives us the launch date of the Enterprise-B as 2293. The Enterprise-A may have indeed been decommissioned earlier that year.
Works for me.
One way to extract dates from stardates in the TOS movies would be to simply apply the TNG era logic. A thousand SD per year, that is. We can also assume that the four-digit dates are abbrerviations of longer dates, just like we might say "it happened in '76" rather than "it happened in 1976". So we get the following:
ST:TMP = SD 7412
ST2 = SD 8130 = X0.7 years later where X = either 0 or 1
ST3 = SD 8210 = 0.1 years later
ST4 = SD 8390 = 0.2 years later
ST5 = SD 8454 = 0.1 years later
ST6 = SD 9521 = Y1 years later
That shouldn't be too bad, either. ST2 through 5 could all take place in, say, 2284, putting ST6 in 2295 and ST:TMP in 2273 if we play with the "missing digits" and assume that X=1 and Y=1. That'd clash a bit with the idea that ST:GEN is 78 years before 2371, but otherwise it would be more or less consistent. Perhaps the title card was supposed to say "76" years and there was a typo?
The same logic can be extended to TOS as well: the episode stardates from SD 1300 to SD 5900 could indicate mission years 2267 through 2271, assuming these stardates have the same "missing digit" X in front of them as the ST:TMP stardate does. And 2271 is a better date for the ending of the 5-year mission than 2270, in terms of the time difference between "Space Seed" and ST2...
Only TAS fails to fit this pattern no matter how you twist the "missing digits"!
Timo Saloniemi
ST:TMP = SD 7412
ST2 = SD 8130 = X0.7 years later where X = either 0 or 1
ST3 = SD 8210 = 0.1 years later
ST4 = SD 8390 = 0.2 years later
ST5 = SD 8454 = 0.1 years later
ST6 = SD 9521 = Y1 years later
That shouldn't be too bad, either. ST2 through 5 could all take place in, say, 2284, putting ST6 in 2295 and ST:TMP in 2273 if we play with the "missing digits" and assume that X=1 and Y=1. That'd clash a bit with the idea that ST:GEN is 78 years before 2371, but otherwise it would be more or less consistent. Perhaps the title card was supposed to say "76" years and there was a typo?
The same logic can be extended to TOS as well: the episode stardates from SD 1300 to SD 5900 could indicate mission years 2267 through 2271, assuming these stardates have the same "missing digit" X in front of them as the ST:TMP stardate does. And 2271 is a better date for the ending of the 5-year mission than 2270, in terms of the time difference between "Space Seed" and ST2...
Only TAS fails to fit this pattern no matter how you twist the "missing digits"!
Timo Saloniemi
The dates allow a second five-year mission, but before TMP, rather than after. If the Enterprise returned in 2270, then left on a second five year mission, something less than three years (assuming a brief refit between missions) would remain between that mission and TMP, allowing Kirk's 2.5 years without a "star hour". Six years between TMP and TWOK would also allow him a brief (perhaps years-long) return to the stars before settling down at Starfleet Academy.
I began with the first stardate from The Wrath of Khan. It falls on Kirk's birthday (22 March), in 2283 or later (McCoy's Romulan ale), and is roughly fifteen years after Space Seed. 22 March, 2283 is not quite sixteen years after Space Seed, so I presumed that date for stardate 8130.3.
Next, I took the stardate for the Enterprise-B's commissioning, 9715.5. According to the movie, this takes place 78 years before the TNG portion of the film; for simplicity's sake, I took it to be exactly 78 years earlier (this has some effect on exact dates, but less than one might think).
I then divided the difference between the stardates by the difference (in days) between the dates. I took the result as representing the number of stardate units per day (roughly 0.4; the actual figure is much less pretty) in the movie era. Using that number, I calculated possible dates of the remaining movies from their stardates.
Clever! I also think that one of the early chronologies had TMP in 2278 as well. However, if there had been a second 5-year mission before TMP, Kirk would say that he had 10 years out there dealing with unknowns. Whatever he does in the intervening time has to be less prestigious than a deep space mission.
I'm not sure that the second 5 year mission is canon (it's assumed that was what was intended for the Phase II series). Sulu spent 2 years cataloguing gaseous anomalies in TUC so there is no reason why your dates could not be accurate and they spent a 3 or 4 year mission before settling down for training.
A nerdy fan should probably just re-dub the stardates in TMP to fit in.
Starfleet probably had planned the to build an Excelsior class Enterprise when Kirk got the Ent-A (ST IV). At the time, The Excelsior class was a prototype. It's main feature was its Transwarp drive that later proved to be a failure. I could see that Ent-A being decommissioned earlier in the year 2293 and the Ent-B coming about at the very end. Cobra
Indeed, I don't think there's any incidation that the big and majestic E-B would have been a successor to the relatively humble E-A. Instead, she was merely another starship that was given the same name.
The true, functional successor to the E-A might have been a starship in that size category, perhaps named USS Resolution or something - and this successor might not have been immediately available, given how unexpected the demise of the E-A was. In turn, the E-B could have been the direct and long-planned successor of some older battlewagon, say, the dreadnought Entente mentioned in ST:TMP...
Let's not get confused by the similarity of names between these dissimilar starships. The E-B may have succeeded the E-A in some public relations sense, but odds are that the two Enterprises were not part of the same chain of continuity in the military-operational sense. Had the E-A not been lost, the E-B would probably still have been launched, only under some different name.
Timo Saloniemi
The true, functional successor to the E-A might have been a starship in that size category, perhaps named USS Resolution or something - and this successor might not have been immediately available, given how unexpected the demise of the E-A was. In turn, the E-B could have been the direct and long-planned successor of some older battlewagon, say, the dreadnought Entente mentioned in ST:TMP...
Let's not get confused by the similarity of names between these dissimilar starships. The E-B may have succeeded the E-A in some public relations sense, but odds are that the two Enterprises were not part of the same chain of continuity in the military-operational sense. Had the E-A not been lost, the E-B would probably still have been launched, only under some different name.
Timo Saloniemi
When, where and how was the E-A lost?
The fact that Enterprise, rather than Excelsior or some other ship was handpicked to escort the Klingon head of state throws a bit of water on the idea that the Enterprise-A was some humble old bucket. Old, yes? Any less effective? debatable.
Clearly it was an impressive enough ship that it served its purpose as flagship (in the "showing the flag" sense of the term, not the literal admirals command post sense of the term).
Well, it had symbolic value - possibly the same way sending the sailing ship USS Constitution to escort Nikita Khruschchev's missile cruiser to New York harbor would have had...
Also, never confuse "the best suited" with "the best". Far more often, it's a synonym for "the most expendable" instead.
Tiom Saloniemi
Also, never confuse "the best suited" with "the best". Far more often, it's a synonym for "the most expendable" instead.
Tiom Saloniemi
11 years before the launch of the Enterprise Bee, Kirk meets Antonia while horse back riding.
9 years before the launch of the Enterprise Bee, Kirk cooks eggs for Antonia to soften the news that Kirk was returning to Starfleet.
7 years before the launch of the Enterprise Bee, Kirk's dog Butler dies.
In order for Kirk to return to Starfleet, he would have first have had to of left Starfleet. Following the Enterprise A's change of command to a new Captain, retirement would seem to make sense for Kirk. It not clear how much time elapsed between Kirk leaving Starfleet and his meeting Antonia.
Certainly enough time for the Enterprise A to have a couple of five year missions under another Captain (or two), be permanently decommissioned, have a year or few go by and then have the name Enterprise assigned to a brand new ship.
Uhura message from Starfleet mentioned decommission, Kirk final log suggests otherwise.
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