Yes, and...? I never said it was anything but my personal assumption. Not unless he's in charge of a show or movie and puts it in there, no. That's how canon works. Canon is what's presented onscreen that the tie-in creators have to conform to. That's it. Something that a creator says in an interview is great for learning what the creator intent was, and it can be great in the absence of any real canon to go by, but until it's onscreen, it doesn't officially count.
I won't rehash timeline-related comments of mine from other threads, but with respect to "canon," are we to believe (just to take one example of the many contradictions among filmed episodes or movies) that James Kirk's middle initial is somehow both T. and R.? Perhaps the James R. Kirk of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" will feature somehow in the new Discovery series... Even the science varied between episodes. (For example, the ship's orbit decaying shortly after Finney messes with the engines in "Court Martial," versus Norman's line early in "I, Mudd": "If you do not come with me, your engines will be destroyed and you will remain in orbit here forever.") Why does anyone take any of this seriously enough to even use the word "canon"?! What's enjoyable or thought-provoking about a given Star Trek episode (or movie) is changed not one iota by whether it fits into anyone's idea of what is "official." [Similarly, I get annoyed when I see (for example) a 50th-anniversary story that refers to Nichelle Nichols' role in the original series as "Nyota" Uhura.]
Things can remain in orbit of a planet without being powered by an engine. Like naturally-occurring satellites. It's just a question of gravity. Perhaps "standard orbit" is a shorthand for the Enterprise entering a planetary orbit that it could maintain naturally if need be.
Yes, of course the Enterprise would want to choose a self-maintained orbit whenever possible. My point was that such differences as the one between "Court Martial" and "I, Mudd" can't be reconciled, not that one is right and the other one wrong. (In what universe would a planet chosen for a star base require orbiting ships to use their engines to maintain orbit, a la "The Naked Time"?)
Off topic, but that actually would have been a cool turn for a movie or series - On the run / disgraced, stuck in a freighter (or the BOP), with the whole galaxy thinking the worst of them due to Klingon propaganda, and a new badass galactic reputation..... kind of "Dark Matter/Renegades" but with the TOS crew....
Is it really a retcon? The show we viewed began in 2266 (to match up with the aired year) but that never meant the 5YM did - WNMHGB implied a history on the ship, and i've always thought of it as the END of an *unseen* season - making the Seasons we got, years 2 thru 4 of the mission - making an ending point of 2270 match my headcanon to a T. lol
I don't think any specific conclusions have been made about the Wrath of Khan date, but the thing that irks me about the 2285 date is the "fifteen year" reference to Space Seed that both Kirk and Khan make, independently of one another. That both of them would give the same date, with Khan being smart enough to do the math in his head and Kirk not having particularly thought about it in over a decade, seems to indicate that it's pretty on the mark, with wiggle room of no more than a year. (To account for it maybe being closer to 15 and some months or 14 and some months.) Whether that means Space Seed needs to be moved up or Khan moved back, I don't know. It's probably both depending on how you want to interpret the 2283 reference. IIRC, the problem was Generations, wasn't it? Some reference to Kirk's time away with Antonia (nine years before 2293?) led the Okudas to fiddle around with the film timeline, forgetting or ignoring the Khan dates. I don't have the first edition of the Chronology to check. So any attempt to move Khan back from the 2285 date would need to square with that as well. (I think it can be done; I just don't remember the relevant info.) YMMV (especially on nitpicky things like this) but keeping the episodes in production order provides consistency on some minor issues, such as cosmetic changes to the sets and things like uniform colors and rank usage becoming more consistent as the seasons go on. That said, I definitely agree that there's no need to assume that each season covers a year of time, even for the later shows. I know the writers and the Okudas generally assume that it does, and I'm sure that's more or less accurate on average. But I'd rather get a more accurate sense of time passing during specific years by noting the references to days and weeks, etc., in the episodes themselves. Maybe TOS season 1 can't take place in less than a year and a half, Enterprise time, while all of the animated series could take place in as little as five months, for example. TC
The fifteen year reference in TWOK is already shaky without even looking at the chronology. If Space Seed is in 2266-67, then fifteen years later would put TWOK in 2281-82. But, we know without a doubt that the absolute earliest that TWOK can take place is in 2283, given the Romulan Ale. So, there's room for Kirk and Khan to be fudging the exact length of time when they speak of "fifteen years ago" and "a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years."
I agree. I interpret the "2283" line about the Romulan Ale as Kirk teasing McCoy a bit about getting him a bottle from that year. If you think about it, the Romulan Ale might have even been kind of a gag gift, the kind that's presented before the major gift of the vintage eyeglasses (Although I doubt that either item was particularly easy for McCoy to get his hands on...). BTW, how cool is it that Spock gives Kirk a book to read, and McCoy gives him the glasses to read it with? Those guys are great friends to have. I think the big reasons the Okudas put TWOK in 2285 was because they had both the "2283" date on the Romulan Ale and a reference to Nimbus III being founded 20 years before TFF. Since the Romulans were in hiding before 2266 by their reckoning, Nimbus III had to be founded sometime after "Balance of Terror" (and probably after "Errand of Mercy" when it came to the Klingons). So I understand their reasoning, even if I don't agree with it. Agreed. Production order makes much more sense than airdate order or stardate order. I don't know. I don't really see someone as obsessed as Khan was as being one to "fudge" the date, do you? It seems much more likely to me that he'd know down to the day just how long he'd been stranded on Ceti Alpha V. So if Khan says it was 15 years, it was 15 years. Kirk's dialogue just corroborates that.
Some have said Khan is using Ceti Alpha 5 years, Not my favorite idea but It's possible. I assume Kirk would have told him things like the Length of the year on the planet as part of the prep before leaving them there.
Kirk stating that it was the same length of time proves that it he wasn't, wouldn't you say? That's a reasonable assumption, but both Khan and Kirk saying that it's been 15 years means that either Khan was counting in Earth years or that the orbits on CA5 were very, very close to Earth years.
Basically, the argument would be that Kirk is rounding down, Khan is using Ceti Alpha 5 years and by some cosmic coincidence they land on the same number. It's not pretty but it works if you want to ignore both 15 year statements.
I see no reason to ignore two perfectly straightforward statements that Khan was on Ceti Alpha V for 15 years.
The only way for Kirk and Khan's reference to 15 years and the 2283 date on the Romulan Ale to be consistent with each other is if we decide that Space Seed took place in 2268, and that's a pretty big revision.
Really? Even if we suppose Khan is someone going to keep this record down to the day, and even if we suppose Khan were able to keep an accurate count of days after a literally world-shattering event reduced the planet to near-lifelessness --- and think how hard it is to recall how long ago something a decade-plus was in your past, and that with the benefits of having seasons and calendars and newspapers and histories --- and if we suppose Khan were going to use this record to pin down how long he had been on Ceti Alpha V to the day, then we have to conclude he got rescued on the exact anniversary of the settlement. Which would ... be quite a coincidence. No; I find it much easier to believe Khan was rounding, the way normal people do when they are making normal points. It was closer to fifteen years than to ten or twenty years. If you need the timespan down to the day, ask Spock.
I would say that 2268 works just fine then.... its just one year later and fixes the Chekov problem. 65 - 66 Year One (WNMHGB being the finale of an unseen season.) 66 - 67 Year Two (Corbomite, Mantrap, most of S1) 67 - 68 Year Three (Space Seed, most of S2) 68 - 69 Year Four (Season 3) 69 - 70 Year Five (matching Voyagers chonology) mix in the fan films and TAS between 68 and 70. TMP in 73. Khan in 2283, matching the 15 years line. Which gives 10 years for the 2nd 5YM, and more then enough time for the E to be turned into a training ship and for Chekov and Spock's promotions. Romulan Ale was brand new and had no time to ferment, yet. Of course then we have to use rounding up for Nimbus 3, because TFF would be in 84 at the latest.
Yeah, gee, I guess it is pretty hard to believe that Khan would be obsessive like that. After all, he shows no pattern of that type of behavior at all. Oh, come on. That's not what I was saying and you know it.
Since it was all over the place originally, I don't see it as being a "big" revision, and we're talking about one year.
I'd rather fudge the Romulan Ale date than the Khan date if it came to that, to be honest, even though on first glance it appears to be more accurate. After all, speaking in-universe, it could be a stardate rather than a year, or it could be a Romulan year. Speaking out of universe, all we knew as of Wrath of Khan was that the movies took place in the 23rd Century, and even that fact was a relatively recent introduction to the canon. At the time, it was entirely possible for Space Seed to have taken place fifteen years before and 2283 to have been some time before the movie. Maybe Wrath of Khan took place in 2298 and Space Seed in 2283. (A random example on my part that would be a little too on the nose thematically, but you get the idea.) It was only later that it was decided that the TOS dates should be 300 years or so after it originally aired. Both dates having been called into question by the "new" (and since consistent) dating system, the fact that Khan and Kirk agree on the date, and the fact that the amount of time since Space Seed is more important to the plot makes it more important than the date on a bottle of Romulan ale, IMO. Right? It's enough to make you want to live life as they did... *Pulls out cast photo, holds back tears* Ooooh, that makes a bit more sense then. I hadn't realized there were more references to TOS in play. How specific is the reference to Nimbus III? Are they actually celebrating an anniversary, or or are they just speaking in general terms ? That's not exactly what I meant, although Khan's enhanced intelligence does make that more likely than it would for another character. I'd be more open to accepting the notion that Khan was wrong (for the reasons you stated, which are good reasons) if Kirk hadn't used the same figure independently when speaking about Khan. Now Kirk would have even less reason to be accurate than Khan, but I think the fact that they both agree should give the fifteen year figure more weight. And I'm not pushing that it was exactly fifteen years; just that it's probably closer to fifteen than nineteen, which is the current Okuda date. One would think that nineteen would be rounded up to twenty for normal people making normal points. I think somewhere between fourteen to sixteen years would be more in keeping with the film's dialogue, but if nothing else, it's a strong clue for timeliners sticking to the Okuda dates to place Space Seed on the later side of 2266 and Wrath of Khan on the earlier side of 2285. (Which, admittedly, jives with the notion that Kirk's birthday was in March.) EDIT: I had also been under the assumption that the Okudas placed Space Seed in 2266, rather than 2267, which is what is actually in the Chronology. My bad. So we're talking about 18 years rather than 19, which could be brought closer to 17 depending on when in 2267 Space Seed takes place. I still think that it might be better to change the officially acknowledged date of 2285 to something earlier, but I do recognize that at this point we're only quibbling about an increasingly small number of years. TC