A Chronological Question

[ryan123450]

In continuing working on a TOS chronology over in the Trek Lit board http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/a-lit-verse-based-tos-chronology.270997/page-19 the point came up that I had never taken into account the fact that some TOS and even TAS episodes probably begin with a line like "We've been charting this system for the last three weeks" or something similar, stating the minimum amount of time since the last adventure.

The timeline I have as it currently stands http://startreklitverse.yolasite.com/the-five-year-mission--month-by-month.php simply spaces intervening episodes and books out evenly between certain locked in dates we have derived from Trek Lit. But these potential opening lines would give me more precise dating info to throw into the mix.

I figured I would start with at least the canonical instances of this and I could think of no better place to ask than the TOS board. As someone who spends 99% of their TrekBBS time in TrekLit, it is odd to post something out here 'in the wild', but I know there are super knowledgeable people here who will probably know the answer to this question right off the top of their heads.

So I ask, are there any TOS or TAS episodes that start with an account of the Enterprise's recent activity and lock in a specific amount of time during which they have been doing it?

Thanks!

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Most of these instances are noted in the Okuda Star Trek Chronology. They note if the Enterprise proceeds to Starbase 2 at the end of the episode, or whatever. That would probably be the easiest place to consult.

If you want to look up the dialogue references yourself, using the episode transcripts is probably the fastest way to do it.

 

[Christopher]

Here's what I can find, though most are for time spans after the episode rather than before:

"The Cage": Rigel VII attack two weeks before episode.
"The Corbomite Maneuver": Three days of star charting before episode.
"The Galileo Seven": Three days to reach Makus III after episode.
"The Squire of Gothos": Eight days to reach Beta VI after episode.
"Arena": Invitation to Cestus III one day before episode.
"Tomorrow is Yesterday": Maintenance at Cygnet XIV, unspecified duration. At least three weeks' overhaul afterward to undo it.
"The City on the Edge of Forever": First anomalous temporal readings received up to a week before episode.
"Amok Time": Spock hasn't eaten for three days before episode. At least a day to get to Altair VI afterward, possibly longer.
"The Changeling": A week for Uhura to get back on the job afterward.
"Journey to Babel": Two weeks ferrying delegates before episode. Two to ten days for Kirk to get out of sickbay afterward.
"Obsession": Rendezvous with Yorktown less than 48 hours afterward.
"The Enterprise Incident": Spock says Kirk hasn't been himself for several weeks before episode, but he's in on the mission, so he could be lying.
"And the Children Shall Lead": Children dropped off at starbase afterward.
"The Terratin Incident": Ten days to reach Verdanis afterward.

 

[ryan123450]

Wow Christopher! Thanks for that! As always you are a invaluable repository or Trek details.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Just thought of one more, a bit on the oblique side, from "Shore Leave":

SPOCK: Doctor McCoy is correct, Captain. After what this ship has been through in the last three months, there is not a crewman aboard who is not in need of rest. Myself excepted, of course.

This reference was more explicit in the original script, where it's said that the Enterprise is coming off "the Treblenk mission" (the script for "Shore Leave" was revised a lot on set).

I'd say that if you want those three months to include episodes we saw or have them be all completely unseen adventures, you're good either way. I'd just do whatever works better for your timeline.

 

[ryan123450]

Yeah I was also remembering that line yesterday but didn't recall it exactly. Thanks for mentioning it.

 

[Christopher]

I noted the "three months" line, but I've always assumed it was just a reference to all the dangerous adventures they'd been having in previous episodes. Realistically, if any crew faced danger and death and crises as often as the casts of weekly TV series do, they'd be stressed-out wrecks within six months, tops.

 

[ryan123450]

Well after looking at all those episodes on my timeline, really all of them but one have plenty of freedom around them to accomidate all these missions. The one exception is Journey to Babel which I do have a specific calendar date for. If the previous two weeks are 'busy' thats a pretty considerable amount of time taken up. So I rearranged a few things in the proceeding months accordingly. Thanks for the help!

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Looking over my notes I'll add a couple more
The Corbomite Maneuver - The Enterprise waits at the buoy for 18 hours.
Mudd's Women - It's going to take two days to travel to Rigel XII.
Miri - Kirk and the landing party were infected 5 days earlier. They have 3 days 7 hours before they succumb to the disease.
The Menagerie Part 2 - It took six days to travel from Starbase 11 to Talos IV.
I, Mudd - It takes four days at maximum warp to reach Norman's planet.
The Trouble With Tribbles - Spock says the Tribbles have been feeding on the grain for three days
and last
The Paradise Syndrome - It takes the Enterprise 59.223 days to travel back to the planet.

 

[Idran]

Another one for I, Mudd, Norman had been on board for 72 hours at the start of the episode; not impossible that that could overlap with The Deadly Years, but it feels a little off to me.

Also, you might have misheard something in Miri, @DarrenTR1970; at one point McCoy says they've got 5 days left before the virus kills them (after the "second day of seven" Captain's Log), but I can't find anywhere where it says they've been infected for five days. Early on they give it 170 hours before they die, though, so the episode span can't be more than that.

 

[Christopher]

Looking over my notes I'll add a couple more

All of those are intervals within the episodes, so I'd expect ryan has already accounted for them. We're looking for intervals before and after episodes.

Another one for I, Mudd, Norman had been on board for 72 hours at the start of the episode; not impossible that that could overlap with The Deadly Years, but it feels a little off to me.

I doubt anyone expects each episode to pick up the next day after the previous episode. There's got to be a significant amount of travel time between star systems, as well as time for injuries to heal, the ship to be repaired, reports to be filed, services to be held for the dead, etc. And of course, ideally, we should assume the ship goes on plenty of uneventful missions between the ones that are dangerous enough to warrant getting episodes about them.

I've always found it implausible that a single group of characters could have as many as 22-26 life-threatening adventures in a single year. That's as much as once every other week. Maybe firefighters or soldiers in wartime face danger that often, but probably not while dealing with dramatic personal conflicts or challenging moral questions in every instance. And it's harder to justify in something like Star Trek where it should take weeks just to travel from one star system or sector to another. The modern trend of having fewer episodes per season is more reasonable to me, or would be if today's shows weren't so serialized with even less room for downtime between episodes.

 

[Idran]

Oh yeah, not as a usual thing; I only mention it in case dating requires it, since sometimes the episode durations force it. I know in trying to place a lot of late-season DS9 stuff, the in-episode spans and presumptive travel times have forced me to do that in places.

Also:

I've always found it implausible that a single group of characters could have as many as 22-26 life-threatening adventures in a single year.

Sounds like the Red Shirts elevator pitch.

 

[ryan123450]

Judging by the participants in this thread, I didn't really need to leave the TrekLit forum for this question.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Judging by the participants in this thread, I didn't really need to leave the TrekLit forum for this question.

I think the chronological questions tend to have a lot of overlap with the folks who read TrekLit.

Just thought of another one... The Enterprise travels back in time two days at the end of "The Naked Time."

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

What would be really helpful is a canon gap timeline/map that shows all the whens that are not accounted for and how long they lasted, whether they're up for grabs (storywise), and where they were, when (and subsequently where they couldn't have gone in the interim, barring intervention by a lifeform/anomaly.)

So like, after a hypothetical episode that takes place on Mars, there's a two week unaccounted for span in between that and an episode where they're at Vulcan, meaning they can go somewhere/do something that takes two weeks and is within range of both planets. And the map would show a radius of where they could possibly go in that time and still make it to Vulcan two weeks later.

 

[ryan123450]

An interesting idea. That would probably serve to point out lots of continuity issues with various books and comics though.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I suppose. Any inconsistencies can be chalked up to parallel universes.

 

[Idran]

I'm not sure there are enough solid time references in episodes to do that outside Enterprise, though. We can say how much time has to be before or after an episode, and how long a given episode seems to span, but to identify an unaccounted for timespan like that you'd need either two consecutive episodes with solid calendar dates, or an episode that just says "it's been X days since <events of last episode>". I can't think of any examples of the first outside Enterprise; the second might pop up in late DS9 when things are more serialized (I have a vague memory of there being lines like that during the run up to the finale), but outside then I'm not sure that ever happens either. I'm sure that there's no examples of either in TOS, at least. (Besides Menagerie of course, but there is no timespan between parts I and II anyway.)

Though I think that's kind of a good thing in a sense? It means we have more flexibility in placing episodes. The stuff in this thread gives us minimum time gaps, forcing a buffer of at least a certain length, but what you're talking about would be giving maximum time gaps, which is a lot more rigid to work around in making a timeline and so more likely to cause contradictions.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

But helpful if you wanted to follow what was happening in between episodes to non-main characters beyond those ship-wide catastrophes.