So I've been working on merging all the reading order lists on the Litverse Reading Guide into one massive chronological list. And as I've been trying to do that, I realized that I really just need to figure out a month by month chronology of the 5YM so that I will be able to place books in the chronology more definitively in the future. So I tried to take all the pieces of chronological info from all the Lit-verse books set during that time period, and put all the books and episodes in a month by month chronology.
The problem of course being that there have always been different interpretations of the TOS chronology, and several of these differing interpretations have made their way into the books. In particular, there seemed to be different dating assumptions between the Vanguard authors and Christopher's DTI book. It would seem impossible then, to make the few dates we have from the books line up, but I gave it a try anyway.
With a few shifts of episodes, some extrapolation, and alot of averaging, I came up with a final form. The end result, I will admit, is simply my own interpretation, and could never be claimed to be the official version the authors must be trying to give us. But it's the version I'll be going with on the Litverse Reading Guide from here on, assuming this discussion doesn't prompt any changes to it.
I started, obviously with the book order given in the Pocket Timeline. Any changes I made to that I will point out along the way. I did, however, ignore the year dividing points, because their placement wasn't explained and didn't line up with the other data points I gathered.
I figured I would post it in one year increments so if anyone has any comments to make or mistakes to point out, perhaps I can make this even better and more accurate. I assume there are several of you out there who have already done this project for yourselves (authors included). I would love any imput anyone can give. I would also love to talk with anyone out there who was part of the process of building the Pocket Books Timeline in Voyages of Imagination. I've never seen any of you on this board, but would love to get a better idea of why certain books were placed precisely where they were.
So without further comment here's the first year of the 5YM:
December 2265
Thanks!
The problem of course being that there have always been different interpretations of the TOS chronology, and several of these differing interpretations have made their way into the books. In particular, there seemed to be different dating assumptions between the Vanguard authors and Christopher's DTI book. It would seem impossible then, to make the few dates we have from the books line up, but I gave it a try anyway.
With a few shifts of episodes, some extrapolation, and alot of averaging, I came up with a final form. The end result, I will admit, is simply my own interpretation, and could never be claimed to be the official version the authors must be trying to give us. But it's the version I'll be going with on the Litverse Reading Guide from here on, assuming this discussion doesn't prompt any changes to it.
I started, obviously with the book order given in the Pocket Timeline. Any changes I made to that I will point out along the way. I did, however, ignore the year dividing points, because their placement wasn't explained and didn't line up with the other data points I gathered.
I figured I would post it in one year increments so if anyone has any comments to make or mistakes to point out, perhaps I can make this even better and more accurate. I assume there are several of you out there who have already done this project for yourselves (authors included). I would love any imput anyone can give. I would also love to talk with anyone out there who was part of the process of building the Pocket Books Timeline in Voyages of Imagination. I've never seen any of you on this board, but would love to get a better idea of why certain books were placed precisely where they were.
So without further comment here's the first year of the 5YM:
December 2265
- The First Year Begins (Note 1)
- Alien Spotlight: Romulans II
- VAN: Summon the Thunder
- VAN: Reap the Whirlwind
- VAN: Hard News
- 1x02- The Corbomite Maneuver
- The Landing Party
- 1x03- Mudd's Women
- 1x04- The Enemy Within
- 1x05- The Man Trap
- 1x06- The Naked Time
- The Captain's Table, Book 6: Where Sea Meets Sky
- The First Artifact
- Alien Spotlight: Romulans
- 1x08- Balance of Terror
- Shadow Lord
- The Peril of Planet Quick Change
- Errand of Vengeance, Book 1: The Edge of the Sword
- 1x09- What Are Little Girls Made Of?
- Errand of Vengeance, Book 2: Killing Blow
- Errand of Vengeance, Book 3: River of Blood
- 1x11- Miri (Note 5)
- 1x12- The Conscience of the King
- 1x13- The Galileo Seven
- 1x14- Court Martial
- Official Record
- 1x15, 1x16- The Menagerie
- 1x17- Shore Leave
- 1x18- The Squire of Gothos
- 1x19- Arena
- 1x07- Charlie X (Note 6)
- The First Year Ends (Note 7)
- I placed the beginning of the 5YM in December 2265. We know that it ended in 2270, and I wanted to give the most time to the post-TOS period that I could. So I assigned the end of the 5YM to the end of November 2270, then simply went back five years.
- The first date I could lock down was The Corbomite Maneuver in May 2266. So all the stories that took place before that must have been during the previous few months of the year.
- As we will end up seeing as this discussion goes, it ended up coincidentally working out that TOS seasons 2 and 3 took place over the course of exactly one year each. Season 3 actually took 14 months, but The Paradise Syndrome itself taking 2 months added to the one year. So I simply assumed Season 1 should take one year as well, and went back from the start of Season 2 to assign The Corbomite Maneuver to May 2266.
- The next episodes with definite dates given in the Lit-verse were Errand of Mercy and City on the Edge of Forever. I simply divided the intervening Enterprise stories on the list equally over the proceeding months (May 2266 to April 2267). I acknowledge that this is arbitrary, but without doing things like that, there simply aren't enough data points to assign dates to most episodes and books. Several episodes with vague dates given did line up in their correct spots under this plan though.
- 1x10 Dagger of the Mind had to be moved into the future. We can talk about that episode in the next year's post.
- This episode takes place at Thanksgiving. I moved it out of production order. The next episode with a definite date was Errand of Mercy in March 2267. If I hadn't moved Charlie-X out of production order, almost all of Season One would have to take place in that 4-5 month gap. That seemed like too short a period for most of the season to be crammed into.
- One year after the start of the 5YM.
Thanks!