A Lit-verse based TOS chronology

[Jinn]

I agree with Idran. I love numbers. Also 300 posts in this thread! Could someone say "This is Sparta".. Please..
Also I've just discovered the edit post function so I can finally erase mistakes!

Do you think about TNG stardates in the same way as TOS stardates, Christopher? Apart from some err.. Tasha Yar dead-alive stuff it doesn't seem to contract much.

 

[Christopher]

Do you think about TNG stardates in the same way as TOS stardates, Christopher? Apart from some err.. Tasha Yar dead-alive stuff it doesn't seem to contract much.

While those are nominally in order with a few exceptions (mainly in season 1, where they started out in order and then jumped around randomly), they don't actually increase in any meaningful proportion. One episode might have, say, an increase of only 5 units while weeks elapse in-story, while another might have 30 units pass in a single day. (Not actual examples, just suggestive of the inconsistencies.) So once you get past the first two digits, they don't make any real sense. Heck, even the first two digits don't make a lot of sense. For one thing, having 1000 units equal one Earth year seems contrived; why would an interspecies alliance invent a whole new calendar if it's just going to align with the Gregorian calendar? And it means that each unit equals about 8 3/4 hours, which is a weird standard. And if it is one per year, that would mean the system only dates from 2323. Why start it there, and how can it be reconciled with TOS stardates? Even with the more consistent increase, it still has no real validity as a calendar.

Although if a tenth of a unit equalled an hour, then a season would be 417 days long, or about 1.14 years. That I could live with -- and indeed I think I tried to make my TNG-era chronology work that way for a few years way back when -- but the novels have stuck resolutely to the assumption that 1000 stardate units is exactly one year and that it rolls around to 000 at midnight on December 31.

 

[Idran]

What's really weird about things, though, Christopher, is that they went to a ton of effort to match up decimals whenever they had any sort of display that was showing both stardate and time of day. Like, they'd always make sure that decimal was dead on exact for the displayed time assuming 1 unit = 1 day. I guess Okuda really liked keeping those lined up?

And don't forget Voyager, which also played somewhat fast and loose with keeping stardates monotonic over the course of its run. Though there's little enough internal continuity and during-show Litverse fiction for Voyager that I think you legitimately can just rearrange into stardate order for Voyager without much issue; I've honestly done that myself in my timeline and I don't remember running into any trouble with it. It also helps that DS9 and Voyager were both very stardate-light compared to TNG as well, of course. (The only issue with DS9 I can think of in that vein offhand was "Dax"; other than that I don't think it had any issues with keeping stardate order lined up with production order.)

 

[Jinn]

And don't forget Voyager, which also played somewhat fast and loose with keeping stardates monotonic over the course of its run. Though there's little enough internal continuity and during-show Litverse fiction for Voyager that I think you legitimately can just rearrange into stardate order for Voyager without much issue; I've honestly done that myself in my timeline and I don't remember running into any trouble with it

I am pretty sure that there was some kind of problem with the Kazon-traitor being alive in some episodes that are stardate-set after his death by Neelix.

 

[Christopher]

What's really weird about things, though, Christopher, is that they went to a ton of effort to match up decimals whenever they had any sort of display that was showing both stardate and time of day. Like, they'd always make sure that decimal was dead on exact for the displayed time assuming 1 unit = 1 day. I guess Okuda really liked keeping those lined up?

I never noticed that. It makes no sense, though, because it would mean that TNG's seven seasons spanned 7000 days = 19.16 years. Yet "All Good Things..." made it explicit that only seven years had passed since "Encounter at Farpoint."

 

[Jinn]

why would an interspecies alliance invent a whole new calendar if it's just going to align with the Gregorian calendar? And it means that each unit equals about 8 3/4 hours, which is a weird standard. And if it is one per year, that would mean the system only dates from 2323.

Maybe when years are mentioned they don't mean Earth years but rather some kind of "galactic year". I don't really have proof for that but on Deep Space Nine everybody seems to be talking of Bajoran days ("26 hours a day" etc.) Maybe at some point the Federation invented a new calender. Then again there would be no need for stardates at all. Also I am pretty sure that the stardate system in TOS was newly introduced at roughly the same time as the original 5YM starts. This and the TNG stardates reffering to 2323 as stardate 0 could mean that the Federation reboots its own calender every now and then. Maybe between 2323 and the end of the TOS stardates there was some kind of "galactic year" system and everyone still sometime talks about (galactic) years because the TNG stardate system is new and everybody is still used to the old year system.

 

[Idran]

I never noticed that. It makes no sense, though, because it would mean that TNG's seven seasons spanned 7000 days = 19.16 years. Yet "All Good Things..." made it explicit that only seven years had passed since "Encounter at Farpoint."

Yeah, it's really strange, I don't get it either.

Edit: I remembered Memory Alpha having a good table of those stardate/time of day comparisons, and I found this quote from the 1992-1993 TNG revised writer's guide (bolding mine, underlining theirs):

A Stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: "46254.7". The first two digits of the Stardate are "46." The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. The following three digits will progress consecutively during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point counts tenths of a day. Stardate 45254.4, therefore, represents the noon hour on the 254th "day" of the fifth season. Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible.

And here's that table:

In addition to the overall rate of approximately 1,000 units per year, many episodes confirm the 24-hour stardate unit mentioned in the series bibles. It is especially noticeable when the time of day is shown next to a stardate fraction, as demonstrated in the table below:

Stardate and time - Fraction converted to h:m:s - Source
42605.57 13:40:23 - 13:40:48 - Donald Varley's log (TNG: "Contagion")
42592.72 17:16 - 17:16:48 - Log from the future Enterprise (TNG: "Time Squared")
44673.9 22:30:59 - 21:36 to midnight - Captain Chantal Zaheva's log (TNG: "Night Terrors")
40164.7 17:29:46 (19:29, 22:15) - 16:48 to 19:12 - Logs of the USS Victory (TNG: "Identity Crisis")
44623.9 22:26:09 - 21:36 to midnight - A video showing Pardek (TNG: "Unification I")
46154.4 10:37:41 - 09:36 to noon - Riker's clock (TNG: "Schisms")
2823.6 16:23:00 - 14:24 to 16:48 - TOS: "The Galileo Seven" (remastered)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Christopher]

Maybe when years are mentioned they don't mean Earth years but rather some kind of "galactic year".

Unfortunately there are too many episodes making it clear that stardate "years" are the same as Earth years -- see above about "All Good Things...". The writers assumed by default that the amount of time that had passed since any previous event in the series was the same amount of time that had passed in real life. (For instance, "Cold Fire" aired ten months after "Caretaker" and was set ten months after it as well.) So yes, obviously a Federation-wide calendar should have been based on something different than Earth years, but the regrettable fact is that the writers didn't bother to do it that way. It's consistently clear that 1000 stardate units equal one Earth year, even though they shouldn't.

(By the way, "Encounter at Farpoint" went from 41153.7 for the encounter with Q to 41153.8 for eleven hours later, which would suggest that 1.0 stardate units would be about 5 days, give or take, which would make a single season nearly 14 years long. But then they jumped to 41174.2 for the closing log entry, which would imply that the Enterprise hung around at Deneb IV for roughly 100 days negotiating the treaty for rebuilding Farpoint. Even within a single episode, there's no effort to keep the stardate intervals consistent. They're meant to be meaningless.)

I don't really have proof for that but on Deep Space Nine everybody seems to be talking of Bajoran days ("26 hours a day" etc.)

Which is because they were on a Bajoran station and had to adapt to local time. It was one of the things the producers did to convey a sense of alienness, and the whole idea was that it was different from how things were done within the Federation.

 

[Jinn]

An in-universe reason for the human fixation of the Federation might be that two of the five founding "groups" are human. This might be a reason for a big part of starfleet being human. The Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites are the oldest Federation member (because they are founding members...) which would make it likely that they are the most common species in the Starfleet. Many Vulcans stay out of military which explains the low number of Vulcans on many Federation starships. Also they have their "own" Vulcan crews with ships like the... the.. the one in this Baseball DS9 episode.. The Andorians have a reproduction crisis so probably many stayed on Andor (or Andorian colonies) especially in their years of reproductiveness. That leaves the Tellarites and the Humans. I have no explanation on the absence of Tellarites since they for some reason they are the least prominent federation founding member. That leaves humans as the most important species in Starfleet. Under some assumptions. Also I feel that we went pretty off-topic from TOS chronology. Sorry.

 

[Idran]

Unfortunately there are too many episodes making it clear that stardate "years" are the same as Earth years -- see above about "All Good Things...". The writers assumed by default that the amount of time that had passed since any previous event in the series was the same amount of time that had passed in real life. (For instance, "Cold Fire" aired ten months after "Caretaker" and was set ten months after it as well.) So yes, obviously a Federation-wide calendar should have been based on something different than Earth years, but the regrettable fact is that the writers didn't bother to do it that way. It's consistently clear that 1000 stardate units equal one Earth year, even though they shouldn't.

Reminds me of a situation in Supernatural: for most of the show they went straight with "in-show year = real life year" in terms of setting, but then they explicitly wrote in a one-year timejump between seasons 5 and 6. But afterwards, they continued with "in-show year = real life year" whenever mentioning the year in-show because (according to them) they didn't want to confuse people by having the show say it was 2011 when IRL it was 2010. (Which makes me wonder why they didn't just go with a three month timejump over the summer like in every previous season break in the first place - it still would've fit the plot - but I digress.)

 

[TheAlmanac]

Reminds me of a situation in Supernatural: for most of the show they went straight with "in-show year = real life year" in terms of setting, but then they explicitly wrote in a one-year timejump between seasons 5 and 6. But afterwards, they continued with "in-show year = real life year" whenever mentioning the year in-show because (according to them) they didn't want to confuse people by having the show say it was 2011 when IRL it was 2010. (Which makes me wonder why they didn't just go with a three month timejump over the summer like in every previous season break in the first place - it still would've fit the plot - but I digress.)

Highlander: The Series had a similar issue with a one-year timejump between Season 5 and Season 6 which was inconsistently remembered by the show's writers.

I haven't looked into it too closely, but I also doubt Doctor Who has managed to stay consistent with its contemporary dating--especially with the various jumps and gaps associated with both Amy/Rory and Clara. Given this thread, however, the UNIT Dating Controversy is probably the more analogous reference.

 

[Christopher]

I haven't looked into it too closely, but I also doubt Doctor Who has managed to stay consistent with its contemporary dating--especially with the various jumps and gaps associated with both Amy/Rory and Clara.

The Russell T. Davies seasons set the "present-day" storiespretty consistently one year in the future of real time, starting with "Aliens of London" when the Doctor brought Rose back home a year late. I don't think Moffat's present-day stories have had much in the way of time references.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Don't have much to add because I haven't been keeping up with the books lately, but i don't have a problem placing 'Forged In Fire' before 'The Tabukan Syndrome' mini-series. The way I see it - Sulu was promoted to Captain after the death of Captain Styles in 'Forged in Fire' and completed the mission Styles started. 'The Tabukan Syndrome' was the first mission proper under Sulu's command after repairs to the Excelsior were completed. Then there's 'The Captain's Table: War Dragon's'; the framing story is set after 'The Undiscovered Country', but the story Kirk and Sulu tell are set after 'The Corbomite Maneuver' and shortly after 'The Final Frontier', where sulu is promoted to Captain and set to take command of the Excelsior.

 

[Christopher]

Don't have much to add because I haven't been keeping up with the books lately, but i don't have a problem placing 'Forged In Fire' before 'The Tabukan Syndrome' mini-series. The way I see it - Sulu was promoted to Captain after the death of Captain Styles in 'Forged in Fire' and completed the mission Styles started. 'The Tabukan Syndrome' was the first mission proper under Sulu's command after repairs to the Excelsior were completed.

Yup, we discussed that in this thread a while back, starting in post #16. I'd thought the two were incompatible, but Leto_II convinced me to take another look, and I saw that FiF was probably written to fit in before "Tabukan," although there are a few slight inconsistencies.

Then there's 'The Captain's Table: War Dragon's'; the framing story is set after 'The Undiscovered Country', but the story Kirk and Sulu tell are set after 'The Corbomite Maneuver' and shortly after 'The Final Frontier', where sulu is promoted to Captain and set to take command of the Excelsior.

Does it actually say "shortly after" TFF? Because TFF is generally assumed to be in 2287 and Sulu's promotion was in 2290.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It's consistently clear that 1000 stardate units equal one Earth year, even though they shouldn't.

There were examples though where that assumption didn't hold up. In "Second Sight", Sisko said on stardate 47329.4 that "yesterday" was the fourth anniversary of the massacre at Wolf 359, which should have fallen around 4800x.x using the "1000 units / year" convention (unless Sisko meant the fourth anniversary in Bajoran years, or something). In "Dark Page", Deanna states that her parents were married in the year of stardate 30620.1, and it is explicitly mentioned that this is before Deanna's birth, but by "1000 units / year", that's less than 17 years before the episode.

I'm sure there are many more. As you said... meaningless random numbers.

 

[Idran]

I seem to recall at least one instance where a date should've had a 4-digit stardate by the TNG "1000/year" scheme, but the writers admitted to explicitly fudging the numbers on it because they wanted to avoid confusion with TOS stardates. I can't remember exactly what it was, though. It might actually have been part of Lwaxana's journal in "Dark Page"?

 

[DarrenTR1970]

@Christopher
In the introduction to the video game/1st chapter of the novelization Sulu said that he has just been promoted to Captain and for the next 2 years he'll be in charge of Command School while the Excelsior is fitted out for exploration of the Beta Quadrant for gaseous anomalies. That places it late 2287/early 2288.
Edit To Add:
I apologize - I got my novels mixed up. I meant to say 'Starfleet Academy'; not 'The Captain's Table.

 

[JD]

Christopher, is there a specific system you guys use for making up stardates for the books?

 

[Christopher]

There were examples though where that assumption didn't hold up.

Well, of course. On an episode-by-episode basis, there is zero consistency of any kind to stardates. I'm speaking on a global level, on the scale of entire seasons and series. The only thing about stardates that was ever remotely consistent was the fact that every season increased the second digit of the stardate by one, meaning that there were 1000 units per season.

Christopher, is there a specific system you guys use for making up stardates for the books?

The preferred system for 24th-century novels seems to be based on this calculator. It goes with the assumption that there are 1000 units per year and that the calendar began on January 1, 2323. I don't consider that an ideal system -- for one thing, it doesn't reconcile with the stardate for the VGR episode when Neelix celebrated First Contact Day, which would be in April -- but it's apparently the preferred standard for the novelverse, so I've used it for consistency, although I've made the occasional exception when appropriate. For TOS stardates, I just look at episodes or movies around where I'm setting my story and make up a number that seems to fit the broad pattern.

 

[ryan123450]

I went to add the first two Legacies books to my timeline, and mostly had success. Book 1 says it is in 2267, several months after Journey Babel. Now with J2B being in mid November (I know we've discussed this before, and figured out the exact date, but I can't recall it) you'd have to fudge a little for several months later to be in 2267. But putting it in last several days of the year seems like the best choice.

Book 2 takes place 6 weeks later, which it also says is a week after Obsession. Putting it in Feb 2268, five and a half to six weeks into the year, puts it a week to ten days after where I already have Obsession, so that works out well.