Well, I don't really have it as five-plus, since I don't count a lot of the older novels that are in your list. It's pretty much the start of '66 through the end of '70.
A Lit-verse based TOS chronology
- Thread starter ryan123450
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Well, I don't really have it as five-plus, since I don't count a lot of the older novels that are in your list. It's pretty much the start of '66 through the end of '70.
OK. One month later I'm finally confident that I've taken every new piece of timeline data that we've talked about into account and that I have this figured out as well as possible.
In particular I've taken Idran's Vanguard and Errand of...dating information and arrived at a slightly different interpretation of the exact dates. And because taking Prime Directive's three month gap into account would have pushed the 5YM too far back into the WNMHGB mission timeframe, I've abandoned the idea of "pausing" the 5YM during that story. Regardless of the exact length of their time "out there", I figure they had an appointment for their massive refit to begin and it was just time to come home for it.
So version 2 of the first section of this (which I'm now calling 2265 and 2266).
September 2265
I look forward to anything else we can iron out about this revised version of my timeline, and hopefully we can move on to discussing 2267 straightaway.
In particular I've taken Idran's Vanguard and Errand of...dating information and arrived at a slightly different interpretation of the exact dates. And because taking Prime Directive's three month gap into account would have pushed the 5YM too far back into the WNMHGB mission timeframe, I've abandoned the idea of "pausing" the 5YM during that story. Regardless of the exact length of their time "out there", I figure they had an appointment for their massive refit to begin and it was just time to come home for it.
So version 2 of the first section of this (which I'm now calling 2265 and 2266).
September 2265
- 1x01- Where No Man Has Gone Before (Note 1)
- VAN: Harbinger (Note 2)
- Alien Spotlight II: Romulans (Note 3)
- VAN: Summon the Thunder (Note 4)
- The First Year Begins (Note 5)
- VAN: Reap the Whirlwind (Note 6)
- 1x02- The Corbomite Maneuver (Note 7)
- VAN: Hard News (Note 8)
- 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
- 1x07- Charlie X (Note 10)
- The First Artifact
- Alien Spotlight: Romulans
- 1x08- Balance of Terror (Note 11)
- 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
- 1x10- Dagger of the Mind (Note 12)
- 1x11- Miri
- 1x12- The Conscience of the King
- 1x13- The Galileo Seven
- 1x14- Court Martial
- The Avenger (Note 13)
- 1x15, 1x16- The Menagerie
- 1x17- Shore Leave
- 1x18- The Squire of Gothos
- 1x20- The Alternative Factor
- 1x21- Tomorrow is Yesterday (Note 14)
- The Aliens Are Coming!
- 1x22- The Return of the Archons
- SCE: Foundations, Book Two
- The First Year Ends
- The Second Year Begins
- 1x23- A Taste of Armageddon
- 1x24- Space Seed
- 1x19- Arena (Note 15)
- Takes place some time before Vanguard: Harbinger. I placed it September but it could easily be earlier.
- Takes 3 weeks. Ends one month before early to mid November as based on the dating of the later parts of Summon the Thunder.
- I arbitrarily estimated this takes place six months before Balance of Terror.
- Takes 2 weeks. Ends 6 weeks before the start of Reap the Whirlwind
- 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 (December seemed to 'nice and neat'), then simply went back five years. With the Enterprise 2 months from home in Harbinger, and a small refit needed afterwards, I assume the trip home was shortened when the Enterprise was assigned the 5YM. They did their short refit on some random starbase between Vanguard and Earth and then headed back into the unknown.
- We know this takes place in early 2266. I placed it as early as possible to push back Harbinger as much as I can. This allowed just enough time before the 5YM. Takes 2 weeks
- Takes place shortly after Reap the Whirlwind.
- Takes place one week after Reap the Whirlwind.
- 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 (Jan 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.
- I had to ignore the Thanksgiving reference due to all the Errand of... stuff we have talked about.
- Idran estimated from Open Secrets that this episode should take place around April, so that fell into place like it should.
- This episodes current placement works out just right with relation to the previous Christmas party. And that gives a good reason to think the 5YM had already started by December.
- Christopher gives good reason to move Official Record from this place in the timeline to farther down, and The Avenger works well as a story set in between the Enterprise's two visits to Starbase 11, as Christopher suggests.)
- Forgotten History places this story in or just before December. Spreading the stories out evenly puts it just on the outside edge of comfort for the reference, but I think it works.
- Idran places this story at the tale end of Dec based on Open Secrets. This is the only point that didn't end up in the right place by spreading the months out evenly. I ended up moving it because it seemed like a hard end-of-December date should come after a loose Nov-Dec date (Tomorrow is Yesterday) anyway.
I look forward to anything else we can iron out about this revised version of my timeline, and hopefully we can move on to discussing 2267 straightaway.
That's pretty much how I figured for EoV, yep. Overall I don't see anything popping out in this timeline as an issue; it's not exactly the same as mine, but the places we disagree come down to personal taste, not specific datapoints.
As do I!
Here we go with 2267.
January 2267 (Note 1)
January 2267 (Note 1)
- 1x25- This Side of Paradise
- 1x26- The Devil in the Dark
- Official Record (Note 2)
- Errand of Fury, Book 1: Seeds of Rage
- Errand of Fury, Book 2: Demands of Honor
- 1x27- Errand of Mercy (Note 3)
- Errand of Fury, Book 3: Sacrifices of War
- VAN: Open Secrets (Note 4)
- 1x28- The City on the Edge of Forever (Note 6)
- Final Frontier
- 1x29- Operation- Annihilate!
- The Leader
- 2x01- Catspaw
- Ambition
- 2x02- Metamorphosis
- Chaotic Response
- 2x03- Friday's Child
- Invasion!, Book 1: First Strike
- 2x04- Who Mourns for Adonais?
- 2x05- Amok Time (Note 7)
- Mere Anarchy: The Centre Cannot Hold
- 2x06- The Doomsday Machine
- 2x07- Wolf in the Fold
- The Vulcan Academy Murders (Note 8)
- The IDIC Epidemic (Note 9)
- 2x08- The Changeling
- See No Evil
- 2x09- The Apple
- 2x10- Mirror, Mirror
- 2x11- The Deadly Years
- The Shocks of Adversity (Note 10)
- Romulans: The Hollow Crown, Issue One (Note 11)
- The First Peer (Note 12)
- 2x12- I, Mudd
- 2x14- Bread and Circuses
- Twilight's End
- 2x15- Journey to Babel (Note 13)
- First, Do No Harm
- The Second Year Ends
- The Third Year Begins
- 2x16- A Private Little War (Note 14)
- 2x13- The Trouble With Tribbles (Note 15)
- A Bad Day For Koloth
- 2x14- The Gamesters of Triskelion (Note 16)
- VAN: Precipice (Note 17)
- Still spacing months evenly up until Errand of Mercy and City on the Edge of Forever
- The placement of this story is based on Christopher's suggestion, having to do with when Chekov joined the crew. It seems as good a place as any.
- Specifically takes place in March according to Vanguard: Open Secrets.
- I placed all these stories which take place over a long amount of time at the time during which they end.
- Another stretch of evenly spacing the episodes. This stretch is from here to Journey to Babel.
- Dated in DTI: Forgotten History
- Evenly spacing the episodes in this period ends up putting Amok Time after The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic. For some reason the way I have it now I just moved more stories toward the beginning of this "evenly" spaced period and less towards the end. This moved Amok Time to a little bit before those other Vulcan visits, which admittedly is still waaaay under the (I believe) two years claimed in the book. I'm not sure why I did this instead of moving Amok Time further into the past. Maybe someone can remind me what the problem might be with doing that.
- Specifically dated in Precipice.
- Specifically dated in Precipice.
- 17 months after Balance of Terror.
- Finishes shortly after The Deadly Years
- Takes place a month after The Deadly Years
- Dated to mid November in Precipice.
- Dated to early December in Precipice.
- Dated mid to late December in Precipice.
- Finishes out mid to late December.
- Takes place over the entire course of the year. Placed at the very end.
Nothing jumps out at me, but I did want to say just for the sake of mentioning it, something that I always had a tiny "aw" at was that Vanguard placed Ayelbourne's message ending the brief Federation-Klingon War on March 23rd, just one day after Kirk's birthday and the anniversary of the Xindi attack. That would've been some great parallelism if it'd been placed just one day earlier. 
Of course, it also means that "Errand of Mercy" spans Kirk's birthday, which must've been fun for him.
Edit: Oh, right, I guess I do have one comment I just thought of: because Vanguard puts "Errand of Mercy" so near the end of the month, I put the entirety of EoV in March, since it doesn't seem to span too long a period of time; I've got the start of book 1 just about right at the beginning of March based on my attempt at day-counting that trilogy, and "Devil in the Dark" right near the end of February since it didn't seem to have been too long before the start of EoV book 1 based on how it was described. That's probably another "up to you" thing though, I don't remember if there's room for a long gap between book 2 and "Errand of Mercy" or not but there might be.
Edit2: Oh, I just noticed your note about placing long stories at their end. "The First Peer" should definitely be moved later, then. It starts a month after "The Deadly Years", but the story spans a good few khaidoa, which (going by Christopher's calculations) are usually around 40-50 days apiece (though with a ton of variance khaidoa to khaidoa). I've got it spanning from September 2267 to February 2268 myself, but that's just a vague estimate. There is another datapoint that backs up both the September placement of its start and the August placement of "The Deadly Years", though, which is nice; chapter 3 makes reference to D'Tran's first meeting with Lujok from "Precipice" having just recently happened, which just happens to have occurred on September 12th 2267.
Of course, it also means that "Errand of Mercy" spans Kirk's birthday, which must've been fun for him.
Edit: Oh, right, I guess I do have one comment I just thought of: because Vanguard puts "Errand of Mercy" so near the end of the month, I put the entirety of EoV in March, since it doesn't seem to span too long a period of time; I've got the start of book 1 just about right at the beginning of March based on my attempt at day-counting that trilogy, and "Devil in the Dark" right near the end of February since it didn't seem to have been too long before the start of EoV book 1 based on how it was described. That's probably another "up to you" thing though, I don't remember if there's room for a long gap between book 2 and "Errand of Mercy" or not but there might be.
Edit2: Oh, I just noticed your note about placing long stories at their end. "The First Peer" should definitely be moved later, then. It starts a month after "The Deadly Years", but the story spans a good few khaidoa, which (going by Christopher's calculations) are usually around 40-50 days apiece (though with a ton of variance khaidoa to khaidoa). I've got it spanning from September 2267 to February 2268 myself, but that's just a vague estimate. There is another datapoint that backs up both the September placement of its start and the August placement of "The Deadly Years", though, which is nice; chapter 3 makes reference to D'Tran's first meeting with Lujok from "Precipice" having just recently happened, which just happens to have occurred on September 12th 2267.
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You have The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic dated before "Journey to Babel," despite the fact that the Enterprise crew meets Sarek for the first time in "Babel," while Sarek is a significant guest star in Lorrah's novels.
To be fair, you are replicating an error introduced in Precipice, which even has an explanation as to why M'Benga wasn't present for "Journey to Babel" even though he simply wouldn't be there according to tVAM-- only the misdating of the book by Precipice makes such an explanation necessary, and causes more problems than it solves.
To be fair, you are replicating an error introduced in Precipice, which even has an explanation as to why M'Benga wasn't present for "Journey to Babel" even though he simply wouldn't be there according to tVAM-- only the misdating of the book by Precipice makes such an explanation necessary, and causes more problems than it solves.
There are some differences from my chrono again, but I don't feel like getting into details, since it's just personal perspectives. Just a mention, though -- although Invasion! First Strike explicitly comes right after "Friday's Child," I was uneasy with putting it right before "Who Mourns for Adonais?", because if Kirk had encountered two separate, consecutive instances of mythological entities that turned out to be real aliens, he probably would've mentioned something about it during the episode. So I like to put a bit of distance between them, which isn't a perfect fix but at least eases the problem. I put "Adonais" right before "Wolf in the Fold," which lets me assume that Scotty's somewhat misogynistic attitudes in "Wolf" are a temporary aftereffect of breaking up with Palamas. Not saying that's how it should be arranged, but it works for me.
Speaking of "Adonais," we now also have the recent Crisis of Consciousness to factor into the bigger 2267 picture, taking place as it does very shortly before the events of that episode (Palamas is mentioned as having just very recently joined the Enterprise crew in the novel, and the stardate is extremely close to the episode's).
I found the timing of Crisis of Consciousness puzzling, because there were a couple of references that I thought were to the events of Troublesome Minds, but I had the impression that novel was very late in the 5-year mission (since it pointed toward Spock's decision to pursue Kolinahr). So how can it be after that, yet before a second-season episode?
Yeah, IIRC, at one point Spock makes an offhand comment about having recently encountered "a telepath," which I interpreted as a reference to Dave's earlier novel (I remember him mentioning here on TrekBBS that there'd be nods to Troublesome Minds in his new book), which does indeed take place near the very end of the 5YM. Unfortunately, due to the timeline, there doesn't really seem to be any real way of reconciling these references, so perhaps a bit of light retconnage is in order, here -- it could be that Spock is actually talking about some other encounter, either in an already-produced tale, or one yet to be chronicled.
Dave Galanter talked some on Literary Treks about that, and it sounded like he was being very vague about the placement on purpose, to better fit the episodic nature of TOS. He had always intended for this to be a follow-up to "Troublesome Minds" thematically though, and the references that seemed to be to that story were intended to be such; he specifically refers to the events being "troublesome", for example. And for what it's worth, Palamas wasn't originally intended as part of the story, but one of his editors had suggested using her in place of Uhura to expand the cast some.
As always I'm really enjoying this discussion. As far as Crisis of Consciousness goes, since it's not explicitly set in the Lit-verse, I'm not going to worry about it's exact placement as far as this project goes, but I would assume that if I did try to reconcile it's weird setting, I would move it and the episode it's linked to towards the end of season 3 at the least. That would seem to cover everything, though it's really a situation without a perfect answer, and one which it's too bad was allowed to come up.
I'll have to digest all the specific timeline related points in the next few days, but...
Feel free to mention anything specific you have to add, Christopher. I really enjoyed some of your perspective in the 2266 discussion, and some of that was just personal perspective as well.
A great example of an issue that is really just personal taste, but I feel it adds a great point to the discussion. I like the idea and I think I will be going with it as well.
I'll have to digest all the specific timeline related points in the next few days, but...
Feel free to mention anything specific you have to add, Christopher. I really enjoyed some of your perspective in the 2266 discussion, and some of that was just personal perspective as well.
A great example of an issue that is really just personal taste, but I feel it adds a great point to the discussion. I like the idea and I think I will be going with it as well.
The timing of TM was only ever in my thoughts--it was never stated anywhere when it took place in the prose (and there was no stardate ever given). When I began writing "Crisis" I wanted it to take place after. We then added Palamas and so I had to push it earlier. So I mentally retconned the timing of TM to before "Crisis."
My thought about how he could think about Kolinahr so early was that such a decision would take years to really consider and decide and that he was merely on an investigative journey at this point.
But either book works independent of the other, I feel. The "nod" to TM in "Crisis" was merely a comment about a "troublesome" experience which could relate to something else, and I wanted people to be ABLE to connect some dots, but not make it necessary to. :-)
Yes, Margaret Clark suggested it, and it was a rather brilliant suggestion. So one can, if one wants, place "Crisis" before "Minds" and be just fine. I'd like to think Spock is increasingly making some decisions about himself, and both events (and many others) play into it.
In "Minds" my thought was "what would make Spock move toward purging his emotions?"
In "Crisis" my thought was, "what was his real first step?"
My hope, as always, is that each novel can (like any of the episodes) stand on their own as an individual story, and no real continuity is needed other than what we've seen on screen.
Okay, I'm going to pin myself down... I DO mention the events of Immunity Syndrome in "Minds," and those events are at stardate 4307. So "Crisis" can't have taken place after "Minds" if we're to stick to when stardates are. But then, the early shows didn't do well with that.
This is why I try to be vague about such things. :-)
This is why I try to be vague about such things. :-)
^Well, it's happened before. Web of the Romulans by M.S. Murdock was set immediately after "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (with the flirty computer being a major plot point), yet Chekov is in it, and I have the impression it takes place after "The Enterprise Incident" (given the way the cloaking device is featured). Also, Michael Jan Friedman's first Trek novel, Double, Double, is a near-immediate sequel to "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", yet it also includes Chekov and I seem to recall it having third-season references (perhaps also to "Incident," though I'm not sure).
You know, I'd actually find it kind of refreshing to see a TOS novel that's unambiguously set in the first season, with no Chekov. There were The Janus Gate and the Errand books, but we haven't had much else. Even Enterprise: The First Adventure, which was set before the second pilot, shoehorned Chekov into the book (as well as McCoy and Uhura).
You know, I'd actually find it kind of refreshing to see a TOS novel that's unambiguously set in the first season, with no Chekov. There were The Janus Gate and the Errand books, but we haven't had much else. Even Enterprise: The First Adventure, which was set before the second pilot, shoehorned Chekov into the book (as well as McCoy and Uhura).
Christopher (and I ask because you have a good memory for all this which I sadly do not) has there ever been something set after "Where No Man" but before McCoy was on board and Piper still the doctor?
Maybe MJF's My Brother's Keeper.
Checking Memory Beta (I actually outsource much of my memory to the Internet these days)... yeah, MBK shows Piper's decision to retire. Piper's also in Strangers from the Sky and Mere Anarchy: Things Fall Apart, but those are both pre-WNM. And Traitor Winds picks him up years later, after the 5-year mission. So pretty much just MBK as far as I can tell. And presumably Vanguard: Harbinger, though I don't recall Piper playing a significant role there.
Given when it was published, Strangers from the Sky also chose to stay consistent with Enterprise: The First Adventure by describing McCoy as already part of the crew but "on leave" with Piper as a temporary replacement.
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