Chronologies and Timelines

[Christopher]

Motioning to her newly-minted accreditation and saying she'll "see [Kirk] around the galaxy" doesn't make much sense to me if she's just talking about doing her "three hundred years of catch-up learning" on a boat in the Pacific.

It was a figure of speech. It didn't have to make sense. Also I think it was a polite brushoff. Gillian never really responded to Kirk's charms, so she was basically saying goodbye and had no particular intention of "seeing" him anywhere.

Yes, she could be on a ship on Earth but if some months did take place at the end of Star Trek IV perhaps she is "assigned" to a vessel which does ocean research on many worlds, not just Earth.

But that doesn't make any sense. The whole point of the mission was to bring the extinct humpback whale species back to life. You can't just bring two specimens back from the past, dump them in an ocean that's been devoid of their kind for centuries, leave them to their own devices, and hope for the best -- they'd be dead in weeks, months at the outside. If George, Gracie, and their offspring were to survive, if the species were to be repopulated, it would be imperative to monitor them for the rest of their lives, to develop a breeding program, to figure out what they needed to eat, to protect them from 23rd-century disease organisms, etc. And Gillian Taylor is the only person in the entire Federation with direct, firsthand experience with the biology, behavior, and environmental needs of living humpback whales. Nobody else could do the job. She has to stay with the whales. Anything else would be criminally negligent. Anything else would doom the species to a second extinction.

Besides, why would she want to leave George and Gracie? She was so attached to them that she abandoned her entire life and travelled three centuries into the future to be with them. Do you seriously think that after that, she'd just casually walk away from them? Of course not!

Kirk inquires how he will find her, she responds "I'll find you". Well, she won't find him on Earth. His job is in space. This dialogue certainly can lead many fans to believe she will be spending some time in space.

Or that she would be capable of using a subspace transceiver and "finding" him the same way you find someone's number in the phone book and give them a call. Or that she was politely brushing off this flirtatious older man that she had no interest in.

 

[Jbarney]

I'm not saying it makes sense. Just saying what was said on screen by the characters is enough for people to think she may not have been on Earth after the events of Star Trek IV. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying....just making the point there is enough there for a different opinion.

 

[DaleC76]

Also, the fact that she said a "science vessel" brings to mind images of ships like the Grissom, rather than ocean-going craft.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also, the fact that she said a "science vessel" brings to mind images of ships like the Grissom, rather than ocean-going craft.

Oceangoing ships are vessels as well.

 

[DaleC76]

^^ Sure, but in Star Trek, when someone says "science vessel," you don't think of Cousteau and the Calypso.

 

[Omega_Glory]

The books are for "entertainment purposes only". Nothing in any of them is valid unless it agrees with onscreen events.

 

[Timo]

in Star Trek, when someone says "science vessel," you don't think of Cousteau and the Calypso.

Perhaps you don't - but Gillian would...

The books are for "entertainment purposes only".

And the movies aren't?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DaleC76]

in Star Trek, when someone says "science vessel," you don't think of Cousteau and the Calypso.

Perhaps you don't - but Gillian would...

Timo Saloniemi

That's true, but I was thinking more of the writer who put those words in her mouth. It makes more sense for Gillian to stay on Earth, but I have a strong feeling the writers meant that she was going into space.

 

[DaleC76]

The books are for "entertainment purposes only". Nothing in any of them is valid unless it agrees with onscreen events.

Well, this IS the Trek Literature forum. Perhaps it's not canon, but it does illustrate that the idea is not completely unreasonable. At the very least, it fooled the novelist.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not saying it makes sense. Just saying what was said on screen by the characters is enough for people to think she may not have been on Earth after the events of Star Trek IV. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying....just making the point there is enough there for a different opinion.

Obviously, since many people have jumped to that conclusion. I'm simply pointing out that it's based on kneejerk assumptions -- such as the assumption that any "ship" in a Star Trek context must be a spaceship even though the oceans haven't disappeared from the Earth -- and that it falls apart if you look beyond those initial assumptions and think carefully about the situation.

 

[Omega_Glory]

A Chronology only needs to be consistent within itself. The various books are independent of each other..unless they are part of a multi-volume series. What the Spaceflight Chronology says has nothing to do with what the Trek Ecyclopedia says which has nothing to do with what the various tech manuals have to say, ect.

Timo: Yes the movies are for entertainment value too. The books however have nothing to do with Trek canon. Perhaps I should have been a little clearer on my meaning.

 

[JD]

^ Are you referring to an earlier post? Because I don't see anything about any of that in the current discussion.

 

[Jbarney]

I'm not saying it makes sense. Just saying what was said on screen by the characters is enough for people to think she may not have been on Earth after the events of Star Trek IV. I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying....just making the point there is enough there for a different opinion.

Obviously, since many people have jumped to that conclusion. I'm simply pointing out that it's based on kneejerk assumptions -- such as the assumption that any "ship" in a Star Trek context must be a spaceship even though the oceans haven't disappeared from the Earth -- and that it falls apart if you look beyond those initial assumptions and think carefully about the situation.

Just took a look at Debt of Honor, Chris Claremont's story that takes place after Star Trek IV. For what its worth, he seemed to ignore the line about Taylor being assigned to a "ship" and has she and Kirk boating as they take care of George and Gracie together. If I read the reference correctly, they did so together for a month. Interestingly, Claremont has Taylor on Earth watching the whales until at least the birth of Gracie's baby.

 

[TheAlmanac]

Of course, that's another of my beefs with the Okudachron -- the insistence on treating every round-number figure as an exact date. If something was said to happen 200 years before, the Chronology puts it exactly 200 years before, never 202 or 194 or anything. Which is particularly egregious with the Valiant in "Where No Man...," which by that scheme would've had to be launched only a couple of years after Cochrane's first warp flight, which is patently absurd. If nothing else, the Okudas should've abandoned exactness on that date, put it something like 180 years before the episode instead.

I hear what you're saying, but when it comes to constructing a genre timeline, it's hard enough most of the time to settle on anything cohesive, so there have to be some rules like this which are adhered to consistently...

Otherwise, you just get a bunch of overlapping year ranges, which would mean the authors have to make even more judgement calls and conjectures than they already have, leaving even more people frustrated.

It always seemed to me like a lot of the chronological weirdness of the Okudachron could be explained by the Okudas "ignoring" the tie-ins in an official sense (i.e. in terms of the actual entries and preamble), but still constructing the dates in such a way as to allow for certain longstanding tie-in assumptions (e.g. the second FYM, the comics' depiction of what happened between movies) to remain standing, when they could've just as easily been hardcore canon purists and squished the dates closer together, leaving a lot of those previous titles out in the cold.

But on the other hand, there's their insistence that TOS represented the last three years of the 5-year mission, which ruled out the animated series and the overwhelming majority of TOS novels and comics. Indeed, there seems to be no other reason for doing such a thing than specifically to preclude TAS and the novels. (Unless it's to be consistent with The Making of ST's claim that Kirk had been in command for four years as of the second season.) Fortunately, VGR contradicted the Okudachron and put the end of the 5YM in 2270 rather than '69, giving a year's leeway.

I thought about that after I wrote my original post...

I'm not big on how they organised TOS in general, and that aspect of their placement is indeed weird--apparently based on an old (and otherwise ignored) bit of fanon regarding stardates, so a date in the 1300's is 13 months into the FYM, and a date in the 5900's is close to its end.

The Okudas spelled out a lot of rules for their chronology at the outset, but then followed up by also including various random bits both welcoming and exclusionary to the tie-ins, without explaining their methodology for what parts of fanon get counted.

 

[Christopher]

Just took a look at Debt of Honor, Chris Claremont's story that takes place after Star Trek IV. For what its worth, he seemed to ignore the line about Taylor being assigned to a "ship" and has she and Kirk boating as they take care of George and Gracie together. If I read the reference correctly, they did so together for a month. Interestingly, Claremont has Taylor on Earth watching the whales until at least the birth of Gracie's baby.

Exactly. Regardless of what you call the type of vessel, that was a followup that made sense: the only whale biologist in the 23rd century was taking care of her whales. Having her go off into space makes no sense of any kind.

Of course, that's another of my beefs with the Okudachron -- the insistence on treating every round-number figure as an exact date. If something was said to happen 200 years before, the Chronology puts it exactly 200 years before, never 202 or 194 or anything. Which is particularly egregious with the Valiant in "Where No Man...," which by that scheme would've had to be launched only a couple of years after Cochrane's first warp flight, which is patently absurd. If nothing else, the Okudas should've abandoned exactness on that date, put it something like 180 years before the episode instead.

I hear what you're saying, but when it comes to constructing a genre timeline, it's hard enough most of the time to settle on anything cohesive, so there have to be some rules like this which are adhered to consistently...

Otherwise, you just get a bunch of overlapping year ranges, which would mean the authors have to make even more judgement calls and conjectures than they already have, leaving even more people frustrated.

I don't have a problem with leaving some dates vague rather than making up some arbitrary number. I'm reminded of a discussion in Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars about the difference between accuracy and precision. Precision is how narrow your range of possible figures is, while accuracy is how close you are to the correct result. For instance, if you say pi is 3.1 plus or minus 1, that's accurate but not very precise. But if you say pi is 4 plus or minus 0.0001, that's precise but hardly accurate. Sometimes it's more accurate to be less precise, to give a range that accurately reflects the margin of uncertainty rather than fixing too narrowly on a single number that may be wrong.

(Which is one reason I hate the TOS trope of having Spock give all his probability and other estimates down to three or four decimal places. A true scientist wouldn't indulge in gratuitous, showy precision but would acknowledge the margin of error.)

The Okudas spelled out a lot of rules for their chronology at the outset, but then followed up by also including various random bits both welcoming and exclusionary to the tie-ins, without explaining their methodology for what parts of fanon get counted.

I think they pretty clearly didn't count anything from non-canonical sources. Any reference that seems "welcoming" to tie-in fiction is presumably more by happenstance, or at best neutrality, than any intentional effort at inclusion.

 

[TheAlmanac]

I hear what you're saying, but when it comes to constructing a genre timeline, it's hard enough most of the time to settle on anything cohesive, so there have to be some rules like this which are adhered to consistently...

Otherwise, you just get a bunch of overlapping year ranges, which would mean the authors have to make even more judgement calls and conjectures than they already have, leaving even more people frustrated.

I don't have a problem with leaving some dates vague rather than making up some arbitrary number. I'm reminded of a discussion in Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars about the difference between accuracy and precision. Precision is how narrow your range of possible figures is, while accuracy is how close you are to the correct result. For instance, if you say pi is 3.1 plus or minus 1, that's accurate but not very precise. But if you say pi is 4 plus or minus 0.0001, that's precise but hardly accurate. Sometimes it's more accurate to be less precise, to give a range that accurately reflects the margin of uncertainty rather than fixing too narrowly on a single number that may be wrong.

You might not have a problem with it, but the Okudas were trying to create both a solid reference document for an ongoing franchise and a presentable book that wasn't completely bogged down with minutiae (that is, any more than it already was ).

Besides, isn't accepting all references to the passage of time as precise the least arbitrary option they could've chosen, while keeping the book more readable than a statistical breakdown?

Filling the Chronology with ranges and margins of error might've made it more accurate in the strictest sense, but would've made it a lot less useful for both fans and writers who wanted/needed a quick reference source. It wouldn't have even been very chronological, as overlapping date ranges place a number of events in many possible orders--and (as Dayton and others pointed out) we already know there are very few precise dates in the Star Trek canon to begin with.

Given that the series' writers realised they could change dates anyway (2061 becomes 2063, 2269 becomes 2270), they didn't seem to be too worried about "a single number that may be wrong."

The Okudas spelled out a lot of rules for their chronology at the outset, but then followed up by also including various random bits both welcoming and exclusionary to the tie-ins, without explaining their methodology for what parts of fanon get counted.

I think they pretty clearly didn't count anything from non-canonical sources.

Really? The "SD 1312 = 13 months, 12 days" placement seems pretty non-canonical to me.

Any reference that seems "welcoming" to tie-in fiction is presumably more by happenstance, or at best neutrality, than any intentional effort at inclusion.

Fine, you explain their movie dating, then.

 

[Timo]

(Which is one reason I hate the TOS trope of having Spock give all his probability and other estimates down to three or four decimal places. A true scientist wouldn't indulge in gratuitous, showy precision but would acknowledge the margin of error.)

Isn't that something of an overstatement, though? The one offender would seem to be "That Which Survives", and there Spock quite rightfully uses highly precise time estimates in countdowns to fatal outcomes. In the end, the ship avoided explosion by a matter of seconds; if Scotty's relative imprecision had been allowed to stand, this could have been the last episode in the show...

Outside that episode, Spock very seldom engages in this supposed pointless decimal hobby of his.

Really? The "SD 1312 = 13 months, 12 days" placement seems pretty non-canonical to me.

Quite so. However, the Okudas could have gone for the "final three years out of five" interpretation for other, more objective and more canonical reasons as well. The bulk of the book involves TNG stardates, which proceed at 1,000 units per year or season. Applying the same logic to TOS yields acceptable results, but TOS stardates are heavily tilted towards 3000-5000 - so if 1000 reflected the earliest adventures in the 5-yr mission, then TOS as a whole (save for the first half of the first season) could be argued to have described the final three years of that mission.

Dunno if this "logic" ever entered Mike's mind. But the way the book was executed makes it relatively easy to believe in this afterwards...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stevil2001]

Which is one reason I hate the TOS trope of having Spock give all his probability and other estimates down to three or four decimal places. A true scientist wouldn't indulge in gratuitous, showy precision but would acknowledge the margin of error.

Spock doesn't have a margin of error. He's Spock.

 

[Christopher]

I think they pretty clearly didn't count anything from non-canonical sources.

Really? The "SD 1312 = 13 months, 12 days" placement seems pretty non-canonical to me.

Your premise is flawed. Although the Okudas did mention that in passing as a "conjectural theory espoused by some fans," they never claimed that they actually based their own calculations on that conjecture. Mention is not endorsement. The reference is in the appendix regarding stardates, and is listed among multiple points of discussion that merely point out the numerous contradictory bits of information and speculation that are out there regarding stardates. That's separate from their actual decisions regarding the body of the chronology itself.

Any reference that seems "welcoming" to tie-in fiction is presumably more by happenstance, or at best neutrality, than any intentional effort at inclusion.

Fine, you explain their movie dating, then.

That's a classic logical fallacy: "If you can't give an explanation, then my explanation must be the right one." It doesn't work that way.

Besides, several explanations have already been offered in this very thread. The TWOK dating seems to be based on the 2283 Romulan Ale date. The TFF dating is chosen for consistency with the 20-year interval since the founding of Nimbus III. The TVH dating may simply be splitting the difference between the two films placed in 2285 and the one that can't be earlier than 2287 (if the 20-year figure is presumed to be exact). Or it may have been chosen to place the film exactly 300 years after the 20th-century segments.

 

[Praetor]

Well, you could argue that the final 15 minutes of TVH was spaced out over several months. Who knows how long it was between the landing of the whales and the trial and then how long it was between the trial and the delivery of the ship. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a couple of months (at least between the landing of the whales and the trial).

I tend to think this was the case.

Besides, several explanations have already been offered in this very thread. The TWOK dating seems to be based on the 2283 Romulan Ale date. The TFF dating is chosen for consistency with the 20-year interval since the founding of Nimbus III. The TVH dating may simply be splitting the difference between the two films placed in 2285 and the one that can't be earlier than 2287 (if the 20-year figure is presumed to be exact). Or it may have been chosen to place the film exactly 300 years after the 20th-century segments.

I think that the 2286 date for TVH ties nicely with TNG being promoted as '78 years after the most recent adventures of Kirk and crew' bit and season one of TNG being in 2364. They may have been rather codependent of one another, but it seems to fit.