Could stardates make some sense?

[Harvey]

de Forest Research was called upon to consult on props when a legal issue might occur (such as a phone book prop in the movie All The Presidents Men), but as far as I know they didn't advise the production about the booklet in 'The Menagerie.' It isn't mentioned in the October 7, 1966 research report for the episode (the only one on file at UCLA).

 

[Robert Comsol]

^And as I've said, the text we're discussing was never meant to be legible. It was on camera for a few seconds, and they didn't have HDTV and home video recorders back then.

Okay, until the time the film clips and the photo prints popped up which was my first encounter with the file.

It was never intended to be something the audience could decipher in detail, just something that would give a passing impression of being official Starfleet orders and then never be seen or thought about again.

Okay

Kellam de Forest consulted on the scripts, but I doubt they consulted on every random prop or set dressing.

Yes, but this - like the scripts - was just another sheet of paper that could easily be evaluated along with the screnplays.

The producers didn't put that much effort into figuring it out, and neither should we.

? http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x11hd/themenageriepart1hd180.jpg

Besides that the text doesn't write "of vernal [...] galaxy" in capital letters (to provide the fault you're looking for) it's pretty authentic and absolutely believable in terms of content, grammar and style. Heck, it even reflects the first season premise that Starfleet was apparently a homo sapiens club only. I possibly can't see what's wrong with it and why we should disregard it (maybe you don't like my avatar? )

It belongs in the same category as all the TNG signage with Dirty Pair and Buckaroo Banzai in-jokes, or the Enterprise-D master systems display with the race car and the rubber ducky.

Most obviously the Talos IV file does not belong to this category, because none of the above is hinted or readable.

Bob

 

[Nerys Myk]

^And as I've said, the text we're discussing was never meant to be legible. It was on camera for a few seconds, and they didn't have HDTV and home video recorders back then. It was never intended to be something the audience could decipher in detail, just something that would give a passing impression of being official Starfleet orders and then never be seen or thought about again. Kellam de Forest consulted on the scripts, but I doubt they consulted on every random prop or set dressing. And that's all this was. The producers didn't put that much effort into figuring it out, and neither should we. It belongs in the same category as all the TNG signage with Dirty Pair and Buckaroo Banzai in-jokes, or the Enterprise-D master systems display with the race car and the rubber ducky.

de Forest Research was called upon to consult on props when a legal issue might occur (such as a phone book prop in the movie All The Presidents Men), but as far as I know they didn't advise the production about the booklet in 'The Menagerie.' It isn't mentioned in the October 7, 1966 research report for the episode (the only one on file at UCLA).

I wasn't referring to the Menagerie in particular, but the idea that "the producers wanted the series to be scientifically as accurate as possible". I think that's a slight exaggeration.

 

[Warped9]

I think they wanted a sense of plausibility in terms of science rather than "to the letter" accuracy. Even they acknowledged (read this somewhere awhile back) that if they sweated every single detail to be thoroughly accurate they would never get around to actually filming the episodes.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think they wanted a sense of plausibility in terms of science rather than "to the letter" accuracy. Even they acknowledged (read this somewhere awhile back) that if they sweated every single detail to be thoroughly accurate they would never get around to actually filming the episodes.

Yep, they were making a TV show, not a documentary. They used what worked dramatically.

 

[Arik Deylan]

Here’s just a thought.
In some military circles, you would enter the date that you have whatever incident had occurred on (Just For Example) say at the top, Or in the case of a computer log the entry date. Then in your written or stated logs you would reference the time of each incident that occurred concurrent. This would allow you to give a more detailed report as a reference. Star dates allow the people to give a basic report for the day in question. You would then reference the incidents as supplemental using the specific time it occurred in the report. There really isn’t any mention of specific time in any of the shows during the logs. That may explain why at some point during the shows, you would hear the captains say “Captains Log Supplemental.” This may have been time stamped during the log for specifics.

 

[The Old Mixer]

It belongs in the same category as all the TNG signage with Dirty Pair and Buckaroo Banzai in-jokes, or the Enterprise-D master systems display with the race car and the rubber ducky.

Just because they never showed us the room with the giant rubber ducky doesn't mean that it didn't exist....

 

[Harvey]

I wasn't referring to the Menagerie in particular, but the idea that "the producers wanted the series to be scientifically as accurate as possible". I think that's a slight exaggeration.

Oh, I totally agree with this sentiment.

My post was in response to Christopher, not you. I was in a hurry this morning, and I didn't use the quote function. Sorry if that was confusing.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's cool.

Great blog BTW.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Harvey: by any chance, did you get to see the earliest draft of Star Trek Guide? The stardate entry was written probably around the time of the second pilot, seeing as numbers from its range are listed as examples, but I'm curious if any wording was changed between the earliest and the latest drafts.

(For that matter, revisions to Star Trek Guide might make an interesting blog topic all by themselves, leaving out the full text of that document, of course, but including any interesting changes.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

Forget the "vernal galaxy" and Starfleet's racism, I want to know what a "3XY phagrin level - mass computer" is!

 

[Harvey]

Harvey: by any chance, did you get to see the earliest draft of Star Trek Guide? The stardate entry was written probably around the time of the second pilot, seeing as numbers from its range are listed as examples, but I'm curious if any wording was changed between the earliest and the latest drafts.

(For that matter, revisions to Star Trek Guide might make an interesting blog topic all by themselves, leaving out the full text of that document, of course, but including any interesting changes.)

The UCLA collection has multiple versions of the writer's guide. I have only been able to leaf through them -- at the time, I wanted to know when the 1/3 female, 2/3 male crew claim came in, so I just speed-read them for that information -- but they would be interesting to revisit. When I get back to LA.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Thanks, I'd appreciate it.

Somewhat back on topic: Pike could've easily used JJ stardates, since according to Orci, the prime and alternate realities are identical up to 2233.04. I know this is hard to reconcile with some onscreen evidence (the huge Kelvin etc.), but I see no issue specifically with stardates.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Enterprise-D is much bigger than the later Voyager and even the Enterprise-E, volume-wise. The Kelvin and the old Enterprise are no different.

 

[Warped9]

...since according to Orci, the prime and alternate realities are identical up to 2233.04. I know this is hard to reconcile with some onscreen evidence (the huge Kelvin etc.), but I see no issue specifically with stardates.

And I now lose interest in this topic.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Why? They'd fit perfectly in that era, and also happen to be canon, unlike Mandel's extrapolation of Kirk's gravestone "birthdate".

 

[Warped9]

Why? They'd fit perfectly in the era of United Earthship Enterprise and uniforms of United Earth. They also happen to be canon, unlike Mandel's extrapolation of Kirk's gravestone "birthdate".

I have no tolerance or respect whatsoever for JJ's stuff and simply don't recognize it. I ignore it completely. I find his work offensive and consider it wholly unrelated to the original Star Trek.

If it's dragged into discussions of original Star Trek then I just don't acknowledge it or I move on to another subject.

 

[Timo]

Well, it's an integral part of the discussion of Star Trek. Whether the original Star Trek is that or not, opinions vary... But I guess discussions in this particular sub-forum sort of have to include TOS, too.

Forget the "vernal galaxy" and Starfleet's racism, I want to know what a "3XY phagrin level - mass computer" is!

Considering the context, "3XY", "phagrin" and "level-mass" are likely to be a string of nonsense codewords.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

^But they sound so cool, and bring to mind the computer in Adam West's Batcave.



While I of course see the merit in sticking only to what the originators of Star Trek intended, I get a lot of enjoyment looking back and seeing classic Trek in the new light of the sequels and spin-offs.

 

[Christopher]

While I of course see the merit in sticking only to what the originators of Star Trek intended, I get a lot of enjoyment looking back and seeing classic Trek in the new light of the sequels and spin-offs.

And the problem with the purist reverence for what the creators "originally intended" is that what we actually see onscreen is not what the creators intended -- it's just what they had to settle for. It's the best approximation of their intent that they could achieve with the limited time, money, and resources they had available, and within the limits of network censorship, advertiser interference, and other factors that required compromise. I think you'd find that most TV or film creators, given the chance, would gladly rework or replace a great deal of what ended up onscreen in their original works. We know for a fact that Roddenberry would; in his later productions he tried to distance himself from a lot of TOS's content. When he had the Klingons redesigned in ST:TMP, he asked fans to assume they'd always looked that way and TOS had simply gotten it wrong. And when he made TNG, he approached it as a soft reboot of TOS; while it was nominally a continuation, he mostly tried to distance it from TOS and treat it as a second chance to get right what he felt he'd gotten wrong before.

So that kind of fan purism, that slavish devotion to the details of TOS and the kneejerk hostility toward anything that changes them, has nothing to do with creator intent; indeed, it runs in direct opposition to Roddenberry's documented intentions. Creators are not so resistant to innovation -- if they were, they wouldn't be creators.