Date system?

[beneldon]

In a book called the Making of Star Trek, I believe there was an explaination of the erratic star dates ( other than they being broadcast out of production order) that had to do with the time dilation effect or something.

I've always liked explaining things in this show to conform to reality.

My favorite explanation was when I think Berman was asked how the Heisenberg compensators worked he simply replied "Very well, thank-you."

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

My favorite explanation was when I think Berman was asked how the Heisenberg compensators worked he simply replied "Very well, thank-you."

He was all very pleased at the time, no doubt.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

In a book called the Making of Star Trek, I believe there was an explaination of the erratic star dates ( other than they being broadcast out of production order) that had to do with the time dilation effect or something.

I've always liked explaining things in this show to conform to reality.

My favorite explanation was when I think Berman was asked how the Heisenberg compensators worked he simply replied "Very well, thank-you."

Yeah, ya know... I was thinking about that explanation the other day...

...it's a really useless method of telling time, since there is no rhyme or reason to the dates, and they are dependent on where you were in space and how fast you were moving at the time. Dates need to be orderly, so people know the order in which things happened -- hence the reason for dates in the first place.

For example:

Person #1: Am I older than you?
Person #2: I don't know. When were you born?
Person #1: Stardate 1277.1. When were you born?
Person #2: Stardate 1081.5.
Person #1: So who's older?
Person #2: I don't know. I can't tell by using Stardates since they are so erratic.

If the dates could be different depending on time dilation, then what's the point of keeping time?

 

[Eric Cheung]

Well, one theory was that each ship had a different set of stardates. That obviously changed by the movies because there was definitely a sense of a common stardate system like Marcus' tape and the recording of Spock's last moments etc.

If the warp scale could change, then surely the stardate system could too. But I'd like to think that it starts sometime soon before Kirk's 5-year mission. What are some major political or technological events that might have been used as a reason for stardates? The only think I could think of is perhaps the introduction of the duotronic computers? Perhaps they were introduced after we thought (the second or third generation of computers on the Enterprise?).

 

[Timo]

^but how does that work with Kirk's given birth date of 1277.1?

Well, since you asked (and have had time to regret it):

It doesn't. Kirk is supposedly 34 years old in "The Deadly Years", for which the stardate is 3478, even though the theory would call either for SD 5XXX or for Kirk to be 32 years old.

Then again, Kirk is utterly senile when he claims he's 34; just moments before, he had been repeatedly confusing the numerals 2 and 4, and his friends had to remind him that 4 was correct while 2 was incorrect. So naturally he'd now be predisposed to say 34 rather than the correct 32.

OTOH, the date in Kirk's tombstone might have been a joke inserted by Gary "God" Mitchell, since his middle initial also seems to be incorrect...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

^but how does that work with Kirk's given birth date of 1277.1?

Well, since you asked (and have had time to regret it):

It doesn't. Kirk is supposedly 34 years old in "The Deadly Years", for which the stardate is 3478, even though the theory would call either for SD 5XXX or for Kirk to be 32 years old.

Then again, Kirk is utterly senile when he claims he's 34; just moments before, he had been repeatedly confusing the numerals 2 and 4, and his friends had to remind him that 4 was correct while 2 was incorrect. So naturally he'd now be predisposed to say 34 rather than the correct 32.

OTOH, the date in Kirk's tombstone might have been a joke inserted by Gary "God" Mitchell, since his middle initial also seems to be incorrect...

Timo Saloniemi

^
^^That's all well and good, and the geeky part of me that tries to make grand sense of the TOS universe agrees with you . However, I'll stick with what I said before...

...TOS had no consistent system for stardates, so Abrams is free to use whatever system he wants,
which is akin to what Cogley said earlier:

Just spew some random numbers with confidence, like Kirk did in the good ol' days. We'll eat it up.

 

[USS Excelsior]

And on the first episode with Harry Mudd on the computer recording it said something about him losing a license or something on Stardate 1116 point something.