Did Kirk Command 3 Five Year Missions ?

[TransporterBeam]

Did Captain Kirk command 3 Five year Missions ? he commanded the original 5 year mission, Another one presumably after TMP. The last 5 year Mission would have taken place aboard the Enterprise 2. He commanded that ship 6 years ?

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I got the impression that Kirk's command of Enterprise-A wasn't locked down to a specific mission profile like a Five-Year exploration survey. The DC comics that took place on that ship, iirc, didn't mention it being on one. The mission of the ship and crew, after TMP, seemed to be "ongoing" rather than "five-year."

 

[Christopher]

As I've said before... we have evidence of exactly one five-year mission being conducted by exactly one starship. So there's no reason to assume that every starship mission is five years long by default. One example doesn't even come close to suggesting a pattern. The E's 5-year mission in TOS may have been a unique instance, or one of multiple mission profiles that starships may get assigned to.

(For that matter, outside of the opening narration, there's no onscreen evidence of a 5-year mission at all in TOS; it was never stated in actual dialogue. Only in TMP was the 5-year duration of Kirk's preceding mission made explicit in the story itself. And even that didn't establish that it was planned to be 5 years long, just that it ended up that way.)

Full disclosure, though: I have assumed in my published Trek fiction that the E did go on a second 5YM after TMP, because I was staying consistent with earlier books that made that assumption. But on reflection, if given the chance to revise those works, I might modify what I wrote, and I have tried to touch on possible mission profiles other than 5-year tours.

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

(For that matter, outside of the opening narration, there's no onscreen evidence of a 5-year mission at all in TOS; it was never stated in actual dialogue.
.

Sure it was! Same episode where Kirk says "Beam me up, Scotty!"

 

[Timo]

...Outside the novels, it remains somewhat debatable whether Kirk stayed aboard the Enterprise for a single week beyond TMP. Sure, the ship was deprived of her original skipper in the movie, but Starfleet would probably have several candidates more suited (read: more expendable) for that job than Rear Admiral Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

And the Excelsior was on a three-year mission once (and a rather boring one I have to add... cataloging gaseous anamolies? Pffff.... )

 

[Ronald Held]

But the real mission was collecting intelligence on the Klingon empire?

 

[Lonestar]

I think he only commanded 1 five year mission and just did more specific assignments after the refit and during the Enterprise-A's tenure.

Captain Pike and Captain April (is he cannon?) got the other 3 five year missions on the original Enterprise.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Personally, I choose to believe that Kirk did the original 5-year mission, another one after STTMP, and then a 3-year one after TVH.

As for references to a 5-year mission outside the opening credits, there's the STTMP reference about Kirk commanding a starship for 5 years. There's also an "implied" one in The Mark of Gideon where Kirk tells Odona that the Enterprise has enough food and supplies for a crew of 400 to last 5 years. Read into that line whatever you want.

 

[CoveTom]

There's also an "implied" one in The Mark of Gideon where Kirk tells Odona that the Enterprise has enough food and supplies for a crew of 400 to last 5 years. Read into that line whatever you want.

Which is interesting because, even though the original TOS mission clearly took the Enterprise to the farthest reaches of Federation space, there was no evidence to suggest that they intended to be completely out of contact with the Federation for their entire five year mission. We saw them visiting starbases on many occassions, in fact. So why go to the trouble of storing five years' worth of food?

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Personally, I choose to believe that Kirk did the original 5-year mission, another one after STTMP, and then a 3-year one after TVH.

As for references to a 5-year mission outside the opening credits, there's the STTMP reference about Kirk commanding a starship for 5 years. There's also an "implied" one in The Mark of Gideon where Kirk tells Odona that the Enterprise has enough food and supplies for a crew of 400 to last 5 years. Read into that line whatever you want.

Yes, but those are still just references to the 5 yr mission during the original series. There is no indication at all that 5 yr missions are standard for Starfleet

 

[Ronald Held]

Do we even know much about what mission length is standard for a ship class at any given time in the Starfleet's history?

 

[Therin of Andor]

We saw them visiting starbases on many occassions, in fact. So why go to the trouble of storing five years' worth of food?

Probably because space is a dangerous place. All you'd need would be a warp failure and no communications and you'd be stuck in the middle of nowhere. At least five years of supplies would give you some leeway to developing a strategy to either get moving at warp again, or to improvise a way to send a message back to a base for a rescue mission.

The Bantam tie-in novels tended to assume that the 5YM continued to completion after TOS. When ST:TMP came out, some commentators reported things like Kirk's mission had "ended prematurely", but they were assuming the mission ended abruptly/early like the TV series itself had.

Several of Pocket Books' tie-in authors originally assumed a second 5YM (or at least, an open-ended one) for Kirk and the Enterprise between TOS and TMP, mainly to explain the chronological aging of the cast in the intervening ten years. When the first licensed Chronology and Encyclopedia came out, the Okudas had suggested shifting this second mission to post-TMP, and later tie-in novels complied with this concept.

When Diane Duane's "Rihannsu" novels were recently re-released as an omnibus, the dates in her first two were reconfigured to match the timings suggested by new canonical evidence (such as dates mentioned by Icheb in VOY), and the concept of a second longterm mission between TMP and ST II, which the other novelists had been doing for about a decade.

 

[Christopher]

Do we even know much about what mission length is standard for a ship class at any given time in the Starfleet's history?

This question's effectively been answered already in the negative. We know of one ship that went on one mission that lasted five years, but we don't know if any other ship in the history of Starfleet had a mission of that duration, and we don't even know for sure if that mission length was by design or not. The very concept that there even is such a thing as a standardized mission length is pure fan speculation.

Logically, ships should be assigned to missions that last as long as they need to, and different types of mission would need different durations. It doesn't make sense to assume that every ship of a given class is locked into a particular fixed mission duration. It should depend on the assignment.

 

[DrTaylor]

Here's a take on it no one's mentioned - how do we know that "Where No Man" was the beginning of said five-year mission?

Spock and Mitchell refer to having served together for "years" as in 'more than one', so maybe this is like, the second year, and "Turnabout Intruder" was close to the end of five?

 

[Timo]

If "Where No Man" is part of "the" five-year mission, it must still be the first adventure on that mission that we see on screen. It can't take place, say, after "Space Seed" or something like that - it must always be the first episode, apart from "The Cage" which depicts another mission and captain.

So let's say it's from the late second year. That would probably make "Errand of Mercy" third year - and in "Day of the Dove", Kang argues it's been three years since "Errand of Mercy". So that sets some limits: clearly, it wouldn't do to make "Where No Man" be on the third or fourth year of the five-year mission.

Certainly there is no pressing reason to think that Season 1 was the first year of the five-year mission, or even that Season 1 depicted one year of Kirk's adventures. We could equally well say that all the episodes with 1000-range stardates on them are from the first year, all those with 2000-rangers are from the second year, and all those with 5000-range stardates represent the last mission year.

Or we could decide that all the episodes of TOS take place on the fourth year of Kirk's mission, and Kang is incorrect, confused or using Klingon years or something. Nothing is really set in stone about this.

Timo Saloniemi