Same here. I completely and totally agree 100%.
Oh... sorry. I thought you were talking about the Berman-era Trek "spinoffs." My mistake.
Do You Believe the Official Chronology?
- Thread starter ZapBrannigan
- Start date
I'd dare to say that by the time of TMP they tried to pin it down that 1,000 stardate digits equal one solar year (concluded from Kirk's TMP log entries). TAS notwithstanding (and subtracting idle time the Enterprise spent in spacedock) we'd have a 5 year mission that starts some while after stardate 1000 (1277.1? Kirk's tombstone) and ends around stardate 6000.
Bob
I'd dare to say that by the time of TMP they tried to pin it down that 1,000 stardate digits equal one solar year (concluded from Kirk's TMP log entries). TAS notwithstanding (and subtracting idle time the Enterprise spent in spacedock) we'd have a 5 year mission that starts some while after stardate 1000 (1277.1? Kirk's tombstone) and ends around stardate 6000.
Bob
The tombstone dates are "C 1277.1 TO 1313.7"
Mitchell may have been insulting Kirk by calling him a one-year-old and getting his initial wrong.
Absolutely. In 1966, if you had told Gene Roddenberry that people would be arguing the minutia of Star Trek, like Stardates or warp drive, he would have thought you were crazy.
Yeah. If we think 1000 SD = 1 yr, then those dates would mean that Kirk's birthday and day of death would fall on the same year (the fourth digit from the right) but naturally on a different decade (the missing fifth digit). This would mean that since he's 34 around SD 3478 ("The Deadly Years"), he'd be about 31-32 in SD 1313, and thus 21-22, 11-12 or 1-2 in SD 1277 - the "system" would not allow him to be born on SD 1277 or any of its decade variants.
On the other hand, like Robert Comsol implies, Mitchell could be saying that Kirk was Captain ("C") of the Enterprise for that length of time, which is perfectly okay. Really, what else could the letter "C" mean? It's not standard tombstone symbology, now is it? But it is something Mitchell might want to remind Kirk of ("See how you failed in your life's work and ambition?") plus something that would not require the decade digit.
Timo Saloniemi
^^ "C" standing for "captaincy" is most likely, especially given the otherwise harsh contrast to the actual birth dates of Mitchell's and Dehner's onscreen medical records (old Federation calendar? Stardates apparently didn't exist, yet, in "The Cage"). Back in 1987 I did some deciphering of the birthdates on Mitchell's and Dehner's files but I'm not sure I still have my notes (didn't expect that by 2013 the issue would still be of interest and fans of ENT and GUT probably won't be interested).
Mitchell's date of birth was "1087.7" (age 23)
Dehner's date of birth was "1089.5" (age 21)
Bob
Mitchell's date of birth was "1087.7" (age 23)
Dehner's date of birth was "1089.5" (age 21)
Bob
Last edited:
1313.7 - 1277.1 = 36.6
Shatner was about 35 when the episode was shot. I'm sure they were just saying Kirk was 36 and a half years old.
Shatner was about 35 when the episode was shot. I'm sure they were just saying Kirk was 36 and a half years old.
I agree completely with this conclusion.
Trying to apply any consistent system or interpretation to stardates across any one series, much less the whole of Trek is probably not going to work.
Yes. And as for the "C"... it likely means "circa", a dating convention used in genealogy to denote an approximate date. I would guess they are saying the stardate approximates the Earth date.
Jeez. When I wrote above that Star Trek should have stuck to star dates and never alluded to the conventionally numbered year back on Earth, it didn't occur to me that this would be the result: a whole stack of posts giving proof that it makes no difference. Fans (many of them, perhaps) evidently like to think about sequence of events, whether they're given Earth years or star dates to chew on. You could all be Talmudic scholars (and surely a few of us would have been if we still lived in pre-industrial times).
Well, both bits plausibly equate the last two digits with years, but these don't agree with each other when it comes to the first two digits. That is, the latter clearly has them as being the same as the last two, that is, rolling over like centuries and millennia, yet Kirk and Mitchell obviously must be from the same century.
What are the odds of that being deliberate and done by one and the same person? Or it being deliberate and done by two people who had the exact same idea at the same time but never cross-checked? Lower than it being a complete coincidence, I'd wager. (This wholly apart from the behavior of the stardates punctuating the episode itself, establishing a rapid progression of the digits flanking the decimal point, within the at most days that the episode takes. A third guy doing unrelated creative work?)
Not that this should make the explanations offered any less plausible as in-universe rationalizations. It just looks as if this doesn't wash as a story of how the numbers were chosen in the real world.
Timo Saloniemi
Dear Admiral Don Iago: No need for ad hominem attacks, is there? I have been visiting for years, and hope to make admiral myself someday, but simply had never come across star date analysts of this level of dedication before.
However, I find this sort of thing quite amusing to witness, whether years or star dates are the focus of interest. Somewhere out there, I'm sure, is a fan who has tried to show that "15 years" couldn't possibly mean the same thing to Khan and to Kirk unless either (i) Khan and his gang cared about Earth-timekeeping and/or were given appropriate timepieces when they left the Enterprise, or (ii) Ceti Alpha V had a year the same length as Earth's (on average, perhaps, considering that the planet's orbit had shifted!).
However, I find this sort of thing quite amusing to witness, whether years or star dates are the focus of interest. Somewhere out there, I'm sure, is a fan who has tried to show that "15 years" couldn't possibly mean the same thing to Khan and to Kirk unless either (i) Khan and his gang cared about Earth-timekeeping and/or were given appropriate timepieces when they left the Enterprise, or (ii) Ceti Alpha V had a year the same length as Earth's (on average, perhaps, considering that the planet's orbit had shifted!).
Um...as I intended to indicate by my use of a smiley, it was a teasing comment, not intended as an attack.
It's just been my experience that there's no issue in the world of Trek that one or more individuals here won't be willing to discuss in what others might consider excruciating detail.
It's just been my experience that there's no issue in the world of Trek that one or more individuals here won't be willing to discuss in what others might consider excruciating detail.
The original series did have a thought-ought star date system. The problem is that (a) episodes were frequently aired out of order and (b) writers regularly ignored the star date system set up by the show, and revisions suggested by de Forest Research to keep the numbers in line were not always followed.
There is an expanded edition of this that covers DS9 and Voyager: Star Trek Chronology: The History Of The Future
Similar threads
