Does the Animated Series Complete the 5 year mission?

It doesn't need to - but there's no reason to argue it would not. That is, nothing precludes it from denoting years (mission years, calendar years, stardate years, take your pick, probably not in sync with each other but all 365 days long anyway). And arguing that the SD millennia are years helps out with onscreen tidbits such as it being three years between "Errand of Mercy" and "Day of the Dove". Not a requirement, but a cool bit of serendipity at the very least.

It's a general issue of continuity - do they change systems in-universe at some point? The vast majority of stardate data comes from the Okuda era when everything was neat and tidy and deliberate and sequential. TOS fits in without effort, even though (and exactly because) there never was much effort or deliberation involved originally. TAS does not, because they went the extra mile to randomize the numbers. But since both TAS and TOS were episodic and static, we can shuffle them together - no character of note ever arrived or left, say, and even those who died didn't stay dead for long.

Alas, I haven't yet found unexpected continuity joy in dropping the TAS adventures to their stardate slots, the way dropping "Catspaw" before "Space Seed" makes me purr.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think it’s just a matter of any parallel systems you can think of being handled by the universal translator, whether it’s JJ stardates that seem to use .00 to .99 (as suggested by Spock’s birthdate, Robau’s line and the .XX on screens in STB), JJ stardates that seem to go from .1 to .365/6, DSC stardates with several decimal places on a regular basis, TOS stardates with only one usually, TNG or Xindi stardates.

 

She left after the first season to do live action TV, so that’s unlikely But she does consider TAS season 1&2 the 4th year of the 5 year mission.

 

Logically, if any continuity uniquely from TAS is found in any of the movies or follow on series, then TAS occurred. If not, then TAS didn't happen and not part of canon (it was just a cartoon). Example: Captain April was never mentioned in TOS, but he was introduced in TAS and later referenced in DISCO, therefore, TAS occurred. More examples will further cement it as canon. If you believe it is part of canon, and since the uniforms are the same as in TOS and not the same a few years later in TMP, then TAS is bracketed to occur either during or shortly after the TOS series. Since the stardates overlap then it is in the same 5YM timeframe.

 

That's not logical at all. One work of fiction can borrow ideas from another without being in continuity with it, like how Superman comics incorporated Jimmy Olsen and Perry White from the radio show, or how Batman comics incorporated Harley Quinn from B:TAS, or how Marvel Comics incorporated Phil Coulson from the MCU movies, or how Star Wars canon incorporated Thrawn after the old novels about him had been decanonized. It's all just imaginary ideas, after all, so storytellers can mix together pieces from different fictional "realities" with abandon. (Just look at all of IDW's comics crossing over Star Trek with things like Legion of Super Heroes or Planet of the Apes or Transformers. They're obviously in separate universes, but you can still tell stories that pretend they're in the same universe, because none of this is real.)

Oh, great, more random prejudice against animation as a genre. Form is not substance.

23rd-century stardates have never gone in any logical sequence, so this doesn't follow.

 

Here are better examples than Christopher's.

James Blish often mentioned characters, technology, etc. from one story or series in another story or series. So is all of Blish's fiction happening in alternate universes in one multiverse, or are the various Blish stories unconnected? It might be just a coincidence that the method of instant communication is called a Dirac transmitter in several different Blish stories, for example.

And Blish carried on this approach in his Star Trek writings. In his adaptations of TOS episodes he mentioned Gifford Bonner and the Vegan Tyranny from Cities in Flight, and in Spock Must Die! Xixiobax Jewelworms from "This Earth of Hours".

In the TAS episode "Yesteryear" Spock as a child goes to the mountains before his official survival test. In the TNG
episode "Unification Part 1":

This seems to refer to events in "Yesteryear". So the response to this is to say either:

1) This proves that TAS is canon with the rest of Star Trek.
or:
2) There never was a need to prove TAS canon because TAS always was canon.
or:
3) Nothing could possibly prove TAS canon; TAS can never be canon.
or:
4) The evidence is still insufficient to say if TAS is cannon.

Memory Alpha's article on TAS has a long list of various elements of other Star Trek productions that more or less reference TAS:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series

On the subject of TAS, in "The Slaver Weapon" Larry Niven adapted his story "The Soft Weapon", including elements from his Known Space series, including the Kzin and the Slavers. Thus there seems to be a degree of overlapping between story elements in TAS and in Known Space.

One would normally expect that any Star Trek story where someone time travels to the west of the USA in the 19th century would have to be consistent with actual history of the west, just as much as it a time travel story to any other historical setting would have to be consistent with actual history. But in the case of Star Trek it is more complicated.

Warner Brothers made several television westerns in the 1950s, and there were a number of crossovers from one series to another. In the most famous example, the Maverick episode "Hadley's Hunters" had crossovers with Cheyenne, Bronco, Sugarfoot, & Lawman & a reference to Colt.45 and maybe even to Wanted: Dead or Alive. So there seems to be a Maverick universe of related TV westerns.

In Kenny Rogers as The Gambler, Part III: the Legend Continues (1989) Brady Hawkes gets involved in Sioux affairs and apparently prevents the killing of Sitting Bull, the Ghost Dance troubles, and the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, thus putting that series in an alternate universe to real history. In the sequel The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) Brady Hawkes travels to San Francisco to a poker tournament in honor of the late Mr. Paladin, a reference to Have Gun Will Travel. Brady Hawkes meets characters from a number of TV westerns including Bat Masterson, Kung Fu, The Rifleman, The Westerner, The Virginian, Rawhide, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Cheyenne, and Maverick. This establishes a Gambler universe of TV westerns, which overlaps with the Maverick universe through Cheyenne and Maverick.

In Barbara Hambly's novel Ishmael (1985) Spock travels back in time to the 19th century west. But not to the historic west of real history, but to the west of the television series Here Come the Brides. And there are also references to characters in television westerns such as Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, Rawhide, and Maverick, as well as science fiction like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Dr. Who. So the television shows in the Gambler Universe and the Maverick universe might be real historical events in Ishmael (1985).

And this is only the beginning of a discussion of the many fictional universes which might be considered connected to Star Trek. See: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-is-part-of-mcu.293148/

Therefore, at an absolute minimum, the official standard is that all live action Star Trek productions are certainly canon, though some may happen in alternate universes. And many may consider TAS to be amoung the dramatic productions that are certainly canon.

And some Star Trek fans might consider that their personal canon includes a lot more stuff like the Tommy Westphail Universe, the Wold Newton Universe, the Cthulhu Mythos, the MCU, Cities in Flight, etc., etc., though other fans might not agree with some or all of those additions to Star Trek canon.

 

The Animated Series was soooo bad, really really bad
And stardate debates give me a headache

 

As the author of the upcoming "Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series" I strongly disagree with you! :-) The Stardates make no sense across the board on any series.

 

It does seem . . . an illogical expenditure of resources . . . .

 

Good luck to you with that, I hope it goes well for you.
It's just not my cup of tea

 

Going back to the original post, I'm not sure whether the 22 extra missions completed the 5YM, but those missions attempted to be part of the 5YM. Same uniforms. Same characters (less Chekov). Same ship (mostly). The engine room continued its morphing since TOS Season 1. Same treknobabble (mostly). Sure, they are part of the 5YM. Since Chekov left the ship in TAS, then it looks like TAS all occurred during Season 1, or after Season 3.

 

Speaking of the animated series, I recently had the opportunity to look through the files on David Gerrold's "Bem" story as it was pitched to TOS in 1968. I edited the Memory Alpha page to include the information from those documents, specifically the 3rd–6th bullet points under the section Title, Story and Script (LINK). Gerrold's being a "green" screenwriter at the time is apparent from the lack of any real story in the outlines, something Roddenberry comments on in related memos.