Five Year Mission?

[T'Girl]

In the opening credits of every episode, Kirk spoke of the Enterprise's five year mission, to explore - seek - boldly go. But why that specific time period? True it could have been a standard mission length, based upon Starfleet's force needs and the likely endurance of the ship itself. But I had another thought, Starfleet Command knew ahead of time that the Enterprise in five years time was going to be taken out of service and basically gutted. More than a refurbishment, there was going to be a prescheduled rebuild.

When a US Navy nuclear submarine come in for refueling, they don't just top off the tanks, the submarine is literally cut in two pieces, pulled apart and the reactor assemble is completely removed and replaced.

In TMP, the Enterprise had (at minimum) new engines, new shields, new bridge and a new hull skin. IMHO, she also had a brand new type of reactor, exchanging multiple reactors, for a single. And a new weapons system too.

So is this where the five year mission length came from. Providing that the ship even survived five years. Obviously this is a "in-universe" question.

What say you?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, I'm not sure an in-universe explanation beyond it being a nice round number would make a whole lotta sense.

In office, however, five seasons means you're golden for syndication; that's where the money was in television in those days, and that's what Roddenberry was shooting for. With only three seasons, there were a few nervous days where GR didn't know if Star Trek would ever be heard from again once it left NBC (fortunately, the guy who signed the deal with Paramount was a fan, as well as still being sore over missing out on getting a deal on "The Twilight Zone", so for once, Gene had nothing to worry about).

 

[Christopher]

Based on the way the matter of mission duration was treated in the TNG Technical Manual, I figure it's simply that five years was the maximum time the ship could be expected to stay viable without needing a major overhaul in spacedock. These ships were expected to be far away from civilization, only occasionally resupplying at a starbase. Starbases were supposed to be more like frontier forts than centers of civilization, so their ability to repair and resupply a ship was presumably limited.

Even if it wasn't known in advance that the E would be getting that huge, wholesale refit for TMP, it seems that it's gone through substantial refits between missions before. Look how much work the ship had done between the second pilot and the regular series -- the bridge module and deflector dish were replaced with smaller ones, the spired nacelle caps were replaced with the swirly ones, the rear nacelle grates were replaced with domes, the smooth hangar doors became ridged, etc. All that suggests a pretty major rebuild. Maybe five years is the most a Constitution-class ship can go without one.

Of course, I'm highly skeptical of the assumption that "a five-year mission" is in any way a standard mission profile for Starfleet. We only have evidence that one ship had one five-year mission; indeed, outside of the main title narration, which doesn't really count as an in-universe statement, the only canonical evidence we have that the Enterprise's mission even was five years long is a single line in TMP ("My experience, five years out there dealing with unknowns like this"), and even that's ambiguous. (There's also "Yesteryear"'s line that Thelin has been Kirk's alternate-timeline first officer for five years, which is suggestive, but not probative.) You can't project a pattern from a single example. There's no way of knowing whether the E's 5-year mission is routine or exceptional, because we have no other examples to give it context.

 

[Timo]

It's pretty irritating that basically every possible rationale for a "five-year mission" is preempted by the show itself.

It's not the duration our heroes spend out of contact with their superiors, because we see regular contact. It's not the interval between crew rotations, because the crew rotates. It's not the interval between starbase visits, because we see scheduled and unscheduled visits. It's not the duration of an exploration-only mission because our heroes often go where somebody else has gone before, and sometimes get assigned defensive or diplomatic or show-of-force duties. And as you say, the ship already undergoes some modifications during TOS that might disqualify her from the "five years between major overhauls" theory.

It might be the duration Kirk is allowed to command the ship on a stretch - but that wouldn't make it the 5yr mission of the Enterprise, only the 5yr mission of Kirk. (Which probably is something of a rarity in Starfleet, as there apparently are no other skippers or junior flag officers who could compete with Kirk's "five years out there dealing with unknowns like this, even if only a meter tall" accomplishment in ST:TMP.)

I guess the mission could be dictated the same way a nuclear submarine's mission might be: a single load of fuel lasts for five years, not more or less, and refuelings are impossible until the original fuel is exhausted.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Harvey]

Perhaps, then, five years is simply the length of time the ship spends away from Earth. During the run of the series, after all, the only time our heroes return to what is for most of them their home planet is in the past.

 

[YARN]

It's not Kirk's mission. It's not the crew's mission. The ship itself has been tasked with a mission of exploration. Other Federation ships are tasked with other missions.

A starship is a valuable resource. It can engage in combat, science exploration, provide high speed transport (they were always in a hurry ferrying a vaccine somewhere), and project the esteem and power of Starfleet on diplomatic occasions.

The idea might have been - OK, Enterprise is tasked with a 5 year exploration mission, after which time she will be re-tasked by Starfleet

 

[Wingsley]

There's another angle that hasn't been discussed here...

During TOS, we see variations on the Starfleet uniform. Different badges seem to mean different units of some kind. Could it be different ships? Not likely, when you consider that confrontation in the Starbase 11 bar in "Court Martial". Kirk has a little run-in with former Academy classmates, at least one of whom obviously isn't under his command, but wearing the same arrowhead insignia on his chest.

I've long thought that the arrowhead was a unit designation, not a ship designation. Maybe it means something like "the First Fleet".

Let's consider this possibility for a moment, for sake of argument. If the Enterprise is attached to the Federation First Fleet, and the First Fleet is organized under some kind of five-year plan, then the standing orders of the First Fleet would amount to a five-year mission. These standing orders could be multi-faceted, including exploration, rescue/aid, colonization assistance, scientific, defense/patrol, etc. The bottom line is, the First Fleet may be organized very differently from the naval fleets of old Earth, which were designated by geographic regions. That may or may not be the case with the Enterprise and other starships in her flotilla.

And yes, it is indeed possible that starships are launched in certain classes, let's say that the Enterprise was in the "Class of '65" after James T. Kirk took command from Pike and oversaw the ship's refit in 2265. This kind of class may have an administrative time limit and new technologies and refit schedules are ordered to be incorporated into the First Fleet's "schedule". So if the "five-year mission" expires in 2270, that's when the Enterprise is scheduled to report to dock for refit.

Note that just because Kirk took command of the Enterprise first, piloted her out of the Galaxy near Delta Vega, and then returned home for refit, doesn't mean the extragalatic mission wasn't part of the "five-year mission". It could well have been. Either the refit wasn't as profound as the one seen later in TMP, and therefore didn't qualify as "event one" in the Enterprise's new mission, or the mission itself does indeed include the 2265 refit as part of the mission process. Let's say that one of the key modifications of the '65 refit was the newer, more rounded Bridge module. Let's call the refit module the BX-65. Perhaps the First Fleet's five-year mission profile calls for all starships in the flotilla to upgrade to BX-65 modules before 2266, and that the new captains will oversee the refits and provide reports to First Fleet HQ on the operation of the BX-65s once they are all in service.

 

[Gary7]

Well, I'm not sure an in-universe explanation beyond it being a nice round number would make a whole lotta sense.

In office, however, five seasons means you're golden for syndication; that's where the money was in television in those days, and that's what Roddenberry was shooting for. With only three seasons, there were a few nervous days where GR didn't know if Star Trek would ever be heard from again once it left NBC (fortunately, the guy who signed the deal with Paramount was a fan, as well as still being sore over missing out on getting a deal on "The Twilight Zone", so for once, Gene had nothing to worry about).

+1. Roddenberry thought they'd get a 5 year run, so it was a 5 year mission... I really don't believe there was any other thought put into it. However, it is entertaining to see what people are coming up with to try fitting it into the Star Trek Universe.

 

[YARN]

+1. Roddenberry thought they'd get a 5 year run, so it was a 5 year mission... I really don't believe there was any other thought put into it. However, it is entertaining to see what people are coming up with to try fitting it into the Star Trek Universe.

I wonder what the writers would have done if Trek had made it past season 5...

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why would they have to do anything?

 

[Wingsley]

If TOS had made it to Year 5 at all, I think we would be either living in La-La Land or LOST IN SPACE and BATMAN would also be renewed for 5th years as well.

I actually think it was good that TOS was cancelled when it was. Imagine how many "Spock's Brain" clones we would've seen in Year 4...

 

[Ssosmcin]

Five years on TV could have been really good. In order to get the renewals, though, Trek would have to have gotten that sweet Monday time slot. In which case, Gene would have stayed with the show and never hired Freiberger. Therefore we probably wouldn't have gotten Spock's Brain type shows.

 

[Forbin]

TV time is not the same as real time. On MASH, the Korean war lasted 8 years (or was is 12?). The 5-year mission could still go on for a 7-season show. After all, they only showed us one adventure every week. If they had three adventures in one week, they'd show them to us over a period of three weeks.

 

[Wingsley]

M*A*S*H was on CBS from 17 Sept. 1972 to 28 Feb. 1983. The finale was aired in the show's 12th year of production.

The actual armed hostilities of the Korean Conflict lasted from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953. So M*A*S*H's production lasted about 4 times as long as the actual combat did.

 

[MikeH92467]

In his novelization of TMP GR said that Kirk was the first captain to bring back a ship and crew intact from such a deep space mission (of course that's not counting a few dozen odd red shirts and assorted guest stars, I'm sure) which led to his promotion to Admiral and position as Chief of Star Fleet Operations. As for five years, I would guess there's something about that figure that dates back to the old sailing days of the British Empire where Captains exerted enormous local authority and had to go for months or (I assume) years out of direct contact with Head Shed.

 

[Elder Knight]

+1. Roddenberry thought they'd get a 5 year run, so it was a 5 year mission... I really don't believe there was any other thought put into it. However, it is entertaining to see what people are coming up with to try fitting it into the Star Trek Universe.

I wonder what the writers would have done if Trek had made it past season 5...

There was another TV show of that era, Run For Your Life, which was about a man who sought adventure because he had just two years to live.

It got renewed for a third season. They let the star live another year.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. Shows back then didn't have much continuity, didn't feel the need to insist they ran in real time the way shows today do. Indeed, new episodes often pretty much ignored earlier episodes, as if they didn't even take place in the same reality. Like in Mission: Impossible, where one week you'd have a scam where the team members showed their faces on international television to expose a massive conspiracy that would garner global attention, but by the very next episode they were again sufficiently anonymous to operate undercover. Back then, the ideal was an anthology format, because anthologies had been the classiest dramatic shows of the '50s and '60s. So even shows with continuing characters and standing sets tended to treat each episode as a separate entity and not worry about things like how much time had passed. In fact, Star Trek was pretty unusual for having as much continuity as it did.

Although even later, when shows started to have more continuity, they still played fast and loose with time and retconned their own backstories when necessary. Look at M*A*S*H, an 11-year series about a 3-year war. They even got as far forward in their date references as 1953 and then jumped back to 1950/51, although the characters still remembered the former cast members who'd left and retained the development of their personalities and relationships over time.

I think if TOS had gotten a sixth season, they would've just kept going without comment. The most they might've done was rephrase the opening narration a bit -- since, like I said before, the "five-year mission" thing was never mentioned outside of that narration anyway, so it was more of a throwaway line than a core component of TOS's premise.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, there was Kirk's description to Odonna in "The Mark of Gideon" about how much food and power they have ("We have enough to feed a crew of four hundred and thirty for five years.") which is a pretty big stretch as stated, but still, the five year figure is cited on screen.

Besides, considering how burned out Roddenberry was getting by this time, there's a good chance they just would've had their series finale with the ship returning to Earth at the end of the fifth season, hailed as heroes of the Federation, and we would've gotten "Earth: Final Conflict" about thirty years earlier than we did.

 

[T'Girl]

Look at M*A*S*H, an 11-year series about a 3-year war.

The last two (or was it three?) years of "That 70's show" took place in the second half of 1979. With two Christmas's.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I blame Jimmy Carter.