Franz Joseph’s Timeline

[Falconer]

I had a little fun with converting the SFTM Dates to Earth Dates. FJ calls his dates Stardates but uses an idiosyncratic conversion rate where 20 SD = 1 Earth Year. He tips you off to this early in the book by setting the Romulan Treaty and the Organian Treaty roughly 2000 SD apart. Knowing this, you can calculate the exact date of any event. The only thing lacking is the years. I am complete agnostic regarding what years they should be, so I set up my spreadsheet in such a way that you can plug in your preferred year for the Organian Treaty (Errand of Mercy), and it will calibrate all the dates to that. So here are some examples:



Recalibrated for 2208

Recalibrated for 2267

Recalibrated for 2556

I think until you let these dates sink in, it is very easy to misunderstand the SFTM. For example, I often hear people say that in FJ’s version of the TOS era there are hundreds upon hundreds of ships. When in fact 3220 (accounting for the construction of the Defiant sometime after Season 1 and before Season 3) is the final date of the era. All the later dates must be considered an alternate timeline which was not followed in the movies/TNG.

The other one is that people claim that in FJ’s view, the Federation is brand spanking new at the time of TOS. When in fact in his view it predates the Romulan War.

It must be admitted that there are also dates in the 7000s, but these are of course “out-of-character” dates (eg., 7503.04 = I drew this sheet on March 4, 1975).

 

[yotsuya]

Interesting. I prefer to align most of the dates with TOS. Those stardates range from 1312.4 to 5943.7. That compresses everything from just after the Romulan Treaty to the authorization of the Achernar subclass into 4 years. And puts the authorization of the Dreadnaught just before TMP (before the Enterprise refit). The early years of the Federation don't make sense, but the rest fits in nicely. The construction of the Defiant (FJ named it Defiance), the authorization of replacements. It all fits very nicely indeed.

 

[Falconer]

Hmm, I would have to play around with that. Something like 5 Earth Days per 2 Stardates? Something like this?



That puts Siva and Bonhomme Richard in the first season, Keppler and Monoceros in the second season, the four replacements and Cochise between seasons 2 and 3, Doppler and Cygnus during Season 3, and Achernar and Federation during TAS, by my reckoning. Yes, that would be the way to do it, if you are bound and determined to have the Columbia and Revere and Entente all built and in service during TMP (yet reconcile that with the Enterprise being the only vessel in range)!

I still doubt such a rapid buildup is what FJ had in mind (esp. given his touted pacifism), and of course the early dates don’t work at all.

 

[yotsuya]

Hmm, I would have to play around with that. Something like 5 Earth Days per 2 Stardates? Something like this?



That puts Siva and Bonhomme Richard in the first season, Keppler and Monoceros in the second season, the four replacements and Cochise between seasons 2 and 3, Doppler and Cygnus during Season 3, and Achernar and Federation during TAS, by my reckoning. Yes, that would be the way to do it, if you are bound and determined to have the Columbia and Revere and Entente all built and in service during TMP (yet reconcile that with the Enterprise being the only vessel in range)!

I still doubt such a rapid buildup is what FJ had in mind (esp. given his touted pacifism), and of course the early dates don’t work at all.

I handle the latter by most of them being replacements and not all of them being built. I'm still struggling with the Dreadnaught. I wish they had not picked the last ship as the one in the TMP dialog. I limit it to 2 to 5 ships built with Entente being the first ship built by a different yard.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I had a little fun with converting the SFTM Dates to Earth Dates. FJ calls his dates Stardates but uses an idiosyncratic conversion rate where 20 SD = 1 Earth Year. He tips you off to this early in the book by setting the Romulan Treaty and the Organian Treaty roughly 2000 SD apart. Knowing this, you can calculate the exact date of any event. The only thing lacking is the years. I am complete agnostic regarding what years they should be, so I set up my spreadsheet in such a way that you can plug in your preferred year for the Organian Treaty (Errand of Mercy), and it will calibrate all the dates to that. So here are some examples:



Recalibrated for 2208

Recalibrated for 2267

Recalibrated for 2556

I think until you let these dates sink in, it is very easy to misunderstand the SFTM. For example, I often hear people say that in FJ’s version of the TOS era there are hundreds upon hundreds of ships. When in fact 3220 (accounting for the construction of the Defiant sometime after Season 1 and before Season 3) is the final date of the era. All the later dates must be considered an alternate timeline which was not followed in the movies/TNG.

The other one is that people claim that in FJ’s view, the Federation is brand spanking new at the time of TOS. When in fact in his view it predates the Romulan War.

It must be admitted that there are also dates in the 7000s, but these are of course “out-of-character” dates (eg., 7503.04 = I drew this sheet on March 4, 1975).

This is crazy and puts FJ's enormous ship numbers into perspective. The dreadnought wasn't to launch until the Picard-era!
And the Romulan War was fought with Constitution-class ships??

I've always thought Star Trek ships should last hundreds of years or more. NX-01 was retired after ten years even though "E2" showed she's spaceworthy after 150 years? I love the idea of ships lasting hundreds of years and having dozens of crews, something hinted at at the end of Undiscovered Country, "This ship, and her history, will shortly become care of another crew"

 

[Albertese]

I usually just plug the FJ dates into my own favored stardate scheme, which is that a single stardate is an 8 hour work shift on Earth. In space, stardates squeeze and stretch with local time dilation, but the point is that all ships everywhere have the same stardate, for coordinating ship actions and scheduling. A couple factors when I consider the FJ dates: his Romulan War date is either just wrong, or the stardate calendar just resets every ten years or so, so it's from an earlier cycle. This is not too far removed from the FASA convention of having a reference number preceding the date, like 3/1315.5, (though for FASA the stardate is a conversion of Gregorian dates, YYMM.DD, with the slash being century, so C/YYMM.DD. The dates of the FJ drawings are the same convention, 7405.20, being a drawing that Franz drew on May 20th, 1974. But since this is clearly not how it works in the show, I reject it.)

My other assumption is drawn form some of FJ's fan successors. In the Ship's of the Fleet books it is said that the ships listed in the TM were authorized for construction, but in practice, many of them weren't ever actually built.

I made an infographic several years ago where I visualized the FJ timeline and included dates from onscreen in TOS and it turns out that he doesn't actually contradict any line said on the show. I have it saved on my other computer somewhere, I'll have to go dig it up and repost it.

--Alex

 

[Dukhat]

This is crazy and puts FJ's enormous ship numbers into perspective. The dreadnought wasn't to launch until the Picard-era!
And the Romulan War was fought with Constitution-class ships??

Yeah, I'm confused. Did FJ actually think Connies were used in the Earth-Romulan war?

I've always thought Star Trek ships should last hundreds of years or more. NX-01 was retired after ten years even though "E2" showed she's spaceworthy after 150 years?

Well, that was the idiocy that was TATV.

 

[Falconer]

Yeah, I'm confused. Did FJ actually think Connies were used in the Earth-Romulan war?

Unknown. We can’t be sure how long the war was, or how long it took the Constitution-class ships to actually get built after authorization.

 

[Dukhat]

Unknown. We can’t be sure how long the war was, or how long it took the Constitution-class ships to actually get built after authorization.

The war was 100 years before "Balance of Terror," as was stated clearly in the episode. However, there was no canon on-screen date for Constitution class construction. But they couldn't possibly be the same ships that were used in the war, since Spock specifically states that "as you may recall from your histories, this conflict was fought by our standards today, with primitive atomic weapons and in primitive space vessels which allowed no quarter, no captives. Nor was there even ship-to-ship visual communication." None of which describes Constitution class vessels.

 

[Falconer]

Best to assume they took greater than 12 years to build and deploy to the border 4,750 parsecs away.