Well, to be fair Picard spells the word knife without the K, we all have our little problems.Very true.
This (or something like it), the "class of 78" doesn't have to be a reference to a year.
IS the okuda timeline canon?
- Thread starter sariel2005
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Riker was challenging the authenticity of Data's officer commission. It would be pretty natural for the android to point out that he has 77 witnesses to the commission being for real!
Or then Data graduated from the class of Seventy Eight, the famous great-grandson of Gary Eight.
Timo Saloniemi
Or then Data graduated from the class of Seventy Eight, the famous great-grandson of Gary Eight.
Timo Saloniemi
Indeed.
I don't need it rationalized. It's clearly a reference to the year, which was later retconned. That's good enough for me.
I'm not even convinced that TOS took place in the 23rd Century.
Thanks to the Great Bird of the Galaxy we have stardates instead of traditional calendar dates to refer to.
Nice "class of 78" speculations presented here, maybe there had been a class in 2178 that became famous because it had the best of the best students and eventually became a colloquialism for the best classes in Starfleet in the subsequent years.
Thus Data wasn't providing information regarding the actual year but only that he had been privileged to be in the best class, the "Class of 78"
Bob
Thinking about it a little more, I wonder if the answer is much simpler. Maybe in D.C. Fontana's mind, the show took place exactly 400 years in the future (2387, four hundred years after "Farpoint" was written). Class of '78 would make perfect sense in that case.
^Your neck of the woods needs some math teachers, because that's 9 years.... 
^Your neck of the woods needs some math teachers, because that's 9 years....
I'm glad you caught that because I sure in the hell wouldn't have!
To support your point, Riker's own rise to Commander was comparably short, perhaps shorter.
It's reassuring for me to see everyone here is as bad at math as I am.
And then he spent a couple of ice ages stuck at commander.
Tru dat! Peaked early, I guess.
Similar to how the warp drive worked, characters in TOS were promoted at the speed of plot. Geordi went up three ranks from Ensign to Lt. Commander in as many years (counting his backstory from the year before Season 1).
Peaked early, I guess.Similar to how the warp drive worked, characters in TOS were promoted at the speed of plot. Geordi went up three ranks from Ensign to Lt. Commander in as many years (counting his backstory from the year before Season 1).
Greg Cox addressed/fixed this onscreen discrepancy in his excellentnovel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (Book 3 of the "Khan trilogy"), in that the "fifteen years" figure mentioned by Khan in the film are actually fifteen Ceti Alpha V-years, not Earth-years.Both Kirk and Khan, humans of Earth, stated audibly in ST II / TWOK that they hadn't seen each other for 15 years. (IIRC there was still another reference in the longer version of the film).
Unfortunately these "15 years" were not reflected in the "Okuda Timeline" so the time figures of Kirk's era became debatable and unreliable.
At the time The Wrath of Khan was produced, the perception of ST's timeline was far more fluid and less-established than it became in later years, so that figure was valid at the time, but later onscreen dating referents in episodes of TNG contradicted this (one canonical source versus another canonical source).
Cox's fix was elegant and works amazingly well, and appears in a fantastic story, to boot.
"Onscreen discrepancy" ?!?
Kirk is also a citizen of Earth and hasn't seen Khan for "15 years" (and in the extended version, IIRC, Dr. Marcus makes another "15 years" reference).
Obviously Mr. Okuda didn't pay attention or didn't care, it's as simple as that, and therefore his job to properly work these 15 years into his timeline somehow, if he ever chooses to correct his mistake.
Bob
I have little doubt that Khan, who still considers himself to be the "king" of Earth, counted his days in exile (child's play with the help of his superior intellect) in solar days and solar years.
Also, Chekov didn't protest his "15 years" statement. Just this second an image popped up in my mind with Mr. Okuda taking Chekov's place and saying "Incorrect. It was only 12 years".
Khan: "Make that two [Ceti Eeels] for this character!"
And, for what it's worth, assuming they had intended 1.000 digits to equal one solar year, the difference between Stardate 3.143.3 ("Space Seed") and [1]8130.4 (ST II) is 14.99 years.
Bob
Also, Chekov didn't protest his "15 years" statement. Just this second an image popped up in my mind with Mr. Okuda taking Chekov's place and saying "Incorrect. It was only 12 years".
Khan: "Make that two [Ceti Eeels] for this character!"
And, for what it's worth, assuming they had intended 1.000 digits to equal one solar year, the difference between Stardate 3.143.3 ("Space Seed") and [1]8130.4 (ST II) is 14.99 years.
Bob
Stardates in ST:TMP don't follow such a pattern, nor do those in the later TOS movies. So it need not be worth much - but it may still have been intentional this rare once. Points for Meyer! 
Anyway, fifteen years is certainly a figure in the category of "possibly rounded up or down" - anything ending with 5 or 0 meets those criteria. In contrast, none of the dialogue references fall in the category of "characters would feel obligated to correct an inaccuracy".
Timo Saloniemi
Anyway, fifteen years is certainly a figure in the category of "possibly rounded up or down" - anything ending with 5 or 0 meets those criteria. In contrast, none of the dialogue references fall in the category of "characters would feel obligated to correct an inaccuracy".
Timo Saloniemi
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