Just had a thought - stardates in DSC?

[Kor]

I demand to hear "Captain's Log" voice-overs even when the Captain is stuck on some desolate planet or an enemy ship or in another dimension or time period without any equipment whatsoever and couldn't possibly even be making a Captain's Log recording at that moment.

Kor

 

[Tuskin38]

It was never a system. TOS stardates had nothing to do with modern Trek stardates, and the the modern formula for stardates was not more sophisticated than just using the real calendar.

So, fuck the old stardates.

That isn't what I meant. I didn't mean it was functional, I meant fans really didn't care.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I demand to hear "Captain's Log" voice-overs even when the Captain is stuck on some desolate planet or an enemy ship or in another dimension or time period without any equipment whatsoever and couldn't possibly even be making a Captain's Log recording at that moment.

Kor

It's all in the captain's imagination.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

^I always assumed that the random logs were recorded into the combadge. A bit of a black box for when they found your body on the desolate planet after the fact.

Anyway, I vote for the original 12 digit system that has two decimals (one after the first digit and one after the 8th) followed by a dash and a sequence of four letters. This is what Gene Roddenberry wanted in the original series, but was shot down by the censors because he would often use the four letters to spell out inappropriate words in Spanish.

This is absolutely true as long as there are no follow-up questions and one fails to research it.

 

[Kor]

^I always assumed that the random logs were recorded into the combadge. A bit of a black box for when they found your body on the desolate planet after the fact.

Anyway, I vote for the original 12 digit system that has two decimals (one after the first digit and one after the 8th) followed by a dash and a sequence of four letters. This is what Gene Roddenberry wanted in the original series, but was shot down by the censors because he would often use the four letters to spell out inappropriate words in Spanish.

This is absolutely true as long as there are no follow-up questions and one fails to research it.

I want to believe.

Kor

 

[Noname Given]

^I always assumed that the random logs were recorded into the combadge. A bit of a black box for when they found your body on the desolate planet after the fact.

^^^
Um, there were no commbadges in TOS - and oftentimes the Logs occurred when the Captain didn't have a Communicator with him.

 

[Mudd]

"The Man Trap" is the textbook example of Kirk recording logs in real time while including details that he would only learn later.

 

[Tuskin38]

didn't we see him speaking his log into the arm of his chair?

 

[Markonian]

Wasn't it intended that the logs are recorded after the events, but in a dramatic fashion?

 

[BillJ]

Plus "stardate" sounds like such a funky sciency-fictiony thing. It is Treklore.

If you wanted to sound like a futuristic space show in the 1960s, just add the prefix "star" or "space" to a word, and voilà!

Not sure we should be ashamed of "stardate". It is decidedly "Trek", it wouldn't feel the same without it. But, I don't care if they use the Abrams, TNG, or original version.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

^^^
Um, there were no commbadges in TOS - and oftentimes the Logs occurred when the Captain didn't have a Communicator with him.

This was my reasoning for if it happened in TNG... But we were talking about TOS... And I don't think they ever even did that in TNG so yeah, my reply was a mess lol.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

Wasn't it intended that the logs are recorded after the events, but in a dramatic fashion?

Sorry this makes too much sense to be true.

 

[Kevin Wolff]

didn't we see him speaking his log into the arm of his chair?

Early symptoms of Transporter Psychosis

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Wasn't it intended that the logs are recorded after the events, but in a dramatic fashion?

All of TOS was a holodeck re-creation being watched by Riker and Troi. The Captain's Logs were Kirk's recollections of events that were used to create the holo-simulation.

More seriously though, I see the logs as a plot device akin to the voice-over narration of the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. For people who are aware of that film, the film start's with William Holden's character (Joe Gillis) floating dead in a pool...but then we begin to hear a voice-over narration from Joe Gillis, recounting the story of how he died.

Granted, Kirk isn't dead when he is providing the voiceover narration of his log, but it's also true that he isn't recording his Log while we are seeing the Log events unfold, either -- but rather something akin to an omniscient narrator. In neither case, I don't think we are really supposed to take it at actual face value that (1) Dead guy Joe Gillis is really able to tell us why he's dead, and (2)when Kirk is busy fighting Gorns and stuff, he really isn't giving us a step by step recording of that fight.

It's just a plot device and shouldn't be taken so literally, just like people watching Sunset Boulevard should not stress too much over "how is the dead guy telling us the story?

 

[USS Triumphant]

That said, the Vulcans seemed to be the defacto leader of the pre-human Federation (i.e., they were looked upon as a strong leadership voice), and I would think if this were real (and, yeah -- I know it isn't real, but humor me anyway) that Vulcan would become the Federation standard language.

I can see your reasoning, but, two things:
1. I don't know that anyone ever really looked at the Vulcans as a strong leadership voice. Humanity resented them, the Andorians were close to war with them, etc.
2. Even allowing that, perhaps the other languages of the founding worlds of the Federation (including Vulcan) were just too rigid to adapt to the needs of communicating between the races - while English is well known as the language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. Only in English can you wear your khakis while bringing your glitching, berserk robot to a repair kiosk. (There are "stolen" words from at least six languages in that last sentence.) That might still be true in the Federation, and only in English can you properly express what a total khest'n Herbert that Kolinahr initiate you ran into at the tranya shop was.

 

[mattman8907]

I say do what enterprise did, use the actual Gregorian calendar dates and years. Cause supposedly the Discovery first novel Desperate Hours takes place on May 11-12, 2255. either that or use the Kelvin Stardates with the year (22xx and the number that date corresponds with. I.e. .05 would be January 5).

 

[Tuskin38]

The novels have usually used a combination of Stardate and real date, that is nothing new.

 

[Timo]

For the same reason they didn't use it in the Abrams movies: Because they're trying to get the casual audience interested in Star Trek, and you don't do that by spouting nonsense numbers that no one but hardcore Trekkies can translate into dates.

This I don't get at all. If the idea is to get the casual audience interested, why do Star Trek at all, if Star Trek detail is interpreted as a burden? If the idea in turn is to get the casual audience interested in Star Trek, then obviously Star Trek detail cannot be interpreted as a burden, because Star Trek is just generic scifi with the Star Trek detail added.

A dating system the audience can "understand" doesn't appear crucial - who'd care about the current date anyway? Even in the Abrams movies, it was there merely to suggest connectivity with Star Trek and its (as such utterly irrelevant) supposed year of taking place.

They're doing phasers and transporters and pointed ears. Why change anything at all, except for those things that have been changed before with no ill effect, chiefly visual appearance? They've done spinoff after spinoff without major change, and if the ratings fell, their response wasn't to innovate - it always was to do even more similar things, to go even farther back to the roots.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kelso]

I don't think most people are going to care one way or another if it's stardate 2256.02 or 1076.5 or June 17, 2256.

 

[Timo]

...OTOH, the percentage of people who do get a kick out of hearing "stardate" and go "Ooh, that's Star Trek, cool!" is probably a bit higher. And that is the one desired effect of using stardates, there really being few others and none that would count.

Unless DSC does complex flashback stories where timing really counts, that is. And while Trek has seldom done such stories before, using explicit "two days ago" and "meanwhile" cues is always possible and indeed occasionally done.

Timo Saloniemi