NX Class: Can we take the Daedalus class serious now?

[Timo]

You can substitute "Encyclopedia" with "canon Star Trek" and get pretty much the same track record.

...Of getting material to appear in "real", onscreen Trek? Nope: canon material always scores 100% on that, by definition.

OTOH, one can interchange the Encyclopedia and the "creativity" you deride, as both play the same role in making things appear onscreen. A certain low percentage of things made up for the Encyclopedia become canonical, just as a certain low percentage of things made up by the minds of assorted fans and employees eventually do. But only if they are liked, which remains the sole criterion for relevance or for ignoring.

Didn't Doug Drexler say on his blog that they wanted the NX-01 to look like the Daedalus, but he were told to base the design on the Akira instead?

That story seems to grow with each retelling... Drexler says TPTB wanted the Akira, yes (Drex Files June 13th 2009), but not in the same breath with saying that he would have preferred a Daedalus. Perhaps he said the Daedalus bit elsewhere, though?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Ok, so when did the Eugenics Wars take place? It's only one example of a messy timeline, where the newer canon doesn't take the older canon quite seriously. In fact, there are probably cases where the newer canon was more consistent with the Encyclopedia than with a long-forgotten bit from the earlier canon, since the writers were more likely to trust the Encyclopedia than to rewatch old episodes.

The fact is that the Encyclopedia, the TNGTM, the Chronology and the DS9TM (in part) all have a certain level of predictive power which is unmatched by other licensed sources. Most recently, Kirk's date of birth ended up onscreen in ST2009 and so would've Spock's if the scene hadn't been cut. Both of those dates are based upon Okuda's assumptions -- the 2267 setting of "The Deadly Years" and a mere guesstimate in Spock's case.

This is why such sources haven't been ignored during analysis in all these years, except where they cannot possibly be consistent with the canon.

 

[BillJ]

The NX refit is just as official as is the Daedalus design; which is to say, it isn't official at all.

Not to mention that it is an awkward, ugly bird.

 

[Captain Robert April]

^ And the tennis ball & beer can isn't?

 

[Timo]

Ok, so when did the Eugenics Wars take place? It's only one example of a messy timeline, where the newer canon doesn't take the older canon quite seriously.

...And a perfect example of the complete lack of worth of these reference books.

Kirk's date of birth ended up onscreen in ST2009 and so would've Spock's if the scene hadn't been cut.

Which goes to show that, unlike just about any previous Trek incarnation, the next JJ Abrams movie might well feature the Daedalus - but by precedent, she'd look as different from the Greg Jein model as the Phoenix did.

^ And the tennis ball & beer can isn't?

Or Jeffries' TOS flying saucer with dangling bits, for that matter.

Trek has an aesthetique of its own, sort of - or in fact several, as the Jeffries/Chang TOS was followed by early Probert TNG which was then expanded upon by Sternbach influences and is now Eaves country. There are ugly bits and pretty bits, and there's a vague sense of in-universe "trends" and "eras" thanks to the contributions of the various artists. I guess the problem with Daedalus is that there never was an "era" for her: Jeffries skipped that style when doing TOS, like he (thankfully) skipped his Jetsons style for auxiliary craft. To get the sphere-and-cylinder thing accepted, we'd need a whole new aesthetic era introduced, and ENT wasn't it. But that's what movies are for...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

IIRC, the Chronology gave Kirk's birth as March 22, 2233 in Riverside, Iowa. STXI gave Kirk's birthday as stardate 2233.04, which (according to Bob Orci, who co-wrote the thing) works out as January 4, 2233 in a shuttlecraft, in space.

Chekov's age was also changed by three years in order to fit him on the Enterprise bridge crew.

The Chronology was no more definitive in this case than it was in First Contact's or Enterprise's - it was used as a vague guideline, open to interpretation (which was the point of the thing, as stated in the intro!)

Dare I suggest that according to the Enterprise writers amd the presentation of "These Are The Voyages", the Romulan War may have never happened? And that in the cancelled movie Star Trek: The Beginning, the Earth/Romulan "war" was reduced from 4 years in deep space to a week-long battle against drone ships in Earth orbit?

 

[Timo]

STXI gave Kirk's birthday as stardate 2233.04, which (according to Bob Orci, who co-wrote the thing) works out as January 4, 2233 in a shuttlecraft, in space.

It doesn't make sense that ".04" would mean January 4. What would February 4 look like, then? ".14"? Where does that leave January 14 or January 24?

Anyway, the exact date isn't the issue, but the idea that Kirk would be born in 2233. That presupposes that "The Deadly Years" took place around 2267 - but that's not really an Okudaic, Chronology-only idea, but merely the most popular fan theory at the time of Chronology publication, "TOS = airdate plus 300 years".

Chekov's age was also changed by three years in order to fit him on the Enterprise bridge crew.

Or for no good reason. There's no story requirement for him being 17 in order to fit into the bridge crew. It's just that in this reality he's for some reason supposed to be a teen wunderkind, whereas in TOS he was supposed to be a twentysomething youth idol.

Dare I suggest that according to the Enterprise writers amd the presentation of "These Are The Voyages", the Romulan War may have never happened?

And that would only have contradicted the Chronology speculation; as per canon, the war might easily have taken place after "TAtV".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Skywalker]

STXI gave Kirk's birthday as stardate 2233.04, which (according to Bob Orci, who co-wrote the thing) works out as January 4, 2233 in a shuttlecraft, in space.

It doesn't make sense that ".04" would mean January 4. What would February 4 look like, then? ".14"? Where does that leave January 14 or January 24?

February 4, 2233 would be stardate 2233.35. January 14 would be 2233.14, and January 24 would be 2233.24. The nuTrek stardate is based on Earth's Gregorian calendar, with the first part being the year, and the second part being the day (01 through 365, or presumably 366 on a leap year).

It's actually the same exact system used in the Wing Commander video games back in the '90s.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The Orci/Kurtzman system has given us some useful hints about stardates. If we can have stardate 2233.04, why not stardate 22 March 2233? At the same time, T'Pol referenced a stardate in ENT which apparently had nothing to do with Earth. If so, how many different stardate systems are there and what are the criteria for the "stardate" designation? Can they be used at the same time, depending on where the ship travels?

 

[Captain Robert April]

The Orci/Kurtzman system was a complete waste of effort.

What the hell is the point in trying to impose some sort of order on what were, more or less, randomly selected numbers? It's doomed to failure no matter what you decide on.

The only option that wouldn't violate something would be to cite the stardate listed on the tombstone Gary Mitchell conjured up, but then, that would mean doing some actual research...

 

[Skywalker]

Meh, I prefer nuTrek's system; simple and easy to remember. Stardates always felt like they were random just for the sake of being random. They were fine when TPTB hadn't decided on the century in which Trek took place, but once it was determined that it was the 2200s, the random and meaningless numbers became exactly that.

 

[Captain Robert April]

So what do you do with the established stardates?

 

[Skywalker]

So what do you do with the established stardates?

Who cares? It's a new world. The old stardates don't matter anymore.

Anyway, we're kind of veering off topic.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The established stardates remain in the prime timeline. It is also possible that JJ stardates were used in the prime timeline before the divergence point, since Robau didn't have enough time to change over (of course, that's assuming the timelines _were_ identical before Nero, like the writers intended).

The system wasn't a waste of effort, because it allows us to create timelines more easily. If the next movie is set on stardate 2259.365 and the writers stick to Orci's explanation, we'll know it's December 31, 2259. This is obviously better than stardate 1234.5. Like Solo said, stardates lost their primary purpose as soon as TOS nailed down the time at 200-300 years in the future. Most of their use was probably in allowing writers to be inconsistent regarding dates and times.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Considering there were obviously different stardate systems in use in TOS (four random digits) compared to TNG (five digits supposedly based on thousand-day "space years"), I really don't see the problem.

You could say the UT in your TV has been updated. This is the simplest answer, and explains why the Jellyfish was launched on stardate 2387 instead of the TNG equivalent (stardate 64471.6, according to STO's timline). In other words, a retcon - which is what it really is.

Or you could say the STXI ones are a concurrent Earth-based system akin to FASA's old "reference stardate" system. Today's nuTrek stardate of 2011.01 would be 1/0101.01, for example

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Stardate 2387 need not be a retcon. The Jellyfish could've found a local time server over subspace radio and refreshed its stardate settings, so when talking to Spock, it would've used alternate reality stardates. We need more evidence.

Also, we don't know whether .01 = .1, since .01 to .365 would be a strange format as opposed to .1 to .365 or .001 to .365. The writers could've started out with a fraction of the year, which would be more consistent with stardates in previous Trek, and then decided to make it a day of the year after the fact, in order to simplify the system even further. As above, we need more information.

 

[USS Excelsior]

It would be better to just use the regular calendar instead of that stardate system. At least it pins down the day exactly and nothing to have to figure out.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

But then we wouldn't have learned that stardates can be as simple as 2259.365 and still earn the designation "stardate". That's useful in trying to explain them.

 

[USS Excelsior]

So it's 2011.02 today which is not only Earth centric but the Western calendar also.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The Gregorian calendar is already international. Also, I found this bit interesting.

Stardates have been Earth-centric since the beginning. The TOS writer's guide flat out says that within a particular script, one stardate unit should equal 24 hours with .5 indicating noon. Although this wasn't always followed through onscreen, Mike Okuda's people did try to ensure that stardates in Okudagrams matched the times of day stated next to them (see Donald Varley's logs in "Contagion", for example).