Production Order vs. Airing Order

The character and episode style progression is still noticeable in production order (even if more subtle after mid season one)

 

How did you cope then with the BBC screening The Alternative Factor next to Turnabout Intruder then, Mytan, on the BBC?
JB

 

I was a young Trekkie then. My primary sci-fi interest was still Doctor Who

 

I'm about to start a watch through using star date ordering. This will be a data collection and survey mission; so it will take me three times as long, but that just means three times the fun.

 

I'm doing the same, but spending most of my time digging into the transcripts, but there are a couple of errors which need to be cleared up by watching the scenes. What are we seeing when we watch an episode? I think Roddenberry said something like it is a production of events based on the official mission reports. My rules:

1. Stardates start at 1000, and 1000 stardates = one Earth year or 365.25 days or 8766 hours; or 2.7 stardates = 1 day; (This actually works.)
2. Scene or actor delivered stardates are actual stardates of the event and cannot be changed;
3. Log entries are always spoken in the present tense narrative;
4. "Log" entries can be minutes, hours, days, weeks, months after actual events as-recorded in the ship's records during the episode or as-edited in the mission report after the event;
5. I try to assume the least amount of time of log entries (report while still fresh in memory) but you can also assume any length of time prior to the inserted log stardates, even several months on rare occasion.
6. If you assume Charlie X is on the stardate given, then it is Thanksgiving. I assume stardate 1535 is 11/23/2265, so, now you can date all events such as stardate 1000 is 5/11/2265. Or it could be anytime before the given stardate making the real date anything you want.
7. Using just the unadjusted stardates, it is better to sort the episodes by finish stardates, but this is only a minor issue versus start stardates;
8. Episode durations and time between episodes must be estimated based on episode dialog or action; as a rule of thumb, one to two weeks (20-40 stardates) should be allowed between episodes, but only a day or two is sufficient to travel several star systems if they are in a hurry like answering a distress call (speed of plot can be very fast);
9. Several unknown stardate episodes must be estimated; as a rule of thumb, try to stick to production order if possible, i.e. put episode 54 as close to 53 or 55 as possible;
10. I put in time to complete the unaired parts of each mission (deliver x to y) or for repairs, set changes and starbase visits; serious ship repairs can take one or two weeks; upgrades maybe longer.
11. Have fun.

 

Not always. In the early first season, often the opening log entry was in the past tense, like an after-action report, but later act-opening entries were in the present tense. After a while, they abandoned that and just did present tense -- except for that odd bit of narration late in "Court Martial."

 

Interesting. I hadn't thought about past or present tense for log entries.

The 1000 stardates per year does seem very convenient. However it definitely doesn't work in terms of the movies. The movies completely screw us over. Because using the star date related to hours in TMP we end up with Kirk's five year mission being stretched out over 15 years. Also, the video log that Kirk reviews in STIII places Spock's death prior to the start of TWK. So there's that.

 

A particularly important point The last time I did stardate order, I found it fascinating

 

TMP's stardates aren't even internally consistent. I can't find where I had it written down, but with the various log entries' stardates and the stated time intervals between them, there's a huge discrepancy from one pair of entries to the next.

 

That's why I start and stop with TOS only.

 

My biggest complaint against the original-cast films isn't the age or hammy-ness or rustiness of various actors, but rather the lack of care, the lack of respect for consistency, that was baked into most of the scripts, and the Enterprise interiors. The films are often enjoyable, but they were made by people who didn't think we'd notice anything, and so they took an approach of "anything goes."

 

First season TNG would be a very hard thing to calculate or explain to yourself and others!
JB