For TOS, yes, production order makes more sense.
SFTM Stardates
- Thread starter Falconer
- Start date
For TOS, yes, production order makes more sense.
I have no issues with 1,000 StarDate units per StarYear. I do take issue with the Kelvin Version being the Gregorian Year. The Kelvin version is just lazy with zero effort of imagination. At least some thought was put into 1 StarYear = 1,000 StarDate.
When the UFP formed, I would assume that there wouldn't be a perfect method of Standard Measurements since each of the 4 founding member species must have their respective Time & Measurement Standard Bureau meet and cooperate on a common unit that would be used UFP wide as a common medium and a system that is amenable to adjustment should it not work out in the future.
Since Time Systems are mostly computerized in the modern era and are generally programmable, it should be easy to update the standardized "StarDate" and "StarTime" that goes along with it. I believe that in TOS it was it's own version and somewhere between TOS and TNG, DS9, VOY was a "StarDate&Time" version update due to various discussions within the UFP for wanting it to change for logical purposes. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets changed again in the future to make more sense then what the Writing Staff created during TNG, DS9, VOY era.
The 1,000 StarDay Unit = 1 Star Year makes ALOT of sense if you account for the fact that the "Metric System" is generally what StarFleet / UFP uses. The 1 : 1,000 ratio is a common theme in the Metric System for Unit Scaling. The UFP StarFleet came out of United Earth's StarFleet and merged & took over the equivalent of Andor, Vulcan, and Tellerite's Defensive & Explorative Organizations. In the UFP sense, every further species that joined also contributed their forces into StarFleet as part of tradition and requirements to become part of the UFP. That also means using the "Metric System" as a easy to learn and common form of Time & Measurements.
StarDate could be derived out of "Metric Time" for ease of learning for every member species that joins.
Since Jonathon Archer along with Humans were a key player in the founding of the "Coalition of Planets" that eventually got renamed and reorganized into the UFP, I wouldn't be surprised that some things would be "Earth Centric".
StarFleet operates on mostly a Earth / US Military like principle of organization. And we humans mostly use Metric with a few hold outs that probably won't change in the future. Yes, we Americans in the good ole USA will not have changed, even in the future, but it gives the rest of the world a easy way of dealing with a foreign Time, Date, and Measurement Unit difference. By the time that UFP is in full swing, the "Metric System" will be the common system taught alongside any local units in every member species. In the US, we are taught to observe both US Customary Units & Metric Units. The same can be done with all member species.
1 Star Year = 1,000 StarDay Units isn't such a bad idea for a consistent scheme based on Metric Time & Date.
1 Star Year = 1 Average Gregorian Year = 365.2425 Days = 8765.82 Earth Hours
From there you can do the rest of the Derivations that I've already did.
TNG Era StarDate Formatting = XXYYY.Z
XX = Year approximately matching the Gregorian year
YYY = Day of the Year Span ranging from 0 to 999
Z = Time of Day 24 Hr Earth time converted to a range of 0.??? - 1.00
One of several StarDate's from the shows:
2346 = 23859.7 = TNG: "Sins of the Father"
2355 = 40217.3 = TNG: "The Battle"
2363 = 40759.5 = Dedication plaque of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)
2364 = 41153.7 = TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"
2378/04-05 = 54868.6 = VOY: "Homestead"
2379 = 56844.9 = Star Trek Nemesis
Beyond being used "Inconsistently" in terms of Star Year matching real world Production Year Offset, the starting point of Year 0 makes no sense. There was nothing special to mark the start of Year 0.
What I take more issue with is the "Start Date" for their Star Year Unit. If you're going to have a "Year 0", I think it should be based on the founding of the "Coalition of Planets" since that organization is a direct Pre-Cursor to the UFP.
Our AD system (Anno-Domini) is based on the Birth of Christ due to the impact it has on the rest of Earth's history and as a species.
But if you're going to create a new StarDate system, I would rather have Year 0 be based on the founding of the "Coalition of Planets" since it's a critical part of UFP history and will have radical influences on all member species going forward as they become part of the UFP system.
This is why in my Head Cannon for my 26th Century Writers Technical manual, I have a updated version of StarDate & Time.
We'd be on Version 5.0 by my time.
Version 1 = Founding of UFP (ST:ENT)
Version 2 = TOS
Version 3 = TNG, DS9, VOY era
Version 4 = My modified TNG formatting with XXYYY.Z -> XX/YYY¦Z for better readibility to the average UFP citizen.
Version 5 = V4 with a reset of time scale for starting time and improvements to the formating.
±S.Y/SDU¦STU = (±Star Year / Star Day Unit ¦ Star Time Unit)
1 ISO Star Year = 1 Average Gregorian Year = 365.2425 Days = 8765.82 Earth Hours
1 ISO Star Year = 1000 Star Days = 8765.82 Earth Hours;
1 Star Day Unit = 1000 STU (Star Time Units)
1 Star Day = 8.76582 Earth Hrs = 525.9492 Earth Mins = 31556.952 Earth Secs = 8 Hrs, 45 Mins, 56.952 Secs
1 STU (Star Time Units) = 31.556952 Earth Seconds
Official Earth time format: YYYY/MM-DD DotW HH:MM;SS.MSS TZ
StarDate Version 5.0 starting point StarYear 0 is on the Earth Date =
2155/03-05 Wed 00:00;00.0 PST = Founding of Coalition of Planets
Star Year has +/- with
+ = After Federation: After the UFP was formed/founded
- = Before Federation: Before the UFP was formed/founded
Star Time Unit can be split into Deci-STU, Centi-STU, Milli-STU, etc via SI Prefixes
1 Deci_-STU = 3.1556952 Earth Seconds
1 Centi-STU = 0.31556952 Earth Seconds (Around 1/3 of a second) <- Most Displays only use up to this level
1 Milli-STU = 0.031556952 Earth Seconds (Around 1/33 of a second) <- Too much info, moves by too fast, not very practical for everyday life, ergo hidden to the average UFP user.
Earth Date Starting Point of the Story in my Head Cannon = 2501/01-01 Sat 00:00;00.0 GMT
2501/01-01 Sat 00:00;00.0 GMT = Start of the 26th century on Earth.
+345 / 826 ¦ 847 = 2501/01-01 Sat 00:00;00.0 GMT
But overall, since this show is for us "Humans", and StarFleet along with the UFP has been relatively Earth Centric due to the founding of the "Coalition of Planets", and later the re-organizing itself into the "UFP"; there fore Earth would have a very deep influence on the construction of "StarDate & Time" makes a lot of logical sense IMO.
Heck, in StarFleet, they mostly operate around our human 24 hour cycle taken from Earth Time =D.
I think it's ok to have some things be Human Centric for a show about Humans co-existing with Aliens in a greater Nation State like organization such as the UFP.
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"StarYear," sure. The problem is the assumption that it's exactly the same length as an Earth year. Why even call it "star"-whatever if it's 100% Earth-based? That's stupid. Words are supposed to mean things. If it's a system you can use on Earth, then it's not a stardate, it's just a date.
It's not even a perfect earth year since I'm accounting for the average Gregorian Year factoring in Leap Year. That being said, you gotta start some where, and I choose to base it off of Earth since I'm human and I support Humanity Spreading it's ways across the stars.
Despite whatever you may feel about Jonathon Archer, he is a key figure in UFP / StarFleet history along with Humanity.
So having the StarYear be based somewhat around the Earth Year isn't that big of a deal IMO since this show is made for "Humans". =D
What would the length your StarYear be in duration of time Christopher?
Some Planetoids can have absurdly long durations to complete a orbital cycle around a star.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna
This little Planetoid takes ~ 11,400 years to complete orbit.
Or are you going to go the other direction and pick a length of time that is shorter than our year?
Some Planetoids can have absurdly long durations to complete a orbital cycle around a star.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna
This little Planetoid takes ~ 11,400 years to complete orbit.
Or are you going to go the other direction and pick a length of time that is shorter than our year?
And I find that both ethnocentric and unimaginative. Science fiction is supposed to be about imagining and embracing the new and unfamiliar, not just clinging to what you already know. The word "stardate" implies some futuristic calendar system that hasn't been invented yet, that's designed specifically for use by an interstellar civilization and isn't bound to anything planetary. The fact that later Trek creators failed to live up to that creative challenge and just settled for the lazy rehashing of familiar Earth dates is disappointing.
I'm not even sure there would be such a thing as a "star year." Correctly used, the term "year" refers to the sidereal revolutionary period of a given planet, the length of time it takes to complete one revolution around its star. It would be technically incorrect, or at best figurative, to use the same terminology for an interstellar timekeeping system independent of planetary movement.
Of course, you could devise a calendar with a subdivision on the same order of magnitude as a typical planetary year and call it a "year" for convenience, but the implication is that stardates don't have any such subdivision, because they're only given as single numbers without any separation into different units. Also, the idea that there is such a thing as a "typical planetary year" has fallen by the wayside, now that we've discovered so many red-dwarf exoplanets in such tight orbits that their "years" are mere days or weeks in length. This is another reason why it doesn't make sense to base an interstellar civilization's timekeeping system on any one planet's cycles -- because they vary so drastically from system to system, even if you limit it to habitable-zone planets.
As I suggested before, one good option for a "star"-based calendar is to base it on the periods of the pulsars in this region of space. Get the founding members of your interstellar community to agree on a set of baseline "time beacon" pulsars and base your calendar on multiples of their periods. The problem there is that pulsars slow down over time, of course, but then so does the Earth's rotation, so it's something that could be recalculated for.
If you wanted something more universal, you could define your time units based on physical constants, like the time it takes light to travel a certain distance.
No, what we know from Alcubierre's work is that his particular "warp drive" spacetime metric would not be time-dilated. His discovery does not imply a general result concerning time-dilation or a lack thereof with respect to any metric that enables FTL travel.
I don’t know, if you think about it, when nations form unions, they don’t invent new “universal” dating systems, just like they don’t invent new “universal” languages. They pick a standard or multiple standards from the members’ existing ones, and they just figure out ever-better better and better at translating/converting them.
I think Stardate is just Starfleet’s “Unix Timestamp”. I think it’s based on earth time measurements simply because (based on what we see in the show) Starfleet is de facto a human institution.
On Earth, sure, but that's because every nation lives on the same planet with the same length of its day and year. It doesn't follow that the same would apply for an interstellar alliance where every member planet's day and year length are different -- where the member species have even evolved to adapt to different diurnal cycles, so that the differences are intrinsic to their biology. Earthbound analogies and precedents can't be trusted in an off-Earth setting, because there are circumstances there that nobody on Earth has ever experienced.
And to me, that is the fun of science fiction -- the opportunity to imagine things that have never been done before, to envision the solutions people might devise for problems that have never been faced before. When people just fall back on the ordinary and familiar, when they settle for writing space stories as if things worked exactly the same way they did on Earth, that's just a waste of potential. It's not even trying.
Again -- if it's just Earth dates, then it is stupidly pretentious to call it a stardate. That's what I object to, the reduction of the "star-" part to a meaningless sound. It's like the sci-fi cliche of putting "space" in front of everything. Let me get my space wallet so we can take the space bus to the space diner and have space burgers! In space!
Federation Council Meeting (Paris, France, Earth):
Federation President: First order of business, establishing a standard Federation time keeping system.
Vulcan Ambassador: Since the United Federation of Planets is located on Earth with 90% of its members human, and one Earth year makes for fair period of time distinction, I propose that one Earth year is 1000 Stardates. It should start on the next anniversary of United Earth Starfleet taking over space command of the UFP space assets.
Federation President: All those approve. (counts hands) Motion carries. Next order of business.
It's not about whether it can be rationalized. Even the worst ideas in fiction can be explained away with a little creativity. But that doesn't make them good ideas to begin with. What a terrible waste to imagine going out into space, into that infinite realm of possibilities, and just want everything to be exactly like it was on boring old Earth! Whatever happened to exploring the strange and seeking out the new?
I don't disagree with you about the exploration aspect. But time keeping from a human perspective needs to be consistent and relatable. As a human being watching the show, I'd want that to be somewhat relatable.
The fact that we're not using 1 StarYear = 365 StarDays but instead having 1 StarYear = 1,000 StarDays is already a very drastic departure from normality in the way we split one StarYear up.
Star Days being equivalent to a variant of Metric Day & Star Time being based off a variant of Metric Time is already a very alien concept to most of us humans and it'd be alien to all the founding aliens that join.
Just letting us humans have 1 ISO Star Year = 1 Average Gregorian Year = 365.2425 Days is a nice allowance for the viewers on relatability. It's not a perfect Whole Number, but it's good enough.
I agree with @KamenRiderBlade. Plus, the humans in ST exploring the galaxy at warp aren't that far removed from those that live on planets in the Federation. They don't generally spend their lives exploring the galaxy. They typically do it for years or decades at most, and spend the rest of their lives living with everybody else, generally on class M planets. It's believable that such people would retain habits closely aligned with the planet-bound populace.
First off, we're talking about something that theoretically is a multispecies society, so ideally it shouldn't be strictly "from a human perspective."
Second, the entire reason stardates were invented was to convey no actual chronological information of any kind, because Roddenberry didn't want to pin down the time frame too exactly. So it doesn't matter if it's relatable, since it isn't supposed to mean anything at all. The only thing stardates were originally meant to convey was a vague sense of some futuristic, exotic timekeeping system unknown to us. This is what science fiction is supposed to do -- to create an impression of the new and unknown. When you impose familiar, everyday structures and assumptions on it, that domesticates it too much.
On the contrary, the later shows have made it very clear that days are still defined as 24 hours (except on Bajor, where they're 26) and years are still consistent with the Gregorian calendar. And nobody onscreen has ever said that 1.0 stardate units constitutes a "day" -- that is an arbitrary premise that you are projecting onto it.
It’s not arbitrary, it is in the Writer’s Guide. At least within an episode, time passes at that rate.
I guess we'll have to disagree on this specific subject matter.
Except in Gamesters Of Triskellion where Enterprise logs go from 3211.7 to 3259.2 and which represents a time period of 2 hours, according to onscreen dialogue.
Or did Kirk forget to wind his star-clock that morning?
Writers' guides are just suggestions and story seeds. They're meant to be a starting point for writers' imaginations, not a limit on them. Lots of things in writers' guides get ignored in actual episodes. TNG's first writers' guide said that Data's name rhymed with "that-a," that he was built by aliens, and that Riker was prejudiced against him. And Geordi was the liaison with the ship's children. And Picard secretly had the hots for Tasha Yar.
Things like writers' guides and scripts and such -- they're just the raw materials. They get fed into the machinery of production and get processed, altered, remixed, and sometimes thrown out wholly or in part. All that counts in the final work is the final work.
This is one of my rule 10 violations:
Rule 10 If there is no explanation for something that doesn't fit, assume it is a script error and move along.
I suspect you'd find far more episodes that violate that "rule" from the writers' guide than episodes that follow it. Stardates were never supposed to convey any meaningful information, so I doubt a lot of effort was put into keeping them consistent.
Heck, most TV shows and movies don't even bother to depict seconds consistently. How many times, in Trek and elsewhere, have you heard characters count down the "seconds" but draw it out so that the numbers were far more than a second apart? How many times has a countdown taken five minutes of real time to decrease by 30 seconds? Heck, in ST V, they said it would take over 8 hours to get to the center of the galaxy, but it took less than 20 minutes of continuous story time with essentially no room for a gap. TV and movies are terrible at timekeeping even when it's regular time units, because the priorities of drama and editing and pacing are more important and they know most viewers won't bother to time things. So I doubt they'd put any more care into stardates.
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