Star Trek Books and Comics Timeline-ing Discussion

[Desert Kris]

Understand, my view of the 1980s continuity is somewhat different from the current litverse, but I have not gotten to the point of organizing it as such. In this admittedly undeveloped view, the Gold Keys would probably fit within the 1980s continuity....a separate universe, a different thread of space time than Prime.
Sounds like a project I might get to soon.

I'm curious to learn more about your take on the 1980's continuity. This is the focus of my ST lit reading, immersion into the accumulated continuity details of TOS, before being redefined by later shows. I for myself personally, based only on brief glances through some Gold Key material (haven't read yet, but plan to) it seems a little disconnected from the start. None of the 80's novels I've read have called the transporter room the teleport chamber. I'm receptive to any alternative visual depictions of the Enterprise's interior spaces, rooms that where never seen, ect. My default Enterprise interior and exterior is the movie Enterprise, or TOS/Movie hybrid (it manifests fluidly in my mind's eye).

For instance, a number of the '80s-continuity novels (most explicitly The Final Reflection and First Frontier) were based on the Spaceflight Chronology timeline which put TOS in the first decade of the 2200s, about 60 years earlier than it's now understood to occur.

For fun, I flip through it and regard it as a loose, inspirational guide/sourcebook for the 80's novels I've read so far and will continue to read. It really paid off after a re-read of The Final Reflection; I went back and forth between that novel and the SFC, hyper-focused on a modest little entry of a Babel conference...where things got a little crazy.

I think I need to pick up a copy of the Space Flight Chronology.

I recommend it, as a look at an alternative version of ST history.

I’ve been slowly reading through it for the past year or so. It’s interesting in that the 60 ‘missing’ years seem to be partly explained by the fact that in that version of history, there was no WWIII.

Seems like a good book to have onhand to do an in depth look at the 80s continuity, like you were talking about above.

It very much enhanced my enjoyment of The Final Reflection, and Reflection amplified my enthusiam for the Chronology book. I wish I could do my read through in-depth, but I haven't got it in me. I'm enjoying them in a casual capacity, though. I mostly flip through and reference, and dip in and out of the Chronology, rather than a straight read through.

I've considered starting a thread specifically for reading through the 80's novel continuity, for myself and others who are curious to explore it as it's own (somewhat fluid) continuity. With links to the topic threads that inspired me, credit where credit is due.

 

[ryan123450]

Sounds like a great idea, @Desert Kris. So are you interested in the little chronological details like some of the others of us in this thread? Do you have your own timeline?

 

[Desert Kris]

Sounds like a great idea, @Desert Kris. So are you interested in the little chronological details like some of the others of us in this thread? Do you have your own timeline?

Thanks for the positive encouragement, and sorry if my post is a little off topic. As I read stuff, I sometimes formulate ideas where events and situations might happen in a different context, and different chronological progression suggest themselves.

Looking specifically at the DC Volume 1 series, and applying the Dragnet idea to it, alternative placements occurred (although while reading the individual comics I'll take them at face value, and give the series room to occupy it's own narrative space). The opening story and it's introduction of major recurring characters, I think these might have a different place in a timeline: right after The Voyage Home, before ST V. There's a major conflict with the Klingons, helped along by their anger over the Genesis project. Konom and Nancy's relationship helps Kirk deal with his anger towards Klingons and Kruge's role in killing his son. I feel like there's a version of The Undiscovered Country story where Kirk doesn't say horrible things at the beginning; and towards the end when Azetbur says, "You've restored my father's faith" Kirk says, "Your welcome" because he's a wise old warrior who learned from having met a Klingon who gave him a different perspective.

There's another individual story from the same series where McCoy deals with his feelings after the death of Spock. In spirit it's that moment of acceptance in the grieving process, even though that issue is set after Spock has been resurrected. I think there's a "real" version of this story that happened maybe on the way to pick up Reliant's survivors after the events of The Wrath of Khan.

For the 80's novels, Christopher Bennett outlined this amazing chronology for ordering the novels in The Continuity of Days Gone By. On revisiting it I was surprised and pleased to see that you started that thread; this is what got me started reading through so many books I wouldn't have known to look at before. My thanks to you and Christopher, and others who contributed to that thread. The chronology Christopher Bennett outline has great rational for the placement of many of the books, and I default to that for an overall picture (outside of the moment when I'm actually reading an individual novel).

Christopher Bennett mentioned that some authors assume a 5YM after the events of TMP, but what really boggled my mind is that some authors thought there might have been another 5YM before TMP, and wrote their book with that assumption in mind. I like the idea that the Enterprise was captained by Kirk during a full 5YM, but also a year or two before, and maybe as much as 4 more years after that mission ended. I think of many of the 80's books I've read as after the 5YM.

I'm terrible at working out specific dates, in terms of what year something is supposed to happen; my arithmetic is always off. Trying to place first contact with the Klingons in The Final Reflection has lead me to 2154 that it could have happened. When I looked at the SFC again, I found that it place in 2151. At one point I confused about if that was the date for Klingon first contact, or the Babel conference Krenn takes action at. If I have to outline a chronology, it would have to be by place events and situations; it'll be a mess if I start mucking around with specific years, sadly.

Christopher Bennetts notes in The Continuity of Days Gone coupled with my own reading draws attention to how the coming and going of security chiefs can help guide placement of a story. He uses the rank status of Chekov, Sulu and Uhura to help as well, which puts the Entropy Effect near the end of Kirk's original tour as captain of the Enterprise; but it also means that Ingrit Tomson is security chief for a while, is assigned elsewhere for a short stretch to accomodate Mandala Flynn, and then we see Ingrit Tomson return for the Enterprise's final days under Kirk. It makes sense that Mandala Flynn was only there for a short time, she's explicitly made out to be highly ambitious. I don't keep track of rankings, though; but I'm not keen on a major falling out that sees one of Kirk's command crew demoted (although this might explain how Sulu doesn't become a captain as quickly as his friend Mandala Flynn does). That would be something major to be revealed this late in the game, though; I'm not keen on Sulu's career path being guided by the vagaries of discontinuity artifacts.

So for now, Christopher Bennett's proposed timeline guides my overall thinking. When I read an individual novel I would look for if the author wants their story to be during a 5YM before TMP or during a 5YM after TMP. There's some vagueness about placement with many of these stories. I tried jotting down some ranges for which years these 5YM occur during.

To answer your question more directly, the long way around, I do play with the timeline sorting game. But I'm not super great at it. Christopher Bennett's timeline is a useful short cut for me, and his work on it has not been in vain; I've had a lot of fun reading many books he included on it.

 

[lawman]

Interesting perspective. I can see how an "alternative" context might cast some of these stories in a different light.

For my own part, I tend to take them somewhat closer to face value (although not entirely; that's sometimes impossible in terms of both story elements and chronological references)... if only because doing otherwise would open all kinds of additional ambiguities in the timeline.

Here's a question for whoever wants to address it: assuming for the sake of argument that you include the DC Comics series in your headcanon, how much time do you allow for its storylines, in particular between STII and STIII, and again between STIII and STIV?

 

[Christopher]

Here's a question for whoever wants to address it: assuming for the sake of argument that you include the DC Comics series in your headcanon, how much time do you allow for its storylines, in particular between STII and STIII, and again between STIII and STIV?

That's something I've given some thought in the past. The problem with inserting a large span of time between TWOK and TSFS is that Genesis-clone Spock matures quite quickly. Even allowing for the fact that the acceleration of life processes on Genesis is exponential, starting out slow and getting faster, it seems a bit excessive to assume that months passed between Spock's body landing on Genesis and regenerating to the size of a 7-year-old, given that the rest of his maturation took place within a couple of days.

However, at the end of the "New Frontiers" arc (aka The Mirror Universe Saga), Kirk says that he's been serving with the former Enterprise crew for "these few, too-short, months." That covers the wormhole space/Klingon war arc, "Mortal Gods" (which seems to be at least a few weeks after the war), "Who is... Enigma?" (which is during postwar peace talks), "Saavik's Story," TSFS, and the MU Saga. I could see issues 1-8 covering as little as 6 weeks, if we gloss over travel times, but Kirk's "these few... months" makes it longer, since "few" generally means at least 3, and the MU Saga doesn't appear to take more than a couple of weeks at most.

Now, counting the MU Saga, there are 15 distinct stories taking place between TSFS and TVH, so if we assume roughly one week per story, we're probably talking a minimum of 4 months, possibly longer. And that's before the 3-month exile on Vulcan.

 

[Leto_II]

Here's a question for whoever wants to address it: assuming for the sake of argument that you include the DC Comics series in your headcanon, how much time do you allow for its storylines, in particular between STII and STIII, and again between STIII and STIV?

In my personal continuity, I generally tend to accept that the first eight issues or so of DC Comics Vol. 1 happened in broad terms, since there are a few things in them that are...somewhat incompatible...with the modern continuity, perhaps most strongly the warlike Excalbians (which contradict Tony Daniel's Savage Trade) and also the visual appearance of Kor (possessing the ridged ST:TMP-style forehead, which goes against the Albino's retrovirus cure in 2290). So basically perhaps the overall events still happened mostly as the comics say, but the artist's visual depiction of those events can be disregarded as a form of "creative/storytelling license," or something similar.

As far as precise datings go, since there are simply so many modern Litverse works and others that accept and use the "March, 2285" dating of The Wrath of Khan (March 22nd is Kirk's birthday in the opening scene of the film, and presumably several more days elapse afterwards), I go with it, but then you subsequently have quite a large number of recent sources that place The Voyage Home in very early 2286 (including JJM's Prey: Hell's Heart and Dayton's Elusive Salvation), which suddenly means that there's a nearly-seven-month-long gap in between the second and third movies.

However, if you have the general, broad events of the first eight issues of DC TOS Vol. 1 taking place down that middle-lane? Perfect. And as has been noted in here previously by others, in the opening scenes of TSFS, the Enterprise starship model is clearly even more visually battle-damaged than it was at the end of TWOK, which can now be explained away in-universe by what happens in DC TOS #1-8 (the Enterprise engages a group of Klingon battlecruisers, getting even more kitbashed, etc.).

On a related note, the prelude of Prey: Hell's Heart is set in 2286, and just “weeks” after the death of Klingon Commander Kruge at the Genesis Planet, which points to a very early 2286 timeline-placement, though we're probably also substituting "weeks" for "months" in the case of Kruge's demise, since it'd likely be somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-9 weeks afterwards, probably in January, 2286, assuming that the events of Star Trek III take place in October, 2285.

And finally, it's in Margaret Wander Bonanno's Unspoken Truth that we have established that the Federation Council trial-scene at the very end of The Voyage Home (and the launching of the new Enterprise-A) took place an entire month after the crashlanding of the H.M.S. Bounty in San Francisco Bay. Both are established as having happened in 2286 in the novel, so probably February and January, respectively.

 

[Christopher]

In my personal continuity, I generally tend to accept that the first eight issues or so of DC Comics Vol. 1 happened in broad terms, since there are a few things in them that are...somewhat incompatible...with the modern continuity, perhaps most strongly the warlike Excalbians (which contradict Tony Daniel's Savage Trade) and also the visual appearance of Kor (possessing the ridged ST:TMP-style forehead, which goes against the Albino's retrovirus cure in 2290).

Koloth too, in issues 1-2. There's also the fact that Koloth dies in issue #2. One fix I considered was that maybe it was a different guy with the same name.

My problem with the story was the whole idea of "wormhole space" as some sort of parallel dimension where you could hide a space station. That's not how wormholes work, though I guess I can't blame Mike Barr for not knowing that in 1984, since wormholes were a fairly obscure concept until Carl Sagan's Contact came out in '85, and TMP didn't really take the time to explain just what being sucked into a wormhole meant.

I also don't agree with the idea that the Organians had to be neutralized before there could be a UFP-Klingon war. Fans often assume the Organians were activists, constantly keeping watch and intervening at the first sign of conflict, but "Errand of Mercy" made a point of establishing that the Organians hated interacting with corporeal beings and only got involved in order to get the noisy kids off their lawn. Since shows back then had minimal continuity, Gene Coon had to build in an explanation for why the Organians wouldn't ever be seen again after that episode, so the implication was that they wouldn't bother to stop a UFP-Klingon conflict as long as it didn't involve Organia directly.

As far as precise datings go, since there are simply so many modern Litverse works and others that accept and use the "March, 2285" dating of The Wrath of Khan (March 22nd is Kirk's birthday in the opening scene of the film, and presumably several more days elapse afterwards), I go with it, but then you subsequently have quite a large number of recent sources that place The Voyage Home in very early 2286 (including JJM's Prey: Hell's Heart and Dayton's Elusive Salvation), which suddenly means that there's a nearly-seven-month-long gap in between the second and third movies.

In the DC continuity, that gap makes more sense between the third and fourth movies. As I said, you've got issues 1-8 spanning maybe 2-3 months, then the comics between III & IV spanning maybe 4-6 months, plus the 3-month Vulcan exile before TVH.

And as has been noted in here previously by others, in the opening scenes of TSFS, the Enterprise starship model is clearly even more visually battle-damaged than it was at the end of TWOK, which can now be explained away in-universe by what happens in DC TOS #1-8 (the Enterprise engages a group of Klingon battlecruisers, etc.).

Except they had time to get repairs between storylines. I always figured that the battle with the Romulans in issue 8 was written to explain the fresh battle damage in TSFS. Although it requires suspending disbelief about the fact that several of the ship's scars are identical to the ones they sustained from the Reliant's weapons.

 

[Leto_II]

Also, just noticed that, in FASA's Star Trek IV Sourcebook, in "The State of the Federation" section, it describes a directive issued by Admiral Morrow to all Starfleet vessels concerning the sudden disappearance of the Organian race, and the possibility of war against the Klingon Empire (in the aftermath of DC Comics Vol. 1, #1-4), and the Reference Stardate is given as 2/2107.6, or July 6, 2285 (converted).

So that would definitely seem to retroactively track with modern Litverse dating-assumptions regarding a several-months-long gap in between The Wrath of Khan and The Search For Spock, with the events of those first eight issues or so potentially being spread out somewhat across those months.

 

[lawman]

That's something I've given some thought in the past. ... I could see issues 1-8 covering as little as 6 weeks, if we gloss over travel times, but Kirk's "these few... months" makes it longer, since "few" generally means at least 3, and the MU Saga doesn't appear to take more than a couple of weeks at most.

Now, counting the MU Saga, there are 15 distinct stories taking place between TSFS and TVH, so if we assume roughly one week per story, we're probably talking a minimum of 4 months, possibly longer. And that's before the 3-month exile on Vulcan.

Similar to my thinking, although I've gone with "possibly longer" for that second range of stories. As my timeline currently stands, I have STII in March (given the known date of Kirk's birthday, even though it was only established much later), DC issues 1-8 covering about six weeks, STIII in May... and then DC issues 9-35 covering the remaining months of the year, wrapping up around December, putting STIV in the following March, roughly a year after STII.

(To digress a bit, it's worth noting that there's room for several unchronicled months at the very end of STIV, as well, while the Ent-A is being built/refitted/whatever. I place the launch of that ship and the beginning of Kirk's new command fairly late in the year. In fact, in my take on the timeline, that's when his involvement with the mysterious "Antonia" happened, and his decision to accept the Ent-A command and return to active duty was what drove them apart.)

 

[Christopher]

In fact, in my take on the timeline, that's when his involvement with the mysterious "Antonia" happened, and his decision to accept the Ent-A command and return to active duty was what drove them apart.)

Kirk's relationship with Antonia was from 11 to 9 years before Generations, according to in-movie dialogue, so it was 2282-4, before the currently accepted date for TWOK.

 

[Leto_II]

(To digress a bit, it's worth noting that there's room for several unchronicled months at the very end of STIV, as well, while the Ent-A is being built/refitted/whatever. I place the launch of that ship and the beginning of Kirk's new command fairly late in the year. In fact, in my take on the timeline, that's when his involvement with the mysterious "Antonia" happened, and his decision to accept the Ent-A command and return to active duty was what drove them apart.)

Although I think Generations pretty conclusively establishes the dating of Kirk and Antonia's split as taking place in 2284, not 2285 or '86 (with 2293 being the "present day" from Kirk's subjective POV):

KIRK: Antonia! ...What are you talking about? ...The future? This is the past...This is nine years ago.
(Kirk gets a broken pair of spectacles out of a box)
KIRK: ...The day I told her I was going back to Starfleet.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Christopher!

 

[lawman]

In my personal continuity, I generally tend to accept that the first eight issues or so of DC Comics Vol. 1 happened in broad terms, since there are a few things in them that are...somewhat incompatible...with the modern continuity, perhaps most strongly the warlike Excalbians (which contradict Tony Daniel's Savage Trade) and also the visual appearance of Kor (possessing the ridged ST:TMP-style forehead, which goes against the Albino's retrovirus cure in 2290). So basically perhaps the overall events still happened more or less as the comics say, but the artist's visual depiction of those events can be disregarded as a form of "creative/storytelling license," or something similar.

Not unreasonable. (Regarding the Albino, I haven't watched DS9's "Blood Oath" nor read Forged in Fire in a dog's age... is it really nailed down that 2290 was the terminus post quem for ridgeless Klingons being able to restore their ridges?)

On a related note, the prelude of Prey: Hell's Heart is set in 2286, and just “weeks” after the death of Klingon Commander Kruge at the Genesis Planet, which points to a very early 2286 timeline-placement, though we're probably also substituting "weeks" for "months" in the case of Kruge's demise...

Interesting. I haven't read JJM's Prey trilogy yet, but it's on my list.

And finally, it's in Margaret Wander Bonanno's Unspoken Truth that we have established that the Federation Council trial-scene at the very end of The Voyage Home (and the launching of the new Enterprise-A) took place an entire month after the crashlanding of the H.M.S. Bounty in San Francisco Bay. Both are established as having happened in 2286, so probably February and January, respectively.

As noted a post or two back, I'm perfectly comfortable with treating that gap as several months. (The wheels of Starfleet bureaucracy don't necessarily turn quickly, after all!...)

Koloth too, in issues 1-2. There's also the fact that Koloth dies in issue #2. One fix I considered was that maybe it was a different guy with the same name.

Yep, either that or he managed to avoid death by some unseen means. After all, long before appearing on DS9, Koloth reappeared in issues #31-32 of the same comics series!

 

[lawman]

Kirk's relationship with Antonia was from 11 to 9 years before Generations, according to in-movie dialogue, so it was 2282-4, before the currently accepted date for TWOK.

Although I think Generations pretty conclusively establishes the dating of Kirk and Antonia's split as taking place in 2284, not 2285 or '86 (with 2293 being the "present day" from Kirk's subjective POV):

Yeah, call me stubborn, but I don't accept that 2285 date for STII. I've just never been willing to set aside the multiple on-screen references to "fifteen years" between "Space Seed" and the movie. I place the events of the film in 2283, concurrent with Kirk's 50th birthday (which also fits nicely thematically, given his uncharacteristic brooding over the birthday).

Hey, it's my headcanon.

So as I see it, he met her in 2282 (during a fairly sedate earthbound period of his admiralty)... then went through the traumatic events of movies II-IV (plus the stuff in-between, as we've been discussing)... then settled down with her for a while in 2284, when his trial was pending and he thought his Starfleet career might be over... then ended the relationship when he took command of the Ent-A. It all fits together pretty well, IMHO.

(After all, he says in Generations that things ended "the day I told her I was going back to Starfleet." If it was before STII, we'd have to speculate about some explanation for why he wasn't active in Starfleet at that point, and why he'd go back just for a desk job...)

 

[Christopher]

Not unreasonable. (Regarding the Albino, I haven't watched DS9's "Blood Oath" nor read Forged in Fire in a dog's age... is it really nailed down that 2290 was the terminus post quem for ridgeless Klingons being able to restore their ridges?)

That's when the Qu'Vat virus was cured and all the QuchHa' were genetically restored, but "Divergence" established the possibility of cranial-reconstruction cosmetic surgery. I established in Live by the Code that this was generally frowned upon, as concealing the "taint" of the QuchHa', but it still would've been possible for any sufficiently vain Klingon to get a forehead job to hide their QuchHa' nature. In fact, I think Forged in Fire had such a character in it.

As noted a post or two back, I'm perfectly comfortable with treating that gap as several months. (The wheels of Starfleet bureaucracy don't necessarily turn quickly, after all!...)

The "Genesis Report" chapter that David Mack wrote for John Vornholt's The Genesis Wave, Book One puts TWOK on March 22-26, 2285, TSFS on April 28-29, and Kirk's pardon at the end of TVH on August 7. And I believe The Captain's Daughter constrains the events of ST IV to a couple of weeks at most, which tracks with those dates, since 3 months after TSFS would be late July.

Yeah, either that or he managed to avoid death by some unseen means. After all, long before appearing on DS9, Koloth reappeared in issues #31-32 of the same comics series!

Yes, I thought he'd been retconned back to life within the same comic, but I couldn't quite remember. On checking those issues, I see his return appearance still uses the TMP-style Klingon design for him, although his appearance in Annual 2 (set at the end of the 5-year mission) uses his TOS appearance.

Yeah, call me stubborn, but I don't accept that 2285 date for STII. I've just never been willing to set aside the multiple on-screen references to "fifteen years" between "Space Seed" and the movie.

Unfortunately, there are just too many references in the literature to it being in 2285.

(After all, he says in Generations that things ended "the day I told her I was going back to Starfleet." If it was before STII, we'd have to speculate about some explanation for why he wasn't active in Starfleet at that point, and why he'd go back just for a desk job...)

I explored Kirk's temporary retirement in Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again.

 

[Desert Kris]

Here's a question for whoever wants to address it: assuming for the sake of argument that you include the DC Comics series in your headcanon, how much time do you allow for its storylines, in particular between STII and STIII, and again between STIII and STIV?

I kind of think of the comics and the movies as in their own timeline. When I watch the movies, I am not placing the comics between them. While reading through the comics, a version of those movies occurs in their appropriate place that joins the comics. Kind of the way Vonda McIntyre's novelizations of those three movies are a version of the movies' stories that are inclusive of material she introduced in The Entropy Effect. I wouldn't even include the comic adaptation of The Search For Spock as the version of TSFS that happens between DC issues 8 and 9, necessarily.

 

[lawman]

Unfortunately, there are just too many references in the literature to it being in 2285.

That would indeed be unfortunate (it's one of the most annoying quirks of the Okudachron, IMHO), but I have yet to run across such a reference that can't be adjusted fairly easily. After all, the period of the late 2270s-early '80s is very lightly chronicled. Meanwhile there's obviously a chronological gap of uncertain length between STIV and STV (which accommodates the rest of DC's first comics series, issues #37-55, and some uncertain time after that series was cancelled); we know that STV falls 20 years after the founding of the Nimbus III settlement, which can't predate "Errand of Mercy," hence putting the film c. 2287. It's easy enough to expand that gap a bit if the STII-IV sequence falls earlier; it disrupts not a single story.

 

[Christopher]

we know that STV falls 20 years after the founding of the Nimbus III settlement, which can't predate "Errand of Mercy," hence putting the film c. 2287.

Well, the most annoying thing about the Okudachron is its insistence on treating every stated number as exact rather than rounded up or down -- with the sole and bizarre exception of the "Space Seed"/TWOK interval. Humans like to round things to the nearest multiple of 10, so any reference like "20 years" is easy to interpret as an approximation, giving you 2-3 years of leeway in either direction.

And one of the most annoying things about Star Trek in general is the geocentric tendency to treat the word "year" as an absolute value with only one possible definition. A "year" is how long it takes a planet to complete one orbit, and that is obviously going to be different for every planet. Heck, modern exoplanet searches are routinely discovering planets whose "years" are mere days or weeks long. So maybe the 20 years in question were 20 of Nimbus III's years rather than Earth's. (Which is how Greg Cox reconciled the TWOK dating issue in To Reign in Hell -- by establishing that 15 Ceti Alpha V years equalled 18 Earth years.)

 

[Leto_II]

^ And there is that one line of Admiral Kirk's in the film that kinda seems to fly in the face of Greg's retcon ("There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help him"), but I simply squint sideways at it and disregard it as an impromptu, in-the-moment ballpark-rounding by Kirk, in service of harmony of continuity (even though we'd all likely realistically round it upwards, not downwards, to "twenty years").

For myself, probably the most egregious, facepalm-worthy moment in the Okudachron that I can think of right off the top of my head is Okuda's insistence upon taking the rough dating of the S.S. Valiant launch (from "Where No Man Has Gone Before") as holy writ, and literally placing it in 2065, a mere two years after the Vulcan first contact, at a time when the Earth is still radioactively sizzling from nukes and still in a state of barbarism that would persist in some regions until at least 2079. (Maybe a less-devastated country funded and developed the expedition, like Australia, but still.)

What the hell is with Okuda's ongoing refusal to even consider the notion that there probably exists a few years' worth of leeway on either side of any centuries' old onscreen date, and that even most folks in the real world will most likely just say, "200 years ago" instead of "193 years ago" or "203 years ago" or "207 years ago" (for instance) in the patter of casual conversation?

 

[lawman]

Well, the most annoying thing about the Okudachron is its insistence on treating every stated number as exact rather than rounded up or down -- with the sole and bizarre exception of the "Space Seed"/TWOK interval. Humans like to round things to the nearest multiple of 10, so any reference like "20 years" is easy to interpret as an approximation, giving you 2-3 years of leeway in either direction.

Truth. For my own purposes, I tend to treat such things as exact if they're uttered by Spock (or Data), but malleable when uttered by others, within a range of ±5% or so. (Hell, people have been describing Shakespeare's era as "400 years ago" for decades now, and probably will be for some time to come.)

However, it's notable that in STII both Khan and Kirk independently referred to the events of "Space Seed" as fifteen years earlier... that corroboration has to count for something.

(And as for STV, any way you slice it, there's wiggle room on its exact placement.)

And one of the most annoying things about Star Trek in general is the geocentric tendency to treat the word "year" as an absolute value with only one possible definition....

Scientifically, that's absolutely right. But in terms of usage in Trek, that ship sailed a long time ago.

What the hell is with Okuda's ongoing refusal to even consider the notion that there probably exists a few years' worth of leeway on either side of any centuries' old onscreen date, and that even most folks in the real world will most likely say "200 years ago" instead of "203 years ago" or "207 years ago" (for instance) in casual conversation?

The Okudachron does rely on some quixotic assumptions and rules of thumb. (Things like "TOS was exactly 300 years forward from broadcast" and "TNG's stardates correlate exactly with calendar years" don't make much sense either, for instance.) However, I'll give the Okudas credit for this: they laid their assumptions out very clearly in the book, so at least there was no mystery how they arrived at their dates.

 

[ryan123450]

Thanks for the positive encouragement, and sorry if my post is a little off topic. As I read stuff, I sometimes formulate ideas where events and situations might happen in a different context, and different chronological progression suggest themselves.

I just realized that my comment may have come off as a way of saying..."So why don't we get back to talking about the topic of this thread", and that wasn't my intent at all. Hearing your take on the 80s continuity is very interesting. The only way it would be even more interesting to me personally would be if you were invested in the chronological details, so I really was wanting to know/ hoping that was of interest to you.

Looking specifically at the DC Volume 1 series, and applying the Dragnet idea to it, alternative placements occurred (although while reading the individual comics I'll take them at face value, and give the series room to occupy it's own narrative space). The opening story and it's introduction of major recurring characters, I think these might have a different place in a timeline: right after The Voyage Home, before ST V. There's a major conflict with the Klingons, helped along by their anger over the Genesis project. Konom and Nancy's relationship helps Kirk deal with his anger towards Klingons and Kruge's role in killing his son. I feel like there's a version of The Undiscovered Country story where Kirk doesn't say horrible things at the beginning; and towards the end when Azetbur says, "You've restored my father's faith" Kirk says, "Your welcome" because he's a wise old warrior who learned from having met a Klingon who gave him a different perspective.

There's another individual story from the same series where McCoy deals with his feelings after the death of Spock. In spirit it's that moment of acceptance in the grieving process, even though that issue is set after Spock has been resurrected. I think there's a "real" version of this story that happened maybe on the way to pick up Reliant's survivors after the events of The Wrath of Khan.

Yeah, I accept this "Dragnet" idea as well, but probably with a smaller limit on the changes I'm comfortable with. I doubt I'd want to make "drastic" time period changes to stories, but this idea helps smooth over small continuity issues that are always sure to crop up.

For the 80's novels, Christopher Bennett outlined this amazing chronology for ordering the novels in The Continuity of Days Gone By. On revisiting it I was surprised and pleased to see that you started that thread; this is what got me started reading through so many books I wouldn't have known to look at before. My thanks to you and Christopher, and others who contributed to that thread. The chronology Christopher Bennett outline has great rational for the placement of many of the books, and I default to that for an overall picture (outside of the moment when I'm actually reading an individual novel).

Glad to have had a part in that thread, and being the catalyst by which Christopher introduced some really interesting info, and his take on it all.

To answer your question more directly, the long way around, I do play with the timeline sorting game. But I'm not super great at it. Christopher Bennett's timeline is a useful short cut for me, and his work on it has not been in vain; I've had a lot of fun reading many books he included on it.

To me the timeline-ing is super fun. Not sure why. But the most fun I've had in my Star Trek fandom has been talking about that sort of stuff, both here and in private discussions with jbarney and LetoII and others.

Here's a question for whoever wants to address it: assuming for the sake of argument that you include the DC Comics series in your headcanon, how much time do you allow for its storylines, in particular between STII and STIII, and again between STIII and STIV?

Looking at my timeline, which I arrived at back in the "Lit-verse Based TOS Chronology" thread, I ended up being somewhat vague about the specifics of when The Search for Spock takes place, but overall I placed a 12 to 13 month gap between TWoK and TVH. This whole era, though, is one that I have to say that, in my personal continuity, something LIKE those issues occurred, but definitely not the exact details as they are presented in those comics. I'm not even sure I can accept the overall idea that Kirk commanded the Excelsior, for instance, and jettisoning that idea would be a pretty dramatic change to those stories.

Glad this conversation is really rolling today.