Star Trek Chronology Dating.
- Thread starter sariel2005
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It's a nifty fix for the overlapping stardates of "Miri" and "Dagger of the Mind", tho, thanks to "The Naked Time".
I assume you were joking, but how does Naked Time fix the issue with Dagger and Miri? NT doesn't sit between those episodes either in production, broadcast or stardate order!
The thing about Miri is that it does cover several days worth of events, so the use of stardate 2717 might be deliberate. Here are Miri's stardates:
2713.5 Discover "Earth"
2713.6 A short while after beam-down.
2717.3 Approx 3.5 days after beam-down
It really does seem that the final numeral before the decimal point is representing days here. Of course, we're into very shakey water trying to apply such precision to TOS stardates!
MOst episodes don't last more than a day of episode time so it's hard to draw comparisons - doesn't anyone know of some good examples from TOS?
Now that's a conspiracy theory I can get my teeth into!
^^ You know, just because the Romulans agreed to the planet of galactic peace doesn't necessarily meant they showed their faces before but only after being exposed in BOT. You could almost imagine them sending *uncloaked* ships, dropping in supplies and only attending meetings via subspace radio conference calls. The real reason the Praetor wanted to go to war in BOT was he got tired of the monthly meetings that were always scheduled at lunch time in his Romulan Time Zone 
That's pretty-much the way I've always taken that. Kirk is somewhat appalled at the somewhat recent vintage of the Romulan Ale - basically it's the equivilent of moonshine, borne out by Kirk's reaction when he tastes it - and McCoy is definitely being sarcastic in his reply.
It wouldn't need to, as it would create two different timelines, one of which would accommodate one episode and one the other...
...But only for three days or so, and those days took place before either of the overlapping episodes. Yet further incidents like the "Naked Time" one could be postulated, as Kirk from there on would consider time travel pretty mundane, and engage in it on half a dozen occasions. So, although not meant to be taken all that seriously, the concept of our heroes living the same stardates twice could be applied relatively freely when needed.
I wonder if the messy stardates of TNG's first season could be sorted out that way...? It's annoying that the penultimate scripts found on TrekCore contained no stardate "errors" as regards Tasha Yar's vitality status; only the final aired versions introduced those! But we could say that Picard was so distraught at losing an opening credits character that he engaged in remedial time travel, then thought better of it and didn't rescue Yar after all, but was now stuck with living the same stardates twice...
Timo Saloniemi
My explanation for stardate inconsistencies, including overlapping stardates.
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=1443624&postcount=14
It's pretty similar to what Roddenberry himself concocted when pressed on the same issue.
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=1443624&postcount=14
It's pretty similar to what Roddenberry himself concocted when pressed on the same issue.
Ah, true enough.
We could take an archetypical short episode such as "Charlie X" or "Space Seed" or "The Galileo Seven" to see that a single stardate unit indeed roughly compares to a day (so roughly, though, that the theory of 1000 SD units = 365 days could still easily be defended).
Longer timespans can be found in a couple of "heroes stuck on a planet" episodes, but those generally lack good SD references. "Omega Glory" was written before stardates were invented, apparently. "Paradise Syndrome" spans a very definitely known length of time, a few hours short of 60 days - but only gives us stardates in the very beginning. Also, it opens with an inconsistency: our heroes beam down and manage to lose Kirk by SD 4242.6, Spock then has to leave orbit posthaste to meet with the asteroid, but he has only been en route to the asteroid for "several hours" when he enters a log at SD 4243.6. A full stardate unit has thus passed, supposedly during those "several hours". (Yeah, it could be 20 hours for all we know, but it's already bad enough that "hours" on warp nine would be the same as 60 days riding aboard a sublight asteroid!)
So, alas, no individual episodes where we'd get statistics on the indication of long timespans by the stardate method. The best we can do is compare between episodes. If "Paradise Syndrome" began with SD 4242.6 and took 60 days, we might see if "Immunity Syndrome", the next episode in stardate order, conforms to our theories. That one opens with SD 4307.1, about 65 units later, with the crew in desperate need for rest and recreation - very nicely done! Fits with the theory of 1 SD = 1 day (although not with the idea that 1000 SD = 365 days).
Any other ideas for approaching this?
Timo Saloniemi
That would be the one he offered up before admitting that they essentially pulled the stardates out of their collective asses, right?
There are enough date references placing the show in the 22nd Century for me to accept that as Star Trek's timeframe.
This.
Ditto, sort of like Hawkeye Pierce joking that the drink he's serving has a vintage of "Last week. I hear it was a very good year".
Alcoholic beverages come in two basic varieties: those that are best when fresh, and those that improve with age. Both kinds require a certain amount of aging, for fermentation and whatnot. The first category contains things like beer and ale, the second contains things like scotch. So the question is: is Romulan Ale supposed to be like ale (best served soon after fermentation is done), or like scotch (a good bottle will be older than the person drinking it).
If the first, then the Kirk-McCoy exchange (and McCoy's slight defensiveness) would suggest that the bottle is old: Kirk is commenting that it is far from fresh. If the second, then the Kirk-McCoy exchange (and McCoy's slight defensiveness) would suggest that the bottle is not old, and therefore of presumably low quality.
I always thought it was the second, though I can give no reason for that.
Well, the "vintage" of the bottle was described in whole years. You can easily define a bottle as "old" by stating the year on the label, but you can't as easily declare it "new" that way. At the very best, you have a margin of error of half a year there, and that's all right with declaring something "old" but seriously undermines any attempt at labeling it "new".
Really, if Kirk reads out the year, and McCoy gets defensive about it, it means there's something wrong with the year - not with the month or the day. And that works if the stuff is years old when it should only be months or days old, but it doesn't work if the stuff is days old and ought to be months old.
So, if the bottle is too new to be good Romulan ale, then this must mean that Romulan age must take years (not months or days, since Kirk didn't read those out from the label, and the label may not even have had those printed) to properly ferment, and McCoy is only shooting himself in the foot in pointing that out. Doesn't make any sense to me, either in terms of straightforward logic or humor.
Timo Saloniemi
Really, if Kirk reads out the year, and McCoy gets defensive about it, it means there's something wrong with the year - not with the month or the day. And that works if the stuff is years old when it should only be months or days old, but it doesn't work if the stuff is days old and ought to be months old.
So, if the bottle is too new to be good Romulan ale, then this must mean that Romulan age must take years (not months or days, since Kirk didn't read those out from the label, and the label may not even have had those printed) to properly ferment, and McCoy is only shooting himself in the foot in pointing that out. Doesn't make any sense to me, either in terms of straightforward logic or humor.
Timo Saloniemi
You know there might not be any contradiction since McCoy never states when he got the bottle 
The age of the bottle I think kinda works with the whole theme of the scene. Everything is old in Kirk's quarters, his glasses and now even the ale Besides, I would think that McCoy got Kirk some quality ale for his birthday...
The age of the bottle I think kinda works with the whole theme of the scene. Everything is old in Kirk's quarters, his glasses and now even the ale Besides, I would think that McCoy got Kirk some quality ale for his birthday...
...Sometime in the long gap between "Balance of Terror" and "Squire of Gothos", to be exact. So at least we're avoiding the contradiction of McCoy getting the bottle long before Starfleet renews contact with the Romulan Star Empire!
Timo Saloniemi
You know, it could have been passed down as a family heirloom from the days of the Romulan War. Yes, Spock said they never captured or killed a Romulan face to face; but he never stated caches of Romulan liquor were never found.
However, in getting back to the actual film's dialogue, why couldn't a Romulan ship bring an 'aged' case across the zone for McCoy? As for the line itself, to this day, I think the year was meant to be '2183'; but either the script had a typo, or Shatner had a lapse in saying the line and no one caught it during filming.
Okay, let's run it both ways and see how it plays.
1) I give you a case of fine beer (perhaps imported from Germany). You see the manufacture date on the label and read it aloud; "nineteen ... eighty-two."
"Yeah, well, the stuff needs to age a while."
Here, the stuff should be fresh but isn't. Seems to work.
2) I give you a bottle of fine bourbon. You see the date on the label and read it aloud; "twenty ... oh eight".
"Yeah, well, the stuff needs to age a while."
This bourbon is a lot younger than bourbon is really supposed to be, and my comment is an ironic acknowledgment that is isn't going to be a very good example of bourbon.
Weaker, but still viable IMO.
(Trivia point: bourbon is often a mix of different vintages, a bottle of bourbon is considered to be the age of the youngest bourbon in the bottle, and bourbon that has been aged for less than four years must be specifically labeled as such. I don't drink, so that's all news to me.)
It doesn't work if the stuff is days old when it is supposed to be months, but it works just fine if the stuff is years old when it is supposed to be decades.
I like the stardate version better. More wiggle room.
Just by the name "Romulan Ale" make it sound more like malt beverage that a distilled spirit. Red Horse beer from the Philippines (which I like) is eight percent alcohol. Compare Kirk facial expresion when he drinks the ale, to his expression when he drinks the beer in the pizza place during TVH. Romulan ale is probably heavy beer.
The problem being he always reacts that way to new or unfamiliar beverages, even if he's had them before. Kirk had the same expression several times during TOS.
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