Star Trek VI. the stupidity of Starfleet and Spock for choosing Kirk to meet with Gorkon

[Ssosmcin]

We have no indication that everything was hunky dory with the Klingons after STV. For all we know, the reception aboard the Enterprise-A at the end of the film ended with a gigantic bar brawl, or there was some heinous diplomatic incident that soured Federation/Klingon relations soon after. All we really need to know is that the Klingons and Federation aren't in a great place diplomatically at the beginning of STVI, and it's not hard to imagine any number of reasons as to how or why that happened.

Star Trek V is set in 2287 according to the official ST Chronology. STVI is set in 2293. That's six years. A LOT can happen in six years.

Honestly, you don't even have to dig that deep. Kirk made nice with a retired and cast out General and a loose canon soldier. There's nothing that says they marched to the high counsel and convinced them the Federation was amazing. Individual soldiers can make friends but governments continue to fight. Besides, Koord was obviously changed by Sybok's meld. Nobody said Klaa was anything other than biting his tongue until he got the hell off the Enterprise.

Kirk and Kang didn't sway anything at the end of Day of the Dove. They just put aside their fighting because they had better fish to fry.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Nobody said Klaa was anything other than biting his tongue until he got the hell off the Enterprise.

Peter David even gave Klaa a thought balloon at the end of his STV comic book adaptation that had Klaa thinking, "Next time, Kirk..." PAD was obviously setting up Klaa's return in the early issues of the comic series that followed, and yeah, David's very first storyline picked up on the "There will be no peace as long as Kirk lives!" bit from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

 

[MarkusTay]

I'll use a great line I am stealing from YouTube's Pitch Meeting series...

"Because the movie needed to happen."

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

No, I don't believe that's true. Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn had a scene that opened with Kirk in bed with Carol Marcus before Kirk is called away by a mysterious Starfleet messenger with a glowing hand. That's what was cut from the film. (It was never shot, as STVI was on a very tight budget and the gathering of the crew scenes would've cost about $1 million to shoot.) Flinn later recycled these scenes in his Star Trek novel The Fearful Summons.

J.M. Dillard had a scene in her STVI novelization that had Carol injured in one of the Klingon's secret test attacks with Chang's cloaked Bird of Prey, but that was Dillard's own invention, not something she drew from the script.

We have no indication that everything was hunky dory with the Klingons after STV. For all we know, the reception aboard the Enterprise-A at the end of the film ended with a gigantic bar brawl, or there was some heinous diplomatic incident that soured Federation/Klingon relations soon after. All we really need to know is that the Klingons and Federation aren't in a great place diplomatically at the beginning of STVI, and it's not hard to imagine any number of reasons as to how or why that happened.

Star Trek V is set in 2287 according to the official ST Chronology. STVI is set in 2293. That's six years. A LOT can happen in six years.

Going strictly be the stardates, ST:5 could be as early as 2284 (8454), and ST:6 as late as 2295. I love the Chronology, but some of the dates for the movies seem kind of arbitrary, and seem to be based around trying to get ST:4 to 2286 to make the voyage exactly 300 years of time travel. Why does ST:5 need to be a year after ST:4? Why is ST:2 in 2285 at all? That date does not relate to 15 years after Space Seed, the year of production, or the year implied by the stardate. I understand they wanted to make room for a second five year mission after TMP, but since they put that movie in 2271, there are 14 years between those movies with no clear reason why or explanation of what happened between.

Generations probably means to show what happened between these movies, but there still is no need for 14 years between them.

If you really wanted to push it, you could use the stardates a different way, and put ST:2 to ST:5 into one year, "year 8," which could be 2272 and then put ST:6 into year 9 two rotations later, putting that movie back in 2293. I'm skipping some of the math, obviously, but you could put 21 years between ST:5 and ST:6 if you really wanted. I do not like this idea, but I'm throwing it out there to suggest that there is definitely enough time between ST:5 and ST:6 for a lot to happen.

 

[Unicron]

1. How can the advanced sensors of the 23rd century not have seen that a photon torpedo launched from a cloaked ship beneath the Enterprise, completely refuting (and exonerating) the idea that Starfleet/Kirk was the aggressor?
2. How can advanced 23rd century forensics not determine that a torpedo was never loaded and launched from the Enterprise torpedo bay?

For what it's worth, the novelization addresses this a bit in the scene where Spock tells Kirk about the neutrino surge he detected. It's stated that the torpedo system, when active, generates a relatively small neutrino field and could have theoretically been accessed by the saboteurs (who did plant a false record of two launches). It also provides more context for Chekov's line later, when he comments that a "field that large" could only have been created by a cloaked ship.

3. How can advanced 23rd century sensors and scanning equipment not find Klingon blood, a completely foreign substance, aboard the Enterpise?

Probably the same reason a TNG character could become invisible to onboard sensors without a com badge, even though we've seen the ship detect vessels or planets at range or the status of the people in those locations. Not to mention guest characters who don't wear badges.

Why are there concerns within Starfleet that peace with the Klingon Empire will suddenly make the fleet obsolete? Why would only the "scientific and exploration programs be unaffected?" Are the Klingons the only threat to the Federation? What about the Romulans, Gorn, Tholians, etc? What about other unknown powers or threats? The entire premise makes no sense from that perspective. Valeris says her motive is "saving Starfleet"...but Starfleet shouldn't be going anywhere just because the Klingons are thinking of finally coming to the table.

I'm often amused at how the TNG Officer's Manual for the FASA Trek RPG, which assumed that the Klingons would actually become Federation members in TNG, is hilariously inconsistent on how such a political change would affect (among other things) the status of Starfleet and its assets that have been traditionally used against the Klingons, offensively or defensively. And considering FASA got a lot of mileage out of the rivalry between the two powers, it's a major shift in their continuity.

At one point it's suggested that the loss of the Empire as an enemy would go a long way towards making Starfleet less valuable as a military asset, but later it's shown that the new "Grand Alliance" (as FASA dubbed it) is already making a lot of hybrid ships with technology from both sides even though the Klingons are still "transitioning" into membership.

(Hooray for plot... )

 

[David cgc]

Going strictly be the stardates, ST:5 could be as early as 2284 (8454), and ST:6 as late as 2295. I love the Chronology, but some of the dates for the movies seem kind of arbitrary, and seem to be based around trying to get ST:4 to 2286 to make the voyage exactly 300 years of time travel. Why does ST:5 need to be a year after ST:4? Why is ST:2 in 2285 at all? That date does not relate to 15 years after Space Seed, the year of production, or the year implied by the stardate. I understand they wanted to make room for a second five year mission after TMP, but since they put that movie in 2271, there are 14 years between those movies with no clear reason why or explanation of what happened between.

While I really don't agree with the Chronology making hard dates and always assuming exact round numbers, the big issue with nailing down the movies is that "Space Seed" and "Balance of Terror" are in the same year, and "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Final Frontier" are in the same year, but there's fifteen years between "Seed" and "Khan" and (probably more than!) twenty between "Balance" and "Frontier."

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

While I really don't agree with the Chronology making hard dates and always assuming exact round numbers, the big issue with nailing down the movies is that "Space Seed" and "Balance of Terror" are in the same year, and "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Final Frontier" are in the same year, but there's fifteen years between "Seed" and "Khan" and (probably more than!) twenty between "Balance" and "Frontier."

I don't remember what is said in ST:5 that means it must be 20 years after "Balance of Terror," can you remind me?

I suppose as far as Space Seed goes, rounding can be used as a partial answer but I feel that 2267-2282 (actually 15 years) makes more sense than 2267-2285 (actually 18 years). Even though it is in the middle, I feel that if Kirk had seen Khan 18 years ago, he just as likely would have rounded it to twenty.

Also, though stardates are obviously not exact, if we use the first couple of digits as a guide, the stardate of 1709 from "Balance of Terror" (year 1, a bit more than halfway through), and 3141 for Space Seed (year 3, a bit less than halfway through), suggest those two episodes could be nearly two years apart. Of course this assumes that the way stardates are read aloud is different from the movies, where I interpret the first two digits to be the year, rather than just one.

 

[David cgc]

I don't remember what is said in ST:5 that means it must be 20 years after "Balance of Terror," can you remind me?

When the Romulan Ambassador first arrives at Nimbus III, she exposits that the colony was jointly founded by the Klingons, Federation, and Romulans twenty years earlier. Since there was no contact between the Federation and the Romulans before "Balance of Terror," it had to be some time after that.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Going strictly be the stardates...

Which, in the TOS and movie era, were never intended to make more than a vague amount of sense. It wasn't until TNG they really formalized the system beyond the loosey-goosey approach of TOS.

I love the Chronology, but some of the dates for the movies seem kind of arbitrary...

Because they are.

Why does ST:5 need to be a year after ST:4?

They put STV in 2287 because they said that Nimbus III was founded 20 years before, and the Federation had no contact at all with the Romulans for 100 years before "Balance of Terror" in 2266.

Why is ST:2 in 2285 at all? That date does not relate to 15 years after Space Seed, the year of production, or the year implied by the stardate.

Yeah, I don't agree with it either, since Khan and Kirk BOTH say in TWOK that it's been 15 years since they last saw each other, but that's what the official Chronology says. I know they put TWOK sometime after 2283 because of the year on Kirk's bottle of Romulan Ale, but I forget that rationale beyond that.

I understand they wanted to make room for a second five year mission after TMP, but since they put that movie in 2271...

Which doesn't make sense either, since Decker says in TMP that Kirk hasn't logged a single star hour in 2 1/2 years, which puts it that long since the end of TOS' 5YM. Since VOY established that Kirk's 5YM mission ended in 2270, that puts TMP in 2273 at the earliest. I can't remember if they corrected that in subsequent editions of the ST Encyclopedia or not.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

When the Romulan Ambassador first arrives at Nimbus III, she exposits that the colony was jointly founded by the Klingons, Federation, and Romulans twenty years earlier. Since there was no contact between the Federation and the Romulans before "Balance of Terror," it had to be some time after that.

I cannot believe that did not register to me as having that implication before.

So assuming that she is not rounding or using Romulan years, assuming Kirk's first five-year mission started in 2265 as per the Voyager episode Q2, and assuming that the switch to black-collared TOS uniforms is an indication that at least those episodes are actually part of the five-year mission and not before it, then 2285 would be the earliest that ST:5 could be.

Assuming that 8454 means halfway through 2284, that is close enough to work for me.

I'm not sure that ST:2 to ST:5 really all need to be in the same year, which is why I interpret the first two digits of the stardate to be the year for the movies.

We have 8128.76 for Spock's death, with ST:3 starting about a year later (8210), which seems plausible. Saavik's log says 8130, but I assume that she is giving the future date that she expects to be on the training cruise, not the date of the test, not that it makes a huge difference.

ST:4 has a stardate of 8390, or about a year after the Genesis survey by the Grissom. That works for me since the events of ST:3, including the survey, the trip home, time spent on Earth, and the trip the the Genesis planet, and then to Vulcan could take months to occur or have months between them that are note seen since they do not affect the plot.

ST:5 could take place in 2284, about a year after they return from the past and return from Vulcan; the trial, visit to the NCC-1701-A in spacedock, shakedown cruise from ST:4, as well as the shore-leave and capture of the ambassadors from ST: 5 could have all been spread out over a period of months.

That still leaves 9-11 years between ST:5 and ST:6. It does make a person wonder what missions they could have had in the meanwhile. It also does leave plenty of time for Sulu to leave and have a three year mission on the Excelsior.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

For the record, here's how I break down the movie era in my Star Trek Timeline:

2273: TMP (2 1/2 years after the end of TOS' 5YM, as per Decker's comment to Kirk)
2283: TWOK (15 years after "Space Seed." Kirk was making a joke to McCoy about him getting a bottle of Romulan Ale from that year.)
2283: TSFS (About six months after TWOK. Mainly because I want Kirk & company to have some time to mourn Spock before he's resurrected. This also allows some time for the DC Comics stories to occur.)
2284: TVH (The three month exile on Vulcan pushes it into the next year.)
2287: TFF (20 years after the founding of Nimbus III.)
2292: TUC (27 years after McCoy first came aboard the Enterprise in 2265, three years after Sulu becomes Captain of the Excelsior.)

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

Our posts arrived at same time, so I wanted to add this.

Which, in the TOS and movie era, were never intended to make more than a vague amount of sense. It wasn't until TNG they really formalized the system beyond the loosey-goosey approach of TOS.

Stardates obviously are not made to be something we can easily figure out. I guess the reason that I like to use the movie stardates this way is that since the movies also do not have a clear exact amount of time between them, it seems to all work okay using them that way.

I know they put TWOK sometime after 2283 because of the year on Kirk's bottle of Romulan Ale, but I forget that rationale beyond that.

I supposed that it was meant to be a joke that the ale had not even reached it's date of readiness yet, as the year would then only be 2281. If Kirk was meant to actually turn 50 in that movie, 2283 would be year that would happen, so maybe he meant the movie to take place in 2283 (which still is not correct for 15 years without rounding), but at least 2281, 2282, and 2283 would have some basis in onscreen dialogue, which 2285 does not have.

Perhaps this is something that FactTrek could explore. Surely at least some of the writers or consultants had a rationale of some kind for some of the stardates in the movies. If a writer or consultant had used a stardate to suggest a certain year, even if it was "just in his/her head," and not canon, it would still be fascinating.

Of particular interest to me would be ST:4, since advertising seems to imply that they traveled from 2286 to 1986, yet the stardate is 8390. We could infer the others from that.

The Chronology does state that Micheal Okuda had input on selecting 9529 for ST:6, but does not give further detail. I know one article said that D.C. Fontana had said they used birthdays or favorite numbers, etc. in TOS. Even if that was as specific as it coudl get, that would be interesting as well.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

For the record, here's how I break down the movie era in my Star Trek Timeline:

2273: TMP (2 1/2 years after the end of TOS' 5YM, as per Decker's comment to Kirk)
2283: TWOK (15 years after "Space Seed." Kirk was making a joke to McCoy about him getting a bottle of Romulan Ale from that year.)
2283: TSFS (About six months after TWOK. Mainly because I want Kirk & company to have some time to mourn Spock before he's resurrected. This also allows some time for the DC Comics stories to occur.)
2284: TVH (The three month exile on Vulcan pushes it into the next year.)
2287: TFF (20 years after the founding of Nimbus III.)
2292: TUC (27 years after McCoy first came aboard the Enterprise in 2265, three years after Sulu becomes Captain of the Excelsior.)

I like your timeline overall, except that I am curious how you fill the three years between ST:4 and ST:5. Are you assuming that it took years to build the NCC-1701-A and that the final scene of ST:4 is actually months or years later than the rest of the movie?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I supposed that it was meant to be a joke that the ale had not even reached it's date of readiness yet, as the year would then only be 2281. If Kirk was meant to actually turn 50 in that movie, 2283 would be year that would happen, so maybe he meant the movie to take place in 2283 (which still is not correct for 15 years without rounding), but at least 2281, 2282, and 2283 would have some basis in onscreen dialogue, which 2285 does not have.

I honestly doubt they thought it through that much. Maybe the Okudas were thinking about the fermentation time after 2283 when they were putting together the Chronology, but I doubt it. And "2283" was either just a random number the TWOK screenwriter selected that was roughly 300 years in the future, or perhaps something drawn from the Spaceflight Chronology.

Of particular interest to me would be ST:4, since advertising seems to imply that they traveled from 2286 to 1986, yet the stardate is 8390. We could infer the others from that.

Assuming there's any kind of consistent system to Stardates is a fool's errand, IMO. At best they make sense only in the broad strokes.

The Chronology does state that Micheal Okuda had input on selecting 8529 for ST:6, but does not give further detail.

The Stardate for STVI is 9521.6.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I like your timeline overall, except that I am curious how you fill the three years between ST:4 and ST:5. Are you assuming that it took years to build the NCC-1701-A and that the final scene of ST:4 is actually months or years later than the rest of the movie?

No. I suppose the scene of the crew getting the new Enterprise-A could be a few weeks after their hearing, but months later seems like pushing it to me. YMMV. I haven't really thought too much about about what happens between 2284 and 2287 outside of the new Enterprise going on missions and having adventures.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

I honestly doubt they thought it through that much. Maybe the Okudas were thinking about the fermentation time after 2283 when they were putting together the Chronology, but I doubt it. And "2283" was either just a random number the TWOK screenwriter selected that was roughly 300 years in the future, or perhaps something drawn from the Spaceflight Chronology.

Assuming there's any kind of consistent system to Stardates is a fool's errand, IMO. At best they make sense only in the broad strokes.

The Stardate for STVI is 9522.6.

That was a typo and I fixed it somehow again at almost the exact same time as your post. Weird.

No. I suppose the scene of the crew getting the new Enterprise-A could be a few weeks after their hearing, but months later seems like pushing it to me. YMMV. I haven't really thought too much about about what happens between 2284 and 2287 outside of the new Enterprise going on missions and having adventures.

The Enterprise is stated to be new (or at least "new-to-them") in ST:5, and it's hard to envision them having many adventure between ST:4 and ST:5 with all the malfunctions for three years. AFTER ST:5, I would like to hope they had many adventures before ST:6.

I'm not advocating that an actual "stardate system" for TOS and the movies be found, since different writers did different things. I'm asking if research could find more documentation on how the various 4-digit numbers were selected. We know they they are not really random, since they generally increase, and not by widely varying amounts, throughout the movies. We know so many things about what the writers were thinking, yet this seems to never be discussed.

For example, Meyer describes telling Montalban to leave one glove on so the audience can speculate why. There are several star trek magazine articles about Excelsior prototypes and the models' various details when the script only required a bigger, faster looking ship. Yet, nowhere, does it seem, anyone explains getting a stardate. Why 8128 for Spock's death and not 9947? Why 8454 for ST:5 and not 1111?

Even if the answer from the writer is, "I started with an 8 because the last movie had a 7, and the 1st 2nd and 8th letters are ABH, which was the initials from Abbigale Betty Harrison, the name of a significant other who dumped me five days before I wrote the script," that would still be interesting to me.

An answer like the one I just made up would be behind-the-scenes info that is no more or less compelling than an Excelsior with four nacelles or the fact that all TMP uniforms might have had white breasts like Kirk's, but for a director's request of a change. Neither thing affects the plot, but does bring further light to the artistic process. Hardly what I would call a "fools-errand." We Star Trek fans love to be curious about anecdotes like this, and I do not think it it is right to say that we shouldn't ask about stardates, just because, as far as I know, we have not heard an anecdotal answer before.

 

[Kor]

In DC Comics the crew had some interesting adventures between IV and V including meeting Harry Mudd again, as well as the people of the Vaal planet. And the famous Klingon honorary ensign Konom got married. But there was an 11-month hiatus after Vol. 1 ended with the Nov. 1988 issue. I'm pretty sure the TFF adaptation was released before Vol. 2 started in Oct. 1989, so I don't think we got to see what may have led directly up to the events of TFF in the comics continuity, along the lines of how the crew had the Bird of Prey at the end of TSFS, then Kirk commanded the Excelsior for some time while Spock ended up commanding a different ship called the Surak, and then everyone conveniently got back together on a Bird of Prey just in time for TVH.

Of course, that isn't "cannnnnon," but it's fun anyway.

Kor

 

[JonnyQuest037]

The Enterprise is stated to be new (or at least "new-to-them") in ST:5, and it's hard to envision them having many adventure between ST:4 and ST:5 with all the malfunctions for three years.

I think you pretty much have to introduce a gap of some kind between STIV and V. One, because the actors had all noticeably aged in the seven years between STII and V, and because I quite frankly HATE the idea of the Enterprise-A breaking down right after they get it at the end of The Voyage Home. YMMV.

I'm not advocating that an actual "stardate system" for TOS and the movies be found, since different writers did different things. I'm asking if research could find more documentation on how the various 4-digit numbers were selected. We know they they are not really random, since they generally increase, and not by widely varying amounts, throughout the movies. We know so many things about what the writers were thinking, yet this seems to never be discussed.

I don't think the thought process was any more involved than looking at the Stardates for the last movie, and ticking the numbers up a bit, but not too much. TMP's Stardates started with 7 because the series went up to the 5000s. TWOK's Stardates started with 8 because TMP's started with 7. And they probably kept them in the 8000s because A): not too much story time had passed, and B): they didn't want to run it up to Stardate 9999.9 too quickly.

BTW, Gene Roddenberry's explanation of Stardates was as follows:

In the beginning, I invented the term "star date" simply to keep from tying ourselves down to 2265 A.D., or should it be 2312 A.D.? I wanted us well into the future but without arguing approximately which century this or that would have been invented or superseded. When we began making episodes, we would use a star date such as 2317 one week, and then a week later when we made the next episode we would move the star date up to 2942, and so on. Unfortunately, however, the episodes are not aired in the same order in which we filmed them. So we began to get complaints from the viewers, asking, 'How come one week the star date is 2891, the next week it's 2337, and then the week after it's 3414?'"

In answering these questions, I came up with the statement that "this time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth's time as we know it. One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three Earth hours. The star dates specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading." Therefore star date would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy.

I'm not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. If so, I've been lucky again, and I'd just as soon forget the whole thing before I'm asked any further questions about it.

So outside of making sure Stardates progressed upwards over the course of an episode, even Roddenberry didn't think they should be examined too closely.

We Star Trek fans love to be curious about anecdotes like this, and I do not think it it is right to say that we shouldn't ask about stardates, just because, as far as I know, we have not heard an anecdotal answer before.

I'm not saying you shouldn't ask about it, I'm just saying you shouldn't get your hopes up about an answer that suddenly makes Stardates make sense. They won't.

My personal headcanon is that TOS era Stardates progress up from 1000 up to 9999 over the course of a decade, and then "reset", but there's not much justification for that outside of DSC & SNW Stardates being in the 1000s and TWOK's Stardates being roughly 1000 units above TMP's despite being 10-12 years later. It makes as much sense as anything, I suppose.

I'm pretty sure the TFF adaptation was released before Vol. 2 started in Oct. 1989

It was. The STV adaptation led into the new series. There was a gap in publication as the licensing contract between DC Comics and Paramount was renegotiated.

 

[Kor]

As for stardates, I also like the following excerpt from the 1967 Trek Writer's Guide:

STARDATE
We invented "Stardate" to avoid continually mentioning Star Trek's century (actually, about two hundred years from now), and getting into arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then. Pick any combination of four numbers plus a percentage point, use it as your story's stardate. For example, 1313.5 is twelve o'clock noon of one day and 1314.5 would be noon of the next day. Each percentage point is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of one day. The progression of stardates in your script should remain constant but don't worry about whether or not there is a progression from other scripts. Stardates are a mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode.

So occasionally you will see an episode with lower stardates than an episode that was produced before it, or even overlapping stardates when obviously the events of two unrelated episodes were not happening simultaneously.

Edit: I got one point mixed up, meant to say lower stardates happening in later episodes, not higher.

Kor

 

[dupersuper]

Going strictly be the stardates, ST:5 could be as early as 2284

That's when I like to think it happened. It makes sense to me that the A is still in rough shape if Starfleet rushed it to be ready for the ending of Kirk & company's trial and they've spent several months trying to get it ready. That also leaves time for the Saavik novel that happens between ST IV and DC post V TOS comics, and gives us a 9 year continuing mission between V and VI to fit in all the novels and comics and such set in the movie era while avoiding the "10 year show about a 3 year war" MASH problem Kirk's first 5 year mission has if you try cramming in all the books and such.

When the Romulan Ambassador first arrives at Nimbus III, she exposits that the colony was jointly founded by the Klingons, Federation, and Romulans twenty years earlier. Since there was no contact between the Federation and the Romulans before "Balance of Terror," it had to be some time after that.

2265/66 - 2284: she could've been rounding off.