OK, Let me rephrase it for you. there is no evidence to believe the Xindi stardate has any relation to a Federation stardate.
The common 'stardate' designation isn't evidence? I said there is likely no relation on the level of units, but you seem to be insisting on no relation whatsoever.
This one I just noticed in checking the episode batches and the production schedules. (This largely continues even into TAS). This actually surprised me since I, like MOST Trek fans, grew up with syndication and never noticed that connection, beliving the stardates to be effectively more random.
Can you point me to a particular book or website? Episode guides usually show airdates, while I don't recall seeing a production timeline. Since you don't have a quote from someone involved in production, I would have to see a fairly amazing mathematical fit in order to start considering such a hypothesis (and I would still need confirmation in the end, possibly from Dorothy Fontana).
It wasn't specifically just stardates, but any chronological sequence of episodes was strongly discouraged. Again, this was because syndication channels would episodes in whatever order they liked. Having them 'in order' actually made them harder to sell.
I'm not disputing that, but you haven't shown me proof that stardates were designed to protect for syndication, which is the point we're discussing. I've only seen quotes on producers using them in order to obscure the general timeframe, such as the century or the year.
The '4' was indeed chosen to represent the 24th century. Of course, as soon as you got into the middle years of DS9 and hit that era's 10th season.. oops.
Again, we don't know whether it was literally chosen to represent the 24th century. The writers' guide isn't that clear, especially with a 58xxx stardate appearing as early as TNG season 4 ("Future Imperfect"). As noted, a hypothetical conversation could've gone in this manner also:
Person A: "We need a starting digit."
Person B: "Let's use 4, based on the 24th century."
Person A: "But that's not consistent with making the second digit a season!"
Person B: "Of course not, I was merely inspired by the number 24. It will be a 5 in season ten."
The first option is the most in keeping with what they actually did on the show.
But they didn't on ENT, despite the fact that an early draft of "Broken Bow" contained a stardate. Mike Okuda told me that it was he who suggested to Brannon Braga that calendar dates should be used instead. For all we know, he would've made the same suggestion if the show was set in the early 2200s. (Actually, we can ask him.)
The second option is along the lines of a fannish option on how to make a standard calendar date look like a stardate, which was very big in the 1970's. When applied to Star Trek stories, it falls apart rather quickly, like when JJ had Capt. Robau give a stardate that was supposed to correspond with Kirk's birth (going by a system nobody's come up with before) and wound up coming up with something that was more in line with something around the second season of TOS.
What canon evidence did we actually have of stardate use in the 2230s? The choice of 2233.04 didn't contradict anything in the canon to my knowledge, and not for one second did it feel like a second-season stardate to me, since I had immediately recognized Kirk's birthdate from the
Chronology. Also, the yearly rate of increase for the initial digits is nothing like the once-a-day-or-so rule for TOS stardates.
If one believes that the timelines were identical before Nero, which was intended according to Orci, then Spock would've been born on 2230.06 in both timelines, while both versions of Robau would've recorded a log entry of, say, 2233.01. If this notion is accepted by publishing, it would allow JJ stardates to be used in the prime timeline before TOS.
If they were so frelling determined to shove in an inappropriate reference to Delta Vega, they could just as easily have gone the extra mile, maybe actually watch the damn episode, and use the stardate on that tombstone Gary Mitchell conjured up...
The idea of 1277.1 being Kirk's birthdate is almost certainly a misunderstanding. Sam Peeples came up with this number in his script, which at the same time uses stardates in the 13xx range. I seriously doubt that he saw 1277.1 as Kirk's birthdate, especially since the inscription begins with the letter C in the script, which could stand for the rank of Captain or "command". Kirk could've been promoted to Captain on 1277.1 or assumed command of the
Enterprise on that stardate.
), with the second digit representing which season it was at the time. Other than checking to make sure that this week's episode had a higher stardate number than last week's episode, that was it.
