Stardates ???
- Thread starter JcarlA
- Start date
I gave up on DSC and SNW stardates.
And I say this as someone who can make out TOS stardates.
And I say this as someone who can make out TOS stardates.
every show set after season 1 of TNG uses the same logical system, and thus make sense. There's not enough stardates to go around in the TOS era, so DSC and SNW embraces the TOS method of mostly getting bigger, but sometimes being smaller, justified by Roddenberry's original explanation that Stardates are variable depending on where in the galaxy you are.
Absolutely !! TOS and TAS mixed together in stardate order makes so much sense. More sense in fact than even aired order.
Maybe. But when watched in ascending stardate order, these other shows make sense.
Sure. But that's by accident. But if placing the Magicks of Megas Tu before WNMHGB makes sense to you...
The stardates were never meant to make sense in TOS. IIRC, Roddenberry even said they were actually meant to be inconsistent, to reflect the each region of space uses its own dating system which the Enterprise adopts while in that region. This way here the writers don't actually have to keep track of the dates to make sure everything makes sense. Disco and SNW are merely going back to this original Roddenberrian intent, which which the other shows from TNG onwards disregarded when they actually tried to make the stardates make sense.
And holy shit, my spellchecker recognized a word I thought I was making up while writing this post, "Roddenberrian" but doesn't recognize stardate.
And holy shit, my spellchecker recognized a word I thought I was making up while writing this post, "Roddenberrian" but doesn't recognize stardate.
At least the later seasons of Discovery (mostly) got it right again. In season 5, episode 2, the stardate is 866274.3, which actually follows logically from TNG-era stardates.
The only issue is that Memory Alpha lists season 5 as taking place in 3191, while every stardate calculator I’ve checked converts 866274 to 3189. Still, credit for trying.
The Kelvin Timeline stardates were even worse, though. Just using the Gregorian calendar year with a decimal—like 2259.3? I honestly don’t know who thought any Trek fan would buy that.
The only issue is that Memory Alpha lists season 5 as taking place in 3191, while every stardate calculator I’ve checked converts 866274 to 3189. Still, credit for trying.
The Kelvin Timeline stardates were even worse, though. Just using the Gregorian calendar year with a decimal—like 2259.3? I honestly don’t know who thought any Trek fan would buy that.
I'm not crazy about it, but it could work, even Pre-TOS in the Prime Timeline. After the Federation is founded, they use Gregorian-style stardates, then enough worlds complain about how Earth-centric those stardates are, they change it, then they change it again and again until they finally get to the TNG style stardates, and then that's the system that sticks.
So the Section 31 movie people clearly used the TNG stardate calculator, and by sheer coincidence ended up with a 1200 series date, a little over a year after stardate 0000. They unintentionally established that the stardates were completely reset, rather than reformed, since before we could pretend that there was an even progression between the 9000s and the 40000s.
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Was a non issue to me.
3191 actually was stated in dialogue in that season.
Except when they don't.
