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Stardates ???

JcarlA

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
I was just wondering if anyone had a in universe explanation for why the stardates in SNW and DIS don't seem to make any sense. In every other Star trek show made (including Lower Decks and Prodigy) the stardates make logical sense.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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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.
 
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