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The Stardate (no spoilers)

darkshadow0001

darkshadow0001

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
I just saw the movie for a second time today, and I think when they mentioned the stardate, did they use the current year as the stardate number? Because I remember in the Vulcan ship saying something like "Stardate 2387" which sounded like a year to me.

And this is totally off the subject, but someone in an earlier thread since there was a tribble appearance, I missed it the first time I saw the movie and now saw where it was. It was nice to see the tribbles haven't changed in this new dimension :)
 
The stardate change was almost certainly deliberate. The new movie was designed to appeal to a larger audience than the Trek fan base. The story took place during multiple periods of time. Old-style stardate references, already meaningless, would have been too confusing to a non-Trekkie. Earth date-based stardates have some basis in reality, and they maintain the Trek "feel."
 
We don't know what the .04 part of the Stardate means. That could actually mean anything. But the first 4 didgets are the year.
 
Yup...2387 is the date of the events as described in Countdown, and Spock Prime mentioning that he was specifically from 129 years in the future perfectly compliments the main story taking place in 2258, making Kirk about 25...

By the by, I'm (trying to) read Shatner's own prequel, Collision Course...suffice it to say, not so good, but he gives the date as 2249 and Kirk is 17...interesting that without Daddy around, Kirk wastes years of his life and doesn't enlist in Starfleet until age 25 (although I'm assuming McCoy is even older, given that he calls Kirk a "kid", and has already obtained his M.D., which, if medical training in the 2200s is anything like today, would make him at least 27 or 28 - 4 years of post grad med school, and several years of residency)

A quick question: what exactly is the function of Starfleet Medical? I always assumed it was a traditional Medical School, and yet McCoy clearly has already obtained his MD, so would he be there for specialized training? (I'm thinking of doctors like radiologists who have to go through several extra years of training after Med School) Would Starfleet Medical be a place for MDs to go to recieve training as Field Medics, basically? Seems like an awful lot of school...
 
Kruge said:
Yup...2387 is the date of the events as described in Countdown, and Spock Prime mentioning that he was specifically from 129 years in the future perfectly compliments the main story taking place in 2258, making Kirk about 25...

By the by, I'm (trying to) read Shatner's own prequel, Collision Course...suffice it to say, not so good, but he gives the date as 2249 and Kirk is 17...interesting that without Daddy around, Kirk wastes years of his life and doesn't enlist in Starfleet until age 25 (although I'm assuming McCoy is even older, given that he calls Kirk a "kid", and has already obtained his M.D., which, if medical training in the 2200s is anything like today, would make him at least 27 or 28 - 4 years of post grad med school, and several years of residency)

A quick question: what exactly is the function of Starfleet Medical? I always assumed it was a traditional Medical School, and yet McCoy clearly has already obtained his MD, so would he be there for specialized training? (I'm thinking of doctors like radiologists who have to go through several extra years of training after Med School) Would Starfleet Medical be a place for MDs to go to recieve training as Field Medics, basically? Seems like an awful lot of school...
Click to expand...

I don't think he ever went to Starfleet in the original universe. He was just a doctor that graduated from Ole Miss.
 
Yes but he does in this one, and has already graduated from Ole Miss, so I'm wondering what exactly he has to do at the Academy, other than be in attendance at Kirk's Maru test...

Which was funny as hell
 
It takes doctors today X number of years to get their degree so that they can treat humans...imagine needing to be proficient at treating multiple alien species. Add in the plethora of new diseases, treatments, and scientific advances (plus a longer lifespan in which people have a longer time when they are healthy and able to work) that we will discover between 2009 and 2258 and I can easily see doctors spending 4-5 years in med school just to learn how to treat humans. Those interested in xenomedicine would then go on to attend Starfleet medical for an additional 4 years or so to learn how to treat Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, etc...

There must be an ungodly amount of xenobiology to learn. Indeed, we've seen the other Starfleet doctors repeatedly attending conferences to continue their education. Obviously there will be some similarities between species, but even Bones wasn't nearly as familiar with Klingon anatomy in ST:VI as he wanted to be.
 
Sisko_is_my_captain said:
It takes doctors today X number of years to get their degree so that they can treat humans...imagine needing to be proficient at treating multiple alien species. Add in the plethora of new diseases, treatments, and scientific advances (plus a longer lifespan in which people have a longer time when they are healthy and able to work) that we will discover between 2009 and 2258 and I can easily see doctors spending 4-5 years in med school just to learn how to treat humans. Those interested in xenomedicine would then go on to attend Starfleet medical for an additional 4 years or so to learn how to treat Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, etc...

Indeed, we've seen the other Starfleet doctors repeatedly attending conferences to continue their education. Obviously there will be some similarities between species, but even Bones wasn't nearly as familiar with Klingon anatomy in ST:VI as he wanted to be.
Click to expand...

I think you nailed it, thank you :)

I'd also assume that McCoy's Med School education did not train him for dealing with medical emergencies onboard a Federation Starship either, so that's probably part of his training

Kind of fits with my pet theory...Starfleet is a kind of grad school...people may go to college and graduate, majoring in say, Communications...then perhaps they want to enlist in Starfleet and make a career of it, so they take their training a step further, learning all about interstellar communications, xenolinguistics, and the like, while also learning what it takes to be an officer or to at least serve onboard a startship in some capacity

Kind of like the military...people with college degrees can enlist as well and even MDs can enlist...interesting..
 
Sisko_is_my_captain said:
It takes doctors today X number of years to get their degree so that they can treat humans...imagine needing to be proficient at treating multiple alien species. Add in the plethora of new diseases, treatments, and scientific advances (plus a longer lifespan in which people have a longer time when they are healthy and able to work) that we will discover between 2009 and 2258 and I can easily see doctors spending 4-5 years in med school just to learn how to treat humans. Those interested in xenomedicine would then go on to attend Starfleet medical for an additional 4 years or so to learn how to treat Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, etc...

There must be an ungodly amount of xenobiology to learn. Indeed, we've seen the other Starfleet doctors repeatedly attending conferences to continue their education. Obviously there will be some similarities between species, but even Bones wasn't nearly as familiar with Klingon anatomy in ST:VI as he wanted to be.
Click to expand...

Don't forget this is an alternate dimension so things are not done the same :)

Maybe with the presence of aliens in the future humans have gained greater knowledge and therefore don't have to have years of training.
 
FalTorPan said:
The stardate change was almost certainly deliberate. The new movie was designed to appeal to a larger audience than the Trek fan base. The story took place during multiple periods of time. Old-style stardate references, already meaningless, would have been too confusing to a non-Trekkie. Earth date-based stardates have some basis in reality, and they maintain the Trek "feel."
Click to expand...

Changing the stardates makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The new dates are EARTHdates, not STARdates, so why even pretend some futuristic calender system?

Regarding new audiences and non-Trekkies, do you really think they got the meaning of the new dates or that 2387 would have meant any more to them than 63395.7 would have? I'm sure to most of them they were just random numbers anyway.
 
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