The Stardate (no spoilers)

[FalTorPan]

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."

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

Stardates make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Whether they're the same nonsense as before or different nonsense doesn't matter unless you're a longtime fan who cares about this crap.

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.

To those who pay any kind of attention to the Earth years given in the movie and the stardates given in the movie, the new stardates would make some sense, and the old stardates would be a mess. To those who don't pay attention, they're just random numbers, so there's no harm in changing them.

 

[xman]

The stardate Captain Robau gave Nero was 2233.04, which I guess is supposed to be April 2233.

It couldn't mean April, since the latter stardate used is 2258.42.

Yeah, I'd say that's January 4th if the new stardates simply show a day number beyond the decimal point, up to 366 for leap years.

X

 

[The Wormhole]

So, the Kelvin scene is January 4th, and destruction of Vulcan of April 2nd?

 

[Captain Fine]

from the looks of it, the calendar year is now split into hundredths. I assume that's the "star date" part of it. Today is May 19, which is the 139th day of the year. 139/365 = 0.3808. So today is Stardate 2009.38. Tomorrow is the 140th day, 140/365 = 0.3836, so the Stardate would still be 2009.38.

2233.04 would be approximately January 15, 2233. (4% of 365 = 15th day of 2233)
2258.42 would be approximately June 2, 2258 (42% of 365 = 153rd day of 2258)
We can safely assume stardates range from .00 to .99 (Abrams likes leading zeroes )

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I disagree that the stardates never made any sense - at least the 24th century ones made plenty of sense. They gave a clear understanding of what year and when during that year episodes occurred post-Encounter at Farpoint.

 

[clint g]

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."

Non-trekkies? Ive been a fan for 20 years and every time they would mention the word "star date" my eyes would gloss over as unnecessary information was spouted onto the screen . I for one am glad they ditched the old system(if there even was a system)

 

[FalTorPan]

I disagree that the stardates never made any sense - at least the 24th century ones made plenty of sense. They gave a clear understanding of what year and when during that year episodes occurred post-Encounter at Farpoint.

Let's see. "4" indicates 24th century. The second digit indicates the TNG season number, with year one obviously corresponding to Earth year 2364. If the second stardate digit goes above 9, then naturally we bump the first digit up as if it were a tens digit, but of course the date is still in the 24th century, unless of course the corresponding Earth year is after 2400. The next three digits, ranging from 000 to 999, indicates how far into the year we are. The digits after the decimal point indicate how far into the day we are.

Makes a lot of sense! Combine that with the craziness of 23rd-century stardates. Yeah, I'm starting to agree that the new movie should have remained consistent with this "system."

 

[BrownShatner]

Non-trekkies? Ive been a fan for 20 years and every time they would mention the word "star date" my eyes would gloss over as unnecessary information was spouted onto the screen . I for one am glad they ditched the old system(if there even was a system)

I agree. I assume most people thought they were just random numbers like in TOS.

"Stardate" also reeks of old-school Flash Gordonish sci-fi. "Calibrate the space-gyroscope to the star-coordinates!"

But I suppose at this point it's a Trek trademark, and they couldn't just say "the year 2233".

 

[Zeppster]

Wait.

James Kirk is no longer born on March 22nd?

Sunnovabitch.

Nothing in cannon gave his birthdate. It was always assumed.

 

[NiteTrek]

The stardate Captain Robau gave Nero was 2233.04, which I guess is supposed to be April 2233.

Not accurate enough. April what? The 1st? The 16th?

If that's how you want to reconcile the stardate, I would think that 2233.04 would be the 4th day of the year 2233.

 

[teacherbrock]

The parallel universe created by Enterprise E in first contact messed up the star dates; you see NX01 never would have been named ENTERPRISE had Jordie and crew told Cochrin the name of their ship. The origin of Starfleet changed and so did its way of tracking star dates as in ENT dates are still given as earth years, which persisted throught this entire alternate universe.

Please forgive my mispellings, I didnt correct them as I am doing this AT WORK haha; also the child like lines that represent time are pretty sad but it gets the idea across.

 

[teacherbrock]

I'd further state that TOS timeline died during VH, as they left that worldline to get whales from the past and returned to a new worldline(slightly changed). Once kirk and co left the TOS(geneverse 1) timelines they returned to TOS(geneverse 2.0 and saved earth). In Geneverse TOS 1 the probe likely destroyed earth, however just like vulcan is destroyed in Abramsverse, the federation likely continued on, albeit in a much diffrent form.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

From what I read over on Trekmovie.com, the stardates in this movie were the year, followed by the day in that year (out of 365).

Thus, the Kelvin Incident happened on January 4, 2233 and Kirk's log recording on Delta Vega was February 11, 2258.

It was deliberately done that way to give some sense of logic to the stardating system.

(I think it was Kellam DeForrest, the one researcher for Desilu, who proposed a system that became stardates in TOS, by adapting an offshoot of the calendar system that astronomers use).

 

[teacherbrock]

From what I read over on Trekmovie.com, the stardates in this movie were the year, followed by the day in that year (out of 365).

Thus, the Kelvin Incident happened on January 4, 2233 and Kirk's log recording on Delta Vega was February 11, 2258.

It was deliberately done that way to give some sense of logic to the stardating system.

(I think it was Kellam DeForrest, the one researcher for Desilu, who proposed a system that became stardates in TOS, by adapting an offshoot of the calendar system that astronomers use).

Yes it was done to make it easier to understand. However I am saying from a lore standpoint the chance is the result of the branching from the TNG worldline to the ENTworldline.

In the ENT worldline they used actual year dates which was still in use when the Kelvin was attacked;

for whatever reason starfleet decided to keep the year based stardate after the kelvin incident instead of change to the more complicated versions seen in the other worldlines.

Remember the ENT worldline is the true past to the abramsverse, which is itself a divergence of the TNG timeline, which is a divergence of the Voyage home timeline, which is itself a divergance of the original geneverse.

 

[Dark Gilligan]

It couldn't mean April, since the latter stardate used is 2258.42.

Likely the year is divided into 100 equal units (2258.01 through 2258.99) and do not reflect Earth's days or months.

 

[Praetor]

Wait.

James Kirk is no longer born on March 22nd?

Sunnovabitch.

Nothing in cannon gave his birthdate. It was always assumed.

Wow. So do I really have to point it out when I'm being sarcastic now?

From what I read over on Trekmovie.com, the stardates in this movie were the year, followed by the day in that year (out of 365).

Thus, the Kelvin Incident happened on January 4, 2233 and Kirk's log recording on Delta Vega was February 11, 2258.

It was deliberately done that way to give some sense of logic to the stardating system.

(I think it was Kellam DeForrest, the one researcher for Desilu, who proposed a system that became stardates in TOS, by adapting an offshoot of the calendar system that astronomers use).

I think you're right. However, dividing the year into 100 even units might be more logical. Perhaps its an English vs Metric situation?

Yes it was done to make it easier to understand. However I am saying from a lore standpoint the chance is the result of the branching from the TNG worldline to the ENTworldline.

In the ENT worldline they used actual year dates which was still in use when the Kelvin was attacked;

for whatever reason starfleet decided to keep the year based stardate after the kelvin incident instead of change to the more complicated versions seen in the other worldlines.

Remember the ENT worldline is the true past to the abramsverse, which is itself a divergence of the TNG timeline, which is a divergence of the Voyage home timeline, which is itself a divergance of the original geneverse.

That seems plausible. We don't know, also, whether Captain Pike would have used this old system in "The Cage." So this may not be an alteration to the timeline at all.

 

[teacherbrock]

THE CAGE doesn't happen in the abramsverse. Remember this was the maiden voyage of the Enterprise, Pike only commanded this Enterprise for one surprise mission(outside of overseeing its construction like Captain Decker). Kirk relieved pike following saving Earth and the federation from the Narada and immenent distruction, something he will have to do in the future.

 

[Praetor]

You're missing my point: Pike didn't use a stardate system in "The Cage" so for all we know if he had, he might have used the "older" system used by the Kelvin.

 

[TrekGuide.com]

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

Well, Starfleet Academy and the Federation Council are on Earth, so that makes as much sense as any other system. (Plus, Stardates in TNG seemed to increase by exactly 1,000 Stardates per Earth year. That was probably not a coincidence.)

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.

For average moviegoers, they have never known when "Star Trek" is set, aside from the title "In the 23rd century" at the beginning of "Star Trek II."

However, as inconsistent as the TOS Stardate system was, it did progress from Stardate 1000.0 to 6000.0 throughout the five-year mission. So there is no way this movie, taking place eight (or thirty) years earlier, could have remained consistent with it without becoming a negative number.

The only logical method was to use the actual Earth year, as was established in "Enterprise," but then using a decimal for the specific fraction of a Solar year (to make it seem more futuristic and universally accessible to all planets in the Galaxy, who would not understand Earth months and days and leap years, etc.).

Given this new established Stardate system, when Commander Spock asked the future "red matter" ship its manufacturing origin, the computer probably already knew what the current date was, so it expressed its origin as an extrapolation of a Stardate that Spock would understand, since a response of "Stardate 64867.4" would mean absolutely nothing to someone asking the question in Stardate 2258.42 who would have no idea when Stardate 00001.0 started. (Likewise, if the movie had taken place in the 21st Century, the ship might have responded with the actual calendar date, since that's what a person of that period would understand.)

See my Stardate Calculator page for more than you ever wanted to know about Stardates in various episodes and movies:

http://TrekGuide.com/Stardates.htm#XI

 

[rtc61]

This was one canon change that I am in complete agreement with. The stardates were something Roddenberry made up for TOS so that it was 'futuristic' without nailing down an actual recognizable time during which the series took place. (He was quoted in 'The Making of Star Trek' on this point, though he mentions several times that he envisioned TOS taking place in the 23rd century.) But the stardates never made sense -- in part because they weren't sequential because NBC would air episodes out of order. I like the 'year-based' stardate approach that Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman use in the new film; it's much more accessible.