Time really annoys me in Star Trek.

[Mr. Scott]

I like Star Trek and especially DS9. I'd like to limit my scope to DS9 and TNG because they are the worst offenders of it.

The Starship and a Space Station are a 24 hour operation, but in the series, there seems to be a morning, an afternoon and an evening, even though they are in space. For example "It is Data's birthday party tonight in 10 Forward, you should come." Or in "Data's Day" when Riker announces "day watch", being that Data worked "Graveyard".

Quark's Bar closing for the night, Why would Quark's Bar and Gambling Hall ever close? It's a 24 hour airport. Time would not have the revelance that it does on Earth or a Planet. Also, ever notice that there is a "middle of the night" at DS9, when there are little people on the Promanade, and Quark is doing private business "after hours"? If anything all the aliens would have different sleep patterns if they slept at all. Do Bajorans all sleep at the same time? On a revolving planet around a sun that has day and night, and everyone sleeps at the same time regardless of the daylight or darkness?

Aliens speaking in minutes, hours, weeks, months, years. Or the Talaxian Race has been in existance for 12,000 years. Whose years? Talaxian years? Earth years? Hours and minutes are basically subdivisions of days. It annoys me when evil alien sayd "You have one hour." If it's a Romulan hour, you have 12.5 Earth minutes. Or the Bajorian arbitrator in the first season episode of DS9 who stated that she was 100 years old. Is that Bajorian or Earth?

In TNG when there was an "away mission" and Riker would basically grab all the senior staff below, leaving Picard up there alone with a bunch of ensigns, or those times when all the senior staff (the major cast) were down on a Planet, making me wonder who was flying the Enterprise. Barkley? The computer? Who?

Sorry, it's my inner Star Trek geekness coming out, but the morning, afternoon, evening thing is really a pet peeve of mine, and it should have never been said because it does not have any relevance. Thoughts?

 

[T'Girl]

Quark probably closes the bar when he goes "off shift" because he doesn't trust his employees. When he away from the bar during business hours he's likely squirming inside. As I understand it, DS9 runs on the Bajorian 26 hour clock, the Humans seem to have adapted to it. The station maybe keeps time with "Bajor standard time" which is like Greenwich mean time or Pacific standard time. If a species has a biological clock that precludes this 26 hour day, they sleep when they need too.

US Navy submarines (I think) run on two 8 hour shifts, not three. Everyone on board adapts to a 16 hour long day.

 

[Pavonis]

The Starship and a Space Station are a 24 hour operation, but in the series, there seems to be a morning, an afternoon and an evening, even though they are in space. For example "It is Data's birthday party tonight in 10 Forward, you should come." Or in "Data's Day" when Riker announces "day watch", being that Data worked "Graveyard".

So, they're in space, but they're still subject to biological rhythms. Even as early as first season TOS, Kirk explains to Lenore Karidian that they try to mimic day and night cycles on the Enterprise. It's a biological imperative, and so the colloquial expressions ("tonight", "this evening") are used regardless of their relevance to any nearby planets.

Quark's Bar closing for the night, Why would Quark's Bar and Gambling Hall ever close? It's a 24 hour airport.

I don't know about you, but every time I've been to an airport after midnight, all the shops and eateries are closed. Airports are 24 hour services, but their shops and restaurants definitely aren't. Why would it be different in the future? Why should space stations be any different?

At least on DS9 a replimat is available 24/7 (excuse me, 26/7?) for travelers arriving late at "night" when the shops are closed.

Time would not have the revelance that it does on Earth or a Planet. Also, ever notice that there is a "middle of the night" at DS9, when there are little people on the Promanade, and Quark is doing private business "after hours"? If anything all the aliens would have different sleep patterns if they slept at all. Do Bajorans all sleep at the same time? On a revolving planet around a sun that has day and night, and everyone sleeps at the same time regardless of the daylight or darkness?

I don't know if that was ever addressed in canon, but Bajor must have time zones. Presumably DS9 was synchronized with a particular time zone planet side, perhaps the capital city's time. Wouldn't that be reasonable? Why would you jump to the conclusion that all the Bajorans on the planet must sleep at the same time? How do you reach that conclusion?

On the other hand, you could be quite right; maybe the Bajorans really do all sleep at the same time planet-wide. That would make them particularly alien.

Aliens speaking in minutes, hours, weeks, months, years. Or the Talaxian Race has been in existance for 12,000 years. Whose years? Talaxian years? Earth years?

Talaxian. If a Talaxian is talking about Talaxian history (in a Talaxian language, though translated to English by the UT), wouldn't he be referring to Talaxian years?

Hours and minutes are basically subdivisions of days. It annoys me when evil alien says "You have one hour." If it's a Romulan hour, you have 12.5 Earth minutes. Or the Bajoran arbitrator in the first season episode of DS9 who stated that she was 100 years old. Is that Bajoran or Earth?

Again, if a Bajoran says they're X years old, then they're X Bajoran years old.

In TNG when there was an "away mission" and Riker would basically grab all the senior staff below, leaving Picard up there alone with a bunch of ensigns, or those times when all the senior staff (the major cast) were down on a Planet, making me wonder who was flying the Enterprise. Barclay? The computer? Who?

The other 1000 crewmembers perhaps? Just because an unnamed lieutenant or ensign isn't a main character doesn't mean they're incompetent.

 

[doubleohfive]

The obvious answer here is of course that these choices were made to serve whatever story was being told at the time by the writers.

 

[milo bloom]

The first two responses have explained most of this very well, I'd just like to add that I once read that all Starfleet ships are on San Francisco time to keep them in sync with the Admiralty. Not sure if that's canon, but it makes the same amount of sense as having night and day just to keep the body clocks in some sort of order. It does seem odd that the night shifts would be severely understaffed, like the Voyager episode where Harry is playing the clarinet on the bridge at night.

In TNG when there was an "away mission" and Riker would basically grab all the senior staff below, leaving Picard up there alone with a bunch of ensigns, or those times when all the senior staff (the major cast) were down on a Planet, making me wonder who was flying the Enterprise. Barkley? The computer? Who?

Now this one does bother me. Pavonis makes a good point, but it still bothers me that the away teams are almost always full of "opening credits" cast members, and heaven help the previously unseen crewmember that gets picked for away team duty (I believe that's called the "Ensign Ricky" effect).

I know it's a restriction of the TV format that you use the stars as much as possible, but for any future TV project, I'd love to see at least a token effort made to show these "other" crewmembers, either backup bridge officers that are at least 90% as good as the main crew, or dedicated away team crew, so when the first officer is putting together an away team, he picks, at most, one other bridge officer, and then would call for something like "Beta shift away team, with geological and zoological specialists, report for duty" Heck, it doesn't even always make sense for the first officer to be leading the away teams, that seems more like a second officer function to me.

I think this would definitely be a place where an animated series could shine as you wouldn't have to worry about the availability of the actors for what could be just a few minutes of screen time.

 

[T'Girl]

Now this one does bother me. Pavonis makes a good point, but it still bothers me that the away teams are almost always full of "opening credits" cast members, and heaven help the previously unseen crewmember that gets picked for away team duty (I believe that's called the "Ensign Ricky" effect).

The original Star Trek with Captain Kirk established that landing Parties (later away teams) are composed of the most qualified personnel available. The mission is the primary objective, Kirk would lead the mission, he would take the best scientist, the best doctor, sometime the best engineer. Then, in addition, Kirk would supplement the mission with guards, technicians and specialists.

If, in his opinion, he wasn't required, there were times that Captain Kirk didn't lead landing parties.

If anything happen the Captain, the ship would simply travel to a nearby Starbase and obtain a new one. The mission came first.

The sole difference with TNG is that Starfleet and Picard delegated the responsibility for leading away missions to the first officer, everything else is the same, the best possible people for the mission.

 

[captcalhoun]

there was supposed to be a dedicated away team in TNG, but they got axed when it was decided it doubled the cast/characters...

 

[Shatnertage]

In TNG when there was an "away mission" and Riker would basically grab all the senior staff below, leaving Picard up there alone with a bunch of ensigns, or those times when all the senior staff (the major cast) were down on a Planet, making me wonder who was flying the Enterprise. Barkley? The computer? Who?

I thought about this for a few minutes after seeing "First Contact" (the episode). Why on earth would they send down the first officer of a starship down to a planet to do pre-contact recon? Obviously, it should be a team of anthropologists, as in "Who Watches the Watchers?" But I doubt many of us would sit through 25 minutes of Dr. Whosit trapped in an alien hospital, waiting for a familiar face to show up.

So I guess that, in addition to using your stars, it's important to have characters we're invested in facing death on the planet's surface.

It seems pretty impractical to have your bridge crew heading down to the planet's surface at the drop of a hat (I couldn't resist the urge for a "Justice" reference), so if you wanted to make a show with more plausibility, you'd probably want to have a dedicated bridge crew and a separate group of officers dedicated as an away team, with specialists, etc, rarely going down to the planet when it's safe.

Of course, there's a line between what's practical and what's good TV. The way they did it, while it doesn't necessarily make sense from a certain perspective, gave us a lot of good stories.

 

[Myasishchev]

I thought about this for a few minutes after seeing "First Contact" (the episode). Why on earth would they send down the first officer of a starship down to a planet to do pre-contact recon? Obviously, it should be a team of anthropologists, as in "Who Watches the Watchers?" But I doubt many of us would sit through 25 minutes of Dr. Whosit trapped in an alien hospital, waiting for a familiar face to show up.

It's sort-of explained, since Riker was actually sent down to find Dr. Whosit, who had disappeared or something like that. On the other hand, you'd still think they would send someone better qualified and more studied-up on these aliens than the XO. Failing that, a Marlowe/Willard type.

Aliens speaking in minutes, hours, weeks, months, years.

This never bothered me. If you've got a machine capable of real-time language translation, it's certainly capable of unit conversion. Funny that it works out to such round numbers, though.

 

[Kai Winn]

aliens in st use quite frequently terms like cycles or rotations, what most watchers probably translate into our units, and some might be baffled. makes some sense to maintain a work/rest rhythm aboard a starship or space station, not so much for the biological clock which adapts to almost anything, but simply to organize the life on it.

I don't know if that was ever addressed in canon, but Bajor must have time zones. Presumably DS9 was synchronized with a particular time zone planet side, perhaps the capital city's time. Wouldn't that be reasonable? Why would you jump to the conclusion that all the Bajorans on the planet must sleep at the same time? How do you reach that conclusion?

asimov told of a 'ringworld' in one of his novels, an earth like planet that doesn't rotate. one side frozen, the other one hot. habitable is a small ring between those zones. an eternal spring day.

 

[Timo]

This never bothered me. If you've got a machine capable of real-time language translation, it's certainly capable of unit conversion. Funny that it works out to such round numbers, though.

I don't see much evidence for "round numbers". The originally quoted case of an alien saying "you have one hour" just doesn't happen, at least not often. In "Corbomite Maneuver", the alien explicitly says "you have ten of your Earth minutes"; other foes either aren't all that alien, or then they don't give such exact deadlines.

And if somebody tells you he's 28 years old, he probably isn't. Not unless it's his birthday, and the odds of that are pretty low, 1:365. So it doesn't matter whether he's a fellow Earthling or a Bajoran - every humanoid is likely to have more or less the same length of year, as that's defined by the habitable zone around a star, and the standards of habitation are basically the same for all the Trek humanoids. The 28 years is likely to be about 28 years in every case, and unlikely to be exactly 28 years in any case.

Generally, we just plain don't get round numbers; Trek writers love their decimals...

So it's always Earth hours. It's always Earth minutes. It's always Earth seconds. It's always Earth kilometers. It's always Earth kilograms. No non-Earth culture would have any of those things, as they are purely cultural construct. It may sometimes be alien years, which are natural rather than cultural, but that doesn't make a difference. It may be alien days, which are also natural, but those seem to be very Earth-like, too - no wonder in a galaxy engineered by countless of advanced cultures which all fall in the same biological format.

And when it's lightyears, it's probably Earth lightyears, because the translation machinery would have no reason to retain alien years in these units of distance.

And Bajor doesn't have a day that's exactly 26 Bajoran or even Earth hours long. It has a day that's roughly 26 Earth hours long, and exactly X Bajoran gummabuks (that is, 1 Bajoran day) long - where X may theoretically be 26, but probably is some other integer. It just doesn't make sense any other way.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Kosh: "We will meet in Red 3 at the hour of Scampering."

It might be a function of the universal translator, to transfer measurements into units the user could more easily understand. And also round the unit off for even easier understanding. However if you and I were discussing scientific measurement then the translator would deliver exact figures.

If I were speaking to a European, his meters and kilometers in my ear would be feet and miles. If he wrote out today's date as 09/05/10, I would see 05/09/10.

 

[SonOfMogh]

I just always assumed the UT converts whatever unit of measurement you were using to the appropriate unit for the listener.

If a Romulan gives a distance of 1657 herricakes to Sisko and Martok who are stood next to each other, Sisko will hear 3.4 miles and Martok will hear 6 Kellikams.....

Pretty sure Janeway said the UT uses brainwaves, even if a completely new alien gives a measurement of time I guess the UT will interpret what he is trying to to communicate based on his perception of how long that is.

 

[Myasishchev]

This never bothered me. If you've got a machine capable of real-time language translation, it's certainly capable of unit conversion. Funny that it works out to such round numbers, though.

I don't see much evidence for "round numbers". The originally quoted case of an alien saying "you have one hour" just doesn't happen, at least not often. In "Corbomite Maneuver", the alien explicitly says "you have ten of your Earth minutes"; other foes either aren't all that alien, or then they don't give such exact deadlines.

And if somebody tells you he's 28 years old, he probably isn't. Not unless it's his birthday, and the odds of that are pretty low, 1:365. So it doesn't matter whether he's a fellow Earthling or a Bajoran - every humanoid is likely to have more or less the same length of year, as that's defined by the habitable zone around a star, and the standards of habitation are basically the same for all the Trek humanoids. The 28 years is likely to be about 28 years in every case, and unlikely to be exactly 28 years in any case..

I can get on board the notion that age could be expressed in round figures for convenience by the translator, but assuming M-class planets have all roughly the same orbital period is probably a mistake, given the huge variation in potentially habitable stars--Gliese 876 versus 40 Eridani A versus Sol versus Alpha Centauri A versus Procyon A, all of which are going to have different, sometimes hugely different habitable zones. And G-type suns provide a big swathe of habitable zone; Venus is on the the edge of ours, and with slightly different rotational, material and chemical characteristics could be a habitable world--without changing its orbital period much or at all.

And look at Andor, which orbits a gas giant, which is less likely to form within an AU from a sun like ours at all, and in their case evidently didn't.