TOS Chronology

[MAGolding]

Or then Tarbolde wrote a poem titled "The Canopius Planet". While sipping jippers on a beach somewhere in southern California.

Timo Saloniemi

What Mitchell actually says in the quote is:

MITCHELL: My love has wings. Slender, feathered things with grace in upswept curve and tapered tip. The Nightingale Woman, written by Phineas Tarbolde on the Canopius planet back in 1996. It's funny you picked that one, Doctor.

Mitchell says that Tarbolde wrote a poem titled "Nightengale Woman" or "The Nightengale Woman" on the Canopius planet. The Canopius planet is where Tarbolde wrote Nightengale Woman" in 1996, although it does not have to be an actual planet but could be some vehicle name Canopius Planet.

If I am correct about "the past couple of centuries" it doesn'tmatter where Tarbolde wrote because the S.S. Valiant would have been begun its interstellar voyage sometimes between 1896 and 1996 in the calendar used in that scene.

This is my favorite idea so far. But I'd also like to throw in the idea that maybe there were interstellar ships that can go nearly light speed, and maybe this Tarbolde was an astronaut who spent 10 years on a sleeper ship traveling to Canopius, and wrote a poem after he got there.

of course if Tabolde's 1996 was the same 1996 as when Khan left Earth, the fastest ship available would have been much too slow to reach even Proxima Centuari in a mere 10 years. Remember that even the closest interstellar distances are tens of thousands of times as far as even the farthest interplanetary distances in our solar system.

See my post number 201 at: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/the-enterprise-that-wasnt.303794/page-11

If Tarbolde's and Khan's years 1996 were years in different Earth calendars, that would prove my claim that different calendar eras are used in different episodes of TOS and other Star Trek shows.

Can you prove that? Plus there is something going on behind the scenes I'm pretty sure of!
JB

I discussed reasons why Star Trek's alternate universe might have split off from ours thousand s of years before TOS in my post number 8 on page 1 of this thread.

 

[johnnybear]

Many authors formulated us living in outer space and on other planets by 2030AD and not stuck on a planet smothered in green house gases!!! No one could have foreseen a time where the purse strings to further space exploration would be tied up!
JB

 

[MAGolding]

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" Chronology continued.

The stardates in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" are:

Captain's log, Star date 1312.4. The impossible has happened. From directly ahead, we're picking up a recorded distress signal, the call letters of a vessel which has been missing for over two centuries. Did another Earth ship once probe out of the galaxy as we intend to do? What happened to it out there? Is this some warning they've left behind?

The next log is after the Enterprise hits the galactic barrier and gets out of it:

Captain's log, Star date 1312.9. Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone. Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance. Our overriding question now is what destroyed the Valiant? They lived through the barrier, just as we have. What happened to them after that?

So 0.5 of a stardate unit has passed during the short time that was seen onscreen after the first log and the unknown about of time after the last previous scene. Apparently that unknown period of time was enough to conduct nine autopsies on the dead crew members, so it may have been hours.

The speed reduction is drastic. If "days" means between 1.000 and 365.25 Earth days (or one Earth year), and if years means less than a decade and so between 1.000 and 9.999 Earth years, the speed of the Enterprise has been reduced by between zero times (if distances traveled in 365.25 days now take one year to travel) to 3,652.1347 times (if it takes 9.999 years to travel as far as it used to take one day to travel).

If "days" means between 1.000 days and 6.999 days (so less than a week) and "years means 1.000 to 9.999 years, the speed reduction would be 52.186 to 3,652.134 times.

And it is uncertain whether the new speed of the Enterprise is now faster than light or slower than light.

After it is decided to go to Delta Vega and leave Gary Mitchel there, The next stardate is when the ship is approaching delta Vega:

Star date 1313.1. We're now approaching Delta Vega. Course set for a standard orbit. This planet, completely uninhabited, is slightly smaller than Earth. Desolate, but rich in crystal and minerals. Kelso's task, transport down with a repair party, try to regenerate the main engines, save the ship. Our task, transport down a man I've known for fifteen years, and if we're successful, maroon him there.

The next stardate is probably right before Gary breaks out.:

Captain's log, Star date 1313.3. Note commendations on Lieutenant Kelso and the engineering staff. In orbit above us, the engines of the Enterprise are almost fully regenerated. Balance of the landing party is being transported back up. Mitchell, whatever he's become, keeps changing, growing stronger by the minute.

That log seems to be right before Dr. Dehner says:

DEHNER: He's been like that for hours now.

So it seems like there were at least two hours between the stardates 1313.1 and 1313.3, a period 0.2 stardate units long, making a stardate unit at least 10 hours long, and possibly much longer. Mitchell makes his breakout a minute or so after Dehner speaks.

Kirk is unconscious for an unknown period of time before being revived by Dr. Piper:

PIPER: It hit me, too, whatever it was. Kelso is dead, strangled. At least Spock's alive.

Kirk tells Piper he will go after Mitchell alone:

KIRK: When Mister Spock recovers, you'll both transport up immediately to the Enterprise.
PIPER: But Captain
KIRK: If you have not received a signal from me within twelve hours, you'll proceed at maximum warp to the nearest Earth base with my recommendation that this entire planet be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation. No protest on this, Mark. That's an order.

So the time which passes after stardate 1313.3 until Kirk calls the Enterprise to be beamed up should be an unknown period of time plus a period of time less than twelve hours. In the next scene, Kirk has had his hand bandaged, has washed and changed his uniformed, so some time has passed. Kirk makes another log entry:

KIRK: Captain's log, Star date 1313.8. Add to official losses, Doctor Elizabeth Dehner. Be it noted she gave her life in performance of her duty. Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, same notation. I want his service record to end that way. He didn't ask for what happened to him.

So if there are probably fewer than twelve hours in 0.5 stardate units between stardates 1313.3 and 1313.8, a stardate unit should be less than 24 hours long. So a stardate unit should be about 10 to 24 hours long according to the evidence of "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

In the scene right after the stardate is given as 1312.9, Kirk and Spock on the bridge are reading the personnel medical records of Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. Two pages are seen from each record, the identity page and the ESP rating page. The pages were glimpsed briefly in the episode, but by the 1980s or even the 1970s their contents were known to Star Trek fans.

Gary Mitchell was born at Eldman, New_____. New______ might be New Jersey or some place on Earth or the Earth colony of New Earth, or who knows where. His Date of birth is given as 1087.7, and his age as 23. His age might possibly be his present age or possibly his past age when he entered Starfleet or when he was commissioned at his present rank, etc., but it is highly unlikely to be a prediction of his future age at some future time..

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Gary_Mitchell?file=Mitchell_profile_stats.jpg

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Gary_Mitchell?file=Mitchell_profile_esp.jpg

Elizabeth Dehner was born at Delman, Newst_____, Newst____ may be a state, somewhere. Dehner's Date of birth is given as 1089.5, and her age as 21. Her age might possibly be her present age or possibly her past age when she entered Starfleet or when she was commissioned at her present rank, etc., but it is highly unlikely to be a prediction of her future age at some future time.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Elizabeth_Dehner?file=Dehner_profile_stats.jpg

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Elizabeth_Dehner?file=Dehner_profile_esp.jpg

If Mitchell is 23.000 to 23.999 years old, and Dehner is 21.000 to 21.999 years old, the difference between their ages would between 1.001 years and 2.999 years. If their dates of birth are given in the same dating system, and if that system is in years, there would be 1.8 years between their birth dates, which is consistent with Mitchell being 1.001 to 2.999 years older than Dehner.

Thus it would certainly have been possible for fans to conclude that Mitchell and Dehner's birth dates were given in years of a calendar, which could be called the Eldman-Delman calendar or (ED calendar). And thus when Mitchell was 23.000 to 23.999 years old the date would be between 1110.7 and 1111.699 ED, and when Dehner was between 21.000 and 21.999 the date would be between 1110.5 and 1111.499 ED. Assuming that their ages in the records were correct and up to date, the date of "Where No Man Has Gone Before' would be sometime between 1110.7 and 1111.5 ED.

Of course it is possible that the ages in the personnel medical records were past ages and Mitchell and Dehner were older than those ages. Gary Lockwood was born Feb 21,. 1937 and was about 28 years, and 5 months old when the episode was filmed from July 19 to July 29, 1965. Sally Kellerman was born 2 June 1937 and thus thus about 28 years and 2 months old when the episode was filmed.

Assuming that Mitchell and Dehner could have been up to 10 years older than their ages in the records for some record keeping reason, the date of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" could have been between 1110.7 and 1121.5 ED.

Note that according to what Mitchell said about Tarbolde, the episode date should be between 2096 and 2196 in what I call the Tarbolde-Mitchell calendar (TM calendar). Assuming that they use years of the same planet and the same length, 2096.000 to 2196.999 minus 1110.7 to 1121.5 gives a difference of 974.5 to 1,086.299 years.

So if the TM calendar and the ED calendar are both Earth calendars, the ED calendar should count the years from a calendar era that is 974.5 to 1,086.299 years after the calendar era of the TM calendar.

Of course the TM date of 2096.000 to 2196.999 comes from interpreting Mitchell's reference rather strictly. If Mitchell was speaking very loosely, he might have said that 1996 was within "the past couple of centuries" when it was between 100.000 to 999.999 years earlier. Thus the TM date of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" could be between 2096.000 TM and 2996.999 TM, and the calendar era of the ED calendar could be between 974.5 to 1,886.299 years after the calendar era of the TM calendar.

But where the birth dates of Mitchell and Dehner given in years, or in stardates as Memory Alpha claims? They certainly resemble the format of stardates.

So Dehner would be born on stardate 1089.5 and Mitchell on 1087.7, making her 1.8 stardate units younger than Mitchell. If their ages of 23 and 21 were up to date in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Mitchell would 1.001 to 2.999 years older than Dehner. Thus there would be about 0.5561 to 1.6611 years per stardate unit, and Mitchell would turn 23 between stardate 1104.54 and 1129.0586 and Dehner would turn 21 between stardate 1102.14 and 1127.26. And those stardate ranges would be over a century before the stardates of 1312.4 to 1313.8 given in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

Also, a stardate unit should be about 10 to 24 hours long according to the evidence of "Where No Man Has Gone Before", not about 0.5561 to 1.6611 years per stardate unit, If there are 10 to 24 hours in a stardate unit, and about 365.25 days in an Earth year, and thus about 8766 hours in an Earth year, there should be about 365.25 to 876.6 stardate units in an Earth year. Dehner's age of 21.00 to 21.999 years would be 7.670.25 to 19,284.323 stardate units, and Mitchell's age of 23.000 to 23.999 years would be 8,400.75 to 21,037.523 stardate units.

Subtracting even the smallest number of stardate units calculated via their ages from stardate 1312.9 to 1313.1 would result in a stardate with a negative number.

Perhaps the stardate system changed between the births of Mitchell and Dehner and "Where No Man Has Gone before".

Or maybe, as I suggested in my first post, stardates go from 0000.0 to 9999.9, and then reset back to 0000.0 and climb back up to 9999.9 and reset back to 0000.0, over and over again. Or maybe, as I also suggested in my first post, TOS era stardates have more them four digits before the decimal point, but only the last four digits before the decimal point are spoken or shown. So Stardate 1312.4 might actually be stardate 11312.4, or stardate 91312.4, or stardate 261312.4, or stardate 7281312.4, or whatever, with only the last four digits before the decimal point ever mentioned.

So if Mitchel and Dehner were aged 21 and 23 about stardate 101312.9 to 101313.1, Mitchell would have been born sometime between stardates 80274.88 and 92912.35, and Dehner would have been born sometime between stardates 82028.58 and 93642.85. So Mitchell could have been born on stardate 81087.7 or stardate 91087.7, making him about 11.664 to 55.373 years old on stardate 101313.0 which is 10,225.3 or 20,225.3 stardate units later. Dehner could have been born on stardate 91089.5. making her about 11.662 to 27.990 years old, on stardate 101313.0 which is 10,223.5 stardate units later.

The Tombstone that Gary Mitchell created v for Kirk said: "James R. Kirk C. 1277.7 to 1313.7" Or possibly the second number was 1515.7, 1616.7, or 1818.7.

Assuming for the moment that the second number is 1313.7, there are several possible interpretations.

1) 1277.7 and 1313.7 are both decimal years.

2) 1277.7 is a decimal year and 1313.7 is a stardate.

3) 1277.7 is a stardate and 1313.7 is a decimal year.

4) 1277.7 is a stardate and 1313.7 is a stardate.

Since Mitchell created the tombstone sometime between stardates 1313.3 and 1313.8, it is logical to deduce that 1313.7 is probably, though not certainly, a stardate.

"C 1277.7" could be the year or the stardate when Kirk was born, or the year or the stardate when Kirk was first commissioned an ensign in Starfleet, or when he took command of the Enterprise, or when he became a captain in rank, or something.

If 1277.7 and 1313.7 are both decimal years, they are 36 years apart. That certainly fits the general impression that Kirk should have been about 30 to forty years old in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" William Shatner was born 22 March 1931 and thus was 34 years and about 4 months old when the episode was filmed, so his actual age was fairly close to that possible age of Kirk.

If either 1277.7 or 1313.7 is a decimal year date, that would make make it either the second or the third different year count used in the episode, proving that two or three different dating systems are used during the episode. If they are all Earth dating systems, they would use two or three different calendar eras to count the years from.

If year 1313.7 KT (Kirk Tombstone) is also year 2096.000 to 2196.999 TM, the calendar year in the KT calendar would be about 782.3 to 883.299 years after the calendar era in the TM calendar. However, if the date of "Where No Man Has Goes Before" in the TM calendar can be between 2096.000 TM and 2996.999 TM, the calendar era in the KT calendar could be between 782.3 and 1,683.299 years after the calendar era in the TM calendar.

If the date of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" could have been between 1110.7 and 1121.5 ED (In the hypothetical Eldman Delman calendar), the calendar era of the Eldman Delman calendar would be between 192.2 and 203 years after the calendar year of the KT calendar.

Of course it is not certain that the birthdates of Mitchell and Dehner and the dates on Kirk's tombstone are years, so the existence of the Eldman Delman calendar and the Kirk Tombstone calendar is hypothetical. One or both sets of dates could be given in stardates.

If a stardate unit should be about 10 to 24 hours long, there should be about 365.25 to 876.6 stardate units in a year. If Kirk is about 30 to 40 Earth years old at stardate 1313.7, that would make him 10,957.5 to 35,074.4 stardates old. If stardate 1313.7 was actually stardate 101313.7, Kirk would have been born sometime between 66239.3 and 90356.2. If 1277 is the last four digits before the decimal point of a stardate in Kirk's life, that significant stardate could be stardate 71277.7, or 81277.77,.or 91277.7, or 101277.7, and the first two are possible stardates of Kirk's birth..

So once good views of Mitchell and Dehner's records, and of Kirk's tombstone, became available to Star Trek fans, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" gave them a lot of chronological information to try to understand.

Added 06-11-2020. Above I wrote that:

So a stardate unit should be about 10 to 24 hours long according to the evidence of "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

There is some contradictory evidence. Some time after making the log:

Captain's log, Star date 1312.9. Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone. Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance. Our overriding question now is what destroyed the Valiant? They lived through the barrier, just as we have. What happened to them after that?

Kirk decides to leave Mitchell on Delta Vega. In the next scene:

Star date 1313.1. We're now approaching Delta Vega. Course set for a standard orbit. This planet, completely uninhabited, is slightly smaller than Earth. Desolate, but rich in crystal and minerals. Kelso's task, transport down with a repair party, try to regenerate the main engines, save the ship. Our task, transport down a man I've known for fifteen years, and if we're successful, maroon him there.

So there are 0.2 stardate units between the two logs. Even if they were headed for
Delta Vega for all of that 0.2 stardate units, they could only travel as far as they could go at impulse power in 0.2 stardate units.

How far was the distance to Delta Vega?

SPOCK: Recommendation one. There's a planet a few light days away from here. Delta Vega. It has a lithium cracking station. We may be able to adapt some of its power packs to our engines.

Presumably Delta Vega was more than one light day and less than seven light days which would e a light week. A light day is the distance traveled by light in one day. It is 1/365.25 of a light year and is 24 light hours, or 1,440 light minutes, or 86,400 light seconds.

So Delta Vega should have been 1 to 7 light days, or 24 to 168 light hours, or 1,440 to 10,080 light minutes, away.

If there are 10 to 24 hours in a stardate unit., 0.2 stardate units would be 2 to 4.8 hours. If the Enterprise was traveling slower than light at impulse power when traveling to Delta Vega, the farthest it could travel would be 2 to 4.8 light hours, which would be 0.0119 to 0.2 of the stated distance to Delta Vega.

So that seems to indicate that 0.2 of a stardate unit should be at least 1 to 7 days, and thus a stardate unit should be at least 5 to 35 days long.

This would indicate that stardate units are much longer than the other evidence in the episode indicates. But possibly the Enterprise was traveling faster than light to Delta Vega, presumably at least 5 to 84 times the speed of light.

[Added 06-15-2020) Kirk's log after hitting the barrier says:

Captain's log, Star date 1312.9. Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone. Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance. Our overriding question now is what destroyed the Valiant? They lived through the barrier, just as we have. What happened to them after that?

Assuming that days means at least one day and less than a week, and that years means at least one year and less than a decade, the ratio between normal speeds and the speeds after the damage to the main engines should be 365.25 to 3652.5 days divided by 1 to 7 days, or about 52.17 to 3652.5. If the speed after the damage was still faster than light, at least 5 to 84 times the speed of light, the speed before the damage would be at least 260.85 to 306,810 times the speed of light.]

 

[Albertese]

Couple things:

First, this is a fascinating project you're undertaking which I'll follow with great interest. Some of your assumptions (or should I say, range of alternative assumptions) are ideas I've played with but never taken the time to dig into so this is fun to follow.

I would just throw out there my own assumption (without hijacking your thread with a lengthy explanation of my thought process) that a stardate unit is only a consistent rate of time in a given location used for fleet-wide reference, and that nominally one such unit is eight hour long. But at various other places in the galaxy and diverse velocities attained by those making official records will experience stardates passing at variable rates. So your calculations of a stardate unit as experienced on Delta Vega being 10 to 12 hours fits nicely with my scheme; the rate of time being slower than at the central reference point due to the effect of relativistic time dilation.

In the FASA Star Trek Role-Playing Game from the 1980s, they have stardates as spoken in the show being a short form of stardate, whose longer form is 00012/1234.0 where the numbers before the slash tick up every time the numbers after the slash roll over 9999 units.

In my own 8-hour stardate scheme, the 1277.7 figure on Kirk's tombstone is a stardate in the same reference frame as usual stardates (likely given the proximity of the "death" date to the stardate in the mission log) is a date around two weeks prior to the episode, and my assumption is that Kirk is newly minted as the Enterprise CO and he's only been in the center seat for a couple weeks.

Finally, and a personal request, could you please round your estimate ranges to whole (or at most one decimal place) numbers? My glasses prescription is well overdue and the difference between a comma and a period here is hard for me to see and with the decimal listed to three places I keep reading your estimates as a span of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. I immediately correct myself, but it's aggravating.

Thanks!

--Alex

 

[MAGolding]

Couple things:

First, this is a fascinating project you're undertaking which I'll follow with great interest. Some of your assumptions (or should I say, range of alternative assumptions) are ideas I've played with but never taken the time to dig into so this is fun to follow.

I would just throw out there my own assumption (without hijacking your thread with a lengthy explanation of my thought process) that a stardate unit is only a consistent rate of time in a given location used for fleet-wide reference, and that nominally one such unit is eight hour long. But at various other places in the galaxy and diverse velocities attained by those making official records will experience stardates passing at variable rates. So your calculations of a stardate unit as experienced on Delta Vega being 10 to 12 hours fits nicely with my scheme; the rate of time being slower than at the central reference point due to the effect of relativistic time dilation.

In the FASA Star Trek Role-Playing Game from the 1980s, they have stardates as spoken in the show being a short form of stardate, whose longer form is 00012/1234.0 where the numbers before the slash tick up every time the numbers after the slash roll over 9999 units.

In my own 8-hour stardate scheme, the 1277.7 figure on Kirk's tombstone is a stardate in the same reference frame as usual stardates (likely given the proximity of the "death" date to the stardate in the mission log) is a date around two weeks prior to the episode, and my assumption is that Kirk is newly minted as the Enterprise CO and he's only been in the center seat for a couple weeks.

Finally, and a personal request, could you please round your estimate ranges to whole (or at most one decimal place) numbers? My glasses prescription is well overdue and the difference between a comma and a period here is hard for me to see and with the decimal listed to three places I keep reading your estimates as a span of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. I immediately correct myself, but it's aggravating.

Thanks!

--Alex

I'll try to remember to round my estimate ranges.

A 8 hour stardate length would explain a problem with TNG era stardates assuming they use the same system.

I believe the production staff of TNG worked on the assumption that 1 stardate united equaled one Earth day of 24 hours (which makes an average Julian calendar year equal 365 and a quarter stardate units) and also on the contradictory assumption that there were 1,000 stardate unites in an Earth year, thus making about two point seven three seven stardate units in an average day, and making a stardate unit last for about eight point seven six six hours).

Since the word day can be used to refer to someone's work period, and since an eight hour workday is common, the thought has occurred to me, and probably also to you, that a work shift or watch aboard ship could be called a day in the sense of a workday, and might last for about eight hours without being too different from 20th century norms. So that would mean that there would be three shifts or workdays in a 24 hour day, and if a stardate unit equaled such a workday there would be either 1,095 or 1,098 stardate units in an Earth calendar year depending on if it is a leap year. Of course a stardate and a work shift or workday might equel only approximately eight hours on a starship for various reasons.

Thus people in the TNG era could talk like stardates equaled days, meaning shifts or workdays, in various episodes, and also talk like there were about 1,000 stardates in an Earth year in various episodes, without contradicting themselves. And I have also thought that people might use "stardate years" which were exactly 1,000 stardate units long, along with Earth years that might be between 800 and 1200 stardate units long, depending on how the exact length of a strdate uit was adjusted to satisfy various story elements.

The only problem with the 1277.7 number on Kirk's Tombstone being a stardate in your system and being when Kirk takes command of the Enterprise is how short a time it gives for Kirk to take command and to reach the edge of the galaxy, and how it contradicts the stardate of 1254.4 for the animated episode "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" for those who want to include the animated series in their chronology. Of course the stardates could reset from 9999 to 0000 or have digits which were never mentioned, and thus "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" could possibly be years after "Where No Man Has Gone Before", though it would probably be a decade afterwards which might be too long.

 

[MAGolding]

See my post number 282 at:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/the-enterprise-that-wasnt.303794/page-15

For a mention of several different Star Trek chronologies.

Also see this thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/how-many-different-star-trek-chronologies-are-there.295793/

 

[johnnybear]

I could never accept that Gary Mitchell was only twenty three not when Gary Lockwood, the actor was twenty eight or nine but looked more in his thirties! Sally Kellerman was also the same age and she too certainly didn't look twenty one either!
JB

 

[Albertese]

Yeah I had assumed that was their cadet information, not their current records.

--Alex

 

[Tenacity]

maybe this Tarbolde was an astronaut who spent 10 years on a sleeper ship traveling to Canopius, and wrote a poem after he got there.

has it occurred to anyone else that dispite the name, tarbolde was an alien and of the native species of canopius?

1996 was a earth year, but tarbolde wasn't human.

 

[ChallengerHK]

has it occurred to anyone else that dispite the name, tarbolde was an alien and of the native species of canopius?

1996 was a earth year, but tarbolde wasn't human.

That was always my assumption.

 

[MAGolding]

I could never accept that Gary Mitchell was only twenty three not when Gary Lockwood, the actor was twenty eight or nine but looked more in his thirties! Sally Kellerman was also the same age and she too certainly didn't look twenty one either!
JB

Yeah I had assumed that was their cadet information, not their current records.
--Alex

It is possible that Gary Mitchell was 23 when he entered Starfleet Academy and thus 27 when he graduated and was commissioned an ensign. Or it is possible that Gary Mitchell was 23 when he graduated from Starfleet Academy and was commissioned an ensign. Or it is possible that Gary Mitchell was 23 when he was commissioned a lieutenant commander a few years before the epsiode. Or it is possible that Gary Mitchell was 23 at the time of the episode, and how old his actor looked has nothing to do with how old his character was.

Or there could be a fifth possibility that I haven't thought of.

I don't think that Dehner's rank was mentioned in the episode. But she wore a Starfleet uniform indicating she was probably a member of Starfleet. 21 seems very young for her age in the episode, even though there is no necessity for her to be the same age as her actor.

Did Dehner go through sStarfleet Academy, graduate, and be commissioned in Starfleet? If so:It is possible that Elizabeth Dehner was 21 when she entered Starfleet Academy and thus 25 when she graduated and was commissioned an ensign. Or it is possible that Elizabeth Dehner was 21 when she graduated from Starfleet Academy and was commissioned an ensign.

As a doctor, maybe Dehner was commissioned directly from civilian life. Thus she could have been 21 when she first enter Starfleet from civilian life and was commissioned. Or she could have been 21 when she was promoted to her present rank, a rank unspecified in the episode, Or she could have been 21 at the time of the episode, which seems very unlikely, even though characters do not have to be the same ages as their actors.

I note that in the 20th century the age range to enter United States armed service academies was 17 to 22.

has it occurred to anyone else that dispite the name, tarbolde was an alien and of the native species of canopius?

1996 was a earth year, but tarbolde wasn't human.

That was always my assumption.

Does it matter whether Tabolde was a human or an alien? Mitchell said that Tabolde wrote "Nightingale Woman" on the Canopius planet in 1996. So in the calendar which Mitchell used in that statement, which I call the Tarbolde Mitchell or TM calendar, the year when Tabolde wrote "Nightingale Woman" on the Canopius planet was 1996. 1996 TM.

Mitchell also called "Nightingale Woman" "The most passionate love sonnet of the past couple of centuries", which implies that 1996 TM was less than 200 years in the past, and thus that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" happens in or before 2196 TM.

So if the year of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is 2196 TM or earlier, and if the SS Valiant went missing in interstellar space over 200 years before, the SS Valiant was traveling in interstellar space in or before 1996 TM. So it doesn't matter whether Tarbolde was from Earth or not, because the Earth ship SS Valiant was already traveling in interstellar space by 1996 TM.

And that is supported by the TNG episode 'Haven". A space ship is identified as Tarellian from its image, thus showing that Tarellians use an unique design of interstellar star ship. Though the ship is travelling slower than light, Tarellian ships seem to be capable of warp speeds:

RIKER: The fact that it's travelling at its present velocity suggests a possible answer.
LAFORGE: A damaged vessel, sir. That could explain it.
RIKER: If it were unable to reach warp speed, it would have taken all these years to get here.

So what was the Tarellian level of development when they had those space ships with warp capability?

DATA: Tarella was class M, much like your Earth, with similar humanoid life forms. Unfortunately they faced the old story of hatred out powering intelligence.
PICARD: There were hostilities?
DATA: Between the inhabitants of their two land masses, resulting in one group unleashing a deadly biological weapon on the other.
CRUSHER: And in the end the other became infected as well. Makes one question the sanity of humanoid forms.
PICARD: Can you identify the origin of the infection, Doctor?
CRUSHER: The Tarellians had reached Earth's late twentieth century level of knowledge. That's all you need if you're a damned fool. A deadly, infectious virus which at that modest level of knowledge is not difficult to grow.
TASHA: We learned the rest of the story in security training. Some Tarellians made it to other worlds only to die along with the populations they infected.
LAFORGE: It's pretty well covered in Academy training now, Captain. Many of them tried to avoid other civilised worlds as they escaped only to be hunted down and destroyed anyway.
PICARD: And it was believed that the last Tarellian vessel was destroyed eight years ago by the Alcyones.

So the Tarellians had warp capability when their society was as advanced as "Earth's late twentieth century level of knowledge". That proves that in the calendar and calendar era used in "Haven", Earth had warp capability at least as early as the year 2000 in the Haven calendar..

But that is seemingly contradicted by the fact that Earth didn't have any form of interstellar travel in the year 1996 in the calendar used in "Space Seed", the year 1996 SS. According to "Space Seed" space travel was so slow that traveling between planets took years up to about 2018 SS. Since the distances to even the nearest stars are at least tens of thousands of times as far as interplanetary distances in our solar system, it should take space ships in the year 1996 SS tens of thousands of years to reach even the nearest stars.

So when I believed that all episodes used the same calendar, I believed that some group
on Earth secretly developed interstellar travel, and left Earth to explore and colonize the stars, leaving no record of that behind on Earth, sometime before 1996. Thus Khan's people who didn't know about that secret development, had to use the much slower Botany Bay and suspended animation in their attempt to reach another star. And then about the year 2018, or later, warp drive was rediscovered on Earth and Earth began to explore and colonize the stars again. And eventually the two groups from Earth met.

After I decided that different Earth calendars counting the years from different calendar eras were used in Star Trek, I decided that the year 1996 TM from"Where No Man Has Gone Before" could be after the year 2018 SS of "space Seed" if different calendar eras were used in those two episodes. And thus Earth could have invented the warp drive only once in Star Trek.

 

[Henoch]

Let's assume that Earth choose a new, non-Gregorian calendar system to represent the new world government. Pushing the new calendar year zero up a century or two would help explain the technical advances that could not happen in our reality. Which historic event (nondenominational or non-religious) would they choose to call year zero?

One example: Was the new system a resurgence of a Roman Empire system?

The Roman Empire, at its height (c. 117 CE), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. By 285 CE the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305 CE) into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The Roman Empire began when Augustus Caesar (r. 27 BCE-14 CE) became the first emperor of Rome and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus (r. 475-476 CE), was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (r. 476-493 CE). In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI (r. 1449-1453 CE) and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. The influence of the Roman Empire on western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of western culture.

The last time the Roman Empire was one entity was 285 CE. Did putting Earth back under one government akin this to continuing the old Roman Empire? Could the new calendar set 285 CE as the new year zero? Could some other key stone year of the Roman Empire be chosen, like something associated with Marcus Aurelius? Were Roman names like Tiberius now revered on United Earth? Someone in Kirk's family thought so, apparently.​

Are there any other proposed examples for reseting year zero for the new United Earth to explain the technical advances that could not happen in our reality? Is this line of thought without merit?

 

[Timo]

...Are all real-world examples of resetting the clock done retroactively, so that nobody actually ever lived with the awareness that this was Year Zero? That is, not counting the other timekeeping tradition, that observed by the Romans, too, where the clock is constantly being reset at the start of a ruler's reign, and can only survive the passing on of the crown if the scribe survives and remains in royal favor?

Retroactive re-zeroing might be done not on the basis of choosing a new zero event, but by rechecking some basic assumptions. Even in the past 2,000 years, we might well have lost a decade or two to criminally bad bookkeeping - if not in our reality, then in one that is only ever-so-slightly parallel to ours. The zero might remain where it sits, half a decade or so after the traditionally assumed birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, and the extra decades could come later on. (Or then, say, discoveries have been made that establish the much more archival-friendly deathday of Jesus quite exactly, and this is discovered to actually have been around AD 69 of the old count (discoveries like that wouldn't even necessarily require a time machine, just some extra digging).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

Let's assume that Earth choose a new, non-Gregorian calendar system to represent the new world government. Pushing the new calendar year zero up a century or two would help explain the technical advances that could not happen in our reality. Which historic event (nondenominational or non-religious) would they choose to call year zero?

One example: Was the new system a resurgence of a Roman Empire system?

The last time the Roman Empire was one entity was 285 CE. Did putting Earth back under one government akin this to continuing the old Roman Empire? Could the new calendar set 285 CE as the new year zero? Could some other key stone year of the Roman Empire be chosen, like something associated with Marcus Aurelius? Were Roman names like Tiberius now revered on United Earth? Someone in Kirk's family thought so, apparently.​

Are there any other proposed examples for reseting year zero for the new United Earth to explain the technical advances that could not happen in our reality? Is this line of thought without merit?

The Roman Empire was not divided in 285, different men were given command over different areas of it while remaining colleagues in joint authority. beside, it was united by Constantine I, split again, reunited, etc, until the division in 395, which again was merely a division of imperial authority.

...Are all real-world examples of resetting the clock done retroactively, so that nobody actually ever lived with the awareness that this was Year Zero? That is, not counting the other timekeeping tradition, that observed by the Romans, too, where the clock is constantly being reset at the start of a ruler's reign, and can only survive the passing on of the crown if the scribe survives and remains in royal favor?

Retroactive re-zeroing might be done not on the basis of choosing a new zero event, but by rechecking some basic assumptions. Even in the past 2,000 years, we might well have lost a decade or two to criminally bad bookkeeping - if not in our reality, then in one that is only ever-so-slightly parallel to ours. The zero might remain where it sits, half a decade or so after the traditionally assumed birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, and the extra decades could come later on. (Or then, say, discoveries have been made that establish the much more archival-friendly deathday of Jesus quite exactly, and this is discovered to actually have been around AD 69 of the old count (discoveries like that wouldn't even necessarily require a time machine, just some extra digging).

Timo Saloniemi

I may point out that there is no year zero in the AD or CE year count. However, astronomical year numbering uses 0 for 1 BC, so that 2 BC is -1 in astronomical year numbering,

Among Buddhist calendars, 544 BC is year 1 in Sri Lank and Myanmar, but year 0 in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, so their Buddhist calendars are a year off.

So it is uncertain whether a new calendar era would start with zero or one.

I find it very hard to believe that Chinese timekeeping has lost any years or even days in the last two thousand years. And after the new eastern capital of Constantinople was founded in AD 330, the bureaucrats there kept the bureaucracy working uninterrupted for 874 years until the capture of Constantinople by the 4th Crusade in 1204, probably an unequaled record.

And by then there were many cultures keeping track of time with high accuracy.

There have been many actual historical epochs or eras used by different groups on Earth, some differing sightly from Anno Domini and some differing by centuries and millennium.. Many are mentioned in this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_era#Southeast_Asia

 

[Henoch]

Ignoring any political historic event to be associated to a possible new United Earth dating system, maybe year 0/1 was set based on some scientific historic event, like a solar cycle sequence, a supernova explosion, special comet origin, an interstellar pulsar or something else.

 

[MAGolding]

The fourth TOS episode in broadcast order is "The Naked Time", 29 September 1966.

It begins with:

Captain's Log. Our position, orbiting Psi 2000, an ancient world, now a frozen wasteland, about to rip apart in its death throes. Our mission, pick up a scientific party below, observe the disintegration of the planet.

Spock and Tormolen discovered the 6 researches are dead in their research station. Tormolen is infected. Then:

Captain's Log: Stardate 1704.2. The science party we were to have picked up has been found dead. Life support systems had been turned off. Station personnel, frozen to death. Conditions highly unusual. Meanwhile, we remain in orbit to complete our mission, close scientific measurement of the break-up of this planet.

KIRK: Earth Science needs the closest possible measurement of the breakup of this planet. To do this, we need the Enterprise in a critically tight orbit. Question. Could what happened down there to those people create any unusual danger to this vessel and crew?
SPOCK: We will need top efficiency, Captain. It'll be a tricky orbit. When the planet begins to go, there may be drastic changes in gravity, mass, magnetic field.
KIRK: The purpose of a briefing, gentlemen, is to get me answers based on your abilities and experience. In a critical orbit, there's no time for surprise.

It is a mystery how a planet could break up.

My provisional theory is that a micro black hole, a theoretical possibility, has entered the planet and is slowly consuming the planet's matter. As the black hole gains mass, the rate f matter consumption may increase geometrically. Eventually mass may be falling into the black hole at such a rate that it becomes superheated plasma. Eventually the expansive force of superheated plasma in the core might be stronger than the planet's gravity and blow the planet apart.

So if the planet is about to blow up, the total mass within the surface of the planet will not change, but as matter enters the black hole it could be defined as no longer being part of the planet, and thus the planet itself will be losing mass to the black hole, And the changing distribution of the mass may change some of the gravitational effects.

In a rec room, some crew members are a having a meal. Then:

Captain's Log, supplemental. Our orbit tightening. Our need for efficiency, critical. But unknown to us, a totally new and unusual disease has been brought aboard.

RILEY: Relative gravity increasing, sir.
KIRK: Compensate, Mister Riley.
RILEY: Yes, sir.
SULU: Magnetic field continuing to shift, sir. Planet continuing to shrink in mass.
KIRK: Mister Spock?
SPOCK: All scanning stations manned, all recorders functioning, Captain.
RILEY: Orbit steady now, sir.
SPOCK: Obviously, this planet is condensing more rapidly than expected. A valuable study. We may be seeing Earth's distant future. Before its sun went dark, this planet was remarkably similar to yours.

I don't see how the planet could be loosing mass to space without becoming a lot hotter than the frozen wasteland seen. Therefore the mass should be lost to a black hole inside the planet. Note that the planet is shrinking in size.

Note that the planet was once similar to Earth, and so presumably had similar temperatures before its sun went dark.

Old science fiction stories often depicted stars gradually becoming less luminous and their planets becoming colder. However, for 60 or 70 years now nuclear physics and astrophysics have been advanced enough to calculate the life cycles of stars. A main sequence star will shine fairly steadily, though growing somewhat brighter, until it leaves the main sequence by swelling up to become a red giant star many times more luminous than it was, and after a time as a red giant will shrink down into a white dwarf, which will still be shining but with a very small luminosity.

So I imagine that planet Psi 2000 formed near its star, in the star's original habitable zone, and thus was similar to Earth in composition, but gravitational interactions with other bodies flung it out into a distant orbit, where it was very cold, After maybe billions of years, the star swelled up into a red giant and planet Psi 2000 was warmed up to Earthlike temperatures for millions of years. And then the star shrank down to a white dwarf star and the planet frozen even colder than before.

Later on the bridge:

SPOCK: Planet breakup is imminent, Captain. Shrinking in size at an increasing rate. As the planet continues to shrink in size, its surface moves away from us.
KIRK: Forcing us to spiral down to maintain the same distance from it.
SPOCK: Exactly. We must be prepared to respond instantly to any sudden change.

This doesn't seem to make any sense. There doesn't seem to be any reason to change the orbit of the ship as mass falls into the hypothetical black hole. The correct orbital speed at their distances from the center of mass will remain the same. My best guess is that they have to scan the surface and as deeply below the surface as they can with short range scanners, and so have to lower their position to keep the planet's surface in range of the short range scanners. And as the ship gets closer to the center of mass the necessary orbital speed will increase constantly.

Later, the engines are shut off.

SPOCK: Captain. At our present rate of descent, we have less than twenty minutes before we enter planet atmosphere.
KIRK: And burn up. I know, Mister Spock.

Captain's Log, stardate 1704.4. Ship out of control, spiraling down towards planet Psi 2000. We have nineteen minutes of life left without engine power or helm control.

Later:

RILEY [OC]: Attention, crew. This is Captain Riley. There will be a formal dance in the bowling alley at nineteen hundred hours tonight.
SPOCK: No way, Captain. He controls the main power panels. He can override any channel from down there. Seventeen minutes left, sir. (ship is jolted severely)

So it is before 1900 hours by ship's time.

When they enter the engine room:

SCOTT: He's turned the engines off. Completely cold. It will take thirty minutes to regenerate them.
UHURA [OC]: Ship's outer skin is beginning to heat, Captain. Orbit plot shows we have about eight minutes left.
KIRK: Scotty!
SCOTT: I can't change the laws of physics. I've got to have thirty minutes.

Captain's Log, supplemental. The Enterprise, spiraling down out of control. Ship's outer skin heating rapidly due to friction with planet atmosphere.

SCOTT: Maybe twenty two, twenty three minutes.
KIRK: Scotty, we've got six.

Later:

UHURA: Yes, sir. Three and a half minutes left, Captain.

So by the time they restart the engines and warp away to safety. the 19 minutes are almost over. But according to most ideas about the length of stardate units, 19 minutes would be a lot less than a tenth of a stardate unit, and so the stardate when they warp away from Psi 2000 should still be 1704.4, or at the most 1704.5.

The ship travels backwards in time until they manage to stop it:

KIRK: The time warp. What did it do to us?
SPOCK: We've regressed in time seventy one hours. It is now three days ago, Captain. We have three days to live over again.
KIRK: Not those last three days.
SPOCK: This does open some intriguing prospects, Captain. Since the formula worked, we can go back in time, to any planet, any era.
KIRK: We may risk it someday, Mister Spock. Resume course to our next destination, Mister Sulu.
SULU: Course laid in, sir.
KIRK: Steady as she goes.

So if they traveled back in time about 71 hours or about 2.9 days (two point nine five eight three three three.... to be precise). the stardate when they stop going back in time should make it possible to calculate the relationship between stardate units and days in "the Naked Time".

No stardate is mentioned, but shots of Sulu's chronometer show the time and the stardate indicators showing time going backwards, so someone might be able to say what the stardate is when they stop going back in time, in the original or the remastered version. .

And I have to wonder if Kirk completed his mission at Psi 2000 or if he violated his orders.

Captain's Log. Our position, orbiting Psi 2000, an ancient world, now a frozen wasteland, about to rip apart in its death throes. Our mission, pick up a scientific party below, observe the disintegration of the planet.

Captain's Log: Stardate 1704.2. The science party we were to have picked up has been found dead. Life support systems had been turned off. Station personnel, frozen to death. Conditions highly unusual. Meanwhile, we remain in orbit to complete our mission, close scientific measurement of the break-up of this planet.

Obviously it was possible for them to beam the dead science party to the ship's morgue and taken them for burial, but I don't know if they did. What about beaming up the science party alive and well? That would be impossible, since they were dead,. The only possible way to beam up the dead scientists alive would be using time travel to rescue them before they died Oh wait....

And the Enterprise zoomed away at warp speed from planet Psi 2000 to escape from burning up as it entered the planet's atmosphere. Nobody said that they had only X minutes left before the planet exploded. I find it easy to believe that Psi 2000 would not explode until minutes, hours, or days after the Enterprise zoomed away at warp speed. Therefore if the Enterprise warped back to Psi 2000 they might still be able to observe the breakup and complete their scientific mission.

Of course, it wasn't specified where the Enterprise was when it slowed down and stopped 71 hours in the past, or how long it would take for the Enterprise to return to Psi 2000 or go on to their next destination. And we don't known when the researchers on Psi 2000 died or how soon the planet exploded after the Enterprise left. And maybe lives also depending on the Enterprise reaching its unspecified next destination in time.

And maybe Starfleet already had some time travel regulations which forbid changing even the most recent events using time travel.

But I can't help wondering if Kirk obeyed his orders or failed to complete his mission in "The Naked Time"

 

[MAGolding]

Going by broadcast order, the fifth episode of TOS is "The Enemy Within", broadcast on October 6, 1966.

There is a region of the planet Alfa 177 where during some seasons daytime temperatures are comfortable but nighttime temperatures often plummet to minus 120 degrees. Minus 120 Fahrenheit is minus 84 Ccelsius, and minus 120 Celsius is minus 184 Fahrenheit. It is not specified how extreme that temperature range in that region and season is compared to the rest of the planet.

Apparently a lot of small native animals manage to survive there which the small dog like animal they found probably hunts.

Magnetic ore from the planet messes with the transporter, and Captain Kirk is duplicated.

Captain's Log, stardate 1672.1. Specimen-gathering mission on planet Alpha 177. Unknown to any of us during this time, a duplicate of me, some strange alter ego, had been created by the transporter malfunction.

Captain's Log, stardate 1672.9. On the planet's surface, temperatures are beginning to drop, our landing party there in growing jeopardy. Due to the malfunction of the ship's transporter, an unexplained duplicate of myself definitely exists.

Captain's Log, stardate 1673.1. Something has happened to me. Somehow, in being duplicated, I have lost my strength of will. Decisions are becoming more and more difficult.

Captain's Log, stardate 1673.5. Transporter still inoperable. My negative self is under restraint in Sickbay. My own indecisiveness growing. My force of will steadily weakening. On the planet, condition critical. Surface temperature is seventy five degrees below zero, still dropping.

Captain's Log, stardate 1673.1. Entry made by Second Officer Spock. Captain Kirk retains command of this vessel, but his force of will rapidly fading. Condition of landing party critical. Transporter unit still under repair.

And with all those stardates given over a period of of one stardate unit, there are no mentions of elapsed days, or hours, or minutes.

In the first stardate, 1672.1, temperatures on Alfa 177 are starting to drop as night approaches, and the rest of the episode happens during the evening and night at the site on the planet. But there is no statement about how long Alf 177 days and nights are. The time between stardate 1672.1 , and the discovery that the transporter is malfunctioning, is not long enough for the landing party to have reached the end of their watch, gone off duty, and been beamed back to to the ship.

Note that the fifth stardate 1673.1, is lower by 0.4 units than the fourth stardate, 1673.5. So if the transcript is correct either Kirk or Spock made a mistake entering the stardate in the log, or stadates sometimes decrease with time instead of constantly increasing over time.

 

[Phoenix219]

...Are all real-world examples of resetting the clock done retroactively, so that nobody actually ever lived with the awareness that this was Year Zero? That is, not counting the other timekeeping tradition, that observed by the Romans, too, where the clock is constantly being reset at the start of a ruler's reign, and can only survive the passing on of the crown if the scribe survives and remains in royal favor?

Retroactive re-zeroing might be done not on the basis of choosing a new zero event, but by rechecking some basic assumptions. Even in the past 2,000 years, we might well have lost a decade or two to criminally bad bookkeeping - if not in our reality, then in one that is only ever-so-slightly parallel to ours. The zero might remain where it sits, half a decade or so after the traditionally assumed birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, and the extra decades could come later on. (Or then, say, discoveries have been made that establish the much more archival-friendly deathday of Jesus quite exactly, and this is discovered to actually have been around AD 69 of the old count (discoveries like that wouldn't even necessarily require a time machine, just some extra digging).

Timo Saloniemi

There is even some speculation in some alternative circles, that suggest we may have counted as continuous, things that were actually contemporary and in parallel, thus adding possible *centuries* to our 0-1000AD history....

 

[Timo]

The main problem there is the close cultural and geographical connectivity between the region from which our timekeeping system derives its zero point, and those regions that maintained a tradition of at least semi-reliable record-keeping in the time window during which the West really wasn't up to it. But each of those other record canons could be challenged separately, not necessarily for their entirety but simply at sufficiently many points that the interconnectivity chain is broken. And, as said, the Trek history of Earth could have been ever-so-slightly different...

Things like carbon dating work pretty well in the scale of millennia, but they require calibration first, and arguably we could have gotten the calibration all wrong by trusting scribes who had it all wrong. Certain astronomical events would likewise be subject to biased interpretation of the evidence: that event X would almost match what we know of the real Event A we can calculate back with our current knowledge would just be a mistaken interpretation of it actually having been the recorded event Y that was Event A in reality, while event X was in fact an approximation of Event B, decades later.

The thing is, though, this doesn't really help with the project at hand. If our heroes in, say, "Carpenter Street" explicitly associate the year 2004 with what we in the audience clearly recognize as fitting for the real 2004, then their 1996 doesn't plausibly become decades "later" or more advanced than ours through us assuming they are talking about a somehow differently defined 1996. If they are mistaken and it has in 2004 actually been 2395 years since Pontius Pilatus washed his hands, then the same holds for our reality, and no discrepancies get explained.

Not that we would be satisfied with any such explanations anyway. We have no choice but to accept that Earth in their reality had interstellar spacecraft in the 1990s, and FTL ones in the 2060s, and there's no point in a delaying act since we have already hit the 1990s (which predated the SUV and GPS seen in "Carpenter Street") and will hit the 2060s (which postdate those) soon enough.

Doesn't mean we still can't have fun with individual pseudo-datapoints. Perhaps a few dates are indeed stardates or Vulcan or Canopian ones, or the characters fumble, misremember or misquote. Perhaps what is being described isn't quite what one would first assume. But budging, say, the date of First Contact isn't going to work.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

Going by broadcast order, the seventh episode of TOS is "What Are Little Girls made Off?" from 20 October 1966. I forgot to do the sixth episode "Mudd's Women" and will have to do it later.

The planet Exo III is the third frozen planet in a row visited by the Enterprise. Of course in reality planets much too cold for human life are the most common temperature planets, followed by planets which are much too hot for humans, with planets in the narrow habitable temperature range being a small minority, tough still very numerous..

SPOCK: Ship's record banks show little we don't already know about this planet, Captain. Gravity is one point one of Earth, atmosphere within safety limits.
KIRK: But the surface temperature of that planet is one hundred degrees below zero.
SPOCK: It may have been inhabited once, but the sun in this system has been fading steadily for a half million years.

One hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit would be - 73.3 or minus seventy three point three three three three Celsius, while one hundred below Celsius would be 148 below Fahrenheit.

So, like Psi 2000, Exo III should have had Earth like temperatures at one point and its sun has been getting dimmer for half a million years. This suggests that the planet was like Psi 2000, too far from its star and too cold for Earth like life while that star was a main sequence star. As I theorized about Psi 2000, Exo III would not have become warm and habitable until it star expanded into a red giant, and would have remained habitable for millions of years, until it began to shrink down to a white dwarf just 500,000 years ago.

However, Earth did not become habitable for humans until it had an almost steady temperature for billions of years and life forms had evolved for billions of years. Could a planet in the habitable zone of a red giant have enough time to become habitable for humans?

Although traditionally it has been suggested the evolution of a star into a red giant will render its planetary system, if present, uninhabitable, some research suggests that, during the evolution of a 1 M☉ star along the red-giant branch, it could harbor a habitable zone for several billion years at 2 astronomical units (AU) out to around 100 million years at 9 AU out, giving perhaps enough time for life to develop on a suitable world. After the red-giant stage, there would for such a star be a habitable zone between 7 and 22 AU for an additional one billion years.[17] Later studies have refined this scenario, showing how for a 1 M☉ star the habitable zone lasts from 100 million years for a planet with an orbit similar to that of Mars to 210 million years for one that orbits at Saturn's distance to the Sun, the maximum time (370 million years) corresponding for planets orbiting at the distance of Jupiter. However, for planets orbiting a 0.5 M☉ star in equivalent orbits to those of Jupiter and Saturn they would be in the habitable zone for 5.8 billion years and 2.1 billion years, respectively; for stars more massive than the Sun, the times are considerably shorter.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant#Stars_that_do_not_become_red_giants

And it is possible that Exo III developed several times faster than Earth for various reasons and so became habitable after only a few hundred millions years instead of a few billion years.

BROWN: Doctor Korby has discovered that as their sun dimmed, the inhabitants of this planet moved underground from an open environment to this dark world. When you were a student of his, Christine, you must have often heard Doctor Korby remark how freedom of movement and choice produced the human spirit. The culture of Exo 3 proved his theory. When they moved from light to darkness, they replaced freedom with a mechanistic culture. Doctor Korby has been able to uncover elements of this culture which will revolutionise the universe when freed from this cavernous environment.

KIRK: He's an android like Brown?
RUK: More complex than Brown. Much superior. I was left here by the old ones.
KORBY: Ruk was still tending the machinery when we arrived here. How many centuries? Even Ruk doesn't know. With his help, ith the records I could find, we built Brown.

KIRK: Why? Can't your memory banks solve a simple equation like that? What happened to the old ones, Ruk?
RUK: So long ago.
KIRK: Is it possible they built their machines too well, gave them pride and a desire to survive? Machines that wanted logic and order and found that frustrated by the illogical emotional creatures that built them?
RUK: Yes, the old ones. The ones who made us. They grew fearful of us. They began to turn us off.
KIRK: And isn't it Korby who's creating the same danger to you all over again? Unlike you, we humans are full of unpredictable emotions that logic cannot solve.
RUK: Yes. Yes, it had been so long ago, I had forgotten. The old ones here. The ones who made us, yes. Yes, it is still in my memory banks. It became necessary to destroy them. You are inconsistent. You cannot be programmed. You are inferior.
KIRK: And Korby?
RUK: You came from the outside. You bring disorder here.
KIRK: The danger to you is Korby.
RUK: I was programmed by Korby. I cannot harm him.
KIRK: The old ones programmed you, too, but it became possible to destroy them.
RUK: That was the equation! (seizes Kirk) Existence! Survival must cancel out programming.
KIRK: That's it, Ruk! Logic! You can't protect someone who's trying to destroy you!

And that seems to be all the information about the history of Exo III.

Since an expedition led by the famous archaeologist Dr. Roger Korby went to Exo III, presumably there was proof or strong evidence for the previous existence of intelligent life on the planet. So it is a little puzzling that Spock's words seem to indicate doubt about the existence of that intelligent life.

There is information about the past of Christine chapel and Dr. Korby in the teaser:

KIRK: I understand you gave up a career in bio-research to sign aboard a starship.
CHAPEL: I know he's alive down there, Captain.
CREWMAN 2 [OC]: Aft scanner to Bridge, Status report, please. Engineering controls
KIRK: It's been five years since his last message.
CHAPEL: Roger's a very determined man. He'd find a way to live.
UHURA: Beginning signals to surface, sir.
KIRK: Put it on all frequencies, Lieutenant.
SPOCK: Ship's record banks show little we don't already know about this planet, Captain. Gravity is one point one of Earth, atmosphere within safety limits.
KIRK: But the surface temperature of that planet is one hundred degrees below zero.
SPOCK: It may have been inhabited once, but the sun in this system has been fading steadily for a half million years. Now, Doctor Korby, often called the Pasteur of archaeological medicine. His translation of medical records from the Orion ruins revolutionised our immunisation techniques.
KIRK: Required reading at the academy, Mister Spock. I've always wanted to meet him. Do you think there's any chance of him still being alive?
UHURA: I've tried all frequencies, sir. No return signal.
KIRK: Keep trying.
CREWMAN [OC]: Warp capacity point zero seven and building.
CREWMAN 2 [OC]: Communicator, we need more lines to the impulse deck.
CHAPEL: His last signal told about finding underground caverns.
KIRK: And since then two expeditions have failed to find him.
UHURA: I've run all frequencies a second time. There's no
KORBY [OC]: Enterprise, come in, Enterprise. This is Roger Korby. Repeating, this is Doctor Roger Korby. Do you read me, Enterprise? This is Doctor Roger Korby standing by.

So Korby's translations of medical records from the Orion ruins were already famous and studied at Starfleet Academy when Kirk was there, roughly one to two decades earlier one would guess. From Kirby's appearance his discoveries in the Orion ruins should have been fairly early in his career if made at least one or two decades earlier.

BROWN: Christine. You look well. My name is Brown, Doctor Korby's assistant. I presume you are Captain Kirk. He's dead, I assure you. Come, Doctor Korby will be waiting.
KIRK: You do know him well? An old friend?
CHAPEL: I suppose living here for five years.

CHAPEL: Roger, what's happened to you? When I sat in your class, you wouldn't even dream of harming an insect or an animal. Their life was sacred to you then.

KORBY: It's still me, Christine. Roger. I'm in here. You can't imagine how it was. I was frozen, dying. My legs were gone. I was, I had only my brain between life and death. This can be repaired easier than another man can set a broken finger. I'm still the same as I was before, Christine, perhaps even better.

There is also biographical information about Captain Kirk:

KIRK: What about memory? Tell me about Sam.
KIRK2: George Samuel Kirk, your brother. Only you call him Sam.
KIRK: He saw me off on this mission.
KIRK2: Yes, with his wife and three sons.
KIRK: He said he was being transferred to Earth colony two research station.
KIRK2: No, Captain. He said he was continuing his research and that he wanted to be transferred to Earth colony two.

In "Operation;: Annihilate!" Sam Kirk and family are stationed on the Earth colony of Deneva. Unless Deneva and Earth colony two are the same place, Sam Kirk would have gone to Deneva instead of, or after, going to Earth colony two. Sam Kirk probably came to Deneva at least a year before "Operation;: Annihilate!", since it is said there has been no Federation contact with Deneva for over a year. Thus Kirk's "five year mission" probably began over a year, and possibly several years, before "Operation;: Annihilate!".

The first log is right after Dr. Korby is discovered:

Captain's log, Stardate 2712.4. A signal from planet Exo 3. Doctor Roger Korby has been located, he and part of his expedition remaining alive due to the discovery of underground ruins Ieft by the former inhabitants of this world.

Unless Kirk made a number of big assumptions, Korby must have spoken a few more sentences about the fate of his expedition after the fade out of the teaser.

Ruk, imitating Kirk, says:

RUK [Kirk's voice]: We'll return to the ship within forty eight hours. Doctor Korby's records and specimens will require careful packing.

Since the Kirk android goes to the ship later, it should be less than 48 hours later since exceeding the time limit is not mentioned. Unfortunately there are no later logs or stardates in the episode to compare with elapsed time.