I'd like to argue that five-year missions of exploration are extremely rare in Starfleet, and that none were taken by any other ship or captain during Kirk's prominently televised adventures, or immediately before or after. That would give more credence to Kirk's self-boasting that his five-year experience "out there, dealing with unknowns like [V'Ger]" helped qualify him as not just a better skipper for the mission than Decker, but also a better skipper than any of the dozens upon dozens of properly Captain-ranked people available at Earth at that time.
No onscreen source has ever referred to any other ship, captain or crew undertaking a five-year mission of exploration. Heck, I think TMP is the first time we hear that such missions existed at all (since the opening credits of TOS aren't supposed to be part of the Star Trek universe, any more than the closing credits that expose "Kirk" as being an impostor whose real name is Shatner are).
The only other time-limited mission of that sort that I know of would be the one from DS9 "The Sound of Her Voice", where the Olympia supposedly was on an eight-year mission.
Timo Saloniemi
No onscreen source has ever referred to any other ship, captain or crew undertaking a five-year mission of exploration. Heck, I think TMP is the first time we hear that such missions existed at all (since the opening credits of TOS aren't supposed to be part of the Star Trek universe, any more than the closing credits that expose "Kirk" as being an impostor whose real name is Shatner are).
The only other time-limited mission of that sort that I know of would be the one from DS9 "The Sound of Her Voice", where the Olympia supposedly was on an eight-year mission.
Timo Saloniemi
