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Unseen TOS....

Interesting ruminations from both @Warped9 and @Henoch !!

@Henoch

I think I remember the 2018 date for impulse drive mentioned in one episode ("Space Seed", because it rendered sleeper ships obsolete?). So are you basing the invention of warp drive about 2060 on Kirks' line in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", about the 'old impulse drives' couldn't handle the magnetic storm?
1. If TOS takes place around 2260 then if Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centuri discovered space warp when he was in his 30s (missing 150 years at age 87) then that would be around 2060. Earth-ship SS Valiant was lost for more than 200 years then they would not have a warp drive and only "old impulse engines".
@blssdwlf got it. Whether the SS Valiant had an old impulse drive and an early warp drive, too, is not clear, but it is possible based on the timeline.
 
Designing older Romulan, or Earth, ships is tricky. By the time "Balance Of Terror" is being made there was very little to draw on for what starflight could look like during the intervening centuries. If we assume, as this project does, that Matt Jefferies had drawn up a design for the Valiant referenced in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" then they would have had baseline between that and the Enterprise and perhaps come up with something in between the two. The problem is they had no real idea of how the technological progress could be mapped out over the intervening centuries.

Our one small clue is that the ships are supposed to be "primitive" by TOS standards as compared to the Enterprise. Even the Romulans think their new BoP is something special even though we clearly see it's no serious match for the Enterprise.

That small clue means the ships from a century prior should not look similar to the ships seen in the episode. Matt Jefferies and Wah Chang might take clues from the current designs to inform them as to the general sensibility of the respective older ships. The Romulan ships should look a bit clunkier while still looking somewhat predatory. The Earth ships should look less advanced yet still purposeful and perhaps heroic in their own right.
 
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My own personal timeline has TOS happening in the early 2270s. There is zero reason it has to line up 300 years from the 1960s.
Based on two episodes "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed", STAR TREK’s timeline works best for me if the episodes are set in the late 2190's. No reason for me to question its own authenticity and the nature of the established timeline just to fit a very flawed studio canon chronology.
 
Based on two episodes "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed", STAR TREK’s timeline works best for me if the episodes are set in the late 2190's. No reason for me to question its own authenticity and the nature of the established timeline just to fit a very flawed studio canon chronology.
I can skip the Tomorrow is Yesterday humor line, but both Space Seed and The Savage Curtain put Star Trek in the late 2100's to early 2200's stronger than most other evidence. :shrug:

For me, I've been beat down and accept Season One start date is September 2266...:ouch:
 
Taken in isolation, TOS fits into the late 22nd/early 23rd century quite well.
Outside that, TMP lands fairly concretely in 2277 at the earliest, with the other movies following suit
 
Taken in isolation, TOS fits into the late 22nd/early 23rd century quite well.
Outside that, TMP lands fairly concretely in 2277 at the earliest, with the other movies following suit

I HAD to have missed this. Where in TMP the characters stated what year they were in... at the earliest???

I’m on the fringe. TOS, TAS and TMP. I don’t care about the rest.
I'm with you there, these projects just have true Star Trek kinship under Gene Roddenberry.
 
The odd thing about dating, for me, other than the various two centuries lines in the mentioned episodes, was that I'd went with the Spaceflight Chronology dates, which FASA adopted in the 80s.

I thought it odd that the "Star Trek Maps" used the 2260s, and it was years later till I realised that was the more genuinely accepted fan view!
 
I HAD to have missed this. Where in TMP the characters stated what year they were in... at the earliest???
When Decker & Kirk discover the Voyager 6 Probe they say:

KIRK: V-G-E-R ...V-O-Y-A-G-E-R ...Voyager! ...Voyager 6?
DECKER: NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Jim, this was launched more than three hundred years ago.​

Voyager Probes 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, so assuming a similar launch date TMP would have to take place in 2277 or later.
Unless Star Trek exists in the world first postulated by Jules Verne or H G Wells and space probes were being sent up in the 1890s? That cavorite is pretty powerful stuff!
 
I HAD to have missed this. Where in TMP the characters stated what year they were in... at the earliest???

From TMP:
DECKER: NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Jim, this was launched more than three hundred years ago.​

For TOS, the references to the 1960-1999 ("Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Space Seed") seem to point to around "two hundred years" ago.

edit: @Mytran ninja'd me :) FWIW, I think of the TOS movies as on a different timeline than TOS to account for the lower/delayed tech progression in the movies... All IMHO.
 
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FWIW, I think of the TOS movies as on a different timeline than TOS to account for the lower/delayed tech progression in the movies... All IMHO.
In this crazy world of visual reboots that theory certainly has merit: Also, in terms of colour pallet TMP is a more natural successor to The Cage than TOS...ditto for the more cramped corridors.
 
The show is never very clear on dates.
It was never really meant to be. And it wouldn’t really have been an issue if Star Trek had never become wildly popular. When it was being made no one had a clue the show would catch on beyond their wildest imagination.
 
TOS is vague on many things which is why it has aged much better than later series, IMHO. It's also the reason why I wrote two different TOS start dates (2160 vs 2260) when replying to Henoch/Trynda1701's post as there is plenty of room to pick an interpretation of TOS yet still end up with a time where "old impulse engines" existed before space warp drives... :)
 
It was never really meant to be. And it wouldn’t really have been an issue if Star Trek had never become wildly popular. When it was being made no one had a clue the show would catch on beyond their wildest imagination.

That was kind of the point. Some place in the vague future, like "Far, Far Away", But there is that class of geek that must have every single fact nailed to the ground and will argue until blue in the face over it.

I'm not that fan.
 
It is worth noting that a month into season one, in “Miri”, a piano said to date from 1960 is then said to be 300 years old. The context of the planet being a duplicate Eath makes the statement inconclusive, but it is indicative of the intent of the people making the show. Particularly when taken with what they say in TMoST.

It is also worth noting that single date point was the basis for the first fan chronology that I am aware of, by Chuck Graham (circa 1975), upon which Geoff Mandel, James Dixon, Todd Guenther, and yours truly, among many others, based their dating schemes.
 
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When Decker & Kirk discover the Voyager 6 Probe they say:

KIRK: V-G-E-R ...V-O-Y-A-G-E-R ...Voyager! ...Voyager 6?
DECKER: NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Jim, this was launched more than three hundred years ago.​

Voyager Probes 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, so assuming a similar launch date TMP would have to take place in 2277 or later.
Unless Star Trek exists in the world first postulated by Jules Verne or H G Wells and space probes were being sent up in the 1890s? That cavorite is pretty powerful stuff!
Well, TMP's promotion did mention it was from 23rd Century. Meh, I consider TOS and TMP movies to be different universes. There's completely different animals.
 
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