V'Ger 6 + "more than three hundred years"

[Galileo7]

Decker states that V'Ger a.k.a. Voyager 6 was launched "more than three hundred years ago". Based upon the fact that the real Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were both launched in 1977, Voyager 6 should have been launched after 1977. So, at the earliest we say 1978.

1978
+ 300+[but, remember it was more than 300 years ago]
= 2278+

So 2278 or later could be the setting for TMP.

I was just wondering what are your opinions on this line of dialogue.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Decker was good at starship command... not so good at history?

I think it's really just a case of they hadn't really nailed down the chronology of when Star Trek took place. TOS is littered with contradictory dating references.

 

[Christopher]

At the time, the timeframe of ST hadn't been locked down yet. Looking at it retroactively, it clearly doesn't fit what's now been established about the chronology, but it's easy enough to assume that Decker's memory of historical dates was imperfect and he misspoke.

 

[Skywalker]

It'd just be like someone living today mentioning offhand that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas five hundred years ago. That doesn't mean he discovered them in 1513, it just means that the event took place around that amount of time ago.

I never did like how people take lines like "such-and-such happened two hundred years ago" and assume the characters always meant that was the exact amount of time that had passed.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It'd just be like someone living today mentioning offhand that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas five hundred years ago. That doesn't mean he discovered them in 1513, it just means that the event took place around that amount of time ago.

Exactly.

I never did like how people take lines like "such-and-such happened two hundred years ago" and assume the characters always meant that was the exact amount of time that had passed.

Same here. I think people will still talk figuratively and round off numbers at times in the future, especially when they want to be brief or just get to the point.

 

[Mario de Monti]

I also think, that the "more than three hundred years" line shouldn´t be taken to literally.

What bothers me a lot more in this "revelation scene" is the explanation, that Voyager 6 supposedly entered a black hole. That would place a black hole in rather close proximity to our solar system, since it took Voyager 2 about 12 years to even reach Neptune and Voyager 6 must have reached the black hole within the ominous three hundred year time-span.

It gets even worse when you take a look at the section "Future of the Probe" at the bottom of this article in Wikipedia - Voyager 2 has power for less than 50 years of operation. That would necessitate the black hole to be in VERY close proximity

Mario

 

[Christopher]

I never did like how people take lines like "such-and-such happened two hundred years ago" and assume the characters always meant that was the exact amount of time that had passed.

Yeah, that really bugged me about the Okuda Chronology. Like how they put the Valiant's flight to the edge of the galaxy in 2065, just a few years after the first prototype warp flight, in order to put it exactly 200 years before the second pilot, rather than assuming it was rounded up from 170 years or something. Or the way they stretched out the third, fourth, and fifth movies to be a year apart, in direct contradiction to the internal evidence, apparently in order to justify Nimbus III being exactly 20 years old in TFF rather than rounding it down to 18 or thereabouts. (And yet they put TWOK 18 years after "Space Seed" instead of the explicitly stated 15.)

 

[C.E. Evans]

I also think, that the "more than three hundred years" line shouldn´t be taken to literally.

What bothers me a lot more in this "revelation scene" is the explanation, that Voyager 6 supposedly entered a black hole. That would place a black hole in rather close proximity to our solar system, since it took Voyager 2 about 12 years to even reach Neptune and Voyager 6 must have reached the black hole within the ominous three hundred year time-span.

Voyager-6 was equipped with an early impulse engine not too unlike those used on the DY-100 ships of that time. It was able to quickly overtake all five of the five previous Voyager probes prior to its disappearance.

 

[MacLeod]

Time esp. when dealing with decades, centuries is often round or down. So instead of saying an event occured 95 years ago we might say it occured a cenury ago.

 

[F. King Daniel]

He meant 300 Deltan years

 

[Hober Mallow]

I never did like how people take lines like "such-and-such happened two hundred years ago" and assume the characters always meant that was the exact amount of time that had passed.

You mean people like Michael Okuda?

EDIT: Oops, Christopher beat me to the punch.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

At the time, the timeframe of ST hadn't been locked down yet. Looking at it retroactively, it clearly doesn't fit what's now been established about the chronology, but it's easy enough to assume that Decker's memory of historical dates was imperfect and he misspoke.

Right. The first time Star Trek is actually stated to take place in the twenty third century is in TWOK.

--Sran

 

[The Old Mixer]

Yeah, that really bugged me about the Okuda Chronology. Like how they put the Valiant's flight to the edge of the galaxy in 2065, just a few years after the first prototype warp flight, in order to put it exactly 200 years before the second pilot, rather than assuming it was rounded up from 170 years or something. Or the way they stretched out the third, fourth, and fifth movies to be a year apart, in direct contradiction to the internal evidence, apparently in order to justify Nimbus III being exactly 20 years old in TFF rather than rounding it down to 18 or thereabouts. (And yet they put TWOK 18 years after "Space Seed" instead of the explicitly stated 15.)

To be fair, they were trying not to speculate too much beyond what was stated onscreen, so if somebody said 200 years onscreen, that's where they put it. The Okudas would be the first ones to consider it a placeholder date to be contradicted onscreen at the whim of the episode writers.

Regarding the timeframe chosen for the films, I was always under the impression that they were trying to stay true to the offscreen sources that specified the first season of TNG as taking place 78 years after the time of Kirk's crew. 2364 (TNG Season 1, the first current Earth calendar date ever specified in Trek) - 78 = 2286, the year that the most recent installment of the TOS movie series took place (STIV). Putting TWOK and TSFS a year earlier wasn't much of a stretch, as the three films spanned over three months and there might have been a New Year in there. Putting STV in 2287 on top of that was a stretch, though.

What was too cutesy was putting TOS exactly 300 years after the TV seasons aired. They should have taken a hint from TNG, which didn't take place exactly 400 years in the future of its broadcast. Nudge the TOS dates up by two or three years and there's no discrepancy with the 15 years specified in TWOK.

 

[Christopher]

To be fair, they were trying not to speculate too much beyond what was stated onscreen, so if somebody said 200 years onscreen, that's where they put it. The Okudas would be the first ones to consider it a placeholder date to be contradicted onscreen at the whim of the episode writers.

But the problem is that the way they handled the dates was misleading if that was their intent. Assigning an exact date gave readers the impression that that was meant to be the date -- not to mention that we Pocket novelists were required to use the Okudachron dates even when they didn't make sense, unless they'd been overtly contradicted by later screen canon.

Instead of putting the Valiant launch in 2065, for example, maybe they should've just put it in a "Late 21st Century" section without being specific about the year. It would've been hard to fit it into the chronology format, true, but it would've been more truthful.

It just goes to illustrate the difference between precision and accuracy. Accuracy is how correct an answer is; precision is how narrowly it's pinned down. If you assert a degree of precision beyond the actual data, such as pinning down a specific year when all you have is an approximate range, that's actually a less accurate answer, because it doesn't correctly represent the margin of error.

Putting TWOK and TSFS a year earlier wasn't much of a stretch, as the three films spanned over three months and there might have been a New Year in there.

Except that in the 2233 entry, they said Kirk's birthday was March 22, the same as Shatner's. Which would put TWOK in late March, so there's no way TVH could've been the following year.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But the problem is that the way they handled the dates was misleading if that was their intent. Assigning an exact date gave readers the impression that that was meant to be the date

Then the readers didn't read too closely, because the book had disclaimers.

Instead of putting the Valiant launch in 2065, for example, maybe they should've just put it in a "Late 21st Century" section without being specific about the year. It would've been hard to fit it into the chronology format, true, but it would've been more truthful.

"ca." would have worked in a case like that, but where to draw the line? They could put "ca." in front of nearly every date in the book.

 

[Christopher]

^And what's wrong with that? I demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

 

[drt]

Voyager-6 was equipped with an early impulse engine not too unlike those used on the DY-100 ships of that time. It was able to quickly overtake all five of the five previous Voyager probes prior to its disappearance.

I like that idea.

Also, I always figured that in the ST universe there is a black hole lurking somewhere near the Solar System, as indicated by the "black star" encountered in Tomorrow Is Yesterday.

 

[Nerys Myk]

At the time, the timeframe of ST hadn't been locked down yet. Looking at it retroactively, it clearly doesn't fit what's now been established about the chronology, but it's easy enough to assume that Decker's memory of historical dates was imperfect and he misspoke.

Right. The first time Star Trek is actually stated to take place in the twenty third century is in TWOK.

--Sran

Though IIRC, in The Making of Star Trek, Roddenberry often used the 23rd Century as a reference point when talking about the future. So it's interesting that it was chosen to be the setting of Star Trek in TWOK.

 

[Christopher]

Also, I always figured that in the ST universe there is a black hole lurking somewhere near the Solar System, as indicated by the "black star" encountered in Tomorrow Is Yesterday.

In my Department of Temporal Investigations novels, I establish that the "black star" is indeed the black hole that V'Ger fell through.

And if anyone's wondering, yes, it is possible that a dormant black hole could go undetected if it were close to the Solar System. With nothing falling in, no accretion disk, it'd just be, well, black. The only ways to detect it would be, one, if we saw it lensing the light of a star or galaxy it passed in front of -- which would require a lot of luck -- or two, by its gravitational effect on other bodies such as comets, but we know little enough about the orbits of Kuiper Belt comets that it would be hard to tell whether something's perturbing them.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Although many TOS quotes suggest 200 years from now, here is one from "The Trouble with Tribbles" that could suggest otherwise:

SPOCK: Undeveloped. Sherman's Planet is claimed by both sides, our Federation and the Klingon Empire. We do have the better claim.
CHEKOV: The area was first mapped by the famous Russian astronomer Ivan Borkoff almost two hundred [years ago?!?]
KIRK: John Burke.
CHEKOV: Burke, sir? I don't think so. I'm sure it was
SPOCK: John Burke was the Chief Astronomer at the Royal Academy in old Britain at the time.

Hopefully Chekov wasn't referring to "parsecs"

Bob