VoI Timeline - 2377 or 2378?

[Turbo]

I was looking through the Voyages of Imagination timeline, and I noticed that the last three episodes of Voyager - "Homestead", "Renaissance Man", and "Endgame" - are listed in 2377 instead of 2378. I know that the stardates indicate a late-2377 time, but "Homestead" shows Neelix hosting a party in observance of the 315th anniversary of First Contact, which should be April 5, 2378.

What happened?

 

[Christopher]

Maybe Neelix wasn't using the Earth calendar to determine when the anniversary fell. I actually hinted at this in Places of Exile -- I gave Neelix a line suggesting that he commemorates anniversaries based on multiple calendars, because you get to have more parties that way.

 

[SicOne]

I vaguely recall reading about this issue once before, where the stardates didn't necessarily match up with calendar years (i.e. Stardate XX001 is January 1 and Stardate XX999 is December 31), but that the last few episodes of Voyager established that they do not indeed match up. Could someone with more experience with this explain this, or put a link up to the thread where I'm sure this was discussed ad nauseum?

 

[Thrawn]

Well, just generally, there are a ton of inconsistencies with stardates and sequential flow of any kind on all of the Star Trek shows. The timeline in VoI is, as I see it, sort of the solution with the fewest problems, but there are all kinds of stardates that don't match up in there.

 

[SicOne]

Thrawn, didn't someone come up with a Stardate calculator at one time? How to translate any given Stardate to the Gregorian calendar?

 

[Therin of Andor]

didn't someone come up with a Stardate calculator at one time? How to translate any given Stardate to the Gregorian calendar?

http://www.hillschmidt.de/gbr/sternenzeit.htm

 

[PaulSimpson]

Oddly this came up when we were preparing a feature for the Voyager issue - Memory Alpha listed 2378 for Endgame, but we all thought it was meant to be 2377 (well, in the interests of strict accuracy, a consultant editor noted it and was right!). Was there anything mentioned about it in Christie Golden's books or anywhere else that had them going "thank god we got back last year... I couldn't have faced one more New Year's party on that ship" or something to that effect?

P

 

[Christopher]

The Golden VGR novels didn't specify when in the year "Endgame" happened. Memory Alpha puts "Homestead" and the following two episodes in 2378 because of the "First Contact Day" celebration in "Homestead," which would have to be in April, as Turbo says. The books have disregarded the "Homestead" reference and implicitly stuck with the notion of "Endgame" being at the end of '77, though I don't think this was ever made entirely explicit.

 

[PaulSimpson]

The Golden VGR novels didn't specify when in the year "Endgame" happened. Memory Alpha puts "Homestead" and the following two episodes in 2378 because of the "First Contact Day" celebration in "Homestead," which would have to be in April, as Turbo says. The books have disregarded the "Homestead" reference and implicitly stuck with the notion of "Endgame" being at the end of '77, though I don't think this was ever made entirely explicit.

Thanks. (Waits for the inevitable uproar when people see Reddick's Voyager Game in the new issue that now states 2377)

 

[Ethros]

I ignore that myself, Season 7 begins and ends in 2377 IMO, just like the seasons of TNG, DS9 & VOY all equal one year.
There's also a line in VOY Season 5 11:59 where Neelix "hey its April 2nd Ancenstors Eve" or something, when the ep is late in the season

Why do people say Homestead should be in 2378 and not say 11:59 should be in 2376?
Probably because it would just be a confusing mess otherwise, so as I say, just ignore it

 

[Turbo]

Ugh, this is tricky.

I believe that 11:59 gave the exact date of April 22, but not of 2375. Also, if we accept that Homestead's stardate (54868.6) is in April and that 1000 stardate units equals one year, then Relativity (52861.2) must be in March or April as well.

If we place 11:59 on April 22, 2375, and to have the episodes take place in the order they aired, both Homestead's April date and the year 2377 would make sense, but most of Season 6 would be in 2375 and most of Season 7 would be in 2376. And that would make the books wrong, too.

Of course, what we could do is consider 11:59 to have actually taken place earlier in Season 5, at some point after Thirty Days. I believe the only direct reference to other S5 episodes is Tom's demotion. This, however, would still require us to ignore the April reference in Homestead, or both that episode and Relativity will be in the wrong place.

Yet another way we could do this is to have 11:59 take place in April 2376. This would allow us to keep Relativity in April 2376, Homestead in April 2378, and most of Seasons 6 and 7 in 2376 and 2377, respectively. A seemingly logical division would be to have 11:59 to Child's Play be 2376, Good Shepherd to Human Error in 2377, and Q2 to Endgame in 2378. This would obviously break the novel timeline, but it would keep most of the date references intact.

Finally, we could once again ignore the April date in Homestead, but move 11:59 to April 2375 or April 2376. Then everything but Homestead works fine.

Conclusion: I don't think there's a way to reconcile all of this. At least one date or stardate must be ignored.

My head hurts.

 

[Trek]

In filmed Startrek, stardates are fairly consistent in running from mid year to mid year (around may, or when the tv show season ends), dated by dialogue such as First Contact Day in Homestead, the Hindu Festival of Lights in Data's Day (which happens in Oct/Nov), the date in 11.59.

There are of course inconsitancies (such as Neelix saying the it was the 315th aniversary instead of the 314) and most of the early season dates being said to be in the wrong year (such as Voyager's lunch being stated as 2371 in 'Futures End' instead of 2370 acording to the stardates) but for the most part it checks out.

Best stardate calendar I've seen is here (which goes through this in much more detail): http://trekguide.com/Stardates.htm

 

[Thrawn]

In filmed Startrek, stardates are fairly consistent in running from mid year to mid year (around may, or when the tv show season ends), dated by dialogue such as First Contact Day in Homestead, the Hindu Festival of Lights in Data's Day (which happens in Oct/Nov), the date in 11.59.

Then why do the novels have it otherwise?

 

[Timo]

It's pretty intuitive that way, now isn't it? It would take an expert to notice that the TV show writers are doing it differently...

If we assume that the airdates roughly match the stardates in VOY (and in TNG and DS9), then things like "11:59" or "Homestead" or "Data's Day" drop in place very neatly. And while only three or four episodes support the notion that stardates roll over in August or September, there are basically no bits of evidence that would require us to think that the stardates instead roll over at the December/January threshold.

The "which year is it?" question becomes much easier if we allow each season to saddle two years, really. All sorts of writer mistakes can then be more easily accommodated, as the characters could be making those mistakes as well - say, assuming that it's three years between a late 2364 event and an early 2367 one, when it's actually just two.

And the two problems in VOY, namely the insistence that the ship was launched in 2371 and that the 315th anniversary of Cochrane's flight was celebrated, are relatively minor problems because in both cases, the person making the statement is unfamiliar with the timekeeping system.

Neelix might not have the concept of "anniversary" quite down pat when making up his little festival - it would be a perfectly natural assumption in many cultures that the first anniversary is the event itself, and the festivity a year after the event is the second anniversary. And Henry Starling could have been doing some faulty stardate-to-date conversions when making his claim about the 2371 launch.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stevil2001]

Of course, we know from DS9's "Second Sight" that there's no way there's an exact 1000 stardates = 1 Earth year correspondence, anyway. It's more like 831 stardates in a year.

 

[Timo]

Unless we assume that the Emissary adopted Bajoran years as soon as he settled in his new home.

After all, the "annual" Bajoran Gratitude Festival falls on different parts of the stardate year or season on different stardate years or seasons - suggesting that the Bajoran year is significantly out of synch with the Earth/Federation one.

(That is, it's roughly one-third into season 1 but halfway through season 3, on stardate-less episodes, then suddenly goes to the very end of season 6; it's a pretty good match for the Bajoran year being about 80% of the Earth one, really!)

That would explain a thing or two about Molly's age as well.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sci]

I would suggest that it's a mistake to pay attention to any part of the stardate after the second digit. All you really ought to pay attention to is the idea that "41xxx=2364." Everything else is just filler.

 

[Christopher]

^^That's pretty much my approach. I generally find that most numbers in ST are best taken with a grain of salt or ignored altogether.

 

[Trent Roman]

Well, yeah, when you have entire episodes about how many lights there are, you got to figure some of these characters are numerically challenged...

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Thrawn]

I would suggest that it's a mistake to pay attention to any part of the stardate after the second digit. All you really ought to pay attention to is the idea that "41xxx=2364." Everything else is just filler.

Well, but the point in the thread is that, more or less, the TV show disagrees with that.