Vulcan years vs. Earth years

[TrekGuide.com]

In the Enterprise episode "AWAKENING," Minister Kuvak of the Vulcan High Command states that Earth and Vulcan have been allies for 100 years.

The episode takes place in the middle of the year 2154, and apparently refers to first contact between Earth and Vulcans on April 5, 2063, a span of more than 91 Earth years.

Since Vulcans are known to quote numbers with great precision, and the statement about 100 years was made between two Vulcans on the planet Vulcan with no humans present, it would be reasonable to assume they were describing the time span in Vulcan years.

If so, then 100 Vulcan years is about 91 Earth years, so one Vulcan year would be about 0.91 Earth year (around 332 Earth days).


Also, in the Voyager episode "UNIMATRIX ZERO" PART II, it is stated that Tuvok was born on Vulcanis Lunar Colony on Stardate 3877.4 (which would place his birth in the middle of the second season of The Original Series).

In the Voyager episode "FLASHBACK," Tuvok states that his first deep space assignment aboard the U.S.S. Excelsior, on Stardate 9521, was approximately 80 years ago, when he was 29 years old (during the movie STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country).

However, in STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country, McCoy states that he has been ship's surgeon aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise for 27 years. This seems to conflict with Tuvok being born in the second season of TOS and being 29 during that same movie.

However, if Tuvok was 29 Vulcan years old (given the above assumption that a Vulcan year equals 0.91 Earth year), then that would mean STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country takes place about 26 Earth years after Tuvok's birth during the second season of TOS, and 27 years after McCoy's joining the Enterprise crew in Season One of TOS.

So both Tuvok's and McCoy's statements would be true, if each was stating the "years" of his native culture.


Are there any other references from any episode or movie that would give additional clues as to the length of a Vulcan year? (If not, I'm inclined to go with my assumption that 1.0 Vulcan year = 0.91 Earth year.)

http://TrekGuide.com/Stardates.htm#Tuvok

 

[F. King Daniel]

We don't know for sure if McCoy only joined the Enterprise crew after "Where No Man...". He could have been an unseen member of the Enterprise crew (like Chekov supposedly was in "Space Seed"), an underling doctor like M'Benga (or McCoy himself in STXI), or on leave during those events as the novels Enterprise: The First Adventure and Strangers From the Sky would indicate.

 

[TrekGuide.com]

We don't know for sure if McCoy only joined the Enterprise crew after "Where No Man...". He could have been an unseen member of the Enterprise crew (like Chekov supposedly was in "Space Seed"), an underling doctor like M'Benga (or McCoy himself in STXI), or on leave during those events as the novels Enterprise: The First Adventure and Strangers From the Sky would indicate.

That is true, but that doesn't change McCoy's statement that he has been ship's surgeon aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise for 27 years in ST VI, and Tuvok's later statement that he was 29 years old during that same movie.

(Of course, there was McCoy's two-year retirement after the five-year mission and before The Motion Picture, so it's unclear whether that is included in the 27 years.)

 

[Forbin]

I would be stunned if any of the writers or production staff actually tried to do the math accurately to make these two different time spans from different series match in any way.

 

[Albertese]

If Vulcan orbits the real life star 40 Eridani A as has been long postulated by fans going back to the mid-1970's, then Vulcan's year would be about 203 Earth days, given the nature of that star and where it's habitable zone is based on its thermal properties. This would make it about 55.6% the length, rather than about 91%.

Though I'm not aware of any on-screen reference to which star Vulcan orbits, so who knows, maybe a slightly warmer star with a somewhat larger habitable zone would be entirely possible.

--Alex

 

[Boris Skrbic]

TrekGuide, you can't make such a conclusion without more evidence. A round figure such as "100 years" is suspicious by default.

 

[Mysterion]

TrekGuide, you can't make such a conclusion without more evidence. A round figure such as "100 years" is suspicious by default.

Exactly. Minister Kuvak was probably making a generalization.

 

[Ronald Held]

There is no canonical information of the length of the Vulcan year, AFAIR.

 

[T'Girl]

If Vulcan orbits the real life star 40 Eridani A as has been long postulated by fans going back to the mid-1970's, then Vulcan's year would be about 203 Earth days, given the nature of that star and where it's habitable zone is based on its thermal properties. This would make it about 55.6% the length, rather than about 91%.

If Vulcan had a profound green house effect on-going in it's atmosphere then it could orbit further out than the optimum habitable zone. A less intense version of the planet Venus. This could also explain the glacial condition of the nearby moon that nuKirk was marooned on in the last movie, it didn't possess a green house atmosphere.

Minister Kuvak of the Vulcan High Command states that Earth and Vulcan have been allies for 100 years.

I've usually assumed that when we hear aliens speaking english (even if their actually supposed to be speaking their native language) that the measurement and times that they make reference too are Earth units.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Spock's childhood adventures from "Yesteryear" (TAS) were dated at 20-30 Vulcan years in the past, so at least we know the order of magnitude as envisioned by Dorothy Fontana. Since the canon status of TAS is disputed, it would be useful to search other scripts for random references to Vulcan years, but I doubt they were mentioned elsewhere.

 

[Timo]

"Yesteryear" was rather specific about the events being 30 years in the past, although we could probably claim the 26-34 year approximate range there.

A lot of early noncanon stuff is based on the idea of Spock being younger than McCoy, as Nimoy was younger than Kelley. All that would remain constant with "Yesteryear"'s "30 years sharp" interpretation if we evoked the shorter Vulcan years.

Of canon stuff, we have references to the ages of Spock and Sarek to go by. The latter seem to increase from 102 to 202 in exactly 100 Earth years, in the general interpretation where TOS was 300 years after airdate and TNG began in 2364 (or at least its first season ended in 2364). But of course, the references to him being 202 in TNG came from humans only, so they would naturally reflect human years even if Sarek himself considered himself to be 231 years old at the time.

This could also explain the glacial condition of the nearby moon

Having the Delta Vega station be located on Vulcan's moon would probably create more problems than it solves, as

a) Vulcan has no moon
b) nobody on Delta Vega had noticed that Vulcan had been attacked
c) Spock was the only one on Delta Vega who noticed that Vulcan had gone missing and
d) the general idea seemed to be that our heroes were escaping from the Vulcan disaster when flying past the place, and the dialogue didn't establish that they would have been unable to do so at warp, across interstellar distances.

Stranding Spock on a moon of Vulcan would have been a nice trick from Nero, of course - but he couldn't have counted on Spock seeing the destruction live from the surface of the world that held Delta Vega, because that world had almost 100% cloud cover. So the vision of destruction in all probability was purely telepathic, "Immunity Syndrome" style.

Of course, there'd be little reason to assume that a world and its moon would share a climate as such. Position in the life belt around a star doesn't establish surface temperature - even within the limitations of a breathable atmosphere, other things such as general albedo are more decisive in that respect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

STXI obviously recycled concepts from "Yesteryear". The script and deleted scenes put Spock's birth in 2230 and him being 11 years old during the bullying scene. Of course, the incidents weren't supposed to be exactly the same, but it's a useful look inside the heads of those writing Trek.

As for 2009 Delta Vega, I go with the Nero comic's explanation that it's a planet in the Vulcan system with a unique orbit that convenently brought it into viewing range of Vulcan during Nero's attack. Spock sees Vulcan implode from the same angle as we do when the Enterprise swoops away - it would have put it just opposite the camera.

b) nobody on Delta Vega had noticed that Vulcan had been attacked

All transmissions in the area were being blocked. The Vulcans themselves thought they were undergoing seismic distubances and not an attack. Narada itself obviously had some crude form of stealth technology. It was findable, but only by those looking for it.

 

[FalTorPan]

...in STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country, McCoy states that he has been ship's surgeon aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise for 27 years.

McCoy's statement isn't very reliable, considering that...

• He was ship's surgeon of two starships named Enterprise
• He was retired for some length of time between the end of the five-year mission and his being drafted for the V'Ger incident
• Near the end of its lifetime, the NCC-1701 was a training vessel and probably not in continuous service
• Between the destruction of the NCC-1701 and the launch of the NCC-1701-A, McCoy spent three months on Vulcan, plus untold weeks or months on Earth on trial
• The NCC-1701-A was in Spacedock as of a few months after the Praxis incident, which might suggest that the ship had not been in active service in some time

 

[T'Girl]

a) Vulcan has no moon

Vulcan doesn't have a moon, however Vulcan is a moon. Both Vulcan and Delta Vega are in orbit around a gas giant (T'Khut?). Nero timed the implosion of Vulcan to correspond to the moon Vulcan and moon Delta Vega being in conjunction in their orbits, with his superior Vulcan eye sight Spock could see Vulcan clearly in the sky from up to a full million kilometers away. Nero also timed Vulcan's implosion so that the side of Delta Vega that he placed Spock on was rotated towards Vulcan.

Being a planet or a moon has nothing to do with a bodies size.

In the theatrical version of TMP, Spock looks into the sky of Vulcan at what is seemingly a gas giant, there is a moon in transit, maybe it is Delta Vega (don't remember it looking icy), or possibly another of many moons. If Vulcan and Delta Vega are about the same size and if Spock can easily see Delta Vega from the surface of Vulcan, then the opposite must be true.

Cloud cover permitting of course.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I would be stunned if any of the writers or production staff actually tried to do the math accurately to make these two different time spans from different series match in any way.

Agreed. However, it is interesting to note that Dorothy Fontana had the basis of a Vulcan calendar worked up, almost certainly as background info for "Yesteryear", including seasons and the length of a Vulcan year, which she figured is slightly shorter than an Earth year. For instance, her figures puts Sarek's age at the time of "Journey To Babel" at around 75 Earth years, while McCoy cites Sarek's age in Vulcan years of 102. Sarek's retort to "measure it in your years" can be taken to mean that while 102 Vulcan years isn't that old, he felt more like he was 102 Earth years, which probably comes out @ 135 Vulcan years.

In any case, it doesn't appear that the concept was ever picked up to that level of specificity, and the general assumption is that Vulcan years and Earth years are a lot closer in length.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

How did you determine that Fontana intended a shorter year? I can't find any evidence in the dialogue of "Yesteryear".

Also, Sarek said quite clearly that his age of 102.437 was in "your years", presumably Earth years. Picard said that Sarek was 202 in "Sarek" (TNG), which means Sarek wasn't exaggerating.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The advantage of having Bjo's Concordance notes.

As for the actual dialogue, I'm going to do some research on that...

 

[Timo]

Regarding the basic nature of the Vulcan star system and the year implicit in Vulcan's orbit, the occasional presence and usual absence of those fellow heavenly bodies might suggest that the worlds dance a complex dance that perhaps makes even the length of the Vulcan year variable.

As for Vulcan's prominent companion body being a gas planet, the matte from TMP makes her look more like a solid, cratered world.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmphd/tmphd0166.jpg

The moon there, presumably belonging to the companion body (although there might be a contest there), doesn't look particularly like the STXI Delta Vega, but we might be seeing an icy white, reflective body basking in the red glow of Vulcan's own reflected starlight.

Could be that Vulcan has its own "Remus", a hellhole companion world that moves on an orbit with a slightly different radius and thus only occasionally visits Vulcan. And when she does, she creates all sorts of effects, such as increased vulcanism and a frenzy of strange religious ceremonies.

Of course, it might also be that Spock's ceremony did not take place on planet Vulcan at all, but rather at a holy site erected on a neighboring world. When the first Kolinahru says "Our ancestors cast out their animal passions on these very sands", she might be saying that the feat was achieved off-Vulcan, perhaps exactly because the ancestors were finally sufficiently distanced from the passion-filled psionic noise of the population of the homeworld...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The advantage of having Bjo's Concordance notes.

Could you give us the exact quote?

 

[Aahz]

A lot of early noncanon stuff is based on the idea of Spock being younger than McCoy, as Nimoy was younger than Kelley. All that would remain constant with "Yesteryear"'s "30 years sharp" interpretation if we evoked the shorter Vulcan years.

Something that people often miss with regards to Spock's age is the fact that his mother, the former Miss Amanda Grayson (I can't spell her Vulcan married name ) was 57 at the time of the episode "Journey to Babel" (based on Jane Wyatt's actual age at the time). There's a real limit on how young Amanda could have been at the time of Spock's birth. I rather doubt that Sarek would have considered "robbing the cradle" as "the logical thing to do" like he said at the end of that episode!

Amanda was supposed to have been a teacher when she married Sarek, so chances are she had graduated from some secondary school. She probably excelled and finished early, making her attractive intellectually to a Vulcan (maybe the REAL reason it was "the logical thing to do"). So, if she was 21 (speculation) when she married Sarek, and therefore probably 22 when Spock was born, that would make Spock 35 at the time (though Nimoy was actually 36). And since "Babel" took place shortly after "Amok Time", he was probably 35 then as well, which is a convenient multiple of 7 years for the ponn farr cycle. Since in "Amok Time" Spock was discussing the 7-year cycle with Kirk, it could be assumed he was using Earth years.

Also in "Babel", Amanda mentions that Spock and Sarek haven't spoken in the 18 years since Spock entered Starfleet Academy. Since it was two Earth people (Amanda and Kirk) talking, they were most likely using Earth years. If Spock was 35 in that episode, then he entered the Academy at 17.

Any questions or corrections?