I was just about to do a "back in the day" post myself. I remember hearing at a con the idea that the 2283 on the bottle was a stardate, which would have placed it during Kirk's 5-year mission.
Was ANYTHING retained when the Enterprise was refit?
- Thread starter t_smitts
- Start date
Plus, in TWOK, the Romulan ale segment discussed it taking a while to ferment. Interpreting 2283 as a stardate provides a good long while for the ale to ferment; interpret 2283 as a year, and that part makes no sense.
That's something I thought of before, but it could be either. As for why a readable date is on the label, I assume they relabeled it for distribution in Federation space.
Any year other than the current one would make the bottle suspiciously old for ale.
OTOH, if 2283 is to be interpreted as a stardate, we have to accept that 6000 SD units represent some fifteen years of Kirk's life - meaning the stardate system must have "hidden digits", or else stardate zero would have been within Kirk's original mission as well and most of the immediate Trek history would consist of negative stardates. Which doesn't seem to be the case, as we never hear of negative dates, but we do hear of old yet positively stardated events in TOS (such as the background on Kodos).
With hidden digits, Kirk would be left wondering whether the ale is fifteen years old, or a hundred and fifteen... And McCoy would be giving him a somewhat different reply!
Timo Saloniemi
I still think it's supposed to be an actual date.
The stardate has never been a system with set rules. In TNG they decided to put it at 1000 per year (explaining away that impulse acceleration accounts for distortion, though that doesn't work for DS9, which uses the same system). I actually like 1000 per year because it's very very different from the current date.
Of course it wouldn't be very practical, and it doesn't fit very well with the stuff from TOS. But if TMP was on stardate 7400, that would put it 18 months after Turnabout Intruder, at stardate 5900. Cycling back to zero after 9999 would put TWOK's 8100 less than 11 years after TMP (which is pretty close to the official dates), and 15 years after Space Seed (3100).
For Terran ale, yes it would. Does Terran ale have a vintage year, like wine, though?
Importer's "Best before" or "Use by" date?
An ale question? We should ask T'Bonz.
Or perhaps Romulan smugglers intentionally labelled it in English so that it could be sold in the Federation. Nobody's going to buy a bottle of something if they can't read the label.
I'd actually say it does fit pretty well in that sense. Not to mention having TOS span stardates from 1300 to 5900 would be just perfect for the 1000 SD/yr model...
Alas, even if we ignore TAS, the other TOS movies are the weak point of this model. And 18 months between "Turnabout Intruder" and ST:TMP is enough for the refit but not enough for Kirk sitting behind a desk for 2.5 years...
Timo Saloniemi
Do any images of this exist online? I have the old Art Books which show concept art from Planet of the Titans but I dont remember seeing anything like that.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=67493&highlight=planet+titans&page=6
Top of the page. Cross between a French airport and a habitrail and the Moonraker space station interior times about 6.
Top of the page. Cross between a French airport and a habitrail and the Moonraker space station interior times about 6.
Hey, Trevanian? Try not to triple post, okay? And I'd very much appreciate it if you'd merge those posts you have, all right?
