Does anyone know when it was officially decided TOS took place in the 23rd century? I believe TVH was when it was first officially referenced(there were a few contradictory references in the show), but I vaguely remember seeing a TMP poster once that mention it being in the 23rd century as well. Anyone know the official answer?
When did they decide when it takes place?
- Thread starter TalkieToaster
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TWOK starts with a title "In the 23rd century..."
Sir Rhosis
Sir Rhosis
I think Roddenberry's original idea was the distant future, like a few thousand years out. "The Omega Glory" was thought up during that phase, when that episode would have made more sense.
Then during the series, they seemed to think it was 200 years in the future ("Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Space Seed").
If TWOK is the first reference to the 23rd century, then maybe Nicholas Meyer set the calendar for us. He heavily re-wrote that script without credit.
I like The Star Trek Chronology book, which neatly sets TOS in the years 2266 - 2269.
Then during the series, they seemed to think it was 200 years in the future ("Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Space Seed").
If TWOK is the first reference to the 23rd century, then maybe Nicholas Meyer set the calendar for us. He heavily re-wrote that script without credit.
I like The Star Trek Chronology book, which neatly sets TOS in the years 2266 - 2269.
Meyer said he put the title there for his dad, who had no idea what Trek was, when it took place, etc.
Sir Rhosis
Sir Rhosis
I don't think there's a single "official" moment where they decided it; it's more a gradual transition. The original series premise was deliberately vague about the time frame, since it's hard to predict the rate of technological progress. The original series pitch document said "It could be 1995 or maybe even 2995." And "The Squire of Gothos" was based on the assumption that the show was set in the 28th century (900 years after the age of Napoleon and Alexander Hamilton). But "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed" both assumed the series was about 200 years in the future, and the second-season revision of the writers' bible (the April 17, 1967 edition that's the one generally available) specifies in the "Stardates" section that the date of the series is "actually about two hundred years from now." So that was pretty much locked in by the end of the first year.
However, "Metamorphosis" said that Zefram Cochrane had died 150 years before at the age of 87, meaning he would've been born 237 years earlier. If the series were only 200 years after 1967, then he would've been born in 1930, which seems unlikely. So that kinda nudged the time frame forward somewhat, making it seem likely that it was in at least the early 23rd century.
Later on, the trailers for ST:TMP specified a date in the 23rd century, and Decker said that Voyager 6 -- which would've most likely had to be launched in the 1980s -- was launched "more than three hundred years ago," implying a date in the 2280s or later for the movie -- a decade or so later than we now assume. Then TWOK came along with the opening caption "In the 23rd Century..." as Sir Rhosis mentioned, and the date of 2283 was mentioned for the Romulan ale.
But for a long time, there were two rival theories in fandom about Trek chronology. Some went with the TWOK evidence and assumed that TOS took place exactly 300 years in the future, in 2266-69. But others, notably the authors of the Spaceflight Chronology, tried to reconcile the movies' "23rd century" with the first season's "about 200 years" references by setting TOS in the first decade of the century -- 2207-12 by the SFC's dating system. Which is hard to reconcile with the "Metamorphosis" evidence and the TWOK evidence. The 2283 date for the ale was often speculated to be a Romulan calendar date or a stardate. And the Cochrane issue never seemed to come up; I'm not sure the proponents of the early dating model were aware of the problem. At least, I was an early-dating adherent myself at the time, and I never realized it was an issue.
The first time we got a precise calendar year for any Trek episode or film was in TNG's "The Neutral Zone," which gave the current date as 2364. And that confirmed that the early-dating model was wrong, that TOS and the movies took place in the later part of the 23rd century -- leading to the Star Trek Chronology's codification of the "exactly 300 years later" dating for TOS. I had to redo my whole chronology when that episode aired.
However, "Metamorphosis" said that Zefram Cochrane had died 150 years before at the age of 87, meaning he would've been born 237 years earlier. If the series were only 200 years after 1967, then he would've been born in 1930, which seems unlikely. So that kinda nudged the time frame forward somewhat, making it seem likely that it was in at least the early 23rd century.
Later on, the trailers for ST:TMP specified a date in the 23rd century, and Decker said that Voyager 6 -- which would've most likely had to be launched in the 1980s -- was launched "more than three hundred years ago," implying a date in the 2280s or later for the movie -- a decade or so later than we now assume. Then TWOK came along with the opening caption "In the 23rd Century..." as Sir Rhosis mentioned, and the date of 2283 was mentioned for the Romulan ale.
But for a long time, there were two rival theories in fandom about Trek chronology. Some went with the TWOK evidence and assumed that TOS took place exactly 300 years in the future, in 2266-69. But others, notably the authors of the Spaceflight Chronology, tried to reconcile the movies' "23rd century" with the first season's "about 200 years" references by setting TOS in the first decade of the century -- 2207-12 by the SFC's dating system. Which is hard to reconcile with the "Metamorphosis" evidence and the TWOK evidence. The 2283 date for the ale was often speculated to be a Romulan calendar date or a stardate. And the Cochrane issue never seemed to come up; I'm not sure the proponents of the early dating model were aware of the problem. At least, I was an early-dating adherent myself at the time, and I never realized it was an issue.
The first time we got a precise calendar year for any Trek episode or film was in TNG's "The Neutral Zone," which gave the current date as 2364. And that confirmed that the early-dating model was wrong, that TOS and the movies took place in the later part of the 23rd century -- leading to the Star Trek Chronology's codification of the "exactly 300 years later" dating for TOS. I had to redo my whole chronology when that episode aired.
Well, yes, TMoST did mention the 23rd century, and it was about as close to an official source as you could get. However, it was beaten to the punch by James Blish's "Space Seed" adaptation in Star Trek 2, published some seven months earlier. There's a reference there to the formal dinner being held "as a welcome for Commander Kahn [sic] to the twenty-third century." Although the story does reference Khan being suspended for 200 "or more" years after being frozen c. 1994.
Their original idea about not being specific was a nice try, but as we saw, it didn't last very long.
I still have an original paperback of that book, that I bought at Sears when I was a kid. I should look it up.
I wish they had gone with Roddenberry's/whatever original idea to set it a few thousand years into the future. The nearness of when all of this takes place is way too far-fetched. We'll be lucky to have a permanent colony on Mars in the 23rd century.
That was never the case. As I already said, Roddenberry's original 1964 proposal document said only:
So it was never, ever his original idea to set it thousands of years in the future. ZapBrannigan speculated that above based on the premise of "The Omega Glory," but that episode was based on the "parallel worlds" premise underlying the series -- the notion that alien worlds would replicate Earth history and cultures in variously skewed ways. This idea was so fundamental to the series premise that it's on the very next page of the pitch document after the paragraph I quoted above. Roddenberry's thinking was that it was necessary to make the series affordable:
So "The Omega Glory" is not evidence that the show was meant to be thousands of years in the future. It was just one of the numerous parallel-world concepts that Roddenberry included in the original series pitch, along with such other parallels like "President Capone" (forerunner of "A Piece of the Action"), "To Skin a Tyrannosaurus" (prehistoric world), "Mr. Socrates" (a forerunner of "The Savage Curtain," an alien world where Earth historical figures battle in an arena), "Camelot Revisited" (King Arthur world), "The Trader" ("Like a visit to the court of Ghengis [sic] Khan"), "The Pet Shop" ("Exactly duplicating St. Louis, 1910," except with women keeping men as pets), and "Kongo" (the plantation-era South with blacks keeping white slaves). To put it in latter-day terms, Roddenberry envisioned the show being in the same vein as Sliders, but with the parallel Earths resulting from convergent social evolution on other planets rather than being alternate timelines. It didn't make much scientific sense, but he was approaching it from the perspective of a TV producer figuring out how to make the show affordable.
Ah, so that's where they got idea for Kinsey's Star Trek script on "Mad Men".
Duplicating the U.S. Constitution on a distant planet seems to push past the boundaries of Hodgkin's law, into an area that "standard model" exo-sociology just can't account for.
That's why I figured "The Omega Glory" was conceived for the distant future: it needs enough time for settlers to leave Earth, be entirely forgotten by the rest of us, fight a nuclear war, and then rebuild as primitives who mangle the Pledge.
^In theory, that's a reasonable interpretation of that specific episode. But the point is that the episode doesn't exist in isolation. It's just one of multiple parallel-Earth stories that we actually got ("Miri"'s unexplained duplicate Earth, "Bread and Circuses" with its 20th-century Rome) and many more that were part of Roddenberry's original proposal. It's quite clear that convergent evolution on alien worlds was intended from the start to be a foundational conceit of the series. And the very same document that first spelled out that conceit as one of the series' primary selling points is also the document that, literally just one page earlier, defines the series' timeframe as potentially being as early as 1995, and no later than 2995 (which would only have been 1031 years in the future).
So no, Roddenberry never, ever intended the show to be thousands of years in the future. He intended the show to be affordable on a television budget by embracing the fanciful conceit of parallel Earths and just making some handwave about convergent evolution to justify that money-saving premise.
So no, Roddenberry never, ever intended the show to be thousands of years in the future. He intended the show to be affordable on a television budget by embracing the fanciful conceit of parallel Earths and just making some handwave about convergent evolution to justify that money-saving premise.
Where did I read it....the idea that the series would be far enough in the future to explain the amazing technology, but close enough to our time for the viewers to relate to the characters?
That makes sense, because when you start with people who are thousands of years in the future, there does seem to be an unbridgeable gap. It's almost a given that we would have absolutely nothing in common with people like that.
Science fiction (at least on tv) almost always gets it wrong, of course, but who can really be faulted for not being able to accurately predict what will happen when?
That makes sense, because when you start with people who are thousands of years in the future, there does seem to be an unbridgeable gap. It's almost a given that we would have absolutely nothing in common with people like that.
Science fiction (at least on tv) almost always gets it wrong, of course, but who can really be faulted for not being able to accurately predict what will happen when?
I guess we can be glad that they decided not to go with the ultra-futuristic 1995!
I guess we can be glad that they decided not to go with the ultra-futuristic 1995!
I suppose if Star Trek were a Gerry Anderson show, it would have been.
And the eugenics wars would've been a 70's thing!
When I originally viewed Star Trek as a pre-teen I couldn't careless about the parallel world stuff or when it was set - I just enjoyed a good science fiction story.
Now looking back all these years later it still doesn't worry me. Its just a minor blip on a great series IMO.
I agreed with GR on his not wanting to chain the series to a particular date. See what happened in Space Seed with World War 3. If only GR had had the faith that we'd still be talking about the series 50 years later.
And if you want to see a great believable explanation of Miri's planet then I advise people to read the excellent novel "Department of Temporal Investigations".
As for "Omega Glory" and "Bread And Circuses" and arriving there in the equivalent of the 20th century I have no explanation.
Still I found them entertaining episodes so personally I am prepared to go with the 'lost travellers theory' presented here.
Just in case you don't know... the person you are replying to is the person who wrote those novels!
^I appreciate the plug!
I guess we can be glad that they decided not to go with the ultra-futuristic 1995!
Although, it was often assumed then that technology would advance at the same rate it had been since 1945, or perhaps even faster. In thirty years we'd gone from flying around in Zeppelins and biplanes to walking on the moon. Think what another thirty years would bring! I remember reading books about space published in the mid eighties confidently predicting a permanent moonbase by the year 2000. Needless to say, reading these in the nineties, it was evident that wouldn't be the case.
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