As far as I am concerned, it is best to calculate the possible date range of TOS episodes more or less in order, to see how each one may have modified previous date indications, and then go to TAS if considered canon, and then to TMP, and then to later TOS movies and the television series of the TNG era, and so on.
Let's examine the dating of "Space Seed" and
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The Introduction to
Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future (1996) lists the assumptions used when figuring it out.
One is:
Years: When a particular event is described as having taken place "about a century" before a given episode, we are in most cases arbitrarily assuming that it was exactly one hundred years ago. We realize that most people tend to round such expressions off in everyday speech, but we wanted a general rule.
They also state that they assume that years are Earth years.
My assumption - after being convinced that the only way to make sense of Earth dates is to consider that that they are given in several different Earth calendars - is to assume that a date given as a plain year number could be a date in any known Earth dating system, or some unknown one. I only accept a date as being AD/CE or BC/BCE if those abbreviations are included in the date. All other Earth dates, given as plain numbers, are considered be given in dating systems which need to be identified.
So all the years given in "Space Seed" and
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan are considered to be years SS, in the "Space Seed" calendar, until and unless it can be determined what calendar they are in.
The first mention of a date in "Space Seed" is:
KIRK: An old Earth vessel, similar to the DY=500 class.
SPOCK: Much older. DY-100 class, to be exact. Captain, the last such vessel was built centuries ago, back in the 1990s.
So the 1990s would have been between 1990.00 SS and 1999.999 SS, and TOS "centuries" later should be sometime between 2090.000 SS and 2999.999 SS.
POCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid=1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.
SPOCK: Of course. Your attempt to improve the race through selective breeding.
So the Eugenics Wars happened in the mid 1990s and thus sometime between about 1993.333 SS and about 1996.666 SS.
MARLA: Captain, it's a sleeper ship.
KIRK: Suspended animation.
MARLA: I've seen old photographs of this. Necessary because of the time involved in space travel until about the year 2018. It took years just to travel from one planet to another.
"About the year 2018" should be sometime about 2016.000 SS to 2020.999 SS.
KHAN: How long?
KIRK: How long have you been sleeping? Two centuries we estimate. Landing party to Enterprise. Come in.
So at the time Kirk speaks he still thinks the Botany Bay left sometime between about 1993.333 SS and about 1996.666. According to the exact number of years assumption used in the official Star Trek chronology, "Space Seed" should be 200.000 to 200.999 years after that, and so sometime between 2193.333 SS and 2197.665 SS.
When Khan awakes he asks:
KHAN: I remember a voice. Did I hear it say I had been sleeping for two centuries?
MCCOY: That is correct.
So they should still believe that Khan left in the mid 1990s, and so this reinforces the fact that the date of "Space Seed" should be sometime between 2193.333 SS and 2197.665 SS.
Later Kirk asks Khan:
KIRK: What was the exact date of your lift off? We know it was sometime in the early 1990s, but
KHAN: I find myself growing fatigued, Doctor. May we continue this questioning at some other time?
So possibly they found some evidence that the Botany Bay launched sometime between 1990.000 SS and 1993.333 SS, so McCoy's two centuries might be consistent with a date between 2190.000 SS and 2194.332 SS.
Later Spock says:
SPOCK: There is that possibility, Captain. His age would be correct. In 1993, a group of these young supermen did seize power simultaneously in over forty nations.
And later Khan is identified:
KIRK: Name, Khan, as we know him today. (Spock changes the picture) Name, Khan Noonien Singh.
SPOCK: From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.
MCCOY: The last of the tyrants to be overthrown.
So Khan seized power sometime between 1992.000 SS and 1992.999 SS, and then a group of supermen seized power in over forty nations sometime between 1993.000 SS and 1993.999 SS. The supermen were overthrown at various later times, Khan being the last; Khan was deposed sometime between 1996.000 SS and 1996.999 SS. So khan must have left Earth in 1996 SS or later.
Earth has a land area of 510.072,000 square kilometers or 57,510,000 square miles, so Khan must have ruled over at least 127,518,000 square kilometers or 14,377,500 square miles.
So when Kirk & Co. thought that Khan left Earth sometime between about 1990.000 SS and 1996.666 SS, their statements that Khan had been sleeping for 200 years put the date of "Space Seed" exactly 200 years later sometime between about 2190.000 SS and 2197.665 SS.
In
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Terrell and Chekov meet khan on Ceti Alpha V:
TERRELL: What do you want with us? Sir, I demand...
KHAN: You are in a position to demand nothing, sir. I, on the other hand, am in a position to grant ...nothing. What you see is all that remains of the ship's company and crew of the Botany Bay, marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk.
So according to the exact years assumption "fifteen years" should be between 15.000 and 15.999 years. If "Space Seed" should be sometime between about 2190.000 SS and 2197.665 SS,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan should be sometime between about.2205.000 SS and 2213.664 SS.
The scene continues with:
KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain? No? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the ship's company in cryogenic freeze?
So Khan says the Botany Bay left Earth in 1996, and thus sometime between 1996.000 SS and 1996.999 SS. Since Captain Terrell looks like he is in his forties, we can assume that he was about 30 to 60 years old, and that Khan believed Terrell's age was about 30 to 60 years. Terrell should have been born sometime between 2144.001 SS and 2183.664 , and so the other supermen or augments would have swore allegiance to Khan sometime between about 1943.002 SS and 1983.664 SS, possibly while in college, high school, primary school or kindergarten.
Khan also says:
KHAN: This is Ceti Alpha Five. ...Ceti Alpha Six exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet and everything was laid waste. Admiral Kirk ...never bothered to check on our progress. It was only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that enabled us to survive! On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.
If
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is sometime between about.2205.000 SS and 2213.664 SS, "two hundred years ago" should be between about 2004.001 SS and 2013.664 SS. But that date range is about one to two decades after the actual time span when Khan was a prince on Earth ruling millions.
The assumption that the time spans characters mention were exact within a year breaks down with the date from merely two Star Trek productions.
Now make the assumption that a time interval stated to be X hundred years could be anything from (X minus 1) hundred years to (X plus 1) hundred years, which is a broad an interpretation as I can tolerate.
Since Khan was believed to have left Earth in the early 1990s SS or the mid 1990s SS, between 1990.000 SS and 1996.666 SS, if the "two centuries" could be anything from 100.000 to 299.999 years, the possible date range of "Space Seed" would be between 2090.000 SS and 2296.665 SS.
Since in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" the Valiant apparently left on an interstellar voyage over two hundred years earlier, "Space Seed" should be at least 200.000 years after space travel became much faster "about the year 2018". Above I suggested that "about the year 2018" should be sometime about 2016.000 SS to 2020.999 SS. Adding at least 200.000 years to that date range gives 2216.000 to 2220.999 SS as the earliest possible date range for "Where No Man Has Gone before".
So "Space seed" should be sometime between 2216.000 SS and 2296.665 SS, 220 to 299.999 years after Khan left Earth, and thus
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan fifteen years later should be sometime between 2231.000 SS and 2312.664 SS. If Terrell was 30 to 60 years old he would have been born about 2171.000 SS to 2283.664 SS. If Khan's supermen swore allegiance to Khan 100.00 to 299.999 years before Terrell was born, that would have been sometime between about 1871.001 SS and 2183.664 SS, a wide range that certainly includes the time period when they might have done so.
If Khan was a prince on Earth ruling over millions, two hundred years before
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and if
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was sometime between 2231.000 SS and 2312.664 SS, and if "too hundred years" can be between 100.00 years and 299.999 years, Khan was a prince on Earth ruling over millions sometime between 1931.01 SS and 2212.664 SS, a wide time span that includes the period in about 1992 SS to 1996 Ss when Khan actually did rule on Earth.
The assumption that X years is exactly X years clearly fails in Star Trek chronology, and It is my belief that the phrase X years should be interpreted as a wide range of years, as wide as is possibly without the speaker being considered to have made a mistake.
in an earlier post, number 629, I wrote that the 150 years before "Metamorphosis" (years BM) McCoy and Cochrane said that Cochrane had disappeared should be interpreted as 125 to 175 years which is (50 x 3) years plus or minus half of 50 years or 25 years. So if Cochrane disappeared age 87 (87.000 to 87.999) sometime during the years 125 BM to 175 BM, Cochrane would have been born sometime in the period of 262.999 BM to 212.000 BM, and if Cochrane discovered the space warp aged 20 to 40 he should have done so sometime between 242.999 BM and 172.000 BM.
And in post number 632 Christopher replied:
...I think those error bars are too wide. Spock agreed with the 150-year date, not just Kirk and McCoy, so it was probably pretty much exact.
But I think the contrary, that my possible range might have been too narrow. Perhaps it would be better to think of 150 years as 1.5 centuries, and the possible range should be 100.000 to 199.999 years. So Cochrane would have disappeared about 199.999 BM to 100.00 BM, and been born about 287.998 BM to 187.000 BM, and discovered the space warp about 267.998 BM to 147.000 BM.
I don't think that someone should be in a hurry to narrow down the possible date range of any Star Trek production, or else they might wind up narrowing it down to two or more separate date ranges which do not overlap.
