It is far fetched. Because “warp drive” really. I know nasa has a concept but it’s just a conceptTo be fair the whole concept of Star Trek is far-fetched but we still enjoy it!
Wow, its a religion now? 'Oh hail Real Star Trek, we who have come to watch, salute you!'
when did TOS take place, 23rd century or 22nd century
- Thread starter Gabriel
- Start date
I don't get it? Watch the show. If you can see TOS in it, then treat it as such. If you don't see it fitting, then treat it as its own thing (which is what I do). Either avenue doesn't make it a good or a bad show, and neither does Midnight Edge's proclamations.
I never got the need of being patted on the head and told how to think. I can love, hate or be disinterested in something based on my own interactions with it.
You know something if people would care about real life as much as some of us do the trek then the world would possibly be a better place.
In the end it doesn’t matter if we think DSC is right or “proper trek”. It is trek wether we like it or not. And while people can reboot all of trek and make new series and some of us don’t like it (like me) again it doesn’t matter. It’s would be like battlestar galatica. Just because there is a new series doesn’t make the old series any less real or wrong. Same thing with other series (like Hawaii five-o) just because they reboot it doesn’t mean we have to throw old stuff out the window. I. Fact I like old battle star galatica better than new in the fact that. I have old on dvd. Remember we aren’t in control, nor will we ever be. If CBS says it is prime universe then that’s that. While I don’t like CBS is in control that’s that. And if they manage to “kill Star Trek” then that’s that. Excuse my French but stop bitching about stuff we can’t change and Istead why not bitch about stuff we can change. And remember if CBS says that TOS tng ds9 voy aren’t “canon” any more that it doesn’t matter. Well at least not to me I have everything on DVD so I’m good. People keep complaining about DSC when in reality most trek series 1st season sucked. I love DS9 but man the 1st season was no way the best. ps I don’t like DSC but im will change my mind.
Rant over.
In the end it doesn’t matter if we think DSC is right or “proper trek”. It is trek wether we like it or not. And while people can reboot all of trek and make new series and some of us don’t like it (like me) again it doesn’t matter. It’s would be like battlestar galatica. Just because there is a new series doesn’t make the old series any less real or wrong. Same thing with other series (like Hawaii five-o) just because they reboot it doesn’t mean we have to throw old stuff out the window. I. Fact I like old battle star galatica better than new in the fact that. I have old on dvd. Remember we aren’t in control, nor will we ever be. If CBS says it is prime universe then that’s that. While I don’t like CBS is in control that’s that. And if they manage to “kill Star Trek” then that’s that. Excuse my French but stop bitching about stuff we can’t change and Istead why not bitch about stuff we can change. And remember if CBS says that TOS tng ds9 voy aren’t “canon” any more that it doesn’t matter. Well at least not to me I have everything on DVD so I’m good. People keep complaining about DSC when in reality most trek series 1st season sucked. I love DS9 but man the 1st season was no way the best. ps I don’t like DSC but im will change my mind.
Rant over.
The idea of warp drive is at least rooted in Einsteinian theory and an understanding of the existence of the speed of light as a limit on conventional propulsion. Star Trek's use of the concept made it far more science-literate than contemporaries like Lost in Space or successors like Space: 1999 which portrayed interstellar travel as something you could achieve with conventional rocketry or just plain drifting. These things have to be graded on a curve.
Ok i will agree with that. I don’t care for really any other sci-do other Star Trek and battlestar galatica so i wouldn’t know about others. also at least the transporter could one day be a possible. So at least. they put in more science than Star Wars and other series. And Star Trek has encouraged people to study science.
To be fair Space 1999 didn't show travelling to other planets as something that was easy or not time consuming! The concept of the show is the people living in a base on the moon are blasted out of earth orbit and pass by other habitable planets which the crew might be able to relocate to and start new lives! But the television stations never showed it in any sort of order, in production order you get the explanation that the moon is hurled through ion storms or space warps and a black sun which takes them to the other side of the universe where planets and systems are closer together as speculated by scientists even today!
JB
Didn't the space warp follow them like a lost puppy. It seemed to have an intelligence about it taking them back to an earlier visited planet where they find their lost friends still alive and well. Humans colonize a planet. Journey over.
That sounds like the plot of one of Richard Hatch's Battlestar Galactica novels, Hen!
No, they first go through a space warp or Ion storm in the episode Another Time, Another Place and are duplicated by their speed, they eventually return to earth at an unspecified time and find not only a shattered planet but their own future selves! The other times they go through a space warp are in two episodes of the second series but one of them we only hear about!
JB
No, they first go through a space warp or Ion storm in the episode Another Time, Another Place and are duplicated by their speed, they eventually return to earth at an unspecified time and find not only a shattered planet but their own future selves! The other times they go through a space warp are in two episodes of the second series but one of them we only hear about!
JB
This video was splendid in illuminating the level of thinking on show behind the Midnight Edge videos, displaying all the signs of a classic conspiracy theory! Although at least they admit (at 16 minutes in) that the following is all based on rumour.
In summary:
At 23 minutes, we are told that "Prime" does not refer to the material contained in TOS-TNG-DS9-VOY-ENT and the first ten movies (AKA the original canon). No, you see "Prime" is a term coined by Bad Robot in to refer to a TOS-ish timeline that is 25% different from the original canon, distinct from the Kelvin Timeline as well. This is why Spock-Prime has a weird ship and is from a timeline where Romulus is destroyed and why Prime-USS Kelvin looks nothing like TOS ships. The upcoming Picard show also falls under this "Prime" category.
At 25 minutes, M.E. claim that Bryan Fuller wanted DSC to be part of the original canon. But then various legal issues combined with unspecified deals between Les Moonves and Paramount meant that DSC had to be made under the same license as the Kelvin movies, using Kurtzman's company "Secret Hideout"
The highlighted text above is the crux of the entire claim and the least well supported one of the lot, the sole source for such rampant speculation that a lot of the same creative people from the Bad Robot movies came over to work on DSC, including Kurtzman.
As I said upthread - this is a classic conspiracy theory - internally self consistent but no independently verifiable facts or sources. And the motivation? To "trick" the Trek fanbase into thinking that DSC is in the same timeline as the original canon, AKA the "they're out to get me" model of conspiratorial thinking.
Riiiiiiiiight......
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^^^
Except most of what's in that video has been debunked as BS.
That's absurd. If the Bad Robot team hadn't wanted to tie into the original universe, they wouldn't have gone through the convoluted plot mechanics of bringing Leonard Nimoy's Spock back through time travel. If all they'd wanted was to create a universe completely unconnected to the old one, then they could've just told a straight origin story without any of that stuff.
That's downright idiotic. DSC doesn't have to be made under any license, because it's being made by the people who own the franchise! A license is when the owners of the property hire someone else to make it, like Marvel selling the Spider-Man license to Sony. CBS owns Star Trek, and CBS produces Discovery. No license needed. If Midnight's Edge doesn't understand something that basic about the business, then their theories are utter gibberish.
And Secret Hideout is a completely different corporation from Bad Robot. Yes, Kurtzman used to work for Bad Robot, but he left it years ago to found his own company -- or rather, companies, first K&O Paper Products as Roberto Orci's partner, now Secret Hideout as his own independent venture (with Heather Kadin as his partner on the logistical/business side).
"A lot?" The only ones I know of are Kurtzman, production illustrator John Eaves, and makeup designer Neville Page. Certainly no writers or producers other than Kurtzman.
Every new Trek production has tried to "trick" the audience into thinking it was part of the same reality as what came before, even while making changes. But you know what? All fiction is a "trick," in the same way that a magic show is -- you present something unreal as real, and the audience members choose to let themselves believe it for the duration. Pretending that a bunch of 1960s actors were living in the future was a trick, and pretending that a bunch of actors 50 years later are living 10 years earlier in the future is a trick too. It's weird that some people are willing to suspend belief about the former trick yet act offended and betrayed by the latter trick.
Me as soon as I hear someone say I need to watch this long video to justify their opinion:
Yeah, that sounds like 100% bullshit.
Yeah, that's what I figured. I mean, c'mon, isn't the fact that DSC has featured several characters from TOS enough to label this "They can't use anything from the Prime Universe" theory as BS?
^^ Yep. This.
And for the record, I'm one episode away from finishing S1 of DSC, and I'm quite enjoying it, even though it does conflict with TOS at times. I'll certainly take it over VOY, ENT, and most of TNG. YMMV.
wrong franchise
Well you got the did star right. Lol
As I have said in previous posts 36 on page 2 and 173 on page 9 of this thread, there are only about a half a dozen Earth dates in all of the Star Trek productions made before Star Trek (2009) which are specified to be dates AD or BC, and none are specified as CE or BCE which are the same as AD and BC but with different names. Thus any Earth date given in any of those hundreds of Star Trek productions might count the years from a different epoch or era than the Anno Domini dating system does.
And why would anyone want to make use of the freedom to imagine that the Earth dates given in various Star Trek productions might possibly be counted from a different epoch than January 1, AD 1? Making use of such freedom would certainly make Star Trek chronology more complicated.
Because assuming that all Earth dates given in various Star Trek productions must be in the same calendar, let alone one that counts years from the epoch of January 1, AD 1 doesn't add up. There are too many contractions in dates. There have to be several different dating systems counting time from different epochs used in various Star Trek productions.
"Where No Man Has Gone before" opens with:
I note that if Spock heard Kirk make that log entry, and if that log entry was incorrect, Spock would probably have corrected Kirk.
Later Kirk addresses the crew on the Intercom:
That is how the Star trek transcripts site quotes Kirk. But listening to the episode, I seem to hear Kik say "ejected from the S.S. Valiant almost two hundred years ago.".
And whether Kirk says "two hundred years" or "almost two hundred years" when addressing the crew, Spock doesn't correct him. So what Kirk said should have been close enough to the correct and accurate number of years for Spock to consider it within the usual human range of precision and thus not inaccurate enough to be worth correcting.
Later Gary Mitchell demonstrates his memory to Dr. Dehner by quoting from a specified page in a book he had been reading:
If Mitchell said that 1996 was in the last century, the date of "Where No Man Has Gone before" would be sometime between 1996 TM and 2096 TM - TM standing for the Tarbolde-Mitchell calendar. But since Mitchell said "the past couple of centuries" the date of "Where No Man Has Gone before" must be sometime between 2096 TM and 2196 TM.
If "Where No Man Has Gone before" must be sometime between 2096 TM and 2196 TM, then 200 years earlier must be sometime between 1896 TM and 1996 TM, and the S.S. Valiant must have been deep in interstellar space sometime between 1896 TM and 1996 TM - no wonder that Mitchell could claim that Tarbolde (usually presumed to be an Earthman) was on the distant Canopius Planet in 1996 TM.
There are other dates given in the episode that might be either years or stardates.
Mitchell's records, seen onscreen state that Mitchell was born in a city or other place called Eldman on 1087.7, while Dr. Dehner's records, also seen onscreen, say she was born in a city or other place called Delman on 1089.5.
If those dates are given in years and if those years are counted from the same epoch as Tarbolde-Mitchell years, then Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner should be about 1008.3 to 1108.3 years and 1006.5 to 1106.5 years old, respectively, in WNMHGB.
If those dates are given in years in a different calendar than the Tarbolde-Mitchell calendar - call it the Eldman-Delman or ED calendar - and if both the TM and ED calendars use years the same length as Earth years, and If Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner are about 20 to 40 Earth years old, as they look, then the year of WNMHGB should be between 2096 and 2196 TM and also between about 1109.5 ED and about 1127.7 ED. Thus the epoch and year one of the ED calendar would be about 968.3 to 1086.5 TM.
There are other dates in WNMHGB. The tombstone Mitchell makes for Kirk says: "James R. Kirk C 1277.1 to 1313.7" or possibly the last number was 1818.7.
It is possible that both numbers are years (making Kirk live 36.6 to 541.6 of those years), or the first number is a year and the second a stardate, or the first number is a stardate and the second a year, or that both numbers are stardates (making Kirk, live, or command, or whatever for 36.6 to 541.6 of those stardates).
If the second number is a year in the ED calendar, Gary Mitchell would be about 226 to 731, and Elizabeth Dehner about 224.2 to 729.2, ED years old, thus making ED years much shorter than Earth years unless something kept Mitchell and Dehner young and alive for centuries.
Possibly the birth dates of Mitchell and Dehner are given in stardates. Their files are seen between stardates 1312.9 and 1313.1, and thus when Mitchell would be about 225.2 to 225.4, and Dehner 223.4 to 223.6, stardate units old.
It may be noted that the tombstone which has a second number that is 1313.7, or 1318.7, or 1813.7, or 1818.7, is made sometime between stardates 1313.3 and 1313.8. Thus it is logical to assume that the second number on the tombstone is stardate 1313.7.
But if the second number on the tombstone is a year 1313.7 to 1818.7, and if the years are the same length as the TM years, the year one and epoch of the Kirk Tombstone (or KT) calendar should be about 277.3 TM to 882.3 TM.
Thus WNMHGB, intentionally or otherwise, gives viewers a lot to think about the calendar system(s) and stardate system(s) of its society.
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/2.htm
Thus it is possible that WNMHGB shows the use of one, two, or three different (Earth?) calendars at the same time. If there are three separate year counts used in WNMHGB, and the year lengths are the same, the year one and epoch of the KT calendar would be about 277.3 TM to 882.3 TM, and the year one and epoch of the ED calendar would be about 968.3 to 1086.5 TM.
And some people will object that people often casually say "a couple" to mean "a few" instead of "a pair" or "two". Thus WNMHGB could be as much as maybe 500 years after 1996 TM and thus sometime between 2096 TM and 2496 TM.
But as a general rule, fictional characters don't talk as poorly as real people do.
And fictional characters tend to be especially precise and accurate when their words, spoken for other purposes, happen to inform the readers and viewers about important fictional data the readers or viewers wouldn't know any other way.
And fictional character tend to be even more precise and accurate when their words, spoken for other purposes, happen to inform the readers and viewers about important fictional data about a setting that is so remote in time and space that the readers or viewers don't have any other way to learn about it.
In a story set on Earth in the 2018, just last year, it doesn't matter much if a fictional character tells another character than Emperor Basil II the Bulgar Slayer finished conquering Bulgaria a century ago. If the reader is interested enough they can look it up and seen that Basil conquered Bulgaria a millennium ago instead of a century ago, and thus deduce that the fictional character said a century when a millennium, was correct, and perhaps deduce things about the speaker.
And similarly if someone in a present day story says that Emperor Basil II died thousands of years ago it is easy enough to look up that Basil II died only 994 years ago in AD 1025 and thus the character exaggerated a lot.
And it doesn't matter much if in a story set in 2019 a character says that Custer's Last Stand was the most humiliating defeat of the US army in the last century. If the reader or viewer is interested enough they can look up the Little Bighorn and learn that Custer's Last Stand was actually a humiliating defeat for the US army in the last two - or couple of - centuries.
The episode "Magic in the Air" (Julu 15, 2018) of the fantasy series The Bureau of Magical Things had the protagonists chasing a levitating chair, the Flying Throne of Kay Kavus. Professor Maxwell dates the Flying Throne, and thus Kay Kavus or Kai-Kaus, to the first millennium. Presumably Maxwell means the first millennium after Christ, or AD 1 to 1000.
Since The Bureau of Magical Things is set on Earth in the present, that is no problem. Any interested viewer can look up the legendary Kai-Kaus, and find out that nobody knows for sure when he would have lived if he was real, but it was sometime during the first, or possibly second, millennium BC, and also before the Achaemenid Dynasty and the First Persian Empire (c. 550-330 BC). So it is easy to learn that Maxwell's date was off by about 550 to 3,000 years and that Maxwell is careless with historic dates.
Similarly the "My Fair Pharaoh"/"The Power" (10 May 1980) episode of Fantasy Island won't mislead any viewer interested in looking up the historical Cleopatra and her family. Such an interested viewer would learn that Cleopatra VII, Queen of Kings, lived from c.69-30 BC and Marc Anthony lived from 83-30 BC, and that they were involved from about 41 to 30 BC. Cleopatra's enemy Ptolemy is portrayed by Michael Ansara (15 April 1952-13 July 2013) who was 58 years and 25 days old when the show aired. Thus the episode's Ptolemy would have been born about 99 to 88 BC and might have been about as old as Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra VII's father, who was never her enemy. The only Ptolemy who was ever Cleopatra's enemy was her brother Ptolemy XIII (62/61 - 47 BC) who only lived to be a quarter as old as the episode's Ptolemy and and was probably much more likable.
Thus any viewers who were interested enough could quickly learn how much that episode slandered Ptolemy XIII.
But in a story set in a far off and fictional time and place, where the reader or viewer can't look up any information about the setting, everything that characters say about the setting has to be either correct or proven wrong later to prove a plot point. Since the readers or viewers only know what they are told about the setting everything that the characters say about the setting has to be correct to avoid misleading the readers or viewers, unless it is planned to reveal that some of the characters are lying or misinformed.
Therefore, when a fictional character mentions "a couple of centuries" when talking about fictional history, they must mean "a pair of centuries" and not "a few centuries".
And the second pilot for Star Trek has already given a date range in one calendar which is inconsistent with TOS happening during the 23rd century of that calendar. Thus any canonical statement that TOS is in the 23rd century would have to be the 23rd century in a different calendar than any calendar used in WNMHGB, which would prove that at least two different calendars are used in various Star Trek productions, which would prove that it is unwise to assume that any particular Star Trek date is an Anno Domini date - including any 23rd century date for TOS.
And why would anyone want to make use of the freedom to imagine that the Earth dates given in various Star Trek productions might possibly be counted from a different epoch than January 1, AD 1? Making use of such freedom would certainly make Star Trek chronology more complicated.
Because assuming that all Earth dates given in various Star Trek productions must be in the same calendar, let alone one that counts years from the epoch of January 1, AD 1 doesn't add up. There are too many contractions in dates. There have to be several different dating systems counting time from different epochs used in various Star Trek productions.
"Where No Man Has Gone before" opens with:
I note that if Spock heard Kirk make that log entry, and if that log entry was incorrect, Spock would probably have corrected Kirk.
Later Kirk addresses the crew on the Intercom:
That is how the Star trek transcripts site quotes Kirk. But listening to the episode, I seem to hear Kik say "ejected from the S.S. Valiant almost two hundred years ago.".
And whether Kirk says "two hundred years" or "almost two hundred years" when addressing the crew, Spock doesn't correct him. So what Kirk said should have been close enough to the correct and accurate number of years for Spock to consider it within the usual human range of precision and thus not inaccurate enough to be worth correcting.
Later Gary Mitchell demonstrates his memory to Dr. Dehner by quoting from a specified page in a book he had been reading:
If Mitchell said that 1996 was in the last century, the date of "Where No Man Has Gone before" would be sometime between 1996 TM and 2096 TM - TM standing for the Tarbolde-Mitchell calendar. But since Mitchell said "the past couple of centuries" the date of "Where No Man Has Gone before" must be sometime between 2096 TM and 2196 TM.
If "Where No Man Has Gone before" must be sometime between 2096 TM and 2196 TM, then 200 years earlier must be sometime between 1896 TM and 1996 TM, and the S.S. Valiant must have been deep in interstellar space sometime between 1896 TM and 1996 TM - no wonder that Mitchell could claim that Tarbolde (usually presumed to be an Earthman) was on the distant Canopius Planet in 1996 TM.
There are other dates given in the episode that might be either years or stardates.
Mitchell's records, seen onscreen state that Mitchell was born in a city or other place called Eldman on 1087.7, while Dr. Dehner's records, also seen onscreen, say she was born in a city or other place called Delman on 1089.5.
If those dates are given in years and if those years are counted from the same epoch as Tarbolde-Mitchell years, then Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner should be about 1008.3 to 1108.3 years and 1006.5 to 1106.5 years old, respectively, in WNMHGB.
If those dates are given in years in a different calendar than the Tarbolde-Mitchell calendar - call it the Eldman-Delman or ED calendar - and if both the TM and ED calendars use years the same length as Earth years, and If Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner are about 20 to 40 Earth years old, as they look, then the year of WNMHGB should be between 2096 and 2196 TM and also between about 1109.5 ED and about 1127.7 ED. Thus the epoch and year one of the ED calendar would be about 968.3 to 1086.5 TM.
There are other dates in WNMHGB. The tombstone Mitchell makes for Kirk says: "James R. Kirk C 1277.1 to 1313.7" or possibly the last number was 1818.7.
It is possible that both numbers are years (making Kirk live 36.6 to 541.6 of those years), or the first number is a year and the second a stardate, or the first number is a stardate and the second a year, or that both numbers are stardates (making Kirk, live, or command, or whatever for 36.6 to 541.6 of those stardates).
If the second number is a year in the ED calendar, Gary Mitchell would be about 226 to 731, and Elizabeth Dehner about 224.2 to 729.2, ED years old, thus making ED years much shorter than Earth years unless something kept Mitchell and Dehner young and alive for centuries.
Possibly the birth dates of Mitchell and Dehner are given in stardates. Their files are seen between stardates 1312.9 and 1313.1, and thus when Mitchell would be about 225.2 to 225.4, and Dehner 223.4 to 223.6, stardate units old.
It may be noted that the tombstone which has a second number that is 1313.7, or 1318.7, or 1813.7, or 1818.7, is made sometime between stardates 1313.3 and 1313.8. Thus it is logical to assume that the second number on the tombstone is stardate 1313.7.
But if the second number on the tombstone is a year 1313.7 to 1818.7, and if the years are the same length as the TM years, the year one and epoch of the Kirk Tombstone (or KT) calendar should be about 277.3 TM to 882.3 TM.
Thus WNMHGB, intentionally or otherwise, gives viewers a lot to think about the calendar system(s) and stardate system(s) of its society.
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/2.htm
Thus it is possible that WNMHGB shows the use of one, two, or three different (Earth?) calendars at the same time. If there are three separate year counts used in WNMHGB, and the year lengths are the same, the year one and epoch of the KT calendar would be about 277.3 TM to 882.3 TM, and the year one and epoch of the ED calendar would be about 968.3 to 1086.5 TM.
And some people will object that people often casually say "a couple" to mean "a few" instead of "a pair" or "two". Thus WNMHGB could be as much as maybe 500 years after 1996 TM and thus sometime between 2096 TM and 2496 TM.
But as a general rule, fictional characters don't talk as poorly as real people do.
And fictional characters tend to be especially precise and accurate when their words, spoken for other purposes, happen to inform the readers and viewers about important fictional data the readers or viewers wouldn't know any other way.
And fictional character tend to be even more precise and accurate when their words, spoken for other purposes, happen to inform the readers and viewers about important fictional data about a setting that is so remote in time and space that the readers or viewers don't have any other way to learn about it.
In a story set on Earth in the 2018, just last year, it doesn't matter much if a fictional character tells another character than Emperor Basil II the Bulgar Slayer finished conquering Bulgaria a century ago. If the reader is interested enough they can look it up and seen that Basil conquered Bulgaria a millennium ago instead of a century ago, and thus deduce that the fictional character said a century when a millennium, was correct, and perhaps deduce things about the speaker.
And similarly if someone in a present day story says that Emperor Basil II died thousands of years ago it is easy enough to look up that Basil II died only 994 years ago in AD 1025 and thus the character exaggerated a lot.
And it doesn't matter much if in a story set in 2019 a character says that Custer's Last Stand was the most humiliating defeat of the US army in the last century. If the reader or viewer is interested enough they can look up the Little Bighorn and learn that Custer's Last Stand was actually a humiliating defeat for the US army in the last two - or couple of - centuries.
The episode "Magic in the Air" (Julu 15, 2018) of the fantasy series The Bureau of Magical Things had the protagonists chasing a levitating chair, the Flying Throne of Kay Kavus. Professor Maxwell dates the Flying Throne, and thus Kay Kavus or Kai-Kaus, to the first millennium. Presumably Maxwell means the first millennium after Christ, or AD 1 to 1000.
Since The Bureau of Magical Things is set on Earth in the present, that is no problem. Any interested viewer can look up the legendary Kai-Kaus, and find out that nobody knows for sure when he would have lived if he was real, but it was sometime during the first, or possibly second, millennium BC, and also before the Achaemenid Dynasty and the First Persian Empire (c. 550-330 BC). So it is easy to learn that Maxwell's date was off by about 550 to 3,000 years and that Maxwell is careless with historic dates.
Similarly the "My Fair Pharaoh"/"The Power" (10 May 1980) episode of Fantasy Island won't mislead any viewer interested in looking up the historical Cleopatra and her family. Such an interested viewer would learn that Cleopatra VII, Queen of Kings, lived from c.69-30 BC and Marc Anthony lived from 83-30 BC, and that they were involved from about 41 to 30 BC. Cleopatra's enemy Ptolemy is portrayed by Michael Ansara (15 April 1952-13 July 2013) who was 58 years and 25 days old when the show aired. Thus the episode's Ptolemy would have been born about 99 to 88 BC and might have been about as old as Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra VII's father, who was never her enemy. The only Ptolemy who was ever Cleopatra's enemy was her brother Ptolemy XIII (62/61 - 47 BC) who only lived to be a quarter as old as the episode's Ptolemy and and was probably much more likable.
Thus any viewers who were interested enough could quickly learn how much that episode slandered Ptolemy XIII.
But in a story set in a far off and fictional time and place, where the reader or viewer can't look up any information about the setting, everything that characters say about the setting has to be either correct or proven wrong later to prove a plot point. Since the readers or viewers only know what they are told about the setting everything that the characters say about the setting has to be correct to avoid misleading the readers or viewers, unless it is planned to reveal that some of the characters are lying or misinformed.
Therefore, when a fictional character mentions "a couple of centuries" when talking about fictional history, they must mean "a pair of centuries" and not "a few centuries".
And the second pilot for Star Trek has already given a date range in one calendar which is inconsistent with TOS happening during the 23rd century of that calendar. Thus any canonical statement that TOS is in the 23rd century would have to be the 23rd century in a different calendar than any calendar used in WNMHGB, which would prove that at least two different calendars are used in various Star Trek productions, which would prove that it is unwise to assume that any particular Star Trek date is an Anno Domini date - including any 23rd century date for TOS.
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I'm not going to plow through your entire post, but I'm going to nix this right here. That's a big fat nope.
couple noun
cou·ple | \ ˈkə-pəl ; "couple of" is often ˌkə-plə(v)\
Definition of couple (Entry 1 of 3)
[...]
4 : an indefinite small number : FEW
// a couple of days ago
cou·ple | \ ˈkə-pəl ; "couple of" is often ˌkə-plə(v)\
Definition of couple (Entry 1 of 3)
[...]
4 : an indefinite small number : FEW
// a couple of days ago
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/couple
It is exactly as if Mitchell had said: "That's one of the most passionate love sonnets of the past few centuries." No hard number of centuries can be squeezed out of Gary's line, except only that it is a few.
The only three Trek fans in the world, that we personally knew of, used to argue about all this stuff when the show was on NBC. Early on I think we all agreed that it took place in the next century or so because nothing was different enough to be further in the future. But then, we were voracious readers of sf pulp and paperback fiction, where the authors imaginations ranged (sometimes) much further afield than the Trek folks did.
I may never watch Where No Man Has Gone Before ever again.
