For laughs...for kicks...for a way to keep my mind off certain unpleasent realities of the day, I've decided to try and construct my own, completely inclusive canon Trek timeline. This is partly in order to see just where the inconsistancies lie, and partly just to enjoy watching Roddenberry et al figure out just where this "Star Trek" show is going.
Anyway, some ground rules: I'm going in chronological order from the second pilot, so until I come to an episode I'm not recognizing its information. (Which is why my date for the series spans about two hundred years of possibilities.) Stuff that's in italics is either contradicted in the episode itself or based on unsupported conjecture on my part or information that does come from later episodes, or series, or guide books. Assuming I ever finish this, and people haven't beaten me to death for being pedantic and/or boring, these might get fancy color codes to separate contradictions from conjectures and so on. There are three sorts of dates used. One is absolute, dated from the second pilot. ST for Star Trek and BST for before Star Trek. (Even though we've got Star Trek before our Before Star Trek dates.) One is based on the current era dates that can be derived from the episodes. And the last is stardates, which are unreliable for reasons we're all aware. Finally, the numbers in parenthesis lead to footnotes.
Anyway, that's about it. I've done all of two episodes so far. Enjoy.
Where No Man Has Gone Before BST 400-200 "Nightingale Woman" written by Tarbolde on the Canopius planet CE 1996 (1) BST 210-190 S.S. Valiant lost CE 2006-2186 BST 33 Gary Mitchell born (2) Stardate 1087.7 CE 2163-2363 BST 31 Elizabeth Dehner born (2) Stardate 1089.5 CE 2165-2365 BST 23 Gary Mitchell born (2) Stardate 1087.7 CE 2153-2353 BST 21 Elizabeth Dehner born (2) Stardate 1089.5 CE 2155-2355 BST 15 Kirk and Mitchell meet, presumably at the academy (3) CE 2181-2381 ST 1 "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Stardate 1312.4-1313.8 CE 2196-2396
1.) Mitchell gives the date of the poem and then mentions it was the most romantic written in the "past couple of centuries." My purely arbitrary definition of couple is two to four. 2.) It seems highly unlikely that Mitchell and Dehner were 23 and 21, respectively, during the episode, regardless of the ages given on their files. 3.) Mitchell's description of his academy years make it sound like he had not met Kirk prior to attending. It is interesting to note that if Mitchell met Kirk during his first year, and we assume from evidence in TNG that most people go to the academy at the age of 18, Mitchell would be 33 during the episode, which seems like a more reasonable age for a Lieutenant Commander and possible XO. If we're adding ten years to Mitchell's age, it doesn't seem unreasonable to do the same for Dr. Dehner, making her 31.
We get two different and mutually exclusive stardate schemes here. The first, appearing on the personnel files Spock reviews, suggest that one stardate equals one year. By that scheme, Mitchell was 226 years old when he died, and the episode itself took over a year.
Kirk's date of birth, as given by his tombstone and as near as I can make out, is stardate 1277.1.
The Corbomite Manuver BST 250-200 Earliest days of space exploration (1) CE 1946-2196 BST 11 Kirk's first promotion to bridge officer (2) CE 2185-2385 ST 1+93 days "The Corbomite Manuver" Stardate 1512.2 (3) CE 2196-2396
1.) This is more or less how long Kirk says human starships have been using corbomite devices. Another assumption on my part is that "over two centuries" means at least two, but not more than two and a half, at which point we might round up to "almost three" instead. Not, perhaps, the most defensible interpretation, but there you are. This could be used to date the episode, but it has a number of problems we must overcome first. One, is Kirk talking about the earliest days of human space exploration or Federation space exploration? Arguably human, since the UFP hadn't been thought up by Roddenberry and company yet. Two, does earliest mean earliest overall or earliest that actually went anywhere? In other words, is he dating from Gagarin or Cochrane? Tricky, as there's a century just inbetween them. Lastly, seeing as how the whole bit was a bluff anyway, more than two centuries could just have been the first number that popped into Kirk's head. (Of course, assuming that it is a more or less accurate number, and that Kirk was speaking of Cochrane, this number easily fits into the "true" timeline. So, hooray.) One other thing to consider is that he might be dating from the time of the Valiant, in which case this episode adds to the pilot, but doesn't introduce any new timeline information. For now, we'll just go with the date derived from the pilot. 2.) McCoy tells Kirk that the captain was like Bailey 11 years ago. I assume here that the good doctor was speaking about their shared situation, that is, their first permenant seat on the bridge of a starship. But it is also possible McCoy was speaking of a shared rank, or a shared tendancy to spout off dramatic monolouges at opportune moments. I'm going to stick with bridge officer, though, as I think that was the intention. 3.) Another stardate scheme is presented. From the first captain's log to the second, 18 hours and 1.6 stardates have passed. Thus 1 stardate equals 11.25 hours. By this reckoning, about 93 and a half days have passed since "Where No Man Has Gone Before." Not entirely unreasonable, as three months seems almost enough time to refit the ship, change uniforms, and mix and match personnel, especially if the Enterprise returned to base immediately following their galactic barrier encounter, and didn't depart until just before this mission. Of course, it also means that Mitchell would have been only 105 days old.
Coming soon: "Mudd's Women" or "Tomorrow is 85 Days Ago." (Note: It's unlikely I'll be able to come up with joke titles based on stardate inconsistancies for every episode, so enjoy them while you can.)
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
I'll join you:
NOTES (8 December 2256)
New Traders and Merchants
Please open an office on our station. But you MUST do it in the second ring from the right. There is no choice here. That's where we've said you're gonna be, and that's where you'll be.
Lurkers
Your only choice is to go all the way back, as far away from Security as possible. That's so that you can't trouble our command staff too much. We don't want stories involving lurkers, period!
Ambassadors
We want you out of reach of any potential troublemakers! So we'll put you right here in the middle, and simply block access from all sides. Nothing will trouble you. Everyone who wants to talk to you will JUST HAVE TO TAKE THE Core Shuttle.
[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Well, since there seems to be a trend developing for the most random, unconnected posts in this thread, I'll go with:
My kitten's breath smells of catfood!
(that, and my new Enterprise weapons section is up - use the link below)
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I have written fanfiction about 5 year old super-powered girls that doesn't feature underage cartoon sex!
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Hmm.
Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
Sol System,
I disagree with some of your chronology.
A. I think that Kirk met Mitchell fifteen years before the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before". They would later become friends at the Academy when the older Kirk taught a class. In the episode, Kirk said that he had known Mitchell for fifteen years, not that they had been friends for fifteen years.
B. The medical records are for the U.S.S. Enterprise . Gary Mitchell's record is older than Elizabeth Dehner's. In the conference, Dehner said that Mitchell had served for years with Spock. So, Mitchell is older than his records indicate. How much older is not known.
C. The dates given on the tombstone may not indicate birth and date, but rather commission of a rank and the ending of a rank. The "C." at the beginning of the dates I think is a big clue. This "C." I think stands for "Captain". This is confirmed by the stardates. 1277.10 is after 1089.5, not before 1087.70. If we accepted the stardates as birthdates, then Kirk would be considerably younger than Mitchell or Dehner.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Terran bunnies are soft. Klingon bunnies are not.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
A.) Well, that's what I said, more or less. The reason I suspect they met at the academy is because Mitchell doesn't sound as if he knew Kirk by anything but reputation at the time.
B.) The record says, right on it, "age: 23." I'm not sure what you're getting at. I find it rather unlikely that the records are out of date. This is the 23rd century, after all. And the stardates can't really tell us anything.
C.) Again, stardates aren't a good way to date things. Also, putting the years Kirk was a captain on his tombstone is an incredibly bizarre act. Even more so, that c. doesn't stand for captain. It stands for...uh...something calender related. Honest! I just can't quite remember what.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Conceived?
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Circa. But why let a little bit of knowledge cloud some rollicking good randomnity?
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Of course, the tombstone was created by Mitchell, and he might have simply got the Captain's age wrong. Or it could have been a joke; maybe Mitchell called Kirk "baby-faced Monkey fucker", and so he gave him a tombstone that gave him the age of a baby.
Or maybe he cocked up. He apparently didn't know the middle name of his friend of 15 years (or at least a few), so it's possible.
Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: B.) The record says, right on it, "age: 23."
I don't have the episode to look at, but is the record in question something that could have been made when Mitchell WAS 23 rather than being current, or am I missing the point of this argument over the age on the record?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, here's the thing. The record was paper, it seems, scanned in, or something. One page even had circles drawn on it in pen.
But. This is supposed to be 200 years in the future. I have a hard time believing that the Enterprise has her computer banks stuffed with .pdf files that aren't even up to date.
However, I'm not sure what the point of all this is. Obviously Mitchell and Dehner weren't fresh out of their teens during the episode, so whether the record is wrong or old doesn't seem to make a difference to me.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I would think that it would almost certainly be out of date. Who makes a permanent record that asks for "age", and then updates it every year? If it were just a generic record that was updated every time something changed, it would simply have the birthdate on it. I would guess those records were made back when Mitchell and Dehner entered Starfleet, or something.
Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
Speaking of the records, doesn't anyone find it strange that only a corner of Mitchell and Dehner's personnel records are shown? IF you observe the top line, you will notice that the line is not complete.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
The record cards would make sense if we assume they were indeed old ones, from the last time these two were psi-tested (I trust this is not a regularly repeated test, not in the pre-TOS, telepaths-are-a-novelty environment). We have to also assume that early TOS and pre-TOS stardates are cyclic, though, for those to make sense. AND we have to ignore the fact that the CURRENT ranks of these people are given on these OLD cards.
On that last point, it only makes sense to ignore the said ranks. How could Mitchell be a Lt.Cmdr at the age of 23?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Actually, what records even today ask for "age" specifically, and not "date of birth"?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Good point. But perhaps the development of psi abilities is strongly correlated to age, so whenever a licensed psi tester comes to town, the first thing he asks is the age of the testee. The testee will probably not be interviewed again within his lifetime on this subject (unless he's super-gifted and in that case probably carted away to a secret S31 laboratory), so date of birth is not relevant.
Or something. I just felt an urge to type.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
The James R. Kirk issue was addressed rather hilariously in Michael Jan Friedman's 'My Borther's Keeper' novels.. Mitchall made a crack about Kirk not being able to play racquetball, and Kirk stated that racquetball was his middle name... Mitchell was referencing an old personal joke. The rest of the novel sucked though
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Yeah. Each of the three novels gave a different meaning to the middle initial R, which I thought was kinda cute. It was also rather commendable how Friedman was forced to give us a recap of the events of "Where No Man.." in the beginning of each of the three books, and managed to do it so differently each time.
And the plotlines as such were relatively promising - the classic explanation to the Klingon forehead thing and all. It's just that Friedman is so darn uninteresting. He'd water down even ST2 if given the chance to write the novelization...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: ST 1 "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Stardate 1312.4-1313.8 CE 2196-2396
[...]
ST 1+93 days "The Corbomite Manuver" Stardate 1512.2 (3) CE 2196-2396
Just a suggestion: might it be easier to call "Where No Man Has Gone Before" ST 0 as opposed to ST 1? It would make calculations between dates much easier, if I'm not mistaken.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Yes, I would think so. This seems to be based on the BC/AD scale, which is already shunned scientifically because of the problems it causes. I would call WNMHGB the beginning of "ST 0", the year after it "ST 1", and the year before it "ST -1".
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
It would be easier, yes.
Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
I just rewatched "WNMHGB".
Observations: The record cards, with name, age, physical description, etc., are useless for dating purposes. Why? Look at the first line. "Personnel Medical Record-Starship ?". Without the name of this starship, we can't even be certain that these records were produced on the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. For all we know, they may been produced on another starship.
They are good at giving general data.
*Dr. Elizabeth Dehner's father is Gerald Dehner. She lived on street "1489" in a city called Delman, in a state named Newst(). She was born on 1087.70. *Lt. Cmdr. Gary Mitchell lived on street "8148" in a city called Eldman, in the same state as Dehner. He was born on stardate 1089.50.
Additional facts can be gleaned from the ESP files.
*Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. Aside from the notes given on her family's history of ESP, with the earliest records coming from ~60 years ago, and Dr. Dehner's skills with ESP, we learned a little about her career. She studied at the College of Medical Sciences of the Tri-Planetary Academy. At this Academy, she wrote a thesis on ESP in aliens which was due to be published. For her work at this institution, Dr. Dehner was transferred to the Aldebaran Colony.
*Lt. Cmdr. Mitchell. His family's connections are deeper than Dehner's with the earliest records of ESP abilites dating back to ~120 years. As an officer on assigment to Deneb IV, he participated in telepathetic communication with the natives. His comprehension of their thoughts was 80 or greater percent.
This last fact helps to date the incident referred to in dialogue. Kirk was with Mitchell at one of these communications. In a later dialogue, Dehner states that Mitchell served with Spock for years. We know that prior to this episode, Pike was captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 before his promotion. So, at least two years prior to the episode, Mitchell had served with Kirk aboard his first command. Along with visiting Deneb IV, the two visited Dimorus.
Now, as for the fifteen year statement, Dehner said that Kirk and Mitchell became friends when Mitchell joined the service. When Mitchell joined the service, Kirk was a Lt. From later episodes, we know that Kirk became a lt. in 2255. So, for at least five years, possibly more, both men were not friends. They knew each other as acquitances.
Now, the tombstone. I feel that, as with the record cards, until we have a clearer understanding of the material, we shouldn't venture a guess as to what is said or not said.
Oh, to add an additional date. I did research on Spinoza. The work seen in the episode, "Ethics", was published in 1688.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Minor nitpicking on that "not friends" theme:
It definitely sounds as if "Watch out for Lt. Kirk" would be a case of Gary first hearing of Jim. That is, this is the "15 years ago" incident, not the "we became friends" incident. Which of course creates some problems - in 2255, it's about five years too late in case we want to have our "WNMGHB" in 2265 (which is more or less canonical now, if the five-year mission ended in 2270).
But we could say that an ignorant classmate told Gary to "watch out for Lt. Kirk" even when Gary was on first-name basis with the said Lieutenant already, and had been for years. The phrasing of that warning would stay fresh in Gary's mind, due to its humorous inappropriateness.
Does "joining the service" mean enrolling for SF Academy, or graduating? The former would jibe much better with the 15-year reference: if Gary enrolled in 2249/2250, Okudaic/canon dates would hold. But probably Gary joined after Kirk did - or else we have to go back to Square One in the eternal fight against making Kirk a Lt. before graduation...
So 2251 sounds like the proper date for Gary's entry. Jim would have graduated in 2254 and made Lt. rank by 2255 (having served as Ensign aboard the Republic in between, "several years" after befriending Finney, and still performing some sort of Academy-related role aboard so that the statement about being under Garrovick "from the day I left the Academy" would hold true).
Gary would be friends with Jim, having first met him back when Jim was a second-year student, a "stack of books with legs". In 2255, Gary would take a final-year class in whatever his old buddy Jim was teaching, and a classmate would utter this completely improper warning about "Lt. Kirk".
That would make the friendship of the two thirteen years old by 2264, not fifteen, but that's still an acceptable rounding. And if Gary enrolled at 18, if would make him 31 in "WNMHGB", as stated earlier; a very sensible figure considering the actor's appearance and the character's rank and position.
As for the references to 23 and 21 years of age in the cards: As PsyLiam says, an entry for "age" is atypical for such forms or questionnaires. So perhaps Gary had an Adjusted Gravity Endurance of 23 points, and Liz had 21? Of course, since the two share a birthplace, they could also share a non-Earth method of counting the age. Perhaps Newst... has years that are 1.5 times the length of Earth years?
Whuzzap with their heights, BTW? Even for a metric-oriented guy, 5'7" sounds excessively low for Dehner. And I didn't see the heels that would make her the same approximate height as Mitchell in the many shots where they stand side by side. (Now that's a first, a woman without high or even medium heels on a starship bridge! Shatner wore higher heels than Kellerman there - he was probably two inches shorter than most of the cast, and a goodly three inches the inferior of Nimoy. See here.)
But somebody has clearly been smudging the numbers on those cards... Liz's seems to have read either 5'6", 5'8" or 5'9" originally.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
A history of Kirk (using Okuda's dates for convenience)...
2233: Kirk is born.
34 years before "The Deadly Years."
2250: Kirk meets Gary Mitchell, enters Starfleet Academy, and visits Axanar.
He met Mitchell 15 years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before," entered the Academy at 17 according to the writer's guide, and visited Axanar as a "new fledged cadet" according to "Whom God's Destroy."
c. 2250-54: Kirk takes a class under Ben Finney.
This, from "Court Martial," could have been any time during his Academy days.
2254: Kirk graduates from Starfleet Academy. He is assigned to the USS Republic under the command of Captain Garrovick. While aboard, Kirk logs a mistake by Finney. He is promoted to lieutenant and commands his first landing part at Neural.
He served on the Republic as an ensign, "some years" after taking a class under Finney, and his first commanding officer was Garrovick. The logical conclusion is that Garrovick commanded the Republic at the time and this was Kirk's first post-graduation assignment. He was a lieutenant at Neural, 13 years before "A Private Little War."
c. 2255-2256: The Republic returns to port, and Garrovick assumes command of the USS Farragut. He takes some of his staff with him, including Lieutenant Kirk. During a refitting break between assignments, Kirk teaches a class at the Academy. One of his students is Gary Mitchell.
Exactly when all this happens is anyone's guess. Since Kirk was a lieutenant when Mitchell entered the Academy, it has to be after the Republic incident from "Court Martial." That it was also after the Neural landing party accommodates a return to Earth as well as a transfer to the Farragut.
2257: Lieutenant Kirk makes a mistake with the vampire-cloud creature, killing half the Farragut's crew.
11 years before "Obsession."
c. 2258-2264: Kirk rises through the ranks, ultiamtely commanding a destroyer.
His first command, the "equivalent" of a destroyer, was described in The Making of Star Trek.
2264: Kirk assumes command of the USS Enterprise.
4 years before the time of The Making of Star Trek, between the second and third seasons of the original series. This is probably off by a bit, especially since Okuda's dates ignore the three-year gap between "Errand of Mercy" and "Day of the Dove" as well as the only reliable reference relative to the stable dates of The Next Generation, "Sarek." Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Listen, if I had to process records using TOS stardates all day, I'd politely ask for the "age" to be included as well....
I don't think those people can tell time from stardates any better than we can. It's a fact that they vary considerably in rate and direction, but it still stands to reason that a particular stardate will refer to a particular point in time, even though stardate 1089.4 might be today, 1122.3 might be tomorrow, and 1084.4 might be the next day. If they wanted to know precisely when, they'd ask the computer to decode the stardate with respect to the characters' relative location. I somehow doubt the cyclic theory, since we really haven't seen enough pre-TOS stardates to justify it, and because nobody's ever asked for a cycle to be specified.
Stardates would only be perfectly consistent and reasonable with respect to some reference frame we'll never visit on the show, such as a remote time base enclosed inside a subspace field or something. This timebase might have changed location or subspace field intensity a couple of times to even out the variations somewhat. By the time of the TNG era, stardates would be more regular, but not quite.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
A few more.
Mudd's Women BST 3-2 Ben Childress, Herm Gossett and Benton posted to Rigel XII (1) ST 0+7 days (2) "Mudd's Women" Stardate 1329.1 (3)
1.) Ruth reports that the miners have been on the planet for "almost three years." 2.) Assuming 1 stardate equals 11.25 hours. It is extremely unlikely this took place just a week after the second pilot. 3.) The first stardate given in this episode is 1329.8, but a later log entry is listed as 1329.1, and the rest of the dates given proceed from that, including 1329.2 shortly after, and 1330.1 near the middle of the show. It is possible, one supposes, that Kirk simply misspoke and meant 1328.8 at the beginning. At any rate, 1329.1 is the earliest date given in the episode.
The Enemy Within ST 0+168 days (1) "The Enemy Within" Stardate 1672.1
1.) As per scale given in "Corbomite."
The Man Trap BST 12 McCoy and Nancy knew each other at this time. BST 10 McCoy and the future Nancy Crater end their relationship. BST 5-4 Craters arrive at M-113 BST 1 Nancy Crater killed. (1) ST 0+94 days (2) "The Man Trap" Stardate 1513.1
1.) Professor Crater said that Nancy had died one year before, "or was it two?" Spock's search turned up reports of a drop in shipments of artifacts and other scientific findings over the previous year. 2.) Again, the Corbomite scale. This could not have happened the day after "Mudd's Women." For one thing, the Enterprise model is different.
The Naked Time ST 0+180 days Enterprise is thrown back to this date following a successful cold restart of the warp drive. ST 0+183 days (1) "The Naked Time" Stardate 1704.2
1.) Corbomite scale.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Newly updated! And stuff! This time we make the wildly unsupportable claim that "The Cage" occured two weeks before "Where No Man Has Gone Before"! Available as a .txt file you can download to your very own computer! Only this lacks all the fancy formatting tricks I use to keep conjectures separate! Totally download it!
Of course, since the two share a birthplace, they could also share a non-Earth method of counting the age. Perhaps Newst... has years that are 1.5 times the length of Earth years?