posted
When comparing the Okuda and Dixon timelines -- which, in case one didn't know this, are quite frequently out of sync -- I ended up setting both aside out of frustration and going back to the original source material.
Shock and dismay. They're both wrong. And the data (no, not him) have been staring us in the face since 1968 and 1982, respectively. I've poked around a bit online, and it seems no one else has noticed this.
Here's the skinny:
The Writer's Guide for Star Trek -- quoted also in Stephen Whitfield's "Making of Star Trek" -- says that Captain Kirk is "about thirty-four years old". Several sources estimate lower, but since William Shatner was 36 during TOS' second season, I am more inclined to stick with the given age.
TOS had a lot of vague references that averaged out to placing the series somewhere in the 23rd century, and Chuck Graham created his timeline back in the '70s based these. It is a slightly modified version of this timeline that James Dixon uses in his Chronology. This timeline slots the five-year mission in at 2260-65, with TMP in 2267.
Mike Okuda used a simpler, and totally non-scientific, method by just adding 300 to the original series' airdates, thus placing the five-year mission from 2265-2269, with TMP taking place in 2271.
Star Trek II was the first aired/screened Trek material to give a solid dating reference, despite apologists' attempts to dismiss the date Kirk reads off the bottle as a Romulan date . That's a Terran O(ld) C(alendar) date, thank you. Furthermore, even though it's not explicit onscreen, the script establishes that this is Kirk's fiftieth birthday, hence why he's suddenly feeling so over-the-hill.
Now we start crunching. Many novels and fandom sources put Kirk's birthday at the end of March (around the same date as Shatner's birthday). Given how much time has probably passed between when the ale was bottled and when it came into McCoy's hands, it probably isn't March of 2283. Given what I know of brewing and in light of the observed characteristics of the ale, I'd say 2285 is more likely that 2284. At the very least, we'll use that as a data point for the time being.
2285-50=2235. So Kirk would have been born at the end of March in 2235. So far, so good. This even lets the maiden flight of the Enterprise take place in 2245 (as with the Okuda timeline) when Kirk is ten -- as recounted in the novel "Final Frontier".
2235+34=2269. Here's where we hit the rough patch. According to our data points, TOS' second season is set in 2269. This means the five-year mission runs from 2268-2272, and TMP can't be any earlier than 2274. These dates are supported by Kirk saying he hasn't seen Khan in fifteen years. 2269+15=2284 -- close enough for right now.
I have no problem going with an observationally-derived revision to the timeline, but how the heck does one overcome the power of dogmatism?
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
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posted
What do you consider "original source material"? Because Voyager quite explicitly states Kirk's mission took place from 2265-2270.
And since your timeline is still based on vague things like the fermenting of Romulan ale, it's not significantly better than any other TOS timeline, IMHO.
posted
So you have one dating that places TOS in the early 2260s (we'll call that the FASA timeline since yoiu all know how I feel about the blind worshipping of something some fan thought up in the 1970s); the Okuda timeline thatplaces TOS in the late 2260's; and the Kirk-Birthday timeline that places TOS in the early 2270s.
Before you can decide on any there are some things need to be established:-
1. What further calculations caused the FASA timeline to end up with the 2260-65 range.
2. The Okuda timeline can be considered canon by its mention in Voyager (never mind that it would have been because of Okuda's position in the Trek hierarchy). But is there anything that explicitly contradicts it (apart from the Kirk-Birthday timeline, of which more below)?
3. We have a script-only assertion that the anniversary which forms the backbone of the Kirk-Birthday is his 50th; but is that enough? Might it not be his 55th birthday? For all we know in the 23rd century turning 55 has the same implications turning 40 does today.
4. In fact, the birthday itself doesn't HAVE to be any particularly significant one: I mean, what happens? Spock gives him a book, and he has a drink with McCoy at his flat. The gift of the book appeared unexpected, and you'd think a significant milestone would merit more than just a quiet drink at home.
Also, I don't remember any 15-year timespan mentioned in TWoK - when was it said?
quote:Also, I don't remember any 15-year timespan mentioned in TWoK - when was it said?
I believe it was when Kirk was alone with Carol Marcus in the Genesis Cave anteroom after Khan absconded with the Genesis Device and Chekov's brain slug ejected itself. It's part of the "show me a son that'll help" speech, I think.
quote:3. We have a script-only assertion that the anniversary which forms the backbone of the Kirk-Birthday is his 50th; but is that enough? Might it not be his 55th birthday? For all we know in the 23rd century turning 55 has the same implications turning 40 does today.
It could have been a milestone birthday for Kirk, but Kirk may have let it be known to everyone that he didn't one anyone to talk about it. Kirk was also surprised when McCoy showed up, and McCoy does accuse Kirk of treating his birthday like a funeral. Then again, it doesn't matter if this is his 55th birthday, 47th birthday, or 83rd birthday. Going by script notes is pretty iffy.
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quote:Originally posted by Harry: What do you consider "original source material"? Because Voyager quite explicitly states Kirk's mission took place from 2265-2270.
I consider the stuff that came a decade-and-a-half before Voyager to take precedence. Not my fault Okuda missed it. And the fact that the guy who wrote and directed Star Trek II sez so -- and that this was before Okuda even went to work for Paramount -- more than validates it as "original source material" in my eyes. It's not just "script notes", either. It's in the narrative slug in one of the first scenes with Kirk; and since the writer and director were the same person, it's in all of Nick Meyers direction to Mr. Shatner as to how he should be behaving, etc. And besides, Mr. Shatner was fifty when production started...
quote:Originally posted by Harry: And since your timeline is still based on vague things like the fermenting of Romulan ale, it's not significantly better than any other TOS timeline, IMHO.
So because I don't think the stuff could have been fermented (per McCoy's comment), bottled, smuggled across the border, delivered to McCoy, and presented to Kirk in a mere three months... Harry, this is Romulan ale, not Romulan hooch! I could easily have said it could be 2286 or '87, but this is one point where the Okuda 2285 date for Star Trek II works, so I picked it as an acceptable reference point. I'm not slavishly attached to it, but in order to work the numbers I had to pick a date, and that one seemed to allow enough time for bottle-aging and transit time without eating too far into either the latter films' era or lopping off more of the early 2270s.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: So you have one dating that places TOS in the early 2260s (we'll call that the FASA timeline since yoiu all know how I feel about the blind worshipping of something some fan thought up in the 1970s) [...]
Well, I have a problem with that, as the actual FASA timeline set TOS in the 2190s. Here, educate yourself.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: Also, I don't remember any 15-year timespan mentioned in TWoK - when was it said?
"There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me." And when Terrell and Chekov are being talked at by Khan, I think he drops a couple of fifteen-year references, too.
--Jonah
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posted
well, there's also the whole "time does not run at the same "speed" in space" angle as it does on a planet.
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posted
Hmmm... can't you use Trial and Tribble-ations' "105 years, 1 month and 12 days go" as a reference for dating TOS?
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Well, I have a problem with that, as the actual FASA timeline set TOS in the 2190s. Here, educate yourself.
Get a sense of humour. I don't care when FASA said TOS was set. And I don't care when some contemporary of FASA (as in, another fan from the 70's) said it was set. It's all a load of bollocks made up back then by such fans, and it has at best been ignored and at worst totally contradicted by canon ever since. It is totally irrelevant. The only reason anyone pays lip service to it these days is in the vain hope that maybe one day something they make up off the top of their head might be treated with as much reverence.
And my point remains. You may not like Okuda's dates but at least they've been backed up by canon evidence ever since; all you have to counter it is script notes and statements by the creatives that this is what they meant to imply.
And it's a moot point anyway since I don't have a problem with the date of TWoK being 2285. It's just that it's never stated how old Kirk actually is. And we've had so many occasions of stated time periods where the person speaking was obviously either rounding up, rounding down, or just being plain wrong, that I don't see why we should take Kirk's line to mean it's been 15 years, to the day, and not a second more or less. So it's actually closer to 20 years using the canon timeline, big deal.
Moving on. . .
Not sure about Sarek's ages, but since "T&T" was set in about 2371 or 2372, and "TTwT" was set in 2266 or 2267, that just confirms the Oluda timeline. And this is at least one occasion where we can take the stated time period as exact. Dulmer & Lucsly were far too anal to get it wrong. 8)
(remind me to find that thread someone did where they attempted to re-date TMP. That was much more interesting)
posted
And really though... your 'new and improved' only shifts TOS by 2 years? That's hardly worth the trouble of ignoring all the Okuda-based references made in modern Trek.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: 2. The Okuda timeline can be considered canon by its mention in Voyager (never mind that it would have been because of Okuda's position in the Trek hierarchy). But is there anything that explicitly contradicts it (apart from the Kirk-Birthday timeline, of which more below)?
One that comes to mind is Decker's line about Voyager 6 in TMP: "Jim, this was launched more than 300 years ago." With launch dates for Voyagers 1&2 in August and September 1977, that indicates a minimum date for TMP of late 2277 or early 2288 (assuming the next four were launched in rapid succession). That in turn shifts the date for TWoK to somewhere in the vicinity of 2290. Oddly enough, that timeframe would have the added advantage of making McCoy's line about Romulan ale taking a while to ferment a good deal more accurate.
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posted
Then again, the Trek Voyagers 1 and 2 could have been launched in 1970, followed by Voyagers 3-6 by 1972. The Trek space program obviously was more aggressive than ours, and must have picked up pace sometime between the late 1960s and early 1990s. Of course, I'd personally prefer to have ST:TMP in the late rather than early 2270s, but the current 2273 date is justifiable as well...
Generally speaking, most of the arguments for an "early" TOS stem from a couple of references of just two rather than three centuries passing between the late 20th century and TOS. Those can rather easily be sidestepped, though, as most were said in jest and the others were vague at best.
However, there's one further reference that suggests early TOS, gave the late-TOS-favoring Okuda some headache, and resulted in odd TOS movie dating: some 20 years have to pass between the joint founding of Nimbus III and ST5:TFF. The earliest possible date for the founding is just after "Balance of Terror", which led Okuda to choose 2287 for ST5...
Any timeline should take care to leave at least 17 and preferably 18-22 years between "BoT" and ST5, so that a rounding up or down to 20 years is justifiable. A 2265-70 TOS still allows for, say, 2285 ST5 quite easily, but might also support anything between 2282 and 2290.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
. That's a Terran O(ld) C(alendar) date, thank you. Furthermore, even though it's not explicit onscreen, the script establishes that this is Kirk's fiftieth birthday, hence why he's suddenly feeling so over-the-hill.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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