I meant Twentieth-century. Sorry

Er ... the historians "recaliberated" the years, yeah, that's it.

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted)
***
"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001
****
"The candidate who slimed John McCain in the primaries and smeared Al Gore in the general election is now the president who pledges to elevate the nation's tone and bring civility to our discorse. Kind of like Michael Corleone brought peace to the mob by killing the heads of the other four families."
--Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning?

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted)
***
"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001
****
"The candidate who slimed John McCain in the primaries and smeared Al Gore in the general election is now the president who pledges to elevate the nation's tone and bring civility to our discorse. Kind of like Michael Corleone brought peace to the mob by killing the heads of the other four families."
--Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning?

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Space Seed and TWOK do present a few confusing lines of dialouge about the time frame of TOS and the Eugenics Wars. We do know:

1. Kirk initially thinks the BB was from a later time period than it actually turned out to be.

2. Spock believes it to be much older but has no evidence (other than memory) to back it up.

3. Kirk tells Kahn in the BB that he has been sleeping for about two centuries they think. This conversation occurs before any research into the ship or its crew has taken place. Thus, both the identity of Kahn and the exact date of launch for the BB are unknown.

4. After some research, the identity of Kahn and his ship are discovered. Also the approximate date of launch is known. The Eugenics Wars are positively placed in the 1990's.

5. In the begining of TWOK, it is postitively revealed that Kirk's time frame is the 23rd century. This is shown with the words "In the 23rd century" as the opening score and credits end and an instant before the Kobayashi Maru sequence begins.

6.Kahn states that "On earth, two hundred years ago....I was a prince". Kahn knows the date (he read the Enterprise tech manuals).

7. Kahn states that the BB was "...lost in space from the year 1996..." in TWOK. This is a deliberate statement and he doesn't act like he may have misspoke.

My theory is thus:

Kirk sees the BB on screen and belives it to be from the mid-21st century. Spock doesn't convince him otherwise since he has not done any research yet. Kirk tells Kahn "two centuries" because he is still thinking about that time frame for the BB.

Later, research postively identifies Kahn and his ship. The time period of the 1990's is stated as the era of the Eugenics Wars and Kahn's rise and fall. Also, in TWOK, Kahn definitely says his ship was from the year 1996. THIS IS CANON FACT AND CANNOT BE DISMISSED. If Spock states that the Eugenics Wars were the last global war on earth but First Contact shows WWIII in the 2060's, then either the information presented in First Contact is incorrect or Spock made a mistake. TOS came first and any continuity issues with later shows are errors committed by the writers of those later series. Just look at Voyager and their continuity problems.

Kirk is operating in the 23rd century as TWOK indicates. The last bit of the puzzle is why did Kahn state "two hundred years ago" when talking to Chekov and Trerrell? Was he perhaps being sarcastic as he remembered what Kirk told him on the BB in Space Seed? Or did he misspeak and decline to correct himself because it didn't really matter? Or was he so insane that he didn't know what century he was in anymore (highly unlikely)? Or did a writer screw up and put in two hundred years without thinking? My bet is the writer screw up.

In any case, the evidence places him, the Botany Bay, and the Eugenics wars on earth during the 1990's. Kirk, Spock, and Kahn all make this assertation at some point. It is canon fact and must be accepted.

Also, TWOK firmly places Kirk and Co in the 23rd century even before the film starts so 200 years ago is definitely wrong. In another TOS episode, the ship, USS Valliant was lost 200 years before. If TOS was set in the 2190's, that would give us warp drive in the 1990's. Highly unlikely.

As for the distance the BB traveled:

Since the ship drifted for two hundred seventy years (1996-2266) at perhaps a good percentage of the speed of light, it is perfectly logical that it would go at least ten or twenty light years. At various percentages it would travel:

50% @ 270 yrs.......135 LY
40% @ 270 yrs.......108 LY
30% @ 270 yrs.......81 LY
20% @ 270 yrs.......54 LY
10% @ 270 yrs.......27 LY
5% @ 270 yrs.......13.5 LY

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Hunting is a way of life, and mine would have been infinitely poorer without it.

Naturally, Khan would only have been asleep for the subjective duration of his journey, not for the whole objective 270 years. Thus, for him, 1996 in the 2280s would have been 200 years ago, even if it was about 290 years ago for Chekov and Terrell.

Anybody bother to calculate the percentage of lightspeed needed to change 270 years into 249 or less for the rounding-down? I think impulse propulsion in Khan's time could have been at least half as good as "today", so the acceleration phase would have taken a couple of weeks or months at most, giving a constant-speed journey for all practical purposes. Of course, Khan would then need inertial dampeners. But he did seem to have onboard gravity, so IDF isn't so unlikely.

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-->Identity Crisis<--

So how long would it take for Kirk to sail from Earth to Mutara in ST2? Apparently, he was still at impulse when receiving the emergency call from Drs Marcus - so in between getting that signal and encountering Khan (which he apparently did within impulse range of Mutara), he traversed 100 ly. At, say, warp 12, TOS scale (or any near-Okudaic scale), that would take three weeks... Hum-te-dum. Perhaps making Khan highly relativistic is not such a good idea after all.

Then again, if Kirk really was weeks away from home, it would make so much more sense for him to fight his battles alone.

And even if we didn't see the ship go to warp between the "Captain's discretion/Helsman may indulge himself" command and the receiving of the emergency call, there is no explicit indication that the ship did NOT go to warp, and possibly spend several days or weeks at it. A warp training cruise would be reasonable when the cadets were aboard a warp-capable vessel.

What goes more strongly against the theory that Mutara is 100 ly away is how fast the heroes seemed to reach it in ST3. Then again, who's to really say that that journey didn't take several weeks as well?

Hmm...

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Or then it's shorthand for X Ceti Alpha, where X is a Greek letter of your choice: a designation created when X Ceti turned out to be two stars obscured by each other (but nowhere near each other), and there became a need to distinguish between them when we got our first peek behind the forward one. (What is the nearest star in Cetus, btw?)

Something weird is going on with those TOS star names anyway, since so many of them consist of just a Greek letter and a numeral, with no reference to a constellation.

220 ly is a rather excessive distance for Okudaic TOS speeds - but then again, Kirk in "This Side of Paradise" did visit OMICRON Ceti, which is about as distant as Alpha. And then there are of course all those references to Kirk going to Canopus or Rigel or other even more distant locations within weeks or at most months.