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Originally posted by Phelps:
"Hey, Wes, look at these random, nonsensical numbers: 41...42...43...44...45...46...47....48...49...50...51....52...53....54! Incidentally, they increase by one every year! How strange."

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Too bad they don't. 41xxx was 2364 ("The Neutral Zone" [TNG]). 48xxx was 2371 ("Eye of the Needle" and "The 37's" [VGR]). So far, so good. But wait, 54xxx is 2378, not the predicted 2377, because "Homestead" (VGR) is set in April 2378, 315 years after First Contact in 2063. So either one of those numbers increased by two years, or each of them increased by a bit more than one.

Then you've got the fact that the beginning of each thousand-unit span doesn't line up with the beginning of the year, since "Data's Day" (TNG) was in October---Hindu Festival of Lights--and "The Assignment" (DS9) was in September--O'Brien's birthday. You've got tons of evidence that there is only around eight or nine hundred units per year, from "Data's Day" (TNG) and "Second Sight" (DS9) in particular... which makes "Homestead" (VGR)'s placement in 2378 even more problematic. Molly managed to age eight years by "Time's Orphan" (DS9) from "Disaster" (TNG) while only six thousand units passed. Finally, you've got First Contact occurring before "Rapture" (DS9), despite having a much later stardate... and Yar being alive in episodes with later stardates than "Skin of Evil" (TNG).

No, stardates are indeed useless for anything more than a vague idea of when things happen, unless you can account for all of the above and more. They definitely aren't random, but they aren't consistentlty predictable, either. The simplest explanation is subjective relativity, though that doesn't account for them actually being out of order in some cases. So the only logical solution is to ignore them.

[ November 10, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]

quote:

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But wait, 54xxx is 2378, not the predicted 2377, because "Homestead" (VGR) is set in April 2378, 315 years after First Contact in 2063. So either one of those numbers increased by two years, or each of them increased by a bit more than one.

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The problem is that the writers do not use them carefully enough to calculate time spans. They've always given the correct calendar year when they had to (I believe Tuvok also gave 2373 in "Flashback") -- it's the relative references such as "eight years ago" that cause problems. I wouldn't use them to calculate real calendar dates because nobody keeps track of these mistakes, but they do keep track of the current calendar year.

Of course, there are a whole bunch of pre-TNG stardates that don't make sense, such as the five digit stardate from "The Child", 30xxx for an event of the 2290s, but then you get the Khitomer massacre occuring on 23859.7 -- twenty years ago.

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Originally posted by Phelps:
The problem is that the writers do not use them carefully enough to calculate time spans. They've always given the correct calendar year when they had to (I believe Tuvok also gave 2373 in "Flashback") -- it's the relative references such as "eight years ago" that cause problems. I wouldn't use them to calculate real calendar dates because nobody keeps track of these mistakes, but they do keep track of the current calendar year.

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In "Homestead" (VGR), they were showing the anniversary of first contact, mentioned repeatedly, and they still chose 315 years as the ime span. We're not talking about a rounded estimate, they gave the exact span for something that nearly every Star Trek producer and fan has seen.

Tuvok gave no date in "Flashback" (VGR). He said the events were roughly eighty years ago, which would fit 2293 nicely if the episode is set in 2373.

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Originally posted by Phelps:
Of course, there are a whole bunch of pre-TNG stardates that don't make sense, such as the five digit stardate from "The Child", 30xxx for an event of the 2290s, but then you get the Khitomer massacre occuring on 23859.7 -- twenty years ago.

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More proof that they are useless.

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Originally posted by Phelps.
I just wanted to point out that one shouldn't overgeneralize. Stardates *were* intended to make sense in the TNG era, because of the one year = one season rule.

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I never argued that stardates aren't intended to make sense in The Next Generation and beyond. I am only arguing that they aren't useful because those intentions are routinely ignored. If a ship is commissioned on stardate 46090.7 (to get the thread roughly on track), how do you know that this is 46090.7 on the Okuda scale, or on the shifted-six-months-back version in "Data's Day" (TNG) and "The Assignment" (TNG), or the non-chronological version from First Contact and "Rapture" (DS9)? There's no way to know where a given stardate fits into the scheme because the scheme doesn't fit into itself. It doesn't help to know that they were supposed to fit when they don't.

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Originally posted by Phelps:
[...] The writers tend to give Okuda's calendar years when they have to, it would seem they accept Okuda's system in general.

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Actually, it seems to me that the writers tend to ignore Okuda's years! Okuda gave us 2061 for warp drive, First Contact gave us 2063. Okuda gave us 2218 for first contact with the Klingons, "Broken Bow" (ENT) gave us 2151. Okuda gave us 2269 for the end of Kirk's five-year mission, "Q2" (VGR) gave us 2270. Okuda gives us late 2277 for "Homestead" (VGR), the episode gives us early 2278. I can't think of any time where Okuda conjectured anything that wasn't later changed when the opportunity arose.

But I guess you were referring to the system, not his conjectural dates. So why has nearly every reference that corrolates a stardate to an Earth date been wrong? Even here, the producers ignore Okuda's dates. "Data's Day" (TNG) clearly had the system running roughly July to July, if we assume one thousand units to a year. "The Assignment" (DS9), produced after the Star Trek Chronology, fits that pretty well. Even "Homestead" (VGR) is in the early part of the year instead of the later part... even if it's a whole year off! The only date that comes close is in "The Year of Hell" (VGR), which gives Janeway's birthday as May 20 and has a relatively low stardate in the cycle... though every date extrapolated from her birthday doesn't line up with the given stardates, despite the trivially easy calculation.

As an aside, even if we pretend that they said 314 rather than 315 in "Homestead" (VGR), it is still stardate 54868 lining up with April 5 when it should be stardate 54257... even though Neelix was still on the ship in many episodes after that date! There is no way to ge around the fact that the end of Voyager was in the early part of a calendar year, regardless of which year you choose.

In conclusion, the idea that stardates even occasionally fit Okuda's system is simply false because there has never been any case in which they have. Can anyone think of one?

[ November 10, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]

Here are another two such events: the Wolf 359 battle/death of Sisko's wife and Molly's birth. Both had their fourth anniversaries in the early second season of DS9 -- Molly was three in "Nagus" and four in "Cardassians", while the other anniversary happened a day before "Second Sight". Even if we didn't follow Okuda, any Earth calendar would tell me the two events occured at roughly the same time.

Since they didn't, we must ask, did Molly and Alexander age faster aboard the Enterprise? Apparently. Four years passed for Sisko between the DS9/Earth timekeeping frames, while more years passed since Wolf 359 for Molly and Alexander. If this is a common occurence, then anniversaries based on personal reference frames would be more imporant than those calculated with respect to Earth's frame. Could it be that the 315th anniversary happened earlier for Voyager's crew?

Assuming there is a regular Earth calendar based on Earth's reference frame, and a "personal" calendar based on individual history of warp travel, nicely translates to the idea of Okuda's regular timeline that only roughly matches what we actually see. Hence, stardates aren't necessarily useless. They give us the time spans within the Earth reference frame, or some other consistent frame, and then you have all the references to years that could be discounted as personal relativism.

I'd use Okuda as "Earth reference frame", since the writers are still most likely to use his Earth calendar years, and adhere to his timeline in general. I'll point out that Ron D. Moore didn't ignore Okuda when he came up with 2063 -- he asked him if 2063 was ok, and Okuda said yes. Not to mention that the year 2151 looks like it has been derived by adding "90 years" from an early draft of the script to Okuda's 2061. He quotes this date in the TMP text commentary.

I wouldn't be surprised if Okuda also forgot when the five-year mission began (2264), said 2265, and someone then added five years to it. David Stipes (!) asked Okuda the size of the Miranda, and he said 500-560 feet, which is what ended up in the charts. The producers do care about his opinion, yet it's not always consistent. We can't count the Klingon first contact because that's clearly an intentional, required-by-the-story contradiction of his timeline, while the other three dates probably are Okuda's fault.

However, it is irrelevant to use these dates as an example because as they don't relate to stardates, Okuda never had an interest in ensuring they match the Chronology.

[ November 11, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]

40877.20 Stardate of Battle of Maxia Zeta (2354) ("The Battle")