ST V stardate error

[Tsukiyumi]

I was just running some numbers for my Daystrom characters, and noticed that the Stardate Calculator gives stardate 8454.1 (the number listed as the stardate for ST V) as 2331 rather than 2285.



---END OF REPORT---

[Graham Kennedy]

8454.1 is, however, a date which appears onscreen as a great big caption, IIRC as the Grissom arrives at the Genesis planet, and the date appears in the chronology and is based on the various "X years ago" type comments people have made.

[Tsukiyumi]

8454.1 is, however, a date which appears onscreen as a great big caption, IIRC as the Grissom arrives at the Genesis planet, and the date appears in the chronology and is based on the various "X years ago" type comments people have made.

One more thing to trash on the writers about.

[Mark]

Well, to be realistic it's not like they put a WHOLE lot of effort into ST V. Just look at the turbolift tubes. You have different decks all numbered the same???? And a low hanging beam for no other reason than to knock out the Chief Engineer.

[Tsukiyumi]

Yeah, apparently the film takes place in 2331 on a thousand foot tall Enterprise that can travel at Warp 50. Who the hell wrote this movie again?

[Graham Kennedy]

Duh, How did I read Star Trek V and have it reach my brain as Star Trek III?

Okay, the stardate in Star Trek V was... (checks movie script)...

PLANET EARTH
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
STARDATE 8454.011

So sayeth the script, so it did appear. Kirk's attempted and aborted log entry also began "Captain's log, Stardate eighty four-"

As for the date of Star Trek V, the Chronology has it in 2287, but I can't find offhand how solid that date is. While there may not be anything that specifically places ST V in that year, the chronology does tend to be used by pretty much everyone, including the writers, for dating stuff. It's become the de facto "right answer" to things like this.

[Tsukiyumi]

So, Final Frontier takes place in 2287 according to the chronology? Thanks, GK.

[Graham Kennedy]

It's worth noting, for those who may not know, that Stardates before TNG are simply crap. They are more or less random numbers whose only pattern is that they usually get bigger over time.

I assume we all know the TNG system of 1000 stardate units = 1 year, with 41000 = 1 January 2364. The writers have been pretty good about that, overall, for dates within the TNG shows. It goes to pot when they reference things before TNG, though. So for instance in "Dark Page" it's said that Lwaxana married Troi's dad in 30620.1, and that one year later a seven year gap in her logs began. We see Troi during this gap and she's a baby... a year old maybe... with a sister who is several years old at least. So Troi was a baby in circa 35500, which means in 41000, season 1 of TNG, Troi was about six or seven years old.

Still, for all that the TNG system has its problems, at least we are pretty confident that there IS a system, and we know what is it meant to be doing.

In TOS and the TOS movies, the Stardates are pretty much entirely arbitrary. I've seen attempted explanations of the TOS stardate system that are so convoluted that you would barely credit it, but I've never seen one that even came close to wroking. It's one of those things where I ignore it and go with the flow.

The stardate calculator on the site is for the TNG system only. If we do take 41000 as 2364, then we find that the TNG system began on 1st January 2323. What the significance of that is we can only guess. Hence 8454.011 on the TNG system comes out as Monday 15th June 2331 at 17:08 and 10 seconds. But Star Trek V wasn't using the TNG system!

[Tsukiyumi]

Right. I suppose we can conjecture that something occurred to cause a complete revision of the Stardate system around the time of the TNG system's start date. Too bad no one thought to establish a working date system when TOS first started.

[Teaos]

I doubt they thought there would be people anal enough to notice.

[Graham Kennedy]

People didn't even have video recorders in the 1960s. Television was a fleeting thing, seen and then gone forever for the most part. I doubt anybody making Trek in their wildest dreams imagined that we would still be watching and talking about it more than 40 years later.

[Mark]

People didn't even have video recorders in the 1960s. Television was a fleeting thing, seen and then gone forever for the most part. I doubt anybody making Trek in their wildest dreams imagined that we would still be watching and talking about it more than 40 years later.

Much less trying to establish a pattern based on their random "dialog"

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Right. I suppose we can conjecture that something occurred to cause a complete revision of the Stardate system around the time of the TNG system's start date. Too bad no one thought to establish a working date system when TOS first started.

Well, when TOS first started the idea was number of months and then number of days into the ship's mission. That didn't last very long.

[KuvahMagh]

From what I've read about Roddenberry and his greed, I'm sure he hoped it would still be watched. The irony is that he created the "system" to avoid nitpicking by people who would say the show wasn't futuristic enough/too futuristic if he nailed down a date and we sit here and nitpick it anyways...

[Graham Kennedy]

Right. I suppose we can conjecture that something occurred to cause a complete revision of the Stardate system around the time of the TNG system's start date. Too bad no one thought to establish a working date system when TOS first started.

Well, when TOS first started the idea was number of months and then number of days into the ship's mission. That didn't last very long.

Actually that's a fan concept. When TOS first started the only idea the writers had was that if they used "stardate" they wouldn't have to give a real date, so they wouldn't be tied down to any specific period in history.