Stardate Sidebar

In my efforts to organize the various Star Trek series in chronological order, I developed an interest in tying the stardate system to the Gregorian calendar. I have never subscribed to the notion that somehow, faster-than-light travel as it’s conceived of in Star Trek would cause relativistic issues to explain, in-universe, why the stardates jump around from episode to episode. Upon closer examination, that explanation doesn’t really hold up. There have been several attempts at this figuring this out, each approach was different, and each have some issues that I hoped to overcome.

Credit Where CREDIT IS DUE

While most of the work is mine, others have provided jumping off points to make this easier to achieve. First, I needed transcripts of all The Original Series and all The Animated Series episodes, as well as specific episodes of both The Next Generation and Voyager, in order to determine an accurate starting and ending stardates for each episode and film. Chrissie’s Transcript Site has it all (and then some, with the Doctor Who love!) Second, I needed to identify the keystone episodes where we, the viewer, are provided enough information to start to calculate dates and times. TrekGuide.com has a thorough overview of all the factors one would need to consider to find the needed reference points.

THIS IS NO TIME TO ARGUE ABOUT TIME

From there, I built out a timing sheet for each episode of Star Trek, The Animated Series, the Original Series Films, a keystone episode from Star Trek: Voyager called “Homestead,” a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called “Data’s Day” and the film “Star Trek: First Contact,” using the transcripts to get the actual timing of the filmed elements of each story. Then, I adjusted the runtime using on-screen dialogue and timing certain activities aboard the ship. For instance, taking the turbolift from the deck on which the transporter room sits to the bridge takes about 45 seconds, or beaming up or down to a planet takes roughly the same amount of time in most episodes at just under a minute. In most cases it was relatively easy to piece together roughly how long each story takes in real time versus that of a 51-minute edited teleplay.

WE DON’T HAVE THE Time

Three “major” issues exist. There are a handful of episode in all the series that do not specify a stardate at any point on screen, some episodes “overlap” stardates, and then there are times where two episodes run concurrently (and the plot in one or both episodes clearly makes it impossible for them to have happened together). What does one do about that?

My solution to the first issue is simple enough, episodes without stardates must follow the air date order (or in some cases the production order) as closely as possible. For example “The City on the Edge of Forever” (episode 28) has no stated stardate, so it was placed in production order between “Errand of Mercy” (episode 27) and “Operation–Annihilate” (episode 29).

The second and third issues, however, required more nuance. In a handful of episodes, one episode fully overlaps another (the temporally longer episode I refer to below as the dominant episode). In each case, the stakes presented in the story are high enough where one could reason a few things:

The initial event of the dominant episode happens suddenly.
Kirk believes he is about to die or he comes to that conclusion during the story.
Several episodes occur close together both (often within the same 24-hour period) in terms of stardate and in terms of the calculated calendar date.

Because of points one, two, and three, it is possible that Kirk did not have the time to enter a mission log from the event of the non-dominant episode. Therefore, the non-dominant episode must have occurred just before the events of the dominant episode. So, the captain finds some time to take care of his unfinished business. This is the case for the episode pairing of “The Man Trap” and “The Corbomite Maneuver” or “The Eye of the Beholder” and “The Ambergris Element,” where I assume that the end of “The Man Trap” (the non-dominant episode) must have ended just prior to the start of “The Corbomite Maneuver” (the dominant episode) (likewise, where “The Ambergris Element” is dominant episode and “The Eye of the Beholder” is the non-dominant episode). I have not attempted to establish the approximate dates of those non-dominate episode but rather established the dates they were recorded (as determined by the stardate in the episode.)

However, there is the episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion” which takes place over a few weeks and thus overlaps other episodes that heavily feature Kirk. He can’t both be locked in gladiatorial combat hundreds of lightyears away and be on the Enterprise participating in other adventures. So how can we explain this discrepancy?

Fortunately, we have a time travel episode with no reference point to the 23rd century in “Assignment: Earth.” Understand that this explanation is strictly head cannon, but positioning it after “The Gamesters of Triskelion“, and allowing for some offscreen hand waving, the episode gives us a way through. The Enterprise returns to Earth after the events of “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (ostensibly for repairs and provisioning) and is tasked with attempting a time warp to study Earth’s past. At the end of the episode the crew returns to the future. Since this is largely an untested time-travel method they undershoot their return to the 23rd century by a few weeks and go off on the other adventures (namely, “Metamorphosis“, “The City on the Edge of Forever“, and “Operation — Annihilate!“). It’s not perfect, and nothing on screen supports this, but it works.

Wiping Chronometers

Then there is “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” problem, where the stated stardate 1254.4 simply cannot be correct. That date would make it the earliest episode in the chronology of the five year mission. Which it can’t, because Doctor McCoy appears in this adventure and therefore it must happen after “The Corbomite Maneuver,” which is the good doctor’s first on-screen appearance (stardate 1512.2). The best explanation I can come up with is that Kirk misread the stardate, said it into his log wrong, and never bothered to fix it. So, assuming the captain transposed a couple of digits, the events of the episode occur around stardate 2154.4.

Generations

Now, Star Trek: The Next Generation suffered a similar issue in its first season with what I’ve dubbed the “Tasha Discontinuity,” as it revolves around a major plot point of the series (if you haven’t watch the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, stop here and go do that now!)

After “Skin of Evil“, which is stated to have occurred on stardate 41601.3, there are four other episodes that were filmed earlier but have later stardates. They are, “Angel One“, “The Battle“, “The Arsenal of Freedom“, and “The Big Goodbye“. Because of the events of “Skin of Evil,” these four episodes become problematic because of Tasha’s absence after the events of the episode, and the fact that she is heavily featured in each. Unfortunately, each episode’s stardate is as follows, 41636.9, 41723.9, 41798.2, and 41997.7 and it isn’t as simple our prior examples, where perhaps a digit is out of place, the Captain made a late log entry, or he misread his chronometer. Also, we don’t have the luxury of some on-screen time travel to help us cope with this discontinuity. One approach from a “see it or skip it” perspective is to just ignore these four episodes. All except “The Battle” add little to the series overall, however, you are robbing yourself of the totality of Tasha’s story and short-changing yourself on Picard’s. So, we must exclude that approach as a possibility.

So, where does that leave us? More head-cannon hand-waving! My best solution is that the is an off-screen event involving some time-travel shenanigans where Tasha’s encounter with Armus did not originally happen, thus allowing for her to appear in the aforementioned episodes (over the course of five months or so). The event would have been classified since it would mean that there were two starships named Enterprise NCC-1701-D running around the Zed Lapis sector at the same time. Until some other explanation materializes, this is the best I can come up with to address this problem.

So, how does one go about establishing when the history of the future begins?

The keystone episodes

Charlie X: It is clearly stated that the ship is preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving during the first season (and therefore, in the first year of Kirk and Company’s five year mission). So it must be the last Thursday of the month in 2265. The time of day, however, is actually determined by another episode, “Balance of Terror” and the idea that there would be some logic to how humanoids count time, the powers that be would not have started the calendar at any other time other than at midnight.
Balance of Terror: Kirk is conducting a morning wedding. It’s unlikely that a couple would be married first thing in the morning and weddings are generally followed by a meal. So, I presumed that the wedding would likely be held at the top of the 10^th hour, assuming they would be planning on a lunchtime reception. This timing puts a constraint on how early in the day “Charlie X” could start (shortly after 07:00 hours.)
Journey to Babel: During the episode, Sarek of Vulcan provides his age essentially down to the hour during the reception as being 102.437. So, the scene in which he states his age must occur around Wednesday, 13 March 2267 at about 17:13:00 hours. Which means the episode starts that same day a few hours earlier at 15:34:13 hours. Further, this assists us in placing a rough date for the episode “Unification I“.
Data’s Day: Provides a specific holiday that can be pinpointed on a calendar. In this case Diwali, which according to timeanddate.com, the new moon is on 24 October 2367 16:46 (in India – specifically New Delhi) which likely is the date for the third night of Diwali when many would mark the holiday. From there, I presume Data makes the log at the end of his work day based on the dialog (around 18:00:00 hours, assuming that Star Fleet keeps a somewhat regular circadian day.)
Unification I: Sarek is stated to be 203 years old and that is stated on stardate 45233.1, which (assuming it is a precise estimate of his age) can be calculated as Thursday, 04 October 2367 at around 23:38:57 hours.
Star Trek: First Contact: Establishes 05 April 2063 as First Contact with the Vulcans. The first on-screen appearance of the Vulcans is implied to be the same day as the Phoenix’s test flight and the Vulcan ship lands at night in Bozeman, Montana. The NOAA calendar estimates sunset in that area to be 18:58:00 hours, it has to be at least 20:52:10 hours for it to be completely dark when the scout ship lands,
Homestead: The episode must occur over three days starting on First Contact Day, 315 years after the events depicted in “Star Trek: First Contact“. The stardate 54868.6, given towards the end of the episode, must occur the on the night of the third day based on the dialogue. So we can estimated the stardate is approximately Sunday, 09 April, 2378 around 03:54:05 hours.

Other Reference Points

The following episodes and films act as control points on our calculations:

A Mirror Darkly: James T. Kirk’s birthday is stated as 22 March 2233.
The Corbomite Maneuver: First appearance of Doctor Leonard H. McCoy aboard the starship Enterprise (around stardate 1512.2) which is calculated to be Saturday, 18 November 2265 around 19:08:01 hours.
Dagger of the Mind: Must occur after 25 December 2265 based on dialogue regarding the ship’s Christmas party.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Must occur 2.5 years following the end of Kirk and Company’s first five year mission. Note, at this point, Star Fleet (or the Federation) seems to have recalibrated the stardate system.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Both Khan and Kirk provide a different assessment of when they last met with one saying it has been 14 years and the other 15. So, that puts the year at the lower end at 2283 or 2284. However, the generally accepted year for the events of this film is commonly stated as 2285. So, we assume both Kirk and Khan are rounding up year or two.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: McCoy states he’s served with the crew of the starship Enterprise for 27 years around stardate 9521.6 which is calculated to be between Saturday, 08 July 2293 19:08:01 and Monday, 11 September 2293 18:59:50 – based on his first appearance in “The Corbomite Maneuver“.
The Neutral Zone: Must occur in 2364 as established in the episode.
Eye of the Needle: Must occur in 2371 as established in the episode.
Q2: Establishes the fact that Kirk’s first five year mission concluded in 2270, so the earliest episodes must occur some time in 2265.

IT IS ABOUT TIME

Since I am attempting to be as precise as possible, I also needed to define basic terrestrial lengths of time in order to figure out the stardate-to-standard time ratios:

A year is 365.2422 days, and
Each of those days is 23.9344 hours long, which means
There are 1436.0667 minutes in a day, or
86164.0 seconds in a day.

The End of Time

With all of this it becomes possible to calculate with relatively accurate confidence the start and end dates of each episode of most the franchise, with a few exceptions:

Star Trek: Enterprise: The events of the series predates any stardate system and uses the current Gregorian calendar system.
Star Trek: Discovery: The stardates jump around about as much as the ship itself. Like TOS and TNG, the first two season suffer from random stardates. Only in this series, it is exacerbated by the fact that the seasons are serialized and each episode largely ties directly into the next episode.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Oh my! When I figure out a reasonable in-universe explanation for this blatantly disregard for the passage of time, dear reader, I will let you know.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Large chunks of multiple seasons have no stardates mentioned. Fortunately, those seasons are highly serialized and the stardates actually said onscreen are stated are sequentially ordered and episode events largely do not conflict with other episodes.

The Original Series stardate System

When all this is put together, the stardate system used in TOS and TAS would have come into use on Wednesday, 11 January 2265 at 22:29:29 hours GMT.

Stardates per Year			1773.944387
Stardates per Day			4.856899
Stardates per Hour			0.202925
Stardates per Minute			0.003382
Stardates per Second			0.000056

The Next Generation Stardate System

The stardate system used in TNG, DS9, VOY, LDS, and PRO would have come into use on Saturday, 01 June 2318 06:27:12 hours GMT.

Stardates per Year	916.823095
Stardates per Day	2.510178
Stardates per Hour	0.104877
Stardates per Minute	0.001748
Stardates per Second	0.000029

THE ORIGINAL SERIES FILMS

The stardate systems used in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” must utilize a recalibrated system as it is numerically far too low for it to work in line with the original series dates given the fact that 2.5 years has lapsed since the end of the five year mission and the last episode ends somewhere around stardate 7406.6 and “The Motion Picture” occurs on stardate 7410.2. The number of stardates per day must be at a ratio of 1.318319 to 1 solar day.

The stardate system must have been recalibrated at some point after the events of the first film. In the remaining films the number of stardates per day must be at a ratio of 0.367066 to 1 solar day.

Time Management

In closing, this may leave you wondering what could be the reason for reseting the clocks at Star Fleet every few decades? Well, there hasn’t been an on-screen, in-universe theory proposed at the time of this writing. But, I think the easiest explanation is the universal constant- the bureaucratic mentality.