So, what do you think? Should future Trek shows stick to the stardate system (like Discovery has)? Or should they opt for a different method of measuring time that's more...consistent? Let me know down below!
I didn't even know DSC started using a standardized system. Back in my forum RP days, we straight-up invented a system that sounded "right" for each log entry. Truth be told, I tend to block out the stated stardate the same way I block out technobabble, I expect it to be there but I don't expect it to be on the test.
The Georgian calendar would be considered racist by at least the Andorrans and Tellerites and that’s without even considering non-founding members like the Trill or Denobulans. How about a generally accepted centre of the galaxy as a starting point and time defined by that starting point? Seems slightly more equal than beginning around one planets spinning around a particular sun?
In most fiction, dates are irrelevant. If they want to establish a real date for story purposes, they can mention it in dialogue. Honestly, I hear it as "Captain's log, stardate blurgle-blarg gurble-garble point two."
I like Stardates a lot. Knowing precisely how they work is not the point to me. So long as they keep the Stardates internally consistent (and it seems for TOS it was a network issue, not creative) and we know bigger number means later I think it will do fine. And it adds an immersive "this is not our time" element that I find missing in a lot of modern Sci Fi
You’re right. The stardate, and specific information about actual dates isn’t as important as the captain’s log, and his/her oberservations and notations about what is going on with the story from their point of view.
Stardates don't really serve a narrative function for the audience, except to indicate that this takes place so far into the future that measurements of time are different than ours in the present. Unless the passing of time is a plot point in a story it can be done away with. Since they have changed so much from each timeline, my suggestion (if they reboot the universe with more competent producers) is that the stardates aren't even mentioned in the crew's logs. Just display it on a screen, like a timecode embedded into the recording. This would serve another function for them, adding security to indicate any tampering with the official record.
TOS inconsistency with the stardates I came to view (maybe even writing staff), was episodic in nature. Events in the beginning of the show (episode 1 were premiered as third), and later never been connected, more like stories FROM the captains log from various no chronological order of 5 year mission.
@@greggasiorowski1326 They sometimes show long adds whiles watching a short video can press skip for some adds unless part of that video then you can fast forward.
I like stardates. I think they're *necessarily* confusing and uninformative, they serve the function of letting you kick off by telling the audience "by the way, you're not going to understand all of this, and that's fine". Star Trek's always been built on that, you as the audience don't need to know how the warp core works, you just need to know that the characters know how it works. In my own head, I've always been happy to just accept that stardates seem confusing and inconsistent because in trying to apply a common timeframe to events taking place in multiple parts of the galaxy on ships and planets that are moving around each other at variable near-luminal speeds they're trying to do something which is the equivalent of printing a flat map of a round globe - something technically impossible to do accurately, but which you can make estimations of by various methods. I think what they do in Enterprise of just using the Earth date, or the JJ films of just using the Earth date but in a sneaky way would very quickly prove to be unworkable because you would have different ships meeting up with each other and being in complete disagreement about what date it is, and if you can't radio back to Earth to adjudicate on this, you could end up with ships arranging crew transfers where the one ship says x crewman transferred over on x date and the other ship logs that the transfer happened a week earlier. It'd be a nightmare to audit.
Just because YOU dont know how a warp core works doesnt mean you should assume everyone is as ignorant as you. Its a matter/antimatter drive. The ship creates a warp bubble that contains the vessel and then moves space around it. In fact, a lot of things in Star Trek are explained and make sense with our understanding of physics. Not everyone is as dumb as you, so for smart people its nice when a show about science doesnt just throw a random, arbitrary number at you for no reason. When I watch an episode of Star Trek I already know what the ship is capable of depending on the class and by knowing federation technology. I can predict events because I know how tech will interact with eachother or when the crew is truly in a bad way by understanding their limitations. Stardates are a cop out, when literally everything else in this show is explained rather accurately.
I agree. Once you start travelling near the speed of light, you can't even agree what order events happened in. I always thought the stairdate depended on where you are and possibly the path you took to get there. Of course it doesn't make sense, once you have warp drive you have to redefine what time is.
It has nothing to do with time. A warp drive manipulates space. The only thing you have to worry about is a universal srandard. A galactic calendar. The only way time travel would be involved is if there were tachyon radiation.
I think having an unintelligible "stardate" at the beginning of each episode helps the viewer with that whole "suspension of disbelief" thing you talked about...I like them. :)
I think those that stress out about Star Dates miss the point that it is a literary mechanism to bring us into a universe that is different from ours. I always loose that suspension of disbelief when a Gregorian date is mentioned.
I always wondered the significance of the stardates but never placed a big deal on em meaning they weren't the most important part lol when Kirk spits out the date, Captain's log stardate whatever it sounds official, that's the point lol
I think a big issue with the Stardates and their intended purpose, is that Star Trek doesn't actually take place that far into the future, compared to other Sci-fi. Settings like Dune and Warhammer 40k take place millenia farther in the future, and from what I understand The Expanse is roughly as far in the future as the TNG era (roughly the second half of the 2300s), while having technology vastly less advanced than Star Trek. I think Star Trek could've jumped ahead a millenia, with TOS being in the 3200s, TNG era being the 3300s, etc., and then Stardates would make a lot more sense both in and out of universe, imho. It also would fit perfectly with the technology, I always found it a little surprising that things like Warp Drive, Replicators, and the Holodeck have been developed in a society only a few hundred years in our future.
Love the 'well aacktuaully' approach to stay trek. People who think the point of sf is talking about rad new laser tech. Pewpew, rather than talking about human beings (yuk boring fiction for girls, amirite)
As much as I love Star Trek I always wondered about stardates how they became used for example thank you for clearing some of that up Tyler another great video.
In the book Federation: The First 150 Years, stardates are only used in space. When you're on a planet, you'd use the local calendar. In the DS9 episode Paradise Lost, when Sisko is questioning the cadet, he references "19:47 hours PST on the night of the 23rd" etc.
YEAH.... but I Was hoping for a bit of explanation and 'Logic' behind it. It is TOO bad that there was No consistency from TOS - NG/Voy/DS9 - Kelvin timelines. I guess I have to accept that there is NO Value of 'Star Dates', because as mentioned ......... It's a FICTIONAL show!
I always imagined that stardates were based on something tangible like a fraction of the rotation of the galaxy ( a cosmic year being 225-250 million years). It would make sense that you would have to know the movement of stars and the galaxy as whole to navigate. After all nothing is fixed in space so maps couldnt be fixed either. If you think about how an navigational map of earth works it makes sense to combine the passage of time along with a way to measure the location of stars, starting with the rotation of the galaxy. This would have the additional benefits of being something that all species could get with and understand and very non human centric.
I read in one of the novels that stardates are the space equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time in order to keep every planet on the same schedule due to the differences in how long their own days and years are (e.g. a Mars day is nearly 25 hours long and a Mars year is about 1.9 Earth years), and its passage is measured at the center of the galaxy to remain apolitical.
Great summary. One old theory is that in TOS the Stardates representative months and days into the mission. So SD 1312 is 13 months, 12 days in. This does not work so well in the larger context of the Trek franchise, but it's not bad for TOS on its own 😉
If they used 28-day months comes out to 13 months and total of 364 days for year so could have 12 with 28 days and one month with 29 days plus another extra day each leap year.
I like the idea of star dates instead of government used dating system for star trek because for instance a Ferengi and a Tellerite could be talking about an event that happened the Tellerite could ask the Ferengi what the stardate was and they both understand it. The human's of Earth can continue using the gregorian calendar just like the Klingon's use there own calendar but when it comes to communicating between governments utilizing stardates makes the most sense.
When I was a kid, watching ST:TOS for the first time, I wrote down all the star dates for all the episodes. I thought, at the time, that it was actually pretty cool that they used a more universal time rather than relying on the rotation of a single planet out of all the inhabited planets of the galaxy.
Tyler I've watched about a dozen or more of your videos over the last month or two I think you are more intelligent than most you tubers thanks brother note my name
Thinking about this, it does seen odd that in a federation of planets spanning light years that all measures of days, weeks and years would revolve around Earth time. Seems to me that setting those metrics based on a common celestial body or event would make the most sense instead while in space at least. It should however be something easy to convert to "local" time on any planet or moon though. This is something that was obviously not done in Trek, and likely a way to portray the fact the even in the future the entire universe doesn't revolve around the Earth.
I can recall only one time that any reference to any difference in a planet's time and a stardate was in TNG when the Enterprise was helping those people in that biodome, and Troi made reference to the fact that the reason she was still up late was that she was "...still on Enterprise time."
I would think a stardate reflects time passage in space relative to the ship. Between gravity and jumping into and out of warp, differences in time would accumulate, and this lets a ship track the passage of time on the ship, but when contacting Starfleet, they can synchronize with planet-side time/calendars.
I came up with my Stardate system for my RPG.. Mine is based on the alleged founding of the Federation, 2161 AD. I figured Stardates weren’t introduced until 2261 - the Federation centennial. So, 1313.! is roughly July. 2265. I compared it to the five digit TNG dates and it tracks
My local Star Trek fan club, Starfleet Command's Seventh Fleet mostly based in Utah with Ships/Chapters in Idaho and Vermont as well as Shuttles/Chapters-in-Training in Nevada and England has its own Stardate system. It picks up from the TNG/DS9/VOY Era for the start. The Stardate Year starts in September (when the shows usually started seasons) and ends in August. And the last 4 digits are MMD.D. September 2021 to August 2022 starts with 75. So for example today is Stardate: 75032.3 in our system.
I disagree that Stardates should convey information. What does it matter that I know that the episode is starting on the 28th day of the year 2258? That tells me nothing that I need to know to understand the episode. The Stardates are there to set the mood. They are a trope that gets me in to the show. The meaning is: you're watching a space opera and the Captain is just about to tell you something you should notice.
Thank you for another excellent episode! I think I may have once looked up something about this topic before, but I have forgotten anything I learned before if so. Thanks for taking the time to learn and make a video on it! I've watched so many of your videos in recent months I think it's high time I subbed lol. Stay well out there everybody, and God be with you, friends! ✝️ :)
The TH-cam algorithm knows all. I was a chubby dorky pothead in high school…I’ve been a rock climbing pothead for some time. On the surface I look like some of the jocks I use to hate. But clearly by the stuff TH-cam keeps putting in my feed, I’m still a nerd at heart. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I like stardates as a part of in depth *world building.* I appreciate that someone took the time to figure out how everyone can agree on terms like "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow" without too much confusion.
I never understood the point in spelling out the stardate in logs. Like you'd need to tell the computer what time it is, like entries wouldn't be automatically timestamped as they are normally in all operating systems. It's just a stupid contrivance...
Initially, during Original Star Trek, our time-line didn't commonly have automatic time stamps. I think the habit just stuck through the generations, plus there have been corrupted logs that only had blips of audio and may not have had any other readable data. Personally, I think redundancies are more because of absolutely stupid people, but then I work in retail, so my view is biased
@@evelgreytarot8401 Yea, maybe not in 65, when the show was still on the drafting table, but a short couple years after that, digital, general purpose computing simply does not have any way to function without assigning a date attribute to its stored data. It's an anachronism we could have all lived without. TNG doing away with the communicators and still keeping dictated stardates in logs is one of the stupidest things they did. They've kept something that was already superseded (and superfluous) at that point, why?
The question is: With what are you going to REPLACE stardates? What would ship's logs sound like WITHOUT stardates? "Captain's Log: Thursday evening... We have entered standard orbit around Beta Proxima V and are preparing to meet with the representatives of the planetary government." "Captain's Log: A day or so later... We have concluded our negotiations with the planetary representatives and are preparing to warp out of orbit." "Captain's Log: A couple of hours later... We have detected a fault in our warp engines, but Scotty is working on it." "Captain's Log: Later that same afternoon... Scotty has identified the fault, and says that our dilithium crystals need to be regenerated." "Captain's Log: Almost midnight... Scotty has successfully regenerated the dilithium crystals." "Captain's Log: Early Monday morning... After leaving orbit several hours ago, we received a subspace message from Star Fleet, ordering us to proceed at once to Beta Cephalis IV." "Captain's Log: A couple of days later... That fault in our dilithium crystals that we had detected about a week ago has returned."
The stardate system is, as you explain, kinda vague and doesnt really line up with anything all that well, but with a tiny bit of effort it could be clarified into something that makes logical sense going forward, and we could keep a classic bit of treknobabble.
6:31 While there was a magnificent job later of folding real science into the date designation, that was not initially part of the plan. The "star date" was simply meant to sound futuristic and sciencey. It was because the episodes were not aired in the order they were produced that fans noticed and questioned inconsistency. The (at the time) fabricated explanation was that a Star Date was calculated based on such factors as a ship's literal and relative position, relative velocity, and even direction of movement; therefore, two ships could be meeting at the same area at the same time yet have different Star Dates to report. A very happy accident of fiction and science shaking hands but original bottom line to it was, "We're just putting cool sci-fi on TV. What do you want?!"
Actually, the whole point of Stardates is mentioned in the 2nd pilot. “They’ve broken the time barrier.” Stardates are meant to address the time relative to Earth reletive to the time dilation effect.
One thing I’ve admired about Star Trek is the use of stardates instead of using a Christian calendar, where we’re supposed to be impressed with the century (as with shows like Buck Rogers In The 25th Century). Although Star Trek has painted itself into a corner with reference to the Eugenics Wars taking place in the late 20th century and Khan mentioning in ST2 that in 1996 he was a prince with power over millions, the show tried to make it a point not to have specific timelines to avoid this problem.
Just to be fair: time dilation is measurable not only around masses like black holes. But Earth itself is massive enough to have a considerable effect. It is big enough to be taken into account even for the GPS system. It is a difference of around 38ms per day between the planet's surface and the height where the geostationary satelites reside.
Good timing (heh) given the recent hoopla over Daylight savings I always thought the Kelvin approach was the simplest approach which they should adopt and modify to some overarching standardized time like in Mass Effect, so you don't feel too earth chauvanist There is an episode of Voyager where Seven was overloaded with data, causing her to become deluded and create conspiracy theories where she had long stretches of yelling out Stardates to the other characters. Poor Jeri Ryan having to remember all that nonsense.
During TNG. But that is only the century. In Voyager they claim that Kirk’s 5 year mission ended in 2270. So based on that TOS is sometime between 2265 and 2270.
The Wrath of Khan specified the century in the opening (“In the 23rd century…”), but nothing more. There’s some promotional material for early TNG which supposed it was in the 2330s rather than the 2360s, made before _The Neutral Zone_ stated the Gregorian year for the frozen guys. Later TNG-era stuff confirmed it such as Voyager S1 giving a Gregorian year in _Eye of the Needle_ and had some of the most references in dialogue to living in “the 24th century” besides that.
IMO, stardates were most useful when dealing with concurrent shows. TNG, DS9, VOY are the prime examples. So much more understanding of fhe universe at large i felt was gained by being able to watch episodes in "Stardate order" To be fair, only groupings this would be useful is (TNG, DS9, YOY), (DSC, SNW, TOS), and possibly PGY/LWD groups
I love to explore the minute details in these amazing universes that unfold before us.... but I'm also a firm believer in not deconstructing EVERYTHING.
In my opinion, star dates are just a way of reminding the watcher that the show is in space. They're not linked, as you say, to any real date. So that's what I always presumed
While I certainly understand and respect the point of view that they're necessarily obfuscating any sort of real date, and thus kind of pointless for much of the audience, I'm the kind of nerd who loves that sort of detail. The old Starchive digs into it in a great amount of detail. One detail I like is that, using the TOS four-digit system, if you assume it resets every 10000 units, and you roll back the clock, you get to a Stardate 0000 in January 2162, just after the Federation was founded in 2161. It's easy to imagine that the UFP was founded, and then either they found Terran-style dates inappropriate for multi-species or deep space use, or they were simply delayed with red tape, and then switched over to stardates a few months later.
Finally this mysterious phenomenon has been addressed. I imagine I am not the only one who thought they were just numbers picked out of a hat and the showrunners relied on the fact that we weren't paying very close attention.
The TNG Stardate calendar is in fact a Metric calendar, breaking down time into multiples of ten, the same way the Metric system of measurements break down linear measures, weights, volumes, and temperatures as such. Very convenient to work with mathematically. We are told that one Terran year is equal to 1000 stardates, but the Trek writers don’t really delve into the implications of that. Characters in-universe refer to hours, minutes, and seconds, but I don’t think those are the units they would actually use in-universe. I regard that as the show’s writers translating time into terms we (the audience) use, so that we understand. Universal Translator at work. But if you do the math and drill down, things work out a little differently. *Dividing by ten, 100 SD, we get a block of time ~36½ Terran days long.* Let’s call that a “star-month” or “ship-month”. One of the things we seem to lose by dividing by 10 instead of by 12 is the ability to easily match up the four planetary seasonal mileposts (solstices and equinoxes). But actually, it IS easy. *As long as New Years Day (starting SD xx000.0) is pegged to a physically observable astrological event* (for example, Winter Solstice, December 21st or 22nd depending on year), the opposite event (Summer Solstice, June 20th or 21st) will ALWAYS line up on SD xx500, which sets Terran equinoxes at xx250 and xx750. So, we have the four quarters/seasons defined. *Dividing by ten again, 10 SD, we get an oddball duration,* a little over three and one-half Terran days. Not usable in and of itself but TWO of them come damn close to a seven day Terran week, four of these (40SD) roughly equal a fortnight, and eight (80SD) approximate a Terran month. I call this unit a “rotation”, because it is a likely point where personnel will be rotated to a different duty schedule, if a change occurs. For scheduling purposes, humans are granted a “day off” every 20th stardate, basically their work shift is replaced by a recreational and/or religious “sabbath”. Nonhumans can either follow the human custom (maybe on the rotations opposite the ones taken by humans) or arrange with their command according to their needs/preferences. If exactitude is required, 19.3846 SD equals 7 T-Days. *Divide by ten again, and we are at the unit level, the Stardate itself.* And lo and behold, it it NOT a full day, as many have supposed, but a smidge over eight and three-quarter hours. That is, however, to my mind, a solid work shift. The Federation is supposed to be almost a utopia, dare I say, a Socialist ideal? By which I mean real Socialists, not fascists, authoritarians, racists, nor nationalists who masquerade as Socialists, nor the imaginary Socialists used as an epithet by ignorant, fearful, fools. *“Equal parts of work, sleep, and time for yourself”* is what that ideal states, 1/3 of the 24-hour Terran day each. So, a Starfleet service member works for 8.77 Terran hours, sleeps (and/or takes care of personal hygeine) for the next 8.77 Terran hours, and has 8.77 Terran hours for themselves (give or take alerts). This means that three (3) Stardates equals one 26-hour “work day”. Multiplying back up means there are 333 and 1/3 work days in a Star-year. Call the extra shift a holiday. This extra shift is actually where the extra hours that would otherwise eventually have to be accounted as a Leap Day end up. It would take some adjusting to get used to, but I think humans would not only be productive, but flourish under this scheme. One 24H T-day = 2.7692 SD
We are told Picard’s tenure on the Enterprise-D begins in SD 41000, which is given as 2364CE. All we have to do is count back 41 years from 2364. This would be a convenient point to say, “that’s when Stardates switched over from four-digit format to five digit”, but I have a better idea. Read on. Others tackling the stardate issue have scrabbled around, trying to find canonical significance in 2323CE, without success. WHAT IF I TOLD YOU… there is no significance? WHAT IF 2323CE was simply the year that the five-digit counter naturally rolled over from 99999 back to 00000? And that there was a sixth digit [“1”] that “should” be present in TNG Stardates that is simply trimmed or ignored as a matter of convenience? Everyone knows what century they’re in, after all! Prior to 2323CE, the sixth significant digit of a Stardate, being a zero, would conventionally have been ignored anyway, if considered at all. But the digit is there, reserved for future use, to avoid Y2K-like problems! “But TOS stardates only have four digits!” I hear you say. Four digits that WE SAW THEM USE. Saying the fifth digit was likewise “there, but conventionally ignored” harms nothing, and just might help us. We all know what decade we’re in, right? The record-keeping shift to include the TOS-era “ignored” fifth digit could occur at any point after 2282CE. In fact, 2283CE rolling over from SD [x]9999 to SD [x+1]0000 makes that a natural point for this notational change to occur! Failing that, the following decade rollovers at 2293CE, 2303CE, or 2313CE could also serve to spur this shift.
Heh, this is very similar to a comment I’d left on the community post announcing this video, right down to the metric time connection. Though I’d suggested getting used to what for us would be half weeks, versus clustering them in twos, but your idea works well too. Interesting that it’s a 26-hour day like they have on Bajor.
The second part of Gregorian to Stardate conversion that somehow gets ignored...where to assign New Years Day. Jan 1? Lunar New Year? Not so fast! Metric measures are pegged to measurable real physical phenomenon. The original definition of a meter is 1/10,000,000 of the distance from North to South Pole, following the meridian that passes through the center of Paris, France. 1 kilogram is the weight of pure water in a 1 meter cube (excluding the weight of the container itself). Zero Celsius is the freezing point of pure water, 100 is the boiling point, and one BTU is the amount of heat needed to shift 1 kilogram of pure water 1/100th of that interval. So, given that the star years equals ONE EARTH ORBIT (as opposed to a Gregorian year!), and the Earth's orbit around Sol is 8765.72 hours (accounted for under the Gregorian system as 8760-hour standard years or 8784-hour leap years at specific intervals), there are exactly four observable moments in said orbit that can be pinpointed: the solstices and the equinoxes. Stardate xx000 has to be pegged to one of them (I vote for Winter Solstice). That way, the Solstices on Earth are ALWAYS xx000 and xx500, and the equinoxes are ALWAYS xx250 and xx750, _irrespective of the exact day assigned by the Gregorian calendar._ But we can always look up (or calculate) that information.
I like the characters referencing star dates when doing log entries. It’s a clever way to introduce exposition without alienating the viewers with an untethered monologue. The dates are just numbers to me, but thank you for talking about this.
Great video! I'll share something interesting I've written to friends recently, regarding TOS stardates... I've discovered a most interesting thing. This would help clean up the Star Trek original series (TOS) and film stardates a lot. It would make them linear, in order, proportionate to real time, and stay in sync with the release years of the films and the actor's ages. But it would be different than the official interpretation. First, let's look at what the official canon is right now. According to the writers, the original series takes place from 2266 to 2269. The series lasted 3 years, so we are seeing three years of Enterprise's five year mission. Then they have ST 1 (the motion picture) take place in the 'mid 2270s' (no exact date). ST 2 is in 2285 (18 years after Space Seed, even though Kirk says it's been 15 years). By this notion, stardates have a very weird progression. They go from the 1000's to almost 6000 in three years. Then, for some reason, they only advance to the 8000's 15 years later. But here is a much cleaner interpretation... Imagine that what we really see in the 3 years of TOS is spread out over the full five year mission. In 2265, the Federation establishes a new stardate (SD) system beginning at 1000. Just like TNG, every 1000 stardates is one year. The episodes of TOS can then be placed in stardate order. The first episode is SD 1312.4. Year two of their 5-year mission has stardates in the 2000's. The last episode SD 5930.3 is toward the end of year 5 of the five year mission, ending in gregorian calendar year 2269. Then, the motion picture can be said to take place in 2271 (very close to 1971, matching the actor's ages). This would mean the stardate system is right on track, in the 7000's (it was 7410.2 in the film). Now here's what's really interesting. The films II-IV have stardates in the 8000s. They were just trying at this point to make the first 2 digits be close to the release year of the films. It was SD 8130 because it came out around 1981. But if we kept consistent, this would only be 2272, a mere 5 years after meeting Khan. BUT, as it so happens, if we really count 15 years, if comes out to 2282 which would be stardate 18000 if we stayed on track. All we have to do is assume, just as we say '95 and everyone knows we mean 1995, that once the stardates went to 5 digits, people often omitted the first number. Wrath of Khan says 'stardate 8210.3' which can be taken as shorthand for 18210.3. Of course, it's a retcon, but it's pretty amazing how well all these numbers work out... Movies 2-4 obviously happen very close and all have stardates in the 8000s so no problem there. The only thing is that you have to assume these take place in the first half of the year, and ST 5 takes place late in the same year. This makes sense actually, since at the beginning they are still working out the kinks of their new ship. But then we also need to assume that ST 6 is just one year later than 5. Not too unreasonable though. Here would be all the episodes, in chronological order - with Gregorian calendar dates - if this interpretation were used. I think we may need to employ a little timey-wimey wishy-washy on the last three digits, when you have a starship warping around (to explain some of the tight fits)... YEAR ONE - 2265 1312.4 Where No Man Has Gone Before 24-Apr 1329.8 Mudd's Women 30-Apr 1512.2 The Corbomite Maneuver 5-Jul 1513.1 The Man Trap 6-Jul 1533.6 Charlie X 13-Jul 1672.1 The Enemy Within 2-Sep 1702 The Naked Time 13-Sep 1709.2 Balance of Terror 15-Sep YEAR TWO - 2266 2124.5 The Squire of Gothos 14-Feb 2712.4 What Are Little Girls Made Of? 17-Sep (00:38 hrs) 2713.5 Miri 17-Sep (10:16 hrs) 2715.1 Dagger of the Mind 18-Sep 2817.6 Conscience of the King 25-Oct 2821.5 The Galileo Seven 26-Oct 2947.3 Court Martial 11-Dec YEAR THREE - 2267 3012.4 The Menagerie, part I 4-Jan (12:37 hrs) 3013.1 The Menagerie, part II 4-Jan (18:45 hrs) 3018.2 Catspaw 6-Jan 3025.3 Shore Leave 9-Jan 3045.6 Arena 16-Jan 3087.6 The Alternative Factor 31-Jan 3113.2 Tomorrow is Yesterday 10-Feb 3141.9 Space Seed 20-Feb 3156.2 The Return of the Archons 26-Feb 3192.1 A Taste of Armageddon 11-Mar 3196.1 The Devil in the Dark 12-Mar 3198.4 Errand of Mercy 13-Mar ???? City on the Edge of Forever ???? 3211.7 The Gamesters of Triskelion 18-Mar 3219.8 Metamorphosis 21-Mar 3287.2 Operation -- Annihilate! 14-Apr 3372.7 Amok Time 16-May 3417.3 This Side of Paradise 1-Jun 3468.1 Who Mourns for Adonais? 19-Jun 3478.2 The Deadly Years 23-Jun 3497.2 Friday's Child 30-Jun 3541.9 The Changeling 16-Jul 3614.9 Wolf in the Fold 12-Aug 3619.2 Obsession 14-Aug 3715 The Apple 17-Sep 3842.3 Journey to Babel 3-Nov YEAR FOUR - 2268 (leap year) ???? Mirror, Mirror ???? 4040.7 Bread and Circuses 14-Jan 4202.9 The Doomsday Machine 14-Mar 4211.4 A Private Little War 17-Mar 4307.1 The Immunity Syndrome 21-Apr ???? A Piece of the Action ???? ???? Patterns of Force ???? ???? Omega Glory ???? ???? Assignment Earth ???? 4372.5 Elaan of Troyius 14-May 4385.3 Spectre of the Gun 19-May 4513.3 I, Mudd 5-Jul 4523.3 The Trouble with Tribbles 9-Jul 4657.5 By Any Other Name 26-Aug 4729.4 The Ultimate Computer 22-Sep 4768.3 Return to Tomorrow 6-Oct 4842.6 The Paradise Syndrome 2-Nov YEAR FIVE - 2269 5027.3 The Enterprise Incident 9-Jan 5029.5 And the Children Shall Lead 10-Jan 5121.5 The Empath 13-Feb 5423.4 The Mark of Gideon 3-Jun 5431.4 Spock's Brain 6-Jun 5476.3 For The World is Hollow… 22-Jun ???? Day of the Dove ???? 5630.7 Is There in Truth No Beauty? 18-Aug 5693.2 The Tholian Web 10-Sep 5710.5 Wink of an Eye 16-Sep ???? That Which Survives ???? 5718.3 Whom Gods Destroy 19-Sep 5725.3 The Lights of Zetar 21-Sep 5730.2 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield 23-Sep 5784.2 Plato's Stepchildren 13-Oct 5818.4 The Cloud Minders 25-Oct 5832.3 The Way to Eden 30-Oct 5843.7 Requiem for Methuselah 3-Nov 5906.4 The Savage Curtain 26-Nov 5928.5 Turnabout Intruder 4-Dec 5943.7 All Our Yesterdays 10-Dec FILMS 7410.2 ST: The Motion Picture (2271) Monday, May 29, 2271 *18130.3 ST II: The Wrath of Khan (2282) Thursday, February 16, 2282 *18210.3 ST III: The Search for Spock (2282) Friday, March 17, 2282 *18390 ST IV: The Voyage Home (2282) Monday, May 22, 2282 *18454.1 ST V: The Final Frontier (2282) Wednesday, June 14, 2282 *19521.6 ST VI: The Undiscovered Country (2283) Monday, July 9, 2283 *It became common practice to omit the first digit when stardates first moved to five digits.
Part of the point of stardates was to get away from the terracentric way of looking at time. The Federation has hundreds of planets with different time measuring systems. They needed a galactic standard that took relativity and other things into account. At issue is the variation in the rate of time passage to to the relativistic velocities of space vessels when not in warp, and the effect on time measurement and consistency during and after using warp drive. I think the original trek fans were a little more open to such scientific explanations, rather than the mundane ones this video suggests.
I was a college freshman when Star Trek first aired. I and some other “unclaimed treasures” (i.e. women who were without dates for the evening) watched the show in a dedicated area of the dorm’s basement on a small black and white TV. One woman jotted down each star date. I always wondered why and what she did with them, but whatever.
I’d hoped you’d uncovered a more definitive and comprehensive metric for conversion of calendar dates, but I guess it truly falls into the realm of technobabble; I’d picked up on the yearly progression through the TNG-VOY era, but had no idea how the TOS/TOSmovie era dates correlated, or even if a rhyme or reason actually existed. I hadn’t even noticed the fact that Picard had dropped them altogether, but I guess that’s a good thing, since the time element is more reflective than moment-to-moment. And the “demilitarized” nature of the main cast doesn’t necessitate it. And I’d wager that someone like Picard would cease using the convention of he’d quit himself of Starfleet. Though I do have to wonder what other species’/worlds’ conventions would be like.
My best estimate, @John Elliott , is that the system from Wrath of Khan to Undiscovered Country spans 178 or so stardates per year: assuming Wrath of Khan begins March 22nd, 2285 - Kirk's birthday - and Undiscovered Country begins circa January 2293 (six months pre Kirk's encounter with the Nexus) In the Motion Picture it seems a much smaller figure, though. Whilst the average in TOS is 1000 a year, seemingly. In TNG, it's 1000 units a year, on average, and 83 a month, and so on. And 2.738-ish a day. That's the best I've got, anyway.
The point of star dates is that every planet might have different length days and years. So that even knowing what day it is gets very complicated fast.
I think stardates do 2 good things 1. It's for✨the aesthetic✨. Stardates are part of world building that shows that this world is very different from our own. These people are practical and scientific, and they have different problems than we do, requiring different solutions. 2. For us nerds who love to overanalyze the cannon, it technically gives us an order of events, even if we can't pin the Gregorian date.
I figured that stardates included spacial as-well as temporal information. Integalactic versions of real world time zones and the international date line.
In the Riddick series productions the person recording in a log said things like "16 days out..." giving no actual date from anywhere. The way the log was recorded, time was measured from the last launch or lift off of the ship the person recording was aboard. This was also done when a person was recording events while on a trip across the surface of a planet or moon, among other endeavors. When one cannot determine a specific time, due to there being too many different time systems, reporting a time becomes practically useless. Thus the only time measure that works is that of the ship we are traveling aboard. It was in the Riddick series of movies, and Riddick was just one of the people that reported things in their log in that fashion. Seems that this method works best, because it gives a point in time when the endeavor began as the point from which all other moments and events are recorded, yet it keeps the record from including unimportant earlier points in time.
I seem to recall Wrath of Khan's stardate began with 82 to correspond with the year the movie came out - 1982. Search For Spock was still 82 (even though it came out in 1984) because it happened right after the events of the previous movie. Voyage Home I think was 83 because it happened right after the events of the previous movie. I think it may have broken down after that - I stopped following stardates when TNG started.
The only thing I really knew about stardates was so they didn't have to specify a specify year on the show and I was never able to really follow them that well. Considering it tends to be Captains log or first officer etc then I would think it would make most sense for it to be a measurement of time since the ship launched, but I also agree that at this point they no longer really serve a purpose now that years have been established.
Nice video, I was worried it would just be a copy of my video but this is far from it. I do find your idea of the stardate being akin to a mission date. It is giving me ideas to continue my solution to the Stardate problem. If this does help me I will be sure to give you credit.
Wow I’m strangely offended by the Kelvinverse stardate system haha. I lived in perfect ignorance before, but now every time I rewatch those films, I’ll KNOW
Gene Roddenberry said Stardates are used to measure time and location of a starship. He also said that warp drive pushes a starship into subspace and in subspace the universe is smaller. Today is March 22, 2022...which is Stardate 2203.22.
The problem with using any form of dating system is that there will always be a species that does not understand what the dates mean. Considering the fact that earth seems to be a late comer to the technology of warp speed and intergalactic travel, it would be selfish to think that other species would freely accept an earth form of calendar for all to use.
I think, stardates help to immerse the audience. THe lack of it is one of the many many reasons why the Kurtzman era just doesn't feel like trek to me. It's part of the tone established by trek
you bring up an interesting point. i wont lie tos-to ds9/voyager era star trek did have a certain tone that i do think is missing from discovery but i do not think that is exactly a bad thing. honestly i have this impression that the kind of storytelling from that era is kind of out date compared to what we can do now. a good example is the gaberal bell riots from ds9 we got told it was the most voilent civil disturbace in earths history but what we saw was a group of swat team members rescuing 5 hostages or something like that from like maybe half a dozen armed men in an office building.(that looked like i was a set on a tv show) i am saying that if picard and or discovery were to do something like that you would probably feel like it was a volient civil distrubance when watching it play out.
@@thewewguy8t88 yes, we can do more now, but I think, both Discovery and Picard fail at that. For example, the Borg cube in seaon one...this okked incredibly cheap. Most of the sets in both shows are just so...empty. As if they were filmed in an empty room. In storytelling, those shows are no good example either. I mean, compared to stuff like the expanse, it's just laughable
I seem to remember when I was watching Enterprise that their star date system seemed to work out to be possibly the number of days since warp travel was discovered.
@@TK-593 I would imagine they did. But in this era, Earth wouldn't be concerned with that and the only other possible influence would be the Vulcans. Perhaps later conventions were adopted to move away from the earth-centric basis at the beginning.
There is another issue to make things even more confusing with stardates from TOS to TNG and is the agganging of stardates in Star trek VI, those stardates were altered because they would already have five digits followed by a decimal, and some people involved in the production of that film wanted to make that firm distintion between TOS and TNG. Great video, thanks.
I think TNG was pretty close to a meaningful stardate. It could have been century, season number, episode number, and which tenth? So Stardate 4308.2 would be 24th century, 3rd season, episode 8, around the 20 minute mark. DS9 and Voyager could even continue the TNG season counter without causing too many issues. Picard could continue that with stardate 5203.1 meaning 25th century, second season, third episode, 10 minute mark. Granted Prodigy and Lower Decks might cause some complications. Anyway stardates sound cool but yeah it would be better if they contained easily accessible useful or fun information.
Problem: 4th wall problems. It would be letting in daylight into our sealed universe. It would be like saying that our reality was an adjunct of a celestial toy maker, who allows the chaos in this dimension to carry on, when he/she has been called to go to bed by its parents.
I'd suggest counting year zero, day zero being midnight GMT after the Federation charter was signed. So figure we'd be now into 1st digit being 3/4 depending on the exact year it was signed. Then after centuries, 2nd and 3rd digit being years. 10 month year and that is the 5th digit in the ones place. After the decimal number of days, hours minutes etc elapsed. Resetting every standard day. The day length can be adjusted to fit the world of registry of the ship in question. But keeping it metric and divisible by 10s. Rounded down to 20 or up to 30. What ever keeps the month metric. For worlds with shorter days the month is longer. And vice versa. For worlds like venus with days lasting standard years they could just adopt the universal standard. Same with tidally locked planets. With duty hours being assigned as a total per week you either get longer days off or more frequent days off. A win win either way. No doubt you can work out the math to figure out the proper ratios. For crew who do not need sleep or rest they can ignore the issue if a ship or base wishes to accomodate them. I admit I simply don't want to do the math but its high school level stuff. If advanced high school level.
So, what do you think? Should future Trek shows stick to the stardate system (like Discovery has)? Or should they opt for a different method of measuring time that's more...consistent? Let me know down below!
They need one that's even more arbitrary.
I didn't even know DSC started using a standardized system. Back in my forum RP days, we straight-up invented a system that sounded "right" for each log entry. Truth be told, I tend to block out the stated stardate the same way I block out technobabble, I expect it to be there but I don't expect it to be on the test.
The Georgian calendar would be considered racist by at least the Andorrans and Tellerites and that’s without even considering non-founding members like the Trill or Denobulans.
How about a generally accepted centre of the galaxy as a starting point and time defined by that starting point? Seems slightly more equal than beginning around one planets spinning around a particular sun?
I believe Stardates were consistent between TNG, DS9, and Voyager.
In most fiction, dates are irrelevant. If they want to establish a real date for story purposes, they can mention it in dialogue.
Honestly, I hear it as "Captain's log, stardate blurgle-blarg gurble-garble point two."
I like Stardates a lot. Knowing precisely how they work is not the point to me. So long as they keep the Stardates internally consistent (and it seems for TOS it was a network issue, not creative) and we know bigger number means later I think it will do fine. And it adds an immersive "this is not our time" element that I find missing in a lot of modern Sci Fi
You’re right. The stardate, and specific information about actual dates isn’t as important as the captain’s log, and his/her oberservations and notations about what is going on with the story from their point of view.
Stardates don't really serve a narrative function for the audience, except to indicate that this takes place so far into the future that measurements of time are different than ours in the present. Unless the passing of time is a plot point in a story it can be done away with.
Since they have changed so much from each timeline, my suggestion (if they reboot the universe with more competent producers) is that the stardates aren't even mentioned in the crew's logs. Just display it on a screen, like a timecode embedded into the recording. This would serve another function for them, adding security to indicate any tampering with the official record.
TOS inconsistency with the stardates I came to view (maybe even writing staff), was episodic in nature. Events in the beginning of the show (episode 1 were premiered as third), and later never been connected, more like stories FROM the captains log from various no chronological order of 5 year mission.
@@MikeNobody They're not rebooting shit. It's all equally canon, deal with it.
@@greggasiorowski1326 They sometimes show long adds whiles watching a short video can press skip for some adds unless part of that video then you can fast forward.
I like stardates. I think they're *necessarily* confusing and uninformative, they serve the function of letting you kick off by telling the audience "by the way, you're not going to understand all of this, and that's fine". Star Trek's always been built on that, you as the audience don't need to know how the warp core works, you just need to know that the characters know how it works.
In my own head, I've always been happy to just accept that stardates seem confusing and inconsistent because in trying to apply a common timeframe to events taking place in multiple parts of the galaxy on ships and planets that are moving around each other at variable near-luminal speeds they're trying to do something which is the equivalent of printing a flat map of a round globe - something technically impossible to do accurately, but which you can make estimations of by various methods. I think what they do in Enterprise of just using the Earth date, or the JJ films of just using the Earth date but in a sneaky way would very quickly prove to be unworkable because you would have different ships meeting up with each other and being in complete disagreement about what date it is, and if you can't radio back to Earth to adjudicate on this, you could end up with ships arranging crew transfers where the one ship says x crewman transferred over on x date and the other ship logs that the transfer happened a week earlier. It'd be a nightmare to audit.
i thought something similar
Its also several hundred years into the future. Its likely that we'd need to use some non-earth based calender system to unify every species.
Just because YOU dont know how a warp core works doesnt mean you should assume everyone is as ignorant as you. Its a matter/antimatter drive. The ship creates a warp bubble that contains the vessel and then moves space around it. In fact, a lot of things in Star Trek are explained and make sense with our understanding of physics.
Not everyone is as dumb as you, so for smart people its nice when a show about science doesnt just throw a random, arbitrary number at you for no reason. When I watch an episode of Star Trek I already know what the ship is capable of depending on the class and by knowing federation technology.
I can predict events because I know how tech will interact with eachother or when the crew is truly in a bad way by understanding their limitations. Stardates are a cop out, when literally everything else in this show is explained rather accurately.
I agree. Once you start travelling near the speed of light, you can't even agree what order events happened in. I always thought the stairdate depended on where you are and possibly the path you took to get there. Of course it doesn't make sense, once you have warp drive you have to redefine what time is.
It has nothing to do with time. A warp drive manipulates space. The only thing you have to worry about is a universal srandard. A galactic calendar. The only way time travel would be involved is if there were tachyon radiation.
I think having an unintelligible "stardate" at the beginning of each episode helps the viewer with that whole "suspension of disbelief" thing you talked about...I like them. :)
I think those that stress out about Star Dates miss the point that it is a literary mechanism to bring us into a universe that is different from ours. I always loose that suspension of disbelief when a Gregorian date is mentioned.
I always wondered the significance of the stardates but never placed a big deal on em meaning they weren't the most important part lol
when Kirk spits out the date, Captain's log stardate whatever it sounds official, that's the point lol
How about this for a stardate.today is Star date 2022.0323 this makes it simple. The year.the month and the day of the Gregorian calendar
@@stephenstarks874 you pulled that from your Jeffries tube, get with the program and stop winging it man.
I think a big issue with the Stardates and their intended purpose, is that Star Trek doesn't actually take place that far into the future, compared to other Sci-fi. Settings like Dune and Warhammer 40k take place millenia farther in the future, and from what I understand The Expanse is roughly as far in the future as the TNG era (roughly the second half of the 2300s), while having technology vastly less advanced than Star Trek.
I think Star Trek could've jumped ahead a millenia, with TOS being in the 3200s, TNG era being the 3300s, etc., and then Stardates would make a lot more sense both in and out of universe, imho. It also would fit perfectly with the technology, I always found it a little surprising that things like Warp Drive, Replicators, and the Holodeck have been developed in a society only a few hundred years in our future.
Love the 'well aacktuaully' approach to stay trek. People who think the point of sf is talking about rad new laser tech. Pewpew, rather than talking about human beings (yuk boring fiction for girls, amirite)
As much as I love Star Trek I always wondered about stardates how they became used for example thank you for clearing some of that up Tyler another great video.
In the book Federation: The First 150 Years, stardates are only used in space. When you're on a planet, you'd use the local calendar. In the DS9 episode Paradise Lost, when Sisko is questioning the cadet, he references "19:47 hours PST on the night of the 23rd" etc.
Finally! Yet another star trek topic I have often wondered about.
Omg me too!!!
YEAH.... but I Was hoping for a bit of explanation and 'Logic' behind it. It is TOO bad that there was No consistency from TOS - NG/Voy/DS9 - Kelvin timelines.
I guess I have to accept that there is NO Value of 'Star Dates', because as mentioned ......... It's a FICTIONAL show!
Another great episode! I love the ideas and REALLY appreciate the research and effort you put into all of your episodes/content! 👍
I always imagined that stardates were based on something tangible like a fraction of the rotation of the galaxy ( a cosmic year being 225-250 million years). It would make sense that you would have to know the movement of stars and the galaxy as whole to navigate. After all nothing is fixed in space so maps couldnt be fixed either. If you think about how an navigational map of earth works it makes sense to combine the passage of time along with a way to measure the location of stars, starting with the rotation of the galaxy. This would have the additional benefits of being something that all species could get with and understand and very non human centric.
I read in one of the novels that stardates are the space equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time in order to keep every planet on the same schedule due to the differences in how long their own days and years are (e.g. a Mars day is nearly 25 hours long and a Mars year is about 1.9 Earth years), and its passage is measured at the center of the galaxy to remain apolitical.
Rotation of cartoon galaxies AHAHAHAHA 🤦♂️
Great summary.
One old theory is that in TOS the Stardates representative months and days into the mission. So SD 1312 is 13 months, 12 days in.
This does not work so well in the larger context of the Trek franchise, but it's not bad for TOS on its own 😉
If they used 28-day months comes out to 13 months and total of 364 days for year so could have 12 with 28 days and one month with 29 days plus another extra day each leap year.
I like the idea of star dates instead of government used dating system for star trek because for instance a Ferengi and a Tellerite could be talking about an event that happened the Tellerite could ask the Ferengi what the stardate was and they both understand it. The human's of Earth can continue using the gregorian calendar just like the Klingon's use there own calendar but when it comes to communicating between governments utilizing stardates makes the most sense.
When I was a kid, watching ST:TOS for the first time, I wrote down all the star dates for all the episodes. I thought, at the time, that it was actually pretty cool that they used a more universal time rather than relying on the rotation of a single planet out of all the inhabited planets of the galaxy.
Thanks for taking on this topic. Well done as always!
Coffee ☕ and Star Trek🌟
Thanks Tyler 😎
You read my mind. I was just looking for a video about this very topic. It is indeed confusing, but you did a great job at breaking it down. Thanks.
I love your humor in all of your videos
Tyler I've watched about a dozen or more of your videos over the last month or two I think you are more intelligent than most you tubers thanks brother note my name
Wasn't the TOS "Star Date" just the writer's vehicle to preface the setting of the particular episode?
Way off-topic, but I've always loved the fact that Spock wears a World War II-era Army belt spray painted silver in the clip here featured at 6:38 .
I always wondered about stardates... thanks for another video of top notch quality!
I've been watching Star Trek since the premiere of TNG, and I never knew how stardates worked. Thank you for such an informative video!
Thinking about this, it does seen odd that in a federation of planets spanning light years that all measures of days, weeks and years would revolve around Earth time. Seems to me that setting those metrics based on a common celestial body or event would make the most sense instead while in space at least. It should however be something easy to convert to "local" time on any planet or moon though. This is something that was obviously not done in Trek, and likely a way to portray the fact the even in the future the entire universe doesn't revolve around the Earth.
I can recall only one time that any reference to any difference in a planet's time and a stardate was in TNG when the Enterprise was helping those people in that biodome, and Troi made reference to the fact that the reason she was still up late was that she was "...still on Enterprise time."
Awesome! Thanks for putting this together.
Much love!
I would think a stardate reflects time passage in space relative to the ship. Between gravity and jumping into and out of warp, differences in time would accumulate, and this lets a ship track the passage of time on the ship, but when contacting Starfleet, they can synchronize with planet-side time/calendars.
Finally, someone tackles stardates.
I came up with my Stardate system for my RPG.. Mine is based on the alleged founding of the Federation, 2161 AD. I figured Stardates weren’t introduced until 2261 - the Federation centennial. So, 1313.! is roughly July. 2265. I compared it to the five digit TNG dates and it tracks
Excellent, informative video. You have a new subscriber.
Another great video! I always wondered about stardates and tried to understand, but never made sense to me. Thank you!
Yet again, a beautifully researched video, insightful and done with much love. Take care. xx
My local Star Trek fan club, Starfleet Command's Seventh Fleet mostly based in Utah with Ships/Chapters in Idaho and Vermont as well as Shuttles/Chapters-in-Training in Nevada and England has its own Stardate system.
It picks up from the TNG/DS9/VOY Era for the start. The Stardate Year starts in September (when the shows usually started seasons) and ends in August. And the last 4 digits are MMD.D. September 2021 to August 2022 starts with 75. So for example today is Stardate: 75032.3 in our system.
I love the comedy you add to every video!. Always catches me off guard haha
I disagree that Stardates should convey information. What does it matter that I know that the episode is starting on the 28th day of the year 2258? That tells me nothing that I need to know to understand the episode. The Stardates are there to set the mood. They are a trope that gets me in to the show. The meaning is: you're watching a space opera and the Captain is just about to tell you something you should notice.
Thank you for another excellent episode! I think I may have once looked up something about this topic before, but I have forgotten anything I learned before if so. Thanks for taking the time to learn and make a video on it! I've watched so many of your videos in recent months I think it's high time I subbed lol.
Stay well out there everybody, and God be with you, friends! ✝️ :)
The TH-cam algorithm knows all. I was a chubby dorky pothead in high school…I’ve been a rock climbing pothead for some time. On the surface I look like some of the jocks I use to hate. But clearly by the stuff TH-cam keeps putting in my feed, I’m still a nerd at heart. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I like stardates as a part of in depth *world building.* I appreciate that someone took the time to figure out how everyone can agree on terms like "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow" without too much confusion.
I never understood the point in spelling out the stardate in logs. Like you'd need to tell the computer what time it is, like entries wouldn't be automatically timestamped as they are normally in all operating systems. It's just a stupid contrivance...
Initially, during Original Star Trek, our time-line didn't commonly have automatic time stamps. I think the habit just stuck through the generations, plus there have been corrupted logs that only had blips of audio and may not have had any other readable data. Personally, I think redundancies are more because of absolutely stupid people, but then I work in retail, so my view is biased
@@evelgreytarot8401 Yea, maybe not in 65, when the show was still on the drafting table, but a short couple years after that, digital, general purpose computing simply does not have any way to function without assigning a date attribute to its stored data.
It's an anachronism we could have all lived without. TNG doing away with the communicators and still keeping dictated stardates in logs is one of the stupidest things they did. They've kept something that was already superseded (and superfluous) at that point, why?
Thank You for this video - I have always wondered how they calculated Star Dates in the episodes.
The question is: With what are you going to REPLACE stardates? What would ship's logs sound like WITHOUT stardates?
"Captain's Log: Thursday evening... We have entered standard orbit around Beta Proxima V and are preparing to meet with the representatives of the planetary government."
"Captain's Log: A day or so later... We have concluded our negotiations with the planetary representatives and are preparing to warp out of orbit."
"Captain's Log: A couple of hours later... We have detected a fault in our warp engines, but Scotty is working on it."
"Captain's Log: Later that same afternoon... Scotty has identified the fault, and says that our dilithium crystals need to be regenerated."
"Captain's Log: Almost midnight... Scotty has successfully regenerated the dilithium crystals."
"Captain's Log: Early Monday morning... After leaving orbit several hours ago, we received a subspace message from Star Fleet, ordering us to proceed at once to Beta Cephalis IV."
"Captain's Log: A couple of days later... That fault in our dilithium crystals that we had detected about a week ago has returned."
Takes me back to me my college days.
Great information. It’s something I always wondered about but never bothered to look up. I enjoyed the video.
Yes! The "Mycelial Network " shirt 😁
Thanks for this video. Trying to figure out stardates drive me insane.
😂 Starts 30 yrs after the British Invasion 😂😂 You are a treasure Tyler!!! I appreciate the shit out of you!! 🖖🏻
YES!!! Finaly an explanation video! ........for this year.
The stardate system is, as you explain, kinda vague and doesnt really line up with anything all that well, but with a tiny bit of effort it could be clarified into something that makes logical sense going forward, and we could keep a classic bit of treknobabble.
You always have great thought provoking videos
Thank you so much for this explanation. I also really like your voice and that you don't monotone 😊
Wonderful video! Loved the breakdown and helped so much confusion on my end!
In you vast tales of different alien species, don't forget the Vogon's from "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy".
6:31 While there was a magnificent job later of folding real science into the date designation, that was not initially part of the plan. The "star date" was simply meant to sound futuristic and sciencey. It was because the episodes were not aired in the order they were produced that fans noticed and questioned inconsistency. The (at the time) fabricated explanation was that a Star Date was calculated based on such factors as a ship's literal and relative position, relative velocity, and even direction of movement; therefore, two ships could be meeting at the same area at the same time yet have different Star Dates to report. A very happy accident of fiction and science shaking hands but original bottom line to it was, "We're just putting cool sci-fi on TV. What do you want?!"
Great job. You took a subject that I had no interest in and made it VERY interesting. That's why I love your channel.
Very well, thank you
Actually, the whole point of Stardates is mentioned in the 2nd pilot. “They’ve broken the time barrier.”
Stardates are meant to address the time relative to Earth reletive to the time dilation effect.
One thing I’ve admired about Star Trek is the use of stardates instead of using a Christian calendar, where we’re supposed to be impressed with the century (as with shows like Buck Rogers In The 25th Century). Although Star Trek has painted itself into a corner with reference to the Eugenics Wars taking place in the late 20th century and Khan mentioning in ST2 that in 1996 he was a prince with power over millions, the show tried to make it a point not to have specific timelines to avoid this problem.
Great video. I've always wondered about that.
Just to be fair: time dilation is measurable not only around masses like black holes. But Earth itself is massive enough to have a considerable effect. It is big enough to be taken into account even for the GPS system. It is a difference of around 38ms per day between the planet's surface and the height where the geostationary satelites reside.
From the original show I wondered how the star dates worked. Thanks for another informative video.
Good timing (heh) given the recent hoopla over Daylight savings
I always thought the Kelvin approach was the simplest approach which they should adopt and modify to some overarching standardized time like in Mass Effect, so you don't feel too earth chauvanist
There is an episode of Voyager where Seven was overloaded with data, causing her to become deluded and create conspiracy theories where she had long stretches of yelling out Stardates to the other characters.
Poor Jeri Ryan having to remember all that nonsense.
When did TOS' century get definitively placed?
During TNG. But that is only the century. In Voyager they claim that Kirk’s 5 year mission ended in 2270. So based on that TOS is sometime between 2265 and 2270.
The Wrath of Khan specified the century in the opening (“In the 23rd century…”), but nothing more. There’s some promotional material for early TNG which supposed it was in the 2330s rather than the 2360s, made before _The Neutral Zone_ stated the Gregorian year for the frozen guys. Later TNG-era stuff confirmed it such as Voyager S1 giving a Gregorian year in _Eye of the Needle_ and had some of the most references in dialogue to living in “the 24th century” besides that.
IMO, stardates were most useful when dealing with concurrent shows. TNG, DS9, VOY are the prime examples.
So much more understanding of fhe universe at large i felt was gained by being able to watch episodes in "Stardate order"
To be fair, only groupings this would be useful is (TNG, DS9, YOY), (DSC, SNW, TOS), and possibly PGY/LWD groups
I love to explore the minute details in these amazing universes that unfold before us.... but I'm also a firm believer in not deconstructing EVERYTHING.
This channel is just so high quality it makes me want to squanch
In my opinion, star dates are just a way of reminding the watcher that the show is in space. They're not linked, as you say, to any real date. So that's what I always presumed
Not according the the official lore keeper of Trek Michael Okuda
While I certainly understand and respect the point of view that they're necessarily obfuscating any sort of real date, and thus kind of pointless for much of the audience, I'm the kind of nerd who loves that sort of detail. The old Starchive digs into it in a great amount of detail.
One detail I like is that, using the TOS four-digit system, if you assume it resets every 10000 units, and you roll back the clock, you get to a Stardate 0000 in January 2162, just after the Federation was founded in 2161. It's easy to imagine that the UFP was founded, and then either they found Terran-style dates inappropriate for multi-species or deep space use, or they were simply delayed with red tape, and then switched over to stardates a few months later.
Finally this mysterious phenomenon has been addressed. I imagine I am not the only one who thought they were just numbers picked out of a hat and the showrunners relied on the fact that we weren't paying very close attention.
The TNG Stardate calendar is in fact a Metric calendar, breaking down time into multiples of ten, the same way the Metric system of measurements break down linear measures, weights, volumes, and temperatures as such. Very convenient to work with mathematically. We are told that one Terran year is equal to 1000 stardates, but the Trek writers don’t really delve into the implications of that. Characters in-universe refer to hours, minutes, and seconds, but I don’t think those are the units they would actually use in-universe. I regard that as the show’s writers translating time into terms we (the audience) use, so that we understand. Universal Translator at work. But if you do the math and drill down, things work out a little differently. *Dividing by ten, 100 SD, we get a block of time ~36½ Terran days long.* Let’s call that a “star-month” or “ship-month”. One of the things we seem to lose by dividing by 10 instead of by 12 is the ability to easily match up the four planetary seasonal mileposts (solstices and equinoxes). But actually, it IS easy. *As long as New Years Day (starting SD xx000.0) is pegged to a physically observable astrological event* (for example, Winter Solstice, December 21st or 22nd depending on year), the opposite event (Summer Solstice, June 20th or 21st) will ALWAYS line up on SD xx500, which sets Terran equinoxes at xx250 and xx750. So, we have the four quarters/seasons defined. *Dividing by ten again, 10 SD, we get an oddball duration,* a little over three and one-half Terran days. Not usable in and of itself but TWO of them come damn close to a seven day Terran week, four of these (40SD) roughly equal a fortnight, and eight (80SD) approximate a Terran month. I call this unit a “rotation”, because it is a likely point where personnel will be rotated to a different duty schedule, if a change occurs. For scheduling purposes, humans are granted a “day off” every 20th stardate, basically their work shift is replaced by a recreational and/or religious “sabbath”. Nonhumans can either follow the human custom (maybe on the rotations opposite the ones taken by humans) or arrange with their command according to their needs/preferences. If exactitude is required, 19.3846 SD equals 7 T-Days. *Divide by ten again, and we are at the unit level, the Stardate itself.* And lo and behold, it it NOT a full day, as many have supposed, but a smidge over eight and three-quarter hours. That is, however, to my mind, a solid work shift. The Federation is supposed to be almost a utopia, dare I say, a Socialist ideal? By which I mean real Socialists, not fascists, authoritarians, racists, nor nationalists who masquerade as Socialists, nor the imaginary Socialists used as an epithet by ignorant, fearful, fools. *“Equal parts of work, sleep, and time for yourself”* is what that ideal states, 1/3 of the 24-hour Terran day each. So, a Starfleet service member works for 8.77 Terran hours, sleeps (and/or takes care of personal hygeine) for the next 8.77 Terran hours, and has 8.77 Terran hours for themselves (give or take alerts). This means that three (3) Stardates equals one 26-hour “work day”. Multiplying back up means there are 333 and 1/3 work days in a Star-year. Call the extra shift a holiday. This extra shift is actually where the extra hours that would otherwise eventually have to be accounted as a Leap Day end up. It would take some adjusting to get used to, but I think humans would not only be productive, but flourish under this scheme. One 24H T-day = 2.7692 SD
We are told Picard’s tenure on the Enterprise-D begins in SD 41000, which is given as 2364CE. All we have to do is count back 41 years from 2364. This would be a convenient point to say, “that’s when Stardates switched over from four-digit format to five digit”, but I have a better idea. Read on. Others tackling the stardate issue have scrabbled around, trying to find canonical significance in 2323CE, without success. WHAT IF I TOLD YOU… there is no significance? WHAT IF 2323CE was simply the year that the five-digit counter naturally rolled over from 99999 back to 00000? And that there was a sixth digit [“1”] that “should” be present in TNG Stardates that is simply trimmed or ignored as a matter of convenience? Everyone knows what century they’re in, after all! Prior to 2323CE, the sixth significant digit of a Stardate, being a zero, would conventionally have been ignored anyway, if considered at all. But the digit is there, reserved for future use, to avoid Y2K-like problems!
“But TOS stardates only have four digits!” I hear you say. Four digits that WE SAW THEM USE. Saying the fifth digit was likewise “there, but conventionally ignored” harms nothing, and just might help us. We all know what decade we’re in, right? The record-keeping shift to include the TOS-era “ignored” fifth digit could occur at any point after 2282CE. In fact, 2283CE rolling over from SD [x]9999 to SD [x+1]0000 makes that a natural point for this notational change to occur! Failing that, the following decade rollovers at 2293CE, 2303CE, or 2313CE could also serve to spur this shift.
Heh, this is very similar to a comment I’d left on the community post announcing this video, right down to the metric time connection. Though I’d suggested getting used to what for us would be half weeks, versus clustering them in twos, but your idea works well too. Interesting that it’s a 26-hour day like they have on Bajor.
@@kaitlyn__L I'm sure the Bajorans regarded it as a favorable omen for joining the Federation.
The second part of Gregorian to Stardate conversion that somehow gets ignored...where to assign New Years Day. Jan 1? Lunar New Year? Not so fast!
Metric measures are pegged to measurable real physical phenomenon. The original definition of a meter is 1/10,000,000 of the distance from North to South Pole, following the meridian that passes through the center of Paris, France. 1 kilogram is the weight of pure water in a 1 meter cube (excluding the weight of the container itself). Zero Celsius is the freezing point of pure water, 100 is the boiling point, and one BTU is the amount of heat needed to shift 1 kilogram of pure water 1/100th of that interval.
So, given that the star years equals ONE EARTH ORBIT (as opposed to a Gregorian year!), and the Earth's orbit around Sol is 8765.72 hours (accounted for under the Gregorian system as 8760-hour standard years or 8784-hour leap years at specific intervals), there are exactly four observable moments in said orbit that can be pinpointed: the solstices and the equinoxes. Stardate xx000 has to be pegged to one of them (I vote for Winter Solstice). That way, the Solstices on Earth are ALWAYS xx000 and xx500, and the equinoxes are ALWAYS xx250 and xx750, _irrespective of the exact day assigned by the Gregorian calendar._ But we can always look up (or calculate) that information.
I like the characters referencing star dates when doing log entries. It’s a clever way to introduce exposition without alienating the viewers with an untethered monologue. The dates are just numbers to me, but thank you for talking about this.
Great video! I'll share something interesting I've written to friends recently, regarding TOS stardates...
I've discovered a most interesting thing. This would help clean up the Star Trek original series (TOS) and film stardates a lot. It would make them linear, in order, proportionate to real time, and stay in sync with the release years of the films and the actor's ages. But it would be different than the official interpretation.
First, let's look at what the official canon is right now. According to the writers, the original series takes place from 2266 to 2269. The series lasted 3 years, so we are seeing three years of Enterprise's five year mission. Then they have ST 1 (the motion picture) take place in the 'mid 2270s' (no exact date). ST 2 is in 2285 (18 years after Space Seed, even though Kirk says it's been 15 years).
By this notion, stardates have a very weird progression. They go from the 1000's to almost 6000 in three years. Then, for some reason, they only advance to the 8000's 15 years later. But here is a much cleaner interpretation...
Imagine that what we really see in the 3 years of TOS is spread out over the full five year mission. In 2265, the Federation establishes a new stardate (SD) system beginning at 1000. Just like TNG, every 1000 stardates is one year. The episodes of TOS can then be placed in stardate order. The first episode is SD 1312.4. Year two of their 5-year mission has stardates in the 2000's. The last episode SD 5930.3 is toward the end of year 5 of the five year mission, ending in gregorian calendar year 2269.
Then, the motion picture can be said to take place in 2271 (very close to 1971, matching the actor's ages). This would mean the stardate system is right on track, in the 7000's (it was 7410.2 in the film).
Now here's what's really interesting. The films II-IV have stardates in the 8000s. They were just trying at this point to make the first 2 digits be close to the release year of the films. It was SD 8130 because it came out around 1981.
But if we kept consistent, this would only be 2272, a mere 5 years after meeting Khan. BUT, as it so happens, if we really count 15 years, if comes out to 2282 which would be stardate 18000 if we stayed on track. All we have to do is assume, just as we say '95 and everyone knows we mean 1995, that once the stardates went to 5 digits, people often omitted the first number. Wrath of Khan says 'stardate 8210.3' which can be taken as shorthand for 18210.3. Of course, it's a retcon, but it's pretty amazing how well all these numbers work out...
Movies 2-4 obviously happen very close and all have stardates in the 8000s so no problem there. The only thing is that you have to assume these take place in the first half of the year, and ST 5 takes place late in the same year. This makes sense actually, since at the beginning they are still working out the kinks of their new ship. But then we also need to assume that ST 6 is just one year later than 5. Not too unreasonable though.
Here would be all the episodes, in chronological order - with Gregorian calendar dates - if this interpretation were used. I think we may need to employ a little timey-wimey wishy-washy on the last three digits, when you have a starship warping around (to explain some of the tight fits)...
YEAR ONE - 2265
1312.4 Where No Man Has Gone Before 24-Apr
1329.8 Mudd's Women 30-Apr
1512.2 The Corbomite Maneuver 5-Jul
1513.1 The Man Trap 6-Jul
1533.6 Charlie X 13-Jul
1672.1 The Enemy Within 2-Sep
1702 The Naked Time 13-Sep
1709.2 Balance of Terror 15-Sep
YEAR TWO - 2266
2124.5 The Squire of Gothos 14-Feb
2712.4 What Are Little Girls Made Of? 17-Sep (00:38 hrs)
2713.5 Miri 17-Sep (10:16 hrs)
2715.1 Dagger of the Mind 18-Sep
2817.6 Conscience of the King 25-Oct
2821.5 The Galileo Seven 26-Oct
2947.3 Court Martial 11-Dec
YEAR THREE - 2267
3012.4 The Menagerie, part I 4-Jan (12:37 hrs)
3013.1 The Menagerie, part II 4-Jan (18:45 hrs)
3018.2 Catspaw 6-Jan
3025.3 Shore Leave 9-Jan
3045.6 Arena 16-Jan
3087.6 The Alternative Factor 31-Jan
3113.2 Tomorrow is Yesterday 10-Feb
3141.9 Space Seed 20-Feb
3156.2 The Return of the Archons 26-Feb
3192.1 A Taste of Armageddon 11-Mar
3196.1 The Devil in the Dark 12-Mar
3198.4 Errand of Mercy 13-Mar
???? City on the Edge of Forever ????
3211.7 The Gamesters of Triskelion 18-Mar
3219.8 Metamorphosis 21-Mar
3287.2 Operation -- Annihilate! 14-Apr
3372.7 Amok Time 16-May
3417.3 This Side of Paradise 1-Jun
3468.1 Who Mourns for Adonais? 19-Jun
3478.2 The Deadly Years 23-Jun
3497.2 Friday's Child 30-Jun
3541.9 The Changeling 16-Jul
3614.9 Wolf in the Fold 12-Aug
3619.2 Obsession 14-Aug
3715 The Apple 17-Sep
3842.3 Journey to Babel 3-Nov
YEAR FOUR - 2268 (leap year)
???? Mirror, Mirror ????
4040.7 Bread and Circuses 14-Jan
4202.9 The Doomsday Machine 14-Mar
4211.4 A Private Little War 17-Mar
4307.1 The Immunity Syndrome 21-Apr
???? A Piece of the Action ????
???? Patterns of Force ????
???? Omega Glory ????
???? Assignment Earth ????
4372.5 Elaan of Troyius 14-May
4385.3 Spectre of the Gun 19-May
4513.3 I, Mudd 5-Jul
4523.3 The Trouble with Tribbles 9-Jul
4657.5 By Any Other Name 26-Aug
4729.4 The Ultimate Computer 22-Sep
4768.3 Return to Tomorrow 6-Oct
4842.6 The Paradise Syndrome 2-Nov
YEAR FIVE - 2269
5027.3 The Enterprise Incident 9-Jan
5029.5 And the Children Shall Lead 10-Jan
5121.5 The Empath 13-Feb
5423.4 The Mark of Gideon 3-Jun
5431.4 Spock's Brain 6-Jun
5476.3 For The World is Hollow… 22-Jun
???? Day of the Dove ????
5630.7 Is There in Truth No Beauty? 18-Aug
5693.2 The Tholian Web 10-Sep
5710.5 Wink of an Eye 16-Sep
???? That Which Survives ????
5718.3 Whom Gods Destroy 19-Sep
5725.3 The Lights of Zetar 21-Sep
5730.2 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield 23-Sep
5784.2 Plato's Stepchildren 13-Oct
5818.4 The Cloud Minders 25-Oct
5832.3 The Way to Eden 30-Oct
5843.7 Requiem for Methuselah 3-Nov
5906.4 The Savage Curtain 26-Nov
5928.5 Turnabout Intruder 4-Dec
5943.7 All Our Yesterdays 10-Dec
FILMS
7410.2 ST: The Motion Picture (2271) Monday, May 29, 2271
*18130.3 ST II: The Wrath of Khan (2282) Thursday, February 16, 2282
*18210.3 ST III: The Search for Spock (2282) Friday, March 17, 2282
*18390 ST IV: The Voyage Home (2282) Monday, May 22, 2282
*18454.1 ST V: The Final Frontier (2282) Wednesday, June 14, 2282
*19521.6 ST VI: The Undiscovered Country (2283) Monday, July 9, 2283
*It became common practice to omit the first digit when stardates first moved to five digits.
Star dates just sound cool to start an episode. It just techno jargon. Which is what make Star Trek way cool.
This guy is the hugest frigin nerd ever. Kool
Part of the point of stardates was to get away from the terracentric way of looking at time. The Federation has hundreds of planets with different time measuring systems. They needed a galactic standard that took relativity and other things into account. At issue is the variation in the rate of time passage to to the relativistic velocities of space vessels when not in warp, and the effect on time measurement and consistency during and after using warp drive. I think the original trek fans were a little more open to such scientific explanations, rather than the mundane ones this video suggests.
I was a college freshman when Star Trek first aired. I and some other “unclaimed treasures” (i.e. women who were without dates for the evening) watched the show in a dedicated area of the dorm’s basement on a small black and white TV. One woman jotted down each star date. I always wondered why and what she did with them, but whatever.
I don't suppose her name was Bjo Trimble, was it?
Enterprise and TOS were great about it. TNG, DS9 and Voyager…not so much lol! Thanks for the video Tyler!
I’d hoped you’d uncovered a more definitive and comprehensive metric for conversion of calendar dates, but I guess it truly falls into the realm of technobabble; I’d picked up on the yearly progression through the TNG-VOY era, but had no idea how the TOS/TOSmovie era dates correlated, or even if a rhyme or reason actually existed. I hadn’t even noticed the fact that Picard had dropped them altogether, but I guess that’s a good thing, since the time element is more reflective than moment-to-moment. And the “demilitarized” nature of the main cast doesn’t necessitate it. And I’d wager that someone like Picard would cease using the convention of he’d quit himself of Starfleet. Though I do have to wonder what other species’/worlds’ conventions would be like.
My best estimate, @John Elliott , is that the system from Wrath of Khan to Undiscovered Country spans 178 or so stardates per year: assuming Wrath of Khan begins March 22nd, 2285 - Kirk's birthday - and Undiscovered Country begins circa January 2293 (six months pre Kirk's encounter with the Nexus)
In the Motion Picture it seems a much smaller figure, though. Whilst the average in TOS is 1000 a year, seemingly.
In TNG, it's 1000 units a year, on average, and 83 a month, and so on. And 2.738-ish a day.
That's the best I've got, anyway.
Talking about time dilation, how about when using impulse drive which takes you up to 90% of light speed in normal space?
Excellent question! I'd love to see Tyler tackle it in a future video essay.
Stardates are flavoring. They give logs a good starting point, and it allows the writers to torture fans.
This was very entertaining! It contained more actual science than I expected. What was I thinking? We nerds like to nerd!
I wonder if they had used unix time for the stardates if Y2k, or Y2038 would not be a problem.
The point of star dates is that every planet might have different length days and years. So that even knowing what day it is gets very complicated fast.
I like stardates. I like that they have them in Lower Decks and they match the TNG-era formula.
Fun fact: my last employer used days since someday in some day in 1850. These should be star dates.
I think stardates do 2 good things
1. It's for✨the aesthetic✨. Stardates are part of world building that shows that this world is very different from our own. These people are practical and scientific, and they have different problems than we do, requiring different solutions.
2. For us nerds who love to overanalyze the cannon, it technically gives us an order of events, even if we can't pin the Gregorian date.
I figured that stardates included spacial as-well as temporal information. Integalactic versions of real world time zones and the international date line.
In the Riddick series productions the person recording in a log said things like "16 days out..." giving no actual date from anywhere. The way the log was recorded, time was measured from the last launch or lift off of the ship the person recording was aboard. This was also done when a person was recording events while on a trip across the surface of a planet or moon, among other endeavors.
When one cannot determine a specific time, due to there being too many different time systems, reporting a time becomes practically useless. Thus the only time measure that works is that of the ship we are traveling aboard. It was in the Riddick series of movies, and Riddick was just one of the people that reported things in their log in that fashion. Seems that this method works best, because it gives a point in time when the endeavor began as the point from which all other moments and events are recorded, yet it keeps the record from including unimportant earlier points in time.
I seem to recall Wrath of Khan's stardate began with 82 to correspond with the year the movie came out - 1982. Search For Spock was still 82 (even though it came out in 1984) because it happened right after the events of the previous movie. Voyage Home I think was 83 because it happened right after the events of the previous movie. I think it may have broken down after that - I stopped following stardates when TNG started.
The only thing I really knew about stardates was so they didn't have to specify a specify year on the show and I was never able to really follow them that well. Considering it tends to be Captains log or first officer etc then I would think it would make most sense for it to be a measurement of time since the ship launched, but I also agree that at this point they no longer really serve a purpose now that years have been established.
Nice video, I was worried it would just be a copy of my video but this is far from it. I do find your idea of the stardate being akin to a mission date. It is giving me ideas to continue my solution to the Stardate problem. If this does help me I will be sure to give you credit.
Just subscribed cos can never get enough Star Trek 🖖
Wow I’m strangely offended by the Kelvinverse stardate system haha. I lived in perfect ignorance before, but now every time I rewatch those films, I’ll KNOW
Everybody in the comments leaving a novel, i just wanna say great review!
Haha thank you!
Gene Roddenberry said Stardates are used to measure time and location of a starship. He also said that warp drive pushes a starship into subspace and in subspace the universe is smaller. Today is March 22, 2022...which is Stardate 2203.22.
The problem with using any form of dating system is that there will always be a species that does not understand what the dates mean. Considering the fact that earth seems to be a late comer to the technology of warp speed and intergalactic travel, it would be selfish to think that other species would freely accept an earth form of calendar for all to use.
Love the new logo. Very cool
I think, stardates help to immerse the audience. THe lack of it is one of the many many reasons why the Kurtzman era just doesn't feel like trek to me. It's part of the tone established by trek
you bring up an interesting point. i wont lie tos-to ds9/voyager era star trek did have a certain tone that i do think is missing from discovery but i do not think that is exactly a bad thing. honestly i have this impression that the kind of storytelling from that era is kind of out date compared to what we can do now. a good example is the gaberal bell riots from ds9 we got told it was the most voilent civil disturbace in earths history but what we saw was a group of swat team members rescuing 5 hostages or something like that from like maybe half a dozen armed men in an office building.(that looked like i was a set on a tv show) i am saying that if picard and or discovery were to do something like that you would probably feel like it was a volient civil distrubance when watching it play out.
@@thewewguy8t88 yes, we can do more now, but I think, both Discovery and Picard fail at that. For example, the Borg cube in seaon one...this okked incredibly cheap. Most of the sets in both shows are just so...empty. As if they were filmed in an empty room.
In storytelling, those shows are no good example either. I mean, compared to stuff like the expanse, it's just laughable
@@terriblecertainity honestly I don't get that impression stuff looks better ever I find.
@@thewewguy8t88 hm... I guess, that's a matter of preference. I don't like the look of Marvel either. Everything looks so fake
I seem to remember when I was watching Enterprise that their star date system seemed to work out to be possibly the number of days since warp travel was discovered.
If that were the case then wouldn't each species/civilization have a different star date since they all didn't achieve warp travel at the same time?
@@TK-593 I would imagine they did. But in this era, Earth wouldn't be concerned with that and the only other possible influence would be the Vulcans. Perhaps later conventions were adopted to move away from the earth-centric basis at the beginning.
Ahhhhhhh Yeah!
There is another issue to make things even more confusing with stardates from TOS to TNG and is the agganging of stardates in Star trek VI, those stardates were altered because they would already have five digits followed by a decimal, and some people involved in the production of that film wanted to make that firm distintion between TOS and TNG. Great video, thanks.
I think TNG was pretty close to a meaningful stardate. It could have been century, season number, episode number, and which tenth? So Stardate 4308.2 would be 24th century, 3rd season, episode 8, around the 20 minute mark. DS9 and Voyager could even continue the TNG season counter without causing too many issues. Picard could continue that with stardate 5203.1 meaning 25th century, second season, third episode, 10 minute mark. Granted Prodigy and Lower Decks might cause some complications. Anyway stardates sound cool but yeah it would be better if they contained easily accessible useful or fun information.
Problem: 4th wall problems. It would be letting in daylight into our sealed universe. It would be like saying that our reality was an adjunct of a celestial toy maker, who allows the chaos in this dimension to carry on, when he/she has been called to go to bed by its parents.
I'd suggest counting year zero, day zero being midnight GMT after the Federation charter was signed. So figure we'd be now into 1st digit being 3/4 depending on the exact year it was signed. Then after centuries, 2nd and 3rd digit being years. 10 month year and that is the 5th digit in the ones place. After the decimal number of days, hours minutes etc elapsed. Resetting every standard day. The day length can be adjusted to fit the world of registry of the ship in question. But keeping it metric and divisible by 10s. Rounded down to 20 or up to 30. What ever keeps the month metric. For worlds with shorter days the month is longer. And vice versa. For worlds like venus with days lasting standard years they could just adopt the universal standard. Same with tidally locked planets. With duty hours being assigned as a total per week you either get longer days off or more frequent days off. A win win either way. No doubt you can work out the math to figure out the proper ratios. For crew who do not need sleep or rest they can ignore the issue if a ship or base wishes to accomodate them. I admit I simply don't want to do the math but its high school level stuff. If advanced high school level.