Stardate

Stardates are a means of specifying absolute [Relative dates, such as "five months ago", are still expressed using days, months, and years, as can be observed in any average episode, but there have been only a handful of references to current years.] dates in the fictional "Star Trek" universe. They are decimal numbers, usually rounded to a single decimal place, [The writer's guide entries, one of which is quoted in this article, confirm that they are decimal numbers.] which replace absolute Gregorian calendar dates. The in-universe behavior of stardates is much less transparent than that of any known calendar [If it weren't, a conversion formula would have been determined by now.] because out-of-universe writers chose the numbers more or less arbitrarily, [See the quote from the writer's guide.] depending on the era of "Star Trek" in question. [Stardates were less arbitrary in the TNG era.] One of the stated out-of-universe reasons for stardates was the need to establish the events in the series as taking place far into the future without tying the episodes down to a specific date in time. ["The Making of Star Trek," by Stephen E. Whitfield.]

tardate properties

Stardate numbers generally increase with time [The range changed from 1xxx to 5xxx during the original series, to 7xxx in TMP, to 8xxx and 9xxx in the other movies, only to jump to 4xxxx and 5xxxx in the TNG era, confirming a general increase with time.] , although locally they increase with time at different rates, both within particular episodes as well as between. Some future stardates are lower than past stardates. The occasional decrease with time was more prevalent during the than during "", in which stardates increased with time more consistently. Stardates are rarely specified to more than a single decimal, though they have at times (see "TNG" episode #104 ""). The decimal following a stardate is usually omitted in conversation. [Examples: "All Good Things...", where the show's stardate is stated in coversation as 47988, "", where Alexander gives his birthdate as stardate 43205, and many others.] Stardates do not replace clock time, which is still commonly used and often shown next to stardates on displays. [Examples: "", where the computer tells Crusher that she arrived on the "Enterprise" on stardate 41154, followed by clock time, "", where we see clock time on a display showing Donald Varley's log.]

Relationship to the Gregorian calendar

Stardates are almost always used instead of explicit Gregorian dates such as July 6, 2367. [References to "current" Gregorian dates are extremely rare in "TNG" and nonexistent in "TOS". Commander Data gives the current year as 2364 in "", and it is not mentioned in "TNG" after that. Commander Chakotay gives the year as 2371 in the "Voyager" episode "Eye of the Needle".] They are used in the same fashion as Gregorian dates to identify a unique point in time. There is no evidence of special stardate units to replace the Gregorian units that are still used. Even the explicit Gregorian dates are still used, as evidenced in the "TNG" episode "" where crew biographies are given in Gregorian years. Stardates are not being retroactively applied to the past: the Gregorian calendar is used to describe centuries in general (e.g., "a time traveler from the 29th century") and always used for references to time before the 23rd century.

Backstage information

"Star Trek: The Original Series"

Stardates were created as an abstract idea without much thought to actual implementation. They are described as follows [ [http://groups.google.com/group/net.startrek/msg/430bd33b7e4ea98d Newsgroup post from net.startrek] ] in the writer's bible for the original series:

Furthermore, when pressed for an explanation, Roddenberry said the following for Stephen Whitfield's book "The Making of Star Trek":

Roddenberry admitted that he did not really understand this, and would rather forget about the whole thing (from Whitfield's book):

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" and beyond

In "Star Trek: The Next Generation", a slightly more systematic implementation of stardates was used. They were 5-digit numbers, initially starting with four (symbolically to represent the 24th century), and followed by the season number. Within these thousand-unit ranges, subranges were allocated to writers of episodes to use. After the first season, these increased monotonically between episodes. In ' and ' the same system was kept, incrementing to 48xxx in what would have been "TNG" season 8 (or actually the first season of "Voyager"), and wrapping round to 50xxx and beyond in season 10. The last season of "Voyager" takes place in stardates 54xxx.x.

Within a single episode, "TNG" writers have most commonly increased stardates at the rate of one unit per Earth day, contradicting the 1000 units per year used on the larger scale. Although closer to a usable system than they were in the original series, stardates remain inconsistent and often arbitrary. For example, Ron Moore has said flatly that stardates do not make sense and shouldn't be examined closely.

The following sections show the various writer's guide entries concerning stardates.

TNG Season 2

TNG Season 6

References

External links