12 First period of stardates: the original series (Investigation into stardates)
Description
This article is from the Stardates in Star Trek FAQ, by Andrew Main zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk with numerous contributions by others.
12 First period of stardates: the original series (Investigation into stardates)
Stardate 1533.6 was sometime during 2266-11-21. According to the Chronology,
the end of the series (SD 5943.7) was in early 2269. The is approximately
4400 units spanning two and a half years. A nice round number close to this
rate is 5 units per day. (4.8 units/day -- 0.2u/hour -- is also within the
possible range. It would be less plausible, however, because it relates to
hours, which are purely a human invention, whereas days are a natural
phenomenon.)
With this rate, to make things easier, it can be assumed that any exact
multiple of 5 units is midnight. So the Thanksgiving day in question,
2266-11-22, runs from exactly SD 1535 to just before SD 1540. Therefore, SD
5940 is 00:00 on 2269-04-21 ("All Our Yesterdays" is on that day).
This rate puts "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in 2266, in contradiction to the
speculative date in the Chronology. (This is not a problem, because there is
no stronger evidence to back up that particular speculation.) It also set
dates for a number of other events that the Chronology has assigned
conjectural dates. It gives us a date of 2270-02-09 for ST:TMP, which is not
acceptable. ST:TMP should occur in late 2271, to give Kirk time to have "not
logged a single star hour in two and a half years". So the stardate rate must
have changed at some stardate between 5943.7 and 7411.4.
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