I've always gone by what the Star Trek Chronology books stated as canon with the possibility of some very minor wiggle room. Because Star Trek only aired for three seasons, as I see it, Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise in 2264, took the ship out on some minor space detail until 2265 when his Five-Year Mission began. When we first see the Enterprise in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," its roughly a year into the mission. Because of the nature of episodic television in those days, it's hard to say how much time has elapsed between episodes especially with how Star Dates seem to work in TOS; There could have been adventures we didn't see take place between episodes. In any case, the Enterprise returned in 2270, Kirk is promoted to Admiral and spends to the next two & half years sitting behind a desk. Kirk and the Enterprise are back in action to deal with V'Ger in middle of 2272, afterwards they went on a second fiver-year mission we didn't see. By the time of Star Trek II, it is now 2285.
The Wrath of Khan states that Khan has been marooned on Ceti Alpha V for 15 years since Space Seed. If we say that Space Seed is 2267, then The Wrath of Khan would be in 2282. The 2285 date could only be justified if we accepted that Space Seed occurred in the final year of Kirk's original five year mission. I prefer to prioritise screen evidence over the books, because separate books regularly contradict one another and screen evidence. For example, although this is not for chronology, Geoffrey Mandel's Star Trek Star Charts, which totally disregard screen evidence, but still have been adopted by fans as canon.
@@Mr_Sovik The thing is that the Star Trek Chronology Books are sourced directly from the onscreen material by people who worked in the Star Trek Franchise of that time, Mike and Dinese Okuda. I am more inclined to take their word over anything JJ Abrams and Alex Kurtzman try to crap out as canon. The Space Seed/Wrath of Khan time-jump disparity is a product of an ill-thought-out consideration in the writing. Space Seed aired in 1967. Wrath of Khan was released in 1982, there's your 15 years. The same problem occurs in 1984's Search for Spock when Admiral Morrow mentioned that "the Enterprise is 20-year-old", which was a subtle nod to The Cage pilot which was produced in 1964, still an erroneous comment for the Admiral to make as he should know the Enterprise is roughly 40yrs old. It's one of those instances that I find it acceptable to ignore unintentional inconsistencies as opposed to the blatant violations like in Nu-Trek that are based on pure stupidity and malice of the product.
@@TONYGILLEY I am certainly not advocating that we consider any modern show pretending to be Star Trek. I prioritise what is established on screen in actual Star Trek and only use backstage sources to contextualise, not supplant. The idea that Enterprise is 40 years old does not come from canon, but it is certainly true that Enterprise is likely over 30, rather than Morrow's 20. However, if one ignores the non-canonical system that sets each TOS episode 300 years after its airdate, then it is possible to reduce the lifetime down to 25 years. (Have The Menagerie be in 2270 and Space Seed in 2265. Even introducing Robert April from The Animated Series does not cause issues unless we require that he have commanded Enterprise for a significant length of time.)
I’ve always thought that TOS took place in 2264-69. There was the first five year mission. Then shortly after the series ended there was a second five year mission but it was cut short because the Enterprise was scheduled for the TMP refit. During that time might’ve seen Kirk get promoted, Spock went on leave along with Bones. Decker took command during the refit process. TMP takes place in 2279. Star Trek 2-4 takes place between 2282-83. Star Trek V takes place in late 2283/early 2284. Star Trek VI takes place in 2291. Which means that the Enterprise A had a shorter service life because Starfleet was satisfied with Excelsior’s performance trials and began phasing out the Constitution Class. Then Generations is 2294. Then after that is the seventy year period to the beginning of TNG.
2266-2269, exactly 300 years from the when the series aired. The first season is the 2nd year of the 5-year mission. The last season is the 4th year. So, 2265-2270 is the generally recognized timeframe of the 5-year mission. And TMP is commonly pegged as occurring in late 2272 or early 2273. My guess is Kirk was promoted once the 5-year mission ended, just like Robert April. (Pike seems to have served on Enterprise for three 5-year missions, and part or all of April's 5-year mission as his XO.) Decker took over as captain on Kirk's recommendation. 6 months after Decker took over, they went in for the refit. The refit took 18 months, so that would place it in 2272. TAS. which Roddenberry considered non-canonical, is said to occur during the 5th year of the 5-year mission.
And then there's Trelane referencing events of the late 1800s as being "900 years ago", implying TOS takes place in the 28th Century. Obviously this is an odd outlier that needs to be written off, but goes to show how vague they were about when the show was supposed to take place.
He references Napoleon, but which one? if they mean the first Napoleon, it could mean the very late 1700s to early 1800s at the start of his being ruler of France. He died in 1821, so very early 19th century. He also speaks Germanic to to Lt. Jaegar, gives him a Prussian salute, but Prussia was around for a long time and if Trelane is focused on Napoleon Bonaparte I, that pretty much locks the time frame to the late 1700s to early 1800s.
I wish Star Trek was set in the 28th century. If the writers of TOS and TNG knew what we know now, they’d have set it farther out. Subsequent sci-fi like Halo sets far less optimistic predictions about humanity’s technological and societal progress. Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future was so twisted it’s often a parody of itself. “Starfleet is not a military organization.” Is Picard delusional or brainwashed?
With SNW, we have dialog and implied evidence that the timeline between Apollo 11 in 1969 and First Contact in 2063 is a battleground of time traveling factions looking to influence the founding of the Federation, which really explains why there is no cohesive series of events over that nearly 100 year period.
Did Decker know it was Voyager 6? His remark could have been the start of the Voyager program, not just individual launch dates. He might just have difficulties with dates, a lot of people do.
It's stated as a launch date: KIRK: V-G-E-R ...V-O-Y-A-G-E-R ...Voyager! ...Voyager VI? DECKER: NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Jim, this was launched more than three hundred years ago. A launch some 300 years prior would place it in 1973. Space travel and technology in general in Star Trek is shown as much more advanced than in real life. The Voyager program was originally part of the Mariner spacecraft series, but later developed into its own thing, and by sending separate pairs of spacecraft on different trajectories, including to Pluto, and the Saturn V with a fourth state was even on the table as a means to ensure a fast launch. Because of the discovery of the planetary alignment that would occur in the late 70s, and budgets being cut, only two spacecraft got built and they took advantage of the alignment for planetary gravity assists.
@@mikedicenso2778 Would this work? TMP was set in the 2270's with no exact date given. Voyager probes were launched in 77, only 16 days apart. Lets say Trekverse Nasa launched the other Voyagers like the first two, some 10-20 days between launches, that would still be in 1977. That might help us put a date to TMP. Its not 2277. 2278 is to close. 2279 would work. Fits time line, launch dates and Deckers comment.
@@radeakins Star Trek was always showing a more rapid and advanced progression in technology. Just look at the DY-100 interplanetary freighter from "Space Seed", said to be from the 1990s. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that we didn't have anything like that, especially cryogenic sleeper tech. They've tried retconning some of this, but it is pretty a hard and fast feature. So, in the TOS timeline, the Mariner MK II/Voyager spacecraft are launched on 4-stage Saturn Vs, with maybe some launched during the optimal window a few years later.
I can’t recall the details, but I recall on one Trek forum, long ago, a serious look at the chronology and TMP’s place in it. I think the conclusion was it had to be in the late 2270s/early 2280s. Certainly it’s always felt like 2271 is too early!
Heres a video idea; where are the phaser apertures located on the enterprise and other starfleet vessels, ive always held the belief that the bulb disco balls atop and below the saucer and at the aft above the hangar bay of the constitution class were where the phasers came from
You left out several critical pieces of information, start with a big specific date given in Star Trek: Voyager's "Q2" from Icheb reciting a very thoroughly researched report on Kirk's career: "Though it was a blatant violation of the Prime Directive, Kirk saved the Pelosians from extinction, just as he had the Baezians and the Chenari many years earlier. *Finally, in the year 2270, Kirk completed his historic five year mission* and one of the greatest chapters in Starfleet history came to a close. A new chapter began when Kirk regained command of the Enterprise." In other words, there was no second five year mission before TMP. TAS *is* the missing year or two of the that mission and is even stated as such by D.C. Fontana and the other production staff that worked on the show. Another piece of information comes from Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations" which takes place in 236 is stated to be "A hundred and five years, one month, and twelve days ago.". Given that DS9 season 5 takes place in 2373, that would place Season 2 of TOS and the events of "The Trouble with Tribbles" in 2268, just two years prior to the end of the five-year mission. Thus TAS is the final year of Kirk's five year mission on the Enterprise, with the Enterprise returning for its major refit, which adds at least 2.5 years and places TMP sometime in late 2272 or early 2273. From that we can work backwards towards a starting year of 2265 for the five year mission under Kirk. If TMP takes place in 2273, subtracting 300 years gives us a launch date of 1973 for Voyager 6, and it makes sense given the much more advanced and well-funded space exploration that is depicted.
"It was comfortably under three hundred years". No, it was maybe a decade out after 300 years. By the time of ST, big-event space probes will have been long forgotten. It's like trying to remember when Cook's Pacific voyages took place. I bet most people couldn't place them within a decade.
In my own thoughts about this, I believe the motion picture is set in 2273 - based mostly on Kirk's recount of being Chief of Starfleet Operations for 2 and a half years, corroborated by Decker's remark of Kirk not logging a single mission for 2 years. I think that when the Enterprise returned to Earth in 2270 following its five-year mission, it took a year to dismantle and remove the TOS interiors and equipment. Once that was done, it took a further 18 months to redesign the Enterprise both internally and externally.
I've thought for a while now that the Star Trek timeline is far too constricted. So much happens in what is effectively our near future, and then seems to gather pace very quickly from there. "Enterprise", for instance seems far too soon after the First Contact movie and also too close to TOS. Additionally, as you've referenced here, The Motion Picture has such a short turn around, chronologically speaking, from the end of TOS what with both a massive ship overhaul and the aging of the characters (implied of course, but not really properly referenced until the wrath of kahn), that what like, 18 months or something (is that it?), having passed between series and movie, is just completely unbelievable. But anyway, what do I know? Not much, that's for sure
Uss New jersey was reactivated and extensivly modernized in about the same time frame from 1981 to 1982. And about 3 months of that was spent towing the thing. So given 23rd century technology coupled with the ship already in the yard.......yeah I'd say they could pull it off.
Scotty says the refit took 18 months up to that point, but Kirk was Chief of Starfleet Operations for 2.5 years by the time of TMP. More work was needed according to Scotty so it was a major rush job to get the Enterprise into service for the intercept mission. According to Echeb in Voyager's "Q2" episode, the end of the five year mission under Kirk was 2270, a pretty solid date, so TMP takes place in late 2272 or early 2273.
Kirk's 5-year mission ran from 2265 to 2270 - the end date is confirmed in the Voyager episode 'Q2' ("in the year 2270, Kirk completed his historic five year mission"). Assuming Kirk was immediately promoted to Chief of Operations - a post he's been in for 2.5 years by TMP - would date the movie to 2272 or 2273. The TNG episode 'Cause and Effect' shows the USS Bozeman crew - from 2278 - wearing the maroon uniforms. In all, TMP is between 2272 and 2278; probably 2273.
Another great video! 🎉❤ Like others, I like the Star Trek Chronology and it’s later revised form. For me, Kirk took command of the Enterprise roughly sometime in 2262. The ship was being refit and then went out on missions, not a specific five year one. Where No Man has Gone Before occrured in 2263, roughly. The Series begins in 2264, around September. Kirk’s first 5year mission is mostly covered by the series and the animated series. While a number of the animated episodes were just remakes of classic episodes, made as sequels, there were a number of original episodes that could fit nicely. Chekhov was spending that time going through further training in security and tactical topics. The alien crew members were just beginning to mix, after several years of segregated crews on ships such Valient with an all Vulcan crew. Kirk’s second five year mission on the Enterprise followed after The Motion Picture. After that he briefly retired, as we saw in Generations, but then went back and eventually took charge of Starfleet Academy. Spock likely Commanded the Enterprise for two 5 year tours, with refit times. The rest of the classic Kirk films, Wrath of Khan to Final Frontier all happen in the late 2280s. Just weeks or months in between films. Undiscovered Country takes 5 years after Final Frontier, given dialogue in that film. That is all IMO. But as I can see, many think similar or the same. For me, the Kutzman Trek is in the Trek multiverse, but they are not at all in the Prime. Same with Abrams. Picard is not really part of the Prime then say All Good Things future glimpses or Voyagers or DS9’s. Just suggestive at best. Again, this is IMO.
I think you might mean the starship Intrepid from TOS: The Immunity Syndrome, which had an all-Vulcan crew. I do wonder if species not mixing has more to do with Vulcans preferring a higher gravity, so it would be impractical for humans to join them.
@@Mr_Sovik Thanks for the correction! 😉👍 I thought the environmental differences but also dietary would be factors for crewing ships. Then there are the smells, as Enterprise showed. Gravity, temperature and lighting and even air pressure could all have affects. While able to deal with it in short term, long term could have an affect. By TMP, they figure out a comfortable balance as well as replicators in quarters with the needed catalog.
I tried dating The Motion Picture but after we ate dinner together it got up and said it was going to the bathroom and I never it again and I got stuck with the bill.
I think Decker just made an error .. like a spur of the moment quote we all do without thinking it through. but what does surprise me is that they never recognised the Voyager "design" .. there are a few "Red Flags" in the film .. When Spock says .. "Radio" .... come on .. Radio transmission!!! .. They SHOULD have assumed it was a terrestrial "thing" sending that! ..... Also Kirk was "amazed" to find out that a "Machine is sent back to find it's creator" ... how is that a difficult concept to compute when Vegr is HEADING DIRECTLY to Earth ..... So It is a "machine" going back to Earth to find the builders - namely NASA Also ..Decker and Kirk where surprised it was Voyager 6 .. and didn't know about it .. BUT they could get the "Access Codes" for the Voyager ... What the heck are Starfleet doing storing Access Codes for a old Space Probe that vanished 300+ yrs ago and Decker "Knew" how to program the ground test computer .. !!
Thank you for this video. I like seeing more people taking an investigative approach to Star Trek's chronology. 'Conventional chronology' does not place The Motion Picture in 2271, but likely 2273. When Kirk justifies to Decker his assumption of command, he explains that his experience is only five years in space, hence there was only one five year mission. Kirk has served 2.5 years as Chief of Starfleet Operations, and it is implied that he has not been in space in that time. If we expand the investigation to include the Voyager episode Q2 we know that Kirk's five year mission ends in 2270, placing The Motion Picture sometime in 2273. I think it is a little improper to assume Voyager 6 launched after 2, given that in reality, 2 launched before 1 by sixteen days. TNG: The Neutral Zone is set in 2364. The film Generations is set some unknown years later (One season is not one year in TNG. This is an assumption for which there is inadequate evidence.) and is set 78 years after the launch of the Enterprise B, which was said to be about 30 years since Kirk took command of the original Enterprise . This places The Motion Picture after 2264 (by how many years are between The Neutral Zone and Generations). There is another component to using Generations, if we also consider The Undiscovered Country, where McCoy claims to have been Enterprise chief medical officer for 27 years. While we know he wasn't the chief surgeon originally, because of Where No Man Has Gone Before, for theorising, let us assume that he took the role in 2265. The Undiscovered Country would be set around 2292 and Generations would likely be another 3 years later, in 2295, with the TNG component occurring 78 years later in 2373, nine years after The Neutral Zone (not the 6 years that would be assumed by one season equalling one year). Some more fuel for TOS' confused dating: The Squire of Gothos - Planet Gothos is 900 light years from Earth, where Trelaine has apparently observed the early nineteenth century, placing The Original Series in the 2800s, if we assume that Trelaine is using a normal telescope (which it certainly isn't if it can resolve Earth from such a distance). Space Seed - The Botany Bay departs Earth in the 1990s, discovered by Enterprise two hundred years laters. Even considering measurement uncertainty, TOS couldn't be after 2250, if this is believed. It is referenced again in The Wrath of Khan.
Geordi explicitly says in Generations Farpoint was seven years ago. Check and mate and it doesn't even take any effort to tell you're talking out of your ass.
@@XH1927 Thank you for this new information that I had not considered. Here are the lines of dialogue in question. DATA: When you said to Commander Riker 'The clown can stay...' Ha, ha, ha. '...but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to go.' Ha, ha, ha. LAFORGE: What are you talking about? DATA: During the Farpoint mission. We were on the bridge and you told the joke. That was the punch line. Ha, ha, ha! LAFORGE: Farpoint? Data, that was seven years ago. You are claiming that this Farpoint mission had to be the same one as depicted in Encounter at Farpoint. This is an assumption that comfortably fits the information at a base level, but it does not preclude the possibility that Enterprise has other missions to Farpoint and it ignores some oddities. By Encounter at Farpoint, Starfleet had never even seen Ferengi, so it seems very odd that they would be joking about them in this way. Such repartee might be expected in a mission to Farpoint some years after the first. We also never see this interaction during Encounter at Farpoint. Of course, La Forge's gorilla joke could have occurred off-screen, but there are few opportunities where La Forge, Riker and Data are on the bridge together. Riker is also La Forge's new XO. They have a professional relationship and La Forge is unlikely to shout out jokes while on duty. It takes until the season two episode The Measure of a Man to see the crew playing Poker together. If we accepted it as fact that there are seven years between Encounter at Farpoint and Generations, we would have to disregard the evidence in my above comment, which remains valid (only contradictory). However, given that it is unlikely that La Forge would be joking about Ferengi in S1E1/2 and that La Forge has a new, professional relationship with Riker, it seems unreasonable to believe that the Farpoint mission La Forge was referencing must have been the one we have seen on screen.
@@Mr_Sovik After Encounter at Farpoint the Farpoint station ceased to goddamn exist, as it was only sustained by the jellyfish creature's presence. Again, you're trying to argue a point without either a basis in the lore or an understanding of what happened in the actual episode. There were no other missions to Farpoint because Farpoint WASN'T THERE ANYMORE.
@@XH1927 And again you make assumptions. You are correct that Farpoint station no longer existed as of the end of Encounter at Farpoint. Might it have been replaced? Might La Forge's line 'Farpoint mission' refer to something different entirely? We don't know. A probable solution is rarely the only solution. We shouldn't claim one probable solution as canon.
I have always sneered at the idea of taking a character's estimation of when something happened as a true dating mythology. I mean, really, everything conveniently rounds to a zero? In reality, very few, if any, people can accurately date when things happened, much less obscure historical occurances from 3 centuries back. Something occurring on 21 April 1724? Hummmm.... it's the day before Johann Sebastian Bach leads the first performance of his cantata Du Hirte Israel? Who knew? People are more likely to estimate, like saying the Seven Years war was over 250 years ago. That is incorrect on one hand and imprecise on the other, 250 years ago was 1774 which neither 1754, 1757 or 1763. (To argue about when the war started and ended) Incorrect or inaccurate, it is the sort of estimation a person would as from a memory of its study. Thus, I don't think someone saying Kahn ruled about 200 or 300 years ago would be out if the question. They ought say "hundreds of years ago" to speak in "significant figures." Only Spock would say Years, Months and Days."
I think you are missing that Decker says 'more than three hundred years ago'. If he had simply stated 'three hundred years ago' you would be correct; we could assume that Voyager 6 was launched sometime between 250 and 350 years prior and we would have no problem. However, 'more than' indicates that the range is between 300 and 350 years prior, which is where the issue arises, as this places the Voyager program sometime prior to the 1970s.
@@Mr_Sovik I mean to say that people, in general conversation, are not that accurate. Now, if he had been reading it off of some communication that would be a different story. Even majorly significant historical events are usually discussed, without Google, in vague terms. Much less the launch of a space probe. It would be like knowing what date the Titanic's keel was laid off the top of one's head. I would speculate, 1910.... Google Says 31 March 1909.
TNG s1 is set 78 years after the conclusion of the TOS Enterprise's 5-year mission. This is well documented and explicitly called out in the writer's bible.
I perceived that TMP Kirk had been at a desk job for ten years, thus giving him enough time to settle in and get fat or look and seem out of shape to actively command a starship (no more running and jumping.) With the years between TMP and TWOK I thought maybe they had been cruising around on a new assignment (can't even imagine what) given to the crew by Starfleet as a reward for saving earth. I was just about seven when TMP was in theaters and some things perceived back then were based on real world experiences with the old people around me and how they talked about things. And don't forget about Dr.McCoy as an elderly man was given a tour of the TNG Enterprise, I believe in the pilot episode. So I would say TNG is maybe... 50 years after TMP? Is the Next Generation Canon?
Forget all those issues with the voyager dating. I’ve got a Mandela effect for you. I swear that in my old VHS copy of TMP, Decker refers to “the 19th century” instead of “the 1990s.”
I put the 5 Year Mission in the late 2250s to early 2260s and TMP is late 2270s to early 2280s, at least 15 or 20 years after Kirk's first mission. It's at least another 5 or 10 years before WoK.
1:21 Fun Fact: In Germany, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" was the first episode to be broadcast and the translators pretty much ran with that statement. The german TOS opening monologue stated that it was the year 2200.
My headcanon is built around that the "Enterprise is 20 years old" comment in III is referring to that it's actually 20 years AFTER TMP's refit, or at least the refit between Pike's version and Kirk's. So something like: Kirk takes over>5 year mission>refit, TMP, 2nd 5 year mission>8-10 years>TWoK. "Man I haven't seen in *15 years*" is a rough estimate Kirk gives to when the first 5 year mission had ended, but Khan was earlier on in the 5 year mission. IDK. Just my headcanon.
The ‘20 years old’ for the enterprise is a reference to the original Enterprise 3 foot model and possibly the 11 foot long shooting model being 20 years old. If Pike’s trip to Talos 4 was 13 years before the 1st season of TOS, and the 5 year voyage was about a year after commencing, then the 1st 5 year voyage ends after 17 years of the earliest known TOS enterprise mission. This makes the enterprise close to 2 decades old or older in TMP, with probably another decade of age post refit until ST2 and ST3. It’s possible that Wrath of Khan follows just a year or so after TMP, but it’s implied that quite a bit of time has passed between those movies, enough time for another 5 year mission and for the enterprise to become a cadet training vessel.
My head-canon is that Admiral Morrow misspoke and said "twenty" when he meant "forty". Kirk says later in the same film that the Enterprise was his home for twenty years, making clear that Morrow's figure does not include the April and Pike eras.
Decker mentioned to Kirk that he hadn't logged a single hour in space for 2 years. So I've always assumed TMP was around 2 years after the end of the 5 year mission.
Well there has to have been some good chunk of time in between the motion picture and wrath of khan otherwise refitting enterprise wouldve been pointless. Ive always gone with 2271. The refit had been 16 months at that point so the five year mission ended sometime in mid 2270. I dont really take the animated series all that seriously canon wise but thats just me.
To be honest I tend to treat any Star Trek Movie as "based on Star Trek" as they flew off on a Star Trek Discovery style tangent that can very easily be taken to be an entirely different Universe i.e. "Blame the temporal cold war".
I think the two dialogs that mention two hundred years, three hundred years are the kind naturally said without any thought, so I wouldn't go by them when trying to date the show or movies. It is clear that Kirk only had "5 years out there" before he became Admiral, so there's that.
What if we start with Star Trek: Generations and work backwards? We know that the events of Generations take place in 2371 (ie, shortly after "All Good Things...", which takes place at the end of 2370), and we also know from the on-screen caption before Worf's promotion ceremony that the TNG portion of the film takes place 78 years after the launch of the Enterprise-B, thereby dating the Ent-B's launch to 2293. Therefore, this is a hard end-date to the TOS era - everything HAS to have taken place before this date, because Kirk is missing-and-presumed-dead as of the Enterprise-B's encounter with the Nexus.
This does assume that Generations occurred in 2371 and disregards that The Undiscovered Country is set 27 years after the start of Kirk's five year mission and Enterprise (B) launches approximately 3 years later. 2293 could be correct, but I don't think it is a 'hard' end-date. I could see it being fairly placed some years later.
STTNG was set 80 years in the future of the original series! That's what they were saying about it when it came out, and several episodes make reference to that fact.
Do you know of any such episodes? I can find TNG: The Naked Now, where Picard states only 'decades ago'. There are the episodes TNG: Unification 1/2 where Sarek assumes Spock met Pardek at the 'Khitomer Conference' and Pardek claims that he has known Spock for eighty years. If that Khitomer conference is the same as the one from The Undiscovered Country then that would place Unification around 2372, with ±5 year uncertainty, which seems accurate enough.
Don't forget - Voyagers 1 & 2 were launched to co-incide with specific (and very infrequent) planetary alignments to take advantage of the gravity assists the alignments would afford the craft. Perhaps you could look at similar alignments later on and work out when V 3 & 4, V 5 & 6 (assuming they were launched in pairs) occurred, thus giving a rough estimate of the launch date for V6.
I would assume the later voyagers were sent to Pluto and possibly other transneptunian objects, or even improved models sent to nearby interstellar objects.
If you are willing to accept longer missions, there is a NASA report from 1973 (NASA Technical Reports Server number 19740004371), that outlines Grand Tour (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, & Neptune) missions launched from 1976 through 1980, and a second set of yearly launch windows from 1990 through 1993 if you fly by Saturn first (Saturn-Jupiter-Uranus-Neptune) thanks to some fancy Gravity Assist work. With a minor course adjustment, you can even hit Pluto after Neptune on the 1992 window.
I think between TOS, TMP and Khan passed as much time in universe as in reality. No major reason to think otherwise. Also all mentions of years and timespans in TOS and its movies are not to be taken super exact since the proper timeline didn't really come into existence until TNG.
I just assumed that the timelines were intentionally vague, like alot of things in early trek. On another topic, I wouldn't mind a brief exploration of the differences in functionality of dilithium between the series. The crystals are depicted as energy sources in TOS, but were re-purposed as a focusing medium for matter/antimatter in Next gen.
I didn’t pick up with the series until its 2ɴᴅ season was underway, but as a roughly 10 to 12 year old kid when 'The Next Generation' kicked off, I had all the magazine, book, other written materials, and even VHS recordings of interview broadcasts and other feature bits, and I clearly remember it being stated and reiterated, perhaps even by Roddenberry himself, that Picard and crew of the USS Enterprise 'D' picks up approximately “80 years after” the original series.
I think that may have meant (or at least can be interpreted to mean) 80 years after the TOS movies, not the TOS TV series. In fact, I seem to recall seeing the precise figure of "79 years" somewhere. 79 years before 2364 (the year specified in "The Neutral Zone") is 2285, the year of "Wrath of Khan" and "Search for Spock" in the conventional chronology. Since McCoy is 137 in "Farpoint," the timespan between TOS and TNG is somewhere on the order of 100 years. According to the conventional chronology, McCoy was 39 at the beginning of TOS Season 1. He certainly looks older than that (DeForest Kelly was 46 when he began playing McCoy), and, interestingly, McCoy was 147 rather than 137 in an earlier draft of "Farpoint." Nonetheless, in my head-canon, McCoy is in fact 39 in "The Corbomite Maneuver"; his face has been weathered by the stress of his divorce, his separation from his daughter and possibly the circumstances of his father's death (we don't know how long before "Final Frontier" that happened), but his overall physical health is better than would be expected for a 39-year-old in the 21st century, and he is, as we know, destined to live at least 98 more years.
I always considered the Animated series to be part of the original five year mission. Add two and a half years after that to TMP. Like another has said, the "2nd 5 year mission" was with the refit Enterprise. As far as "more than 300 years ago" I'm sure Decker just made a mistake like many people today confuse events from the 1700 and 1800's.
They returned from 5 year mission on 2271. A second fice year mission 2272-77. Kirks 2 years as Admiral. Another 5 year mission after TMP. leanding in to Kirk training cadets.
I've always gone by what the Star Trek Chronology books stated as canon with the possibility of some very minor wiggle room. Because Star Trek only aired for three seasons, as I see it, Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise in 2264, took the ship out on some minor space detail until 2265 when his Five-Year Mission began. When we first see the Enterprise in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," its roughly a year into the mission. Because of the nature of episodic television in those days, it's hard to say how much time has elapsed between episodes especially with how Star Dates seem to work in TOS; There could have been adventures we didn't see take place between episodes. In any case, the Enterprise returned in 2270, Kirk is promoted to Admiral and spends to the next two & half years sitting behind a desk. Kirk and the Enterprise are back in action to deal with V'Ger in middle of 2272, afterwards they went on a second fiver-year mission we didn't see. By the time of Star Trek II, it is now 2285.
The Wrath of Khan states that Khan has been marooned on Ceti Alpha V for 15 years since Space Seed. If we say that Space Seed is 2267, then The Wrath of Khan would be in 2282. The 2285 date could only be justified if we accepted that Space Seed occurred in the final year of Kirk's original five year mission.
I prefer to prioritise screen evidence over the books, because separate books regularly contradict one another and screen evidence. For example, although this is not for chronology, Geoffrey Mandel's Star Trek Star Charts, which totally disregard screen evidence, but still have been adopted by fans as canon.
@@Mr_Sovik The thing is that the Star Trek Chronology Books are sourced directly from the onscreen material by people who worked in the Star Trek Franchise of that time, Mike and Dinese Okuda. I am more inclined to take their word over anything JJ Abrams and Alex Kurtzman try to crap out as canon.
The Space Seed/Wrath of Khan time-jump disparity is a product of an ill-thought-out consideration in the writing. Space Seed aired in 1967. Wrath of Khan was released in 1982, there's your 15 years. The same problem occurs in 1984's Search for Spock when Admiral Morrow mentioned that "the Enterprise is 20-year-old", which was a subtle nod to The Cage pilot which was produced in 1964, still an erroneous comment for the Admiral to make as he should know the Enterprise is roughly 40yrs old.
It's one of those instances that I find it acceptable to ignore unintentional inconsistencies as opposed to the blatant violations like in Nu-Trek that are based on pure stupidity and malice of the product.
@@TONYGILLEY I am certainly not advocating that we consider any modern show pretending to be Star Trek.
I prioritise what is established on screen in actual Star Trek and only use backstage sources to contextualise, not supplant.
The idea that Enterprise is 40 years old does not come from canon, but it is certainly true that Enterprise is likely over 30, rather than Morrow's 20. However, if one ignores the non-canonical system that sets each TOS episode 300 years after its airdate, then it is possible to reduce the lifetime down to 25 years. (Have The Menagerie be in 2270 and Space Seed in 2265. Even introducing Robert April from The Animated Series does not cause issues unless we require that he have commanded Enterprise for a significant length of time.)
The Star Trek Chronology also explains why they pick all those dates as they sifted through the onscreen information, since it is indeed inconsistent.
@@TONYGILLEY I with you on not really enjoying nu trek, but I highly doubt there is malice - it's worse, they simply don't give a fuck.
Yeah. Tend to give TMP a later date to allow for a "Phase II" second five year mission. It also accounts for the ages of the actors.
Ive always thought it was 2271 or 72. The second movie was a decade later.
I’ve always thought that TOS took place in 2264-69.
There was the first five year mission. Then shortly after the series ended there was a second five year mission but it was cut short because the Enterprise was scheduled for the TMP refit. During that time might’ve seen Kirk get promoted, Spock went on leave along with Bones. Decker took command during the refit process.
TMP takes place in 2279. Star Trek 2-4 takes place between 2282-83.
Star Trek V takes place in late 2283/early 2284. Star Trek VI takes place in 2291.
Which means that the Enterprise A had a shorter service life because Starfleet was satisfied with Excelsior’s performance trials and began phasing out the Constitution Class.
Then Generations is 2294. Then after that is the seventy year period to the beginning of TNG.
2266-2269, exactly 300 years from the when the series aired. The first season is the 2nd year of the 5-year mission. The last season is the 4th year. So, 2265-2270 is the generally recognized timeframe of the 5-year mission. And TMP is commonly pegged as occurring in late 2272 or early 2273.
My guess is Kirk was promoted once the 5-year mission ended, just like Robert April. (Pike seems to have served on Enterprise for three 5-year missions, and part or all of April's 5-year mission as his XO.) Decker took over as captain on Kirk's recommendation. 6 months after Decker took over, they went in for the refit. The refit took 18 months, so that would place it in 2272.
TAS. which Roddenberry considered non-canonical, is said to occur during the 5th year of the 5-year mission.
this is how I also interpret events
And then there's Trelane referencing events of the late 1800s as being "900 years ago", implying TOS takes place in the 28th Century. Obviously this is an odd outlier that needs to be written off, but goes to show how vague they were about when the show was supposed to take place.
He references Napoleon, but which one? if they mean the first Napoleon, it could mean the very late 1700s to early 1800s at the start of his being ruler of France. He died in 1821, so very early 19th century. He also speaks Germanic to to Lt. Jaegar, gives him a Prussian salute, but Prussia was around for a long time and if Trelane is focused on Napoleon Bonaparte I, that pretty much locks the time frame to the late 1700s to early 1800s.
I wish Star Trek was set in the 28th century. If the writers of TOS and TNG knew what we know now, they’d have set it farther out. Subsequent sci-fi like Halo sets far less optimistic predictions about humanity’s technological and societal progress.
Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future was so twisted it’s often a parody of itself. “Starfleet is not a military organization.” Is Picard delusional or brainwashed?
While I love the TMP era the most, I've always taken TNG era dating to account for TOS. It also fits up thematically as far at 1969=2269 and so forth.
One of the excuses used a lot for discrepancies of past dates in the 20th Century is lost data during WWIII.
With SNW, we have dialog and implied evidence that the timeline between Apollo 11 in 1969 and First Contact in 2063 is a battleground of time traveling factions looking to influence the founding of the Federation, which really explains why there is no cohesive series of events over that nearly 100 year period.
Did Decker know it was Voyager 6? His remark could have been the start of the Voyager program, not just individual launch dates. He might just have difficulties with dates, a lot of people do.
That's about my guess.
It's stated as a launch date:
KIRK: V-G-E-R ...V-O-Y-A-G-E-R ...Voyager! ...Voyager VI?
DECKER: NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Jim, this was launched more than three hundred years ago.
A launch some 300 years prior would place it in 1973. Space travel and technology in general in Star Trek is shown as much more advanced than in real life. The Voyager program was originally part of the Mariner spacecraft series, but later developed into its own thing, and by sending separate pairs of spacecraft on different trajectories, including to Pluto, and the Saturn V with a fourth state was even on the table as a means to ensure a fast launch. Because of the discovery of the planetary alignment that would occur in the late 70s, and budgets being cut, only two spacecraft got built and they took advantage of the alignment for planetary gravity assists.
@@mikedicenso2778 Would this work?
TMP was set in the 2270's with no exact date given. Voyager probes were launched in 77, only 16 days apart. Lets say Trekverse Nasa launched the other Voyagers like the first two, some 10-20 days between launches, that would still be in 1977. That might help us put a date to TMP. Its not 2277. 2278 is to close. 2279 would work. Fits time line, launch dates and Deckers comment.
@@radeakins Star Trek was always showing a more rapid and advanced progression in technology. Just look at the DY-100 interplanetary freighter from "Space Seed", said to be from the 1990s.
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that we didn't have anything like that, especially cryogenic sleeper tech.
They've tried retconning some of this, but it is pretty a hard and fast feature. So, in the TOS timeline, the Mariner MK II/Voyager spacecraft are launched on 4-stage Saturn Vs, with maybe some launched during the optimal window a few years later.
I can’t recall the details, but I recall on one Trek forum, long ago, a serious look at the chronology and TMP’s place in it. I think the conclusion was it had to be in the late 2270s/early 2280s.
Certainly it’s always felt like 2271 is too early!
Icheb's report places the end of the five year mission in 2270, so late 2272 or early 2273 is the most likely year.
Heres a video idea; where are the phaser apertures located on the enterprise and other starfleet vessels, ive always held the belief that the bulb disco balls atop and below the saucer and at the aft above the hangar bay of the constitution class were where the phasers came from
I love your videos. Fan speculation can be so much fun!
For ye old algorithm 💪🖖🍻
Boy! These things are WAY too short. I settle in for some Star Trek content. And with drink in hand, it’s over in a flash. 😢❣️
You left out several critical pieces of information, start with a big specific date given in Star Trek: Voyager's "Q2" from Icheb reciting a very thoroughly researched report on Kirk's career:
"Though it was a blatant violation of the Prime Directive, Kirk saved the Pelosians from extinction, just as he had the Baezians and the Chenari many years earlier. *Finally, in the year 2270, Kirk completed his historic five year mission* and one of the greatest chapters in Starfleet history came to a close. A new chapter began when Kirk regained command of the Enterprise."
In other words, there was no second five year mission before TMP. TAS *is* the missing year or two of the that mission and is even stated as such by D.C. Fontana and the other production staff that worked on the show.
Another piece of information comes from Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations" which takes place in 236 is stated to be "A hundred and five years, one month, and twelve days ago.". Given that DS9 season 5 takes place in 2373, that would place Season 2 of TOS and the events of "The Trouble with Tribbles" in 2268, just two years prior to the end of the five-year mission. Thus TAS is the final year of Kirk's five year mission on the Enterprise, with the Enterprise returning for its major refit, which adds at least 2.5 years and places TMP sometime in late 2272 or early 2273.
From that we can work backwards towards a starting year of 2265 for the five year mission under Kirk.
If TMP takes place in 2273, subtracting 300 years gives us a launch date of 1973 for Voyager 6, and it makes sense given the much more advanced and well-funded space exploration that is depicted.
"It was comfortably under three hundred years". No, it was maybe a decade out after 300 years. By the time of ST, big-event space probes will have been long forgotten. It's like trying to remember when Cook's Pacific voyages took place. I bet most people couldn't place them within a decade.
In my own thoughts about this, I believe the motion picture is set in 2273 - based mostly on Kirk's recount of being Chief of Starfleet Operations for 2 and a half years, corroborated by Decker's remark of Kirk not logging a single mission for 2 years. I think that when the Enterprise returned to Earth in 2270 following its five-year mission, it took a year to dismantle and remove the TOS interiors and equipment. Once that was done, it took a further 18 months to redesign the Enterprise both internally and externally.
He would have held a flag rank for quite a while before holding such a position.
I think TMP takes place about 2285
I've thought for a while now that the Star Trek timeline is far too constricted. So much happens in what is effectively our near future, and then seems to gather pace very quickly from there.
"Enterprise", for instance seems far too soon after the First Contact movie and also too close to TOS.
Additionally, as you've referenced here, The Motion Picture has such a short turn around, chronologically speaking, from the end of TOS what with both a massive ship overhaul and the aging of the characters (implied of course, but not really properly referenced until the wrath of kahn), that what like, 18 months or something (is that it?), having passed between series and movie, is just completely unbelievable.
But anyway, what do I know? Not much, that's for sure
Uss New jersey was reactivated and extensivly modernized in about the same time frame from 1981 to 1982. And about 3 months of that was spent towing the thing. So given 23rd century technology coupled with the ship already in the yard.......yeah I'd say they could pull it off.
Scotty says the refit took 18 months up to that point, but Kirk was Chief of Starfleet Operations for 2.5 years by the time of TMP. More work was needed according to Scotty so it was a major rush job to get the Enterprise into service for the intercept mission. According to Echeb in Voyager's "Q2" episode, the end of the five year mission under Kirk was 2270, a pretty solid date, so TMP takes place in late 2272 or early 2273.
They invented stardates to avoid dating the show in the first place.
Kirk's 5-year mission ran from 2265 to 2270 - the end date is confirmed in the Voyager episode 'Q2' ("in the year 2270, Kirk completed his historic five year mission"). Assuming Kirk was immediately promoted to Chief of Operations - a post he's been in for 2.5 years by TMP - would date the movie to 2272 or 2273. The TNG episode 'Cause and Effect' shows the USS Bozeman crew - from 2278 - wearing the maroon uniforms. In all, TMP is between 2272 and 2278; probably 2273.
"UNIT dating" all over again. Just takes a couple of stray lines in the script to throw everything off.
Decker wasn't expecting someone to make a RUclips video figuring this crap out.
Another great video! 🎉❤
Like others, I like the Star Trek Chronology and it’s later revised form. For me, Kirk took command of the Enterprise roughly sometime in 2262. The ship was being refit and then went out on missions, not a specific five year one. Where No Man has Gone Before occrured in 2263, roughly. The Series begins in 2264, around September. Kirk’s first 5year mission is mostly covered by the series and the animated series. While a number of the animated episodes were just remakes of classic episodes, made as sequels, there were a number of original episodes that could fit nicely. Chekhov was spending that time going through further training in security and tactical topics. The alien crew members were just beginning to mix, after several years of segregated crews on ships such Valient with an all Vulcan crew. Kirk’s second five year mission on the Enterprise followed after The Motion Picture. After that he briefly retired, as we saw in Generations, but then went back and eventually took charge of Starfleet Academy. Spock likely Commanded the Enterprise for two 5 year tours, with refit times. The rest of the classic Kirk films, Wrath of Khan to Final Frontier all happen in the late 2280s. Just weeks or months in between films. Undiscovered Country takes 5 years after Final Frontier, given dialogue in that film. That is all IMO. But as I can see, many think similar or the same.
For me, the Kutzman Trek is in the Trek multiverse, but they are not at all in the Prime. Same with Abrams. Picard is not really part of the Prime then say All Good Things future glimpses or Voyagers or DS9’s. Just suggestive at best. Again, this is IMO.
I think you might mean the starship Intrepid from TOS: The Immunity Syndrome, which had an all-Vulcan crew. I do wonder if species not mixing has more to do with Vulcans preferring a higher gravity, so it would be impractical for humans to join them.
@@Mr_Sovik Thanks for the correction! 😉👍 I thought the environmental differences but also dietary would be factors for crewing ships. Then there are the smells, as Enterprise showed. Gravity, temperature and lighting and even air pressure could all have affects. While able to deal with it in short term, long term could have an affect. By TMP, they figure out a comfortable balance as well as replicators in quarters with the needed catalog.
I tried dating The Motion Picture but after we ate dinner together it got up and said it was going to the bathroom and I never it again and I got stuck with the bill.
I think Decker just made an error .. like a spur of the moment quote we all do without thinking it through. but what does surprise me is that they never recognised the Voyager "design" .. there are a few "Red Flags" in the film .. When Spock says .. "Radio" .... come on .. Radio transmission!!! .. They SHOULD have assumed it was a terrestrial "thing" sending that! ..... Also Kirk was "amazed" to find out that a "Machine is sent back to find it's creator" ... how is that a difficult concept to compute when Vegr is HEADING DIRECTLY to Earth ..... So It is a "machine" going back to Earth to find the builders - namely NASA
Also ..Decker and Kirk where surprised it was Voyager 6 .. and didn't know about it .. BUT they could get the "Access Codes" for the Voyager ... What the heck are Starfleet doing storing Access Codes for a old Space Probe that vanished 300+ yrs ago and Decker "Knew" how to program the ground test computer .. !!
The animated series is the final two years of the original five year mission. In my head, anyway.
Love your videos, I'm Mr Trek, maybe we should do a collaboration? :-)
I stick by the commonly held dates of 2271 or 2273.
I think about 2285.
There's a lot of years between being promoted from Captain to Chief of operations
@@M167A12285 is about when The Wrath of Khan takes place, 15 years after Space Seed.
Thank you for this video. I like seeing more people taking an investigative approach to Star Trek's chronology.
'Conventional chronology' does not place The Motion Picture in 2271, but likely 2273. When Kirk justifies to Decker his assumption of command, he explains that his experience is only five years in space, hence there was only one five year mission. Kirk has served 2.5 years as Chief of Starfleet Operations, and it is implied that he has not been in space in that time. If we expand the investigation to include the Voyager episode Q2 we know that Kirk's five year mission ends in 2270, placing The Motion Picture sometime in 2273.
I think it is a little improper to assume Voyager 6 launched after 2, given that in reality, 2 launched before 1 by sixteen days.
TNG: The Neutral Zone is set in 2364. The film Generations is set some unknown years later (One season is not one year in TNG. This is an assumption for which there is inadequate evidence.) and is set 78 years after the launch of the Enterprise B, which was said to be about 30 years since Kirk took command of the original Enterprise . This places The Motion Picture after 2264 (by how many years are between The Neutral Zone and Generations).
There is another component to using Generations, if we also consider The Undiscovered Country, where McCoy claims to have been Enterprise chief medical officer for 27 years. While we know he wasn't the chief surgeon originally, because of Where No Man Has Gone Before, for theorising, let us assume that he took the role in 2265. The Undiscovered Country would be set around 2292 and Generations would likely be another 3 years later, in 2295, with the TNG component occurring 78 years later in 2373, nine years after The Neutral Zone (not the 6 years that would be assumed by one season equalling one year).
Some more fuel for TOS' confused dating:
The Squire of Gothos - Planet Gothos is 900 light years from Earth, where Trelaine has apparently observed the early nineteenth century, placing The Original Series in the 2800s, if we assume that Trelaine is using a normal telescope (which it certainly isn't if it can resolve Earth from such a distance).
Space Seed - The Botany Bay departs Earth in the 1990s, discovered by Enterprise two hundred years laters. Even considering measurement uncertainty, TOS couldn't be after 2250, if this is believed. It is referenced again in The Wrath of Khan.
Geordi explicitly says in Generations Farpoint was seven years ago. Check and mate and it doesn't even take any effort to tell you're talking out of your ass.
@@XH1927 Thank you for this new information that I had not considered. Here are the lines of dialogue in question.
DATA: When you said to Commander Riker 'The clown can stay...' Ha, ha, ha. '...but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to go.' Ha, ha, ha.
LAFORGE: What are you talking about?
DATA: During the Farpoint mission. We were on the bridge and you told the joke. That was the punch line. Ha, ha, ha!
LAFORGE: Farpoint? Data, that was seven years ago.
You are claiming that this Farpoint mission had to be the same one as depicted in Encounter at Farpoint. This is an assumption that comfortably fits the information at a base level, but it does not preclude the possibility that Enterprise has other missions to Farpoint and it ignores some oddities. By Encounter at Farpoint, Starfleet had never even seen Ferengi, so it seems very odd that they would be joking about them in this way. Such repartee might be expected in a mission to Farpoint some years after the first.
We also never see this interaction during Encounter at Farpoint. Of course, La Forge's gorilla joke could have occurred off-screen, but there are few opportunities where La Forge, Riker and Data are on the bridge together. Riker is also La Forge's new XO. They have a professional relationship and La Forge is unlikely to shout out jokes while on duty. It takes until the season two episode The Measure of a Man to see the crew playing Poker together.
If we accepted it as fact that there are seven years between Encounter at Farpoint and Generations, we would have to disregard the evidence in my above comment, which remains valid (only contradictory). However, given that it is unlikely that La Forge would be joking about Ferengi in S1E1/2 and that La Forge has a new, professional relationship with Riker, it seems unreasonable to believe that the Farpoint mission La Forge was referencing must have been the one we have seen on screen.
@@Mr_Sovik After Encounter at Farpoint the Farpoint station ceased to goddamn exist, as it was only sustained by the jellyfish creature's presence. Again, you're trying to argue a point without either a basis in the lore or an understanding of what happened in the actual episode. There were no other missions to Farpoint because Farpoint WASN'T THERE ANYMORE.
@@XH1927 And again you make assumptions. You are correct that Farpoint station no longer existed as of the end of Encounter at Farpoint. Might it have been replaced? Might La Forge's line 'Farpoint mission' refer to something different entirely?
We don't know. A probable solution is rarely the only solution. We shouldn't claim one probable solution as canon.
Thank you so much for the though provoking videos. Your refit era, and frankly all the models you create and animate are absolutely amazing.
I have always sneered at the idea of taking a character's estimation of when something happened as a true dating mythology. I mean, really, everything conveniently rounds to a zero? In reality, very few, if any, people can accurately date when things happened, much less obscure historical occurances from 3 centuries back.
Something occurring on 21 April 1724? Hummmm.... it's the day before Johann Sebastian Bach leads the first performance of his cantata Du Hirte Israel? Who knew?
People are more likely to estimate, like saying the Seven Years war was over 250 years ago. That is incorrect on one hand and imprecise on the other, 250 years ago was 1774 which neither 1754, 1757 or 1763. (To argue about when the war started and ended) Incorrect or inaccurate, it is the sort of estimation a person would as from a memory of its study.
Thus, I don't think someone saying Kahn ruled about 200 or 300 years ago would be out if the question. They ought say "hundreds of years ago" to speak in "significant figures." Only Spock would say Years, Months and Days."
I think you are missing that Decker says 'more than three hundred years ago'. If he had simply stated 'three hundred years ago' you would be correct; we could assume that Voyager 6 was launched sometime between 250 and 350 years prior and we would have no problem. However, 'more than' indicates that the range is between 300 and 350 years prior, which is where the issue arises, as this places the Voyager program sometime prior to the 1970s.
@@Mr_Sovik I mean to say that people, in general conversation, are not that accurate. Now, if he had been reading it off of some communication that would be a different story.
Even majorly significant historical events are usually discussed, without Google, in vague terms. Much less the launch of a space probe.
It would be like knowing what date the Titanic's keel was laid off the top of one's head. I would speculate, 1910.... Google Says 31 March 1909.
It’s so refreshing talking about real Trek canon without the dog-mess of Kurtzman era stuff infecting everything. Thanks for making these videos.
Big fan of TMP! 👍
I would like a discussion on "Dating on The Motion Picture." Specifically, did anyone take their date to see it?
TNG s1 is set 78 years after the conclusion of the TOS Enterprise's 5-year mission. This is well documented and explicitly called out in the writer's bible.
I perceived that TMP Kirk had been at a desk job for ten years, thus giving him enough time to settle in and get fat or look and seem out of shape to actively command a starship (no more running and jumping.) With the years between TMP and TWOK I thought maybe they had been cruising around on a new assignment (can't even imagine what) given to the crew by Starfleet as a reward for saving earth. I was just about seven when TMP was in theaters and some things perceived back then were based on real world experiences with the old people around me and how they talked about things. And don't forget about Dr.McCoy as an elderly man was given a tour of the TNG Enterprise, I believe in the pilot episode. So I would say TNG is maybe... 50 years after TMP? Is the Next Generation Canon?
I’m thinking that the TV show didn’t give a crap about any of this. SF movies have always overestimated progress.
Forget all those issues with the voyager dating. I’ve got a Mandela effect for you. I swear that in my old VHS copy of TMP, Decker refers to “the 19th century” instead of “the 1990s.”
I put the 5 Year Mission in the late 2250s to early 2260s and TMP is late 2270s to early 2280s, at least 15 or 20 years after Kirk's first mission.
It's at least another 5 or 10 years before WoK.
1:21 Fun Fact: In Germany, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" was the first episode to be broadcast and the translators pretty much ran with that statement. The german TOS opening monologue stated that it was the year 2200.
My headcanon is built around that the "Enterprise is 20 years old" comment in III is referring to that it's actually 20 years AFTER TMP's refit, or at least the refit between Pike's version and Kirk's. So something like: Kirk takes over>5 year mission>refit, TMP, 2nd 5 year mission>8-10 years>TWoK. "Man I haven't seen in *15 years*" is a rough estimate Kirk gives to when the first 5 year mission had ended, but Khan was earlier on in the 5 year mission. IDK. Just my headcanon.
The ‘20 years old’ for the enterprise is a reference to the original Enterprise 3 foot model and possibly the 11 foot long shooting model being 20 years old.
If Pike’s trip to Talos 4 was 13 years before the 1st season of TOS, and the 5 year voyage was about a year after commencing, then the 1st 5 year voyage ends after 17 years of the earliest known TOS enterprise mission. This makes the enterprise close to 2 decades old or older in TMP, with probably another decade of age post refit until ST2 and ST3. It’s possible that Wrath of Khan follows just a year or so after TMP, but it’s implied that quite a bit of time has passed between those movies, enough time for another 5 year mission and for the enterprise to become a cadet training vessel.
@@russellharrell2747There's 15 years between Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan.
@@Mr_Sovik oh, I forgot. So yeah the enterprise is at least 28 years old in ST2/3
My head-canon is that Admiral Morrow misspoke and said "twenty" when he meant "forty". Kirk says later in the same film that the Enterprise was his home for twenty years, making clear that Morrow's figure does not include the April and Pike eras.
Decker mentioned to Kirk that he hadn't logged a single hour in space for 2 years. So I've always assumed TMP was around 2 years after the end of the 5 year mission.
Or maybe they had incomplete records from subsequent wars and conflicts on earth.
Well there has to have been some good chunk of time in between the motion picture and wrath of khan otherwise refitting enterprise wouldve been pointless. Ive always gone with 2271. The refit had been 16 months at that point so the five year mission ended sometime in mid 2270. I dont really take the animated series all that seriously canon wise but thats just me.
Call me crazy, but I'm starting to think that none of this actually happened. It just doesn't add up 😆
Interesting thought experiment, but this doesn't answer anything...
To be honest I tend to treat any Star Trek Movie as "based on Star Trek" as they flew off on a Star Trek Discovery style tangent that can very easily be taken to be an entirely different Universe i.e. "Blame the temporal cold war".
I think the two dialogs that mention two hundred years, three hundred years are the kind naturally said without any thought, so I wouldn't go by them when trying to date the show or movies. It is clear that Kirk only had "5 years out there" before he became Admiral, so there's that.
Apollo 11 did launch on a Wednesday.
And there were a failed NASA launch and an important assassination on the same day in 1968, a few days after "Assignment: Earth" aired.
I thought TNG was ~80 years after TOS.
I think the Motion Picture takes place in late 2271…
What if we start with Star Trek: Generations and work backwards? We know that the events of Generations take place in 2371 (ie, shortly after "All Good Things...", which takes place at the end of 2370), and we also know from the on-screen caption before Worf's promotion ceremony that the TNG portion of the film takes place 78 years after the launch of the Enterprise-B, thereby dating the Ent-B's launch to 2293.
Therefore, this is a hard end-date to the TOS era - everything HAS to have taken place before this date, because Kirk is missing-and-presumed-dead as of the Enterprise-B's encounter with the Nexus.
This does assume that Generations occurred in 2371 and disregards that The Undiscovered Country is set 27 years after the start of Kirk's five year mission and Enterprise (B) launches approximately 3 years later. 2293 could be correct, but I don't think it is a 'hard' end-date. I could see it being fairly placed some years later.
STTNG was set 80 years in the future of the original series! That's what they were saying about it when it came out, and several episodes make reference to that fact.
Do you know of any such episodes?
I can find TNG: The Naked Now, where Picard states only 'decades ago'.
There are the episodes TNG: Unification 1/2 where Sarek assumes Spock met Pardek at the 'Khitomer Conference' and Pardek claims that he has known Spock for eighty years. If that Khitomer conference is the same as the one from The Undiscovered Country then that would place Unification around 2372, with ±5 year uncertainty, which seems accurate enough.
Don't forget - Voyagers 1 & 2 were launched to co-incide with specific (and very infrequent) planetary alignments to take advantage of the gravity assists the alignments would afford the craft. Perhaps you could look at similar alignments later on and work out when V 3 & 4, V 5 & 6 (assuming they were launched in pairs) occurred, thus giving a rough estimate of the launch date for V6.
I would assume the later voyagers were sent to Pluto and possibly other transneptunian objects, or even improved models sent to nearby interstellar objects.
If you are willing to accept longer missions, there is a NASA report from 1973 (NASA Technical Reports Server number 19740004371), that outlines Grand Tour (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, & Neptune) missions launched from 1976 through 1980, and a second set of yearly launch windows from 1990 through 1993 if you fly by Saturn first (Saturn-Jupiter-Uranus-Neptune) thanks to some fancy Gravity Assist work. With a minor course adjustment, you can even hit Pluto after Neptune on the 1992 window.
A Q did it
Bottoms up!
I think between TOS, TMP and Khan passed as much time in universe as in reality. No major reason to think otherwise.
Also all mentions of years and timespans in TOS and its movies are not to be taken super exact since the proper timeline didn't really come into existence until TNG.
Huh? Wuh?
I just assumed that the timelines were intentionally vague, like alot of things in early trek. On another topic, I wouldn't mind a brief exploration of the differences in functionality of dilithium between the series. The crystals are depicted as energy sources in TOS, but were re-purposed as a focusing medium for matter/antimatter in Next gen.
Chronologies give me headaches, I rely on smart people like you! I vote for having many more Voyagers though
I didn’t pick up with the series until its 2ɴᴅ season was underway, but as a roughly 10 to 12 year old kid when 'The Next Generation' kicked off, I had all the magazine, book, other written materials, and even VHS recordings of interview broadcasts and other feature bits, and I clearly remember it being stated and reiterated, perhaps even by Roddenberry himself, that Picard and crew of the USS Enterprise 'D' picks up approximately “80 years after” the original series.
I think that may have meant (or at least can be interpreted to mean) 80 years after the TOS movies, not the TOS TV series. In fact, I seem to recall seeing the precise figure of "79 years" somewhere. 79 years before 2364 (the year specified in "The Neutral Zone") is 2285, the year of "Wrath of Khan" and "Search for Spock" in the conventional chronology.
Since McCoy is 137 in "Farpoint," the timespan between TOS and TNG is somewhere on the order of 100 years. According to the conventional chronology, McCoy was 39 at the beginning of TOS Season 1. He certainly looks older than that (DeForest Kelly was 46 when he began playing McCoy), and, interestingly, McCoy was 147 rather than 137 in an earlier draft of "Farpoint." Nonetheless, in my head-canon, McCoy is in fact 39 in "The Corbomite Maneuver"; his face has been weathered by the stress of his divorce, his separation from his daughter and possibly the circumstances of his father's death (we don't know how long before "Final Frontier" that happened), but his overall physical health is better than would be expected for a 39-year-old in the 21st century, and he is, as we know, destined to live at least 98 more years.
I always considered the Animated series to be part of the original five year mission. Add two and a half years after that to TMP. Like another has said, the "2nd 5 year mission" was with the refit Enterprise. As far as "more than 300 years ago" I'm sure Decker just made a mistake like many people today confuse events from the 1700 and 1800's.
The Voyager 6 reference is clearly spoken (unlike some of the other more vague dating references) so that places TMP in 2279 or later, IMO
They returned from 5 year mission on 2271. A second fice year mission 2272-77. Kirks 2 years as Admiral. Another 5 year mission after TMP. leanding in to Kirk training cadets.
Although I've read some great books saying 13 year gap between TMP and WOK...
TNG begins 75 years after Kirks time