Timeline of the Original Series

[Falconer]

I’m making a timeline of the TOS episodes. I’m mostly ignoring the stardates given in the episodes—I’ll be effectively giving them new stardates (and earth dates). I’m not asking anyone to accept these dates as canon or headcanon, it’s just a practical matter of being able to know how long ago an episode “happened” relative to my game (adittedly it’s not that important even in this context). Rules:

• 1 stardate = 1 earth day per Writer’s Guide (they explain the “fudging” but let’s un-fudge it)
  
• Use filming date (first day) as default reference for time passage
• Miri takes place in earth year 2260
• Charlie X takes place on Thanksgiving = November 22, 2260
• There is a gap in time (3 months?) between Court Martial and The Menagerie
• Errand of Mercy takes place on Stardate 3198 = sometime in December 12-31, 2261
• There is a gap in time (3 months?) between The Paradise Syndrome and The Enterprise Incident
• Day of the Dove takes place about 3 years after Errand of Mercy
• The Cage takes place about 13 years before The Menagerie

More thoughts/explanations/caveats/observations later.

[Stan]

I look forward to seeing how this develops! This page might help you develop your timeline (it has the original stardates and a list of episodes): memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series.

[Falconer]

Okay, here is my stab. I had to bump Miri up a year, but overall the results pass the squint test. I remembered that Dagger of the Mind takes place after a Christmas party.

Time passes a little faster than the shooting dates, even accounting for the gaps. Day of the Dove is less than 3 years after Errand of Mercy, but within the range that you might refer to it as three years ago. The Cage is exactly 13 years before The Menagerie, which is weird but in lieu of any other data, it is the best I can do. Turnabout Intruder is exactly on the anniversary of The Corbomite Maneuver, which I love, since Kirk has to have the same sort of physical.

#	Name	Stardate	Earth Date
1	The Cage	[-1688]	7/27/2248
2	Where No Man Has Gone Before	2353	8/20/2259
3	The Corbomite Maneuver	2751	9/21/2260
4	Mudd's Women	2762	10/2/2260
5	The Enemy Within	2778	10/18/2260
6	The Man Trap	2788	10/28/2260
7	The Naked Time	2798	11/7/2260
8	Charlie X	2813	11/22/2260
9	Balance of Terror	2824	12/3/2260
10	What Are Little Girls Made Of?	2834	12/13/2260
11	Dagger of the Mind	2850	12/29/2260
12	Miri	2867	1/15/2261
13	The Conscience of the King	2895	2/12/2261
14	The Galileo Seven	2906	2/23/2261
15	Court Martial	2921	3/10/2261
16	The Menagerie	3060	7/27/2261
17	Shore Leave	3070	8/6/2261
18	The Squire of Gothos	3082	8/18/2261
19	Arena	3096	9/1/2261
20	The Alternative Factor	3106	9/11/2261
21	Tomorrow is Yesterday	3122	9/27/2261
22	The Return of the Archons	3132	10/7/2261
24	Space Seed	3143	10/18/2261
23	A Taste of Armageddon	3159	11/3/2261
25	This Side of Paradise	3170	11/14/2261
26	The Devil in the Dark	3185	11/29/2261
27	Errand of Mercy	3198	12/12/2261
28	The City on the Edge of Forever	3208	12/22/2261
29	Operation—Annihilate!	3222	1/5/2262
30	Catspaw	3321	4/14/2262
31	Metamorphosis	3333	4/26/2262
32	Friday’s Child	3343	5/6/2262
33	Who Mourns for Adonais?	3358	5/21/2262
34	Amok Time	3370	6/2/2262
35	The Doomsday Machine	3384	6/16/2262
36	Wolf in the Fold	3393	6/25/2262
37	The Changeling	3405	7/7/2262
38	The Apple	3415	7/17/2262
39	Mirror, Mirror	3429	7/31/2262
40	The Deadly Years	3441	8/12/2262
41	I, Mudd	3451	8/22/2262
42	The Trouble with Tribbles	3465	9/5/2262
43	Bread and Circuses	3492	10/2/2262
44	Journey to Babel	3504	10/14/2262
45	A Private Little War	3514	10/24/2262
47	Obsession	3527	11/6/2262
46	The Gamesters of Triskelion	3537	11/16/2262
48	The Immunity Syndrome	3548	11/27/2262
49	A Piece of the Action	3558	12/7/2262
50	By Any Other Name	3568	12/17/2262
51	Return to Tomorrow	3581	12/30/2262
52	Patterns of Force	3593	1/11/2263
53	The Ultimate Computer	3603	1/21/2263
54	The Omega Glory	3613	1/31/2263
55	Assignment: Earth	3637	2/24/2263
56	Spectre of the Gun	3817	8/23/2263
57	Elaan of Troyius	3830	9/5/2263
58	The Paradise Syndrome	3844	9/19/2263
59	The Enterprise Incident	3943	12/27/2263
60	And the Children Shall Lead	3953	1/6/2264
61	Spock’s Brain	3968	1/21/2264
62	Is There in Truth No Beauty?	3978	1/31/2264
63	The Empath	3989	2/11/2264
64	The Tholian Web	4004	2/26/2264
65	For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky	4014	3/7/2264
66	Day of the Dove	4043	4/5/2264
67	Plato’s Stepchildren	4067	4/29/2264
68	Wink of an Eye	4078	5/10/2264
69	That Which Survives	4089	5/21/2264
70	Let That Be Your Last Battlefield	4099	5/31/2264
71	Whom Gods Destroy	4112	6/13/2264
72	The Mark of Gideon	4123	6/24/2264
73	The Lights of Zetar	4135	7/6/2264
74	The Cloud Minders	4149	7/20/2264
75	The Way to Eden	4161	8/1/2264
76	Requiem for Methuselah	4175	8/15/2264
77	The Savage Curtain	4186	8/26/2264
78	All Our Yesterdays	4198	9/7/2264
79	Turnabout Intruder	4212	9/21/2264

[Stan]

I dig it! Say, I'm working on a new D6 based TOS era Star Trek RPG, and I'm playing with layout. I'd love to include this table as a new 'standard' reference for TOS era gaming. See pages 6-7 in this layout test to see what I have in mind :-)

drive.google.com/file/d/1xBgT6jal1x2XKDwV9M3f_Bmt6rdtkfIP/view?usp=sharing

[Falconer]

Sure, just give me a thanks somewhere:
Sokolov, Philip (“Falconer”). Old School Star Trek Player’s Handbook, 2020.

[Falconer]

I won’t make you credit me for the cover idea.
oldschooltrek.proboards.com/post/2601/thread

[c57d]

Oct 6, 2020 19:27:27 GMT -5 Stan said:

I dig it! Say, I'm working on a new D6 based TOS era Star Trek RPG, and I'm playing with layout. I'd love to include this table as a new 'standard' reference for TOS era gaming. See pages 6-7 in this layout test to see what I have in mind :-)

drive.google.com/file/d/1xBgT6jal1x2XKDwV9M3f_Bmt6rdtkfIP/view?usp=sharing

I, for one, love your uniform designs. An elegant blend of TOS colours (and miniskirt option) and TMP-ish cut.

[Stan]

I like them too; I didn't design them though, I found them someplace on the internet :-)

[c57d]

Either way they are the best TOS uniform redesigns/extrapolations I have seen.
I particualy like the female long smocktop/trousers look.
For at least twenty years, I have found the whole miniskirt/tights thing pretty silly for serving officers encountering the mysteries and dangers of deep space. And so I have "head cannoned" it into a long smocktop/leggings set. I find that more sensible.
YMMV

[Falconer]

I don't think anything will ever top the TOS costumes, for me.

[Stan]

Back on the Stardate topic, Falconer, what day/year would be Stardate 0.0 in your reckoning? And did you include leap years in your calculations (if not, that's OK by me, just wondering).

[Falconer]

In Excel, you just add 129002 to the stardate, and it generates an Excel datevalue. It calculates out the Gregorian Calendar date, of course taking into account leap years.

129002 works out to 3/11/2253.

2253, what happened in 2253? Well, based on the stardate system beginning and the Siva class being authorized (the first group of ships since the original authorizations which happened at the signing of the Articles of Federation), I extrapolate that a major Federation congress was held. FASA also holds that, in this year (2201 by their reckoning), Christopher Pike delivered a report on the Orion slave trade, and the First Amendment to the Articles of Federation is passed, banning this practice. This would also be 2259 by the current “official” (TNG/DS9) timeline, which happens to be the year that Star Trek Into Darkness takes place in the alternate timeline, according to Memory Alpha.

[Falconer]

83	Beyond the Farthest Star	4226	10/5/2264
86	Yesteryear	4278	11/26/2264
82	One of Our Planets Is Missing	4285	12/3/2264
84	The Survivor	4307	12/25/2264
85	The Lorelei Signal	4388	3/16/2265
81	The Infinite Vulcan	4408	4/5/2265
96	Once Upon a Planet	4415	4/12/2265
87	Mudd’s Passion	4419	4/16/2265
88	The Magicks of Megas-tu	4429	4/26/2265
94	The Terratin Incident	4430	4/27/2265
89	The Time Trap	Unknown
80	More Tribbles, More Troubles	4446	5/13/2265
92	The Ambergris Element	4454	5/21/2265
99	The Jihad	4458	5/25/2265
93	The Pirates of Orion	4457	5/24/2265
98	Albatross	4512	7/18/2265
100	The Practical Joker	Unknown
101	How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth	4536	8/11/2265
102	The Counter-Clock Incident	4547	8/22/2265
97	The Eye of the Beholder	4555	8/30/2265
95	Bem	4557	9/1/2265
80	The Slaver Weapon	4570	9/14/2265

Here I have done the Animated Adventures. The novelizations by Alan Dean Foster have already more-or-less done what I wanted, which is assign new stardates in order to weave the stories into a more coherent timeline. Note that a lot of the dates are close together, because in most cases ADF took three episodes and weaved them into a single adventure. From this I subtracted 1095*. About halfway through, ADF starts incrementing stardates by .1/day rather than by 1, so I compensated for that. I am pretty happy with the result. The stories extend the timeline a single year, which seems right to me.

* - If I don’t do this, there is a 3-year gap between the end of TOS and the beginning of TAS. That wouldn’t bother me, however I don’t want to introduce a gap that wasn’t intended and which has never been contemplated in any chronology that I know of. The exact number was arrived at by the fact that The Survivor starts on Christmas Day.

And there you have it—a perfect five-year mission!

[ThrorII]

First post here, but a long time reader.

If you divorce the TOS from the later movies and shows, there is solid evidence that the writers believed Star Trek was the 22nd Century, not the 23rd - Space Seed's 200 years sine 1996, to Kirk's "200 years" being just about right in the Enterprise Incident (1960s), to Lincoln being dead 300 years in The Savage Curtain.

Coincidently, January 8, 2191 at 2am is 121313.1 using the Modified Julian Day system. And since the First two digits ("12") only change every 27 years (roughly a generation) it could be written 1313.1 - which is the Stardate for "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Not that the writers plotted that, but it is interesting.

Space Seed established interplanetary travel in the 1990s, and we are told "by 2018" a new propulsion system was developed. Assuming "Metamorphosis" took place in 2191 (Season 1), then Cochrane went missing around 2041 at the age of 87 (If "150 years" means 125-165 years (+/- 10%) He could have disappeared between 2026 and 2066). It is possible that the "New Propulsion system" discovered in 2018 was the warp drive. Cochrane would have been between 39 to 79 years old.

Just thoughts....

[Falconer]

Hey, welcome, ThrorII! Thanks for posting here.

Yeah, I think you’re right, the episodes commonly mention 200 years or two centuries. Yet The Making of Star Trek is pretty clear on the fact that the show was set in the 23rd Century. That book was published contemporary with TOS, and the 23rd Century quotes come straight from Roddenberry, and this has influenced fan thought ever since. So why the discrepancy? I think the truth is that, lacking a more concrete date, most writers simply thought in terms of the year 2201. Put another way, if you’re writing in 1966, the 23rd Century is 235 years away — what pretty much anyone would in most contexts speak of as 200 years.