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Star Trek
There aren’t many more convenient ways to present “Star Trek” information than a Captain’s log entry, an essential Starfleet document that indicates time in “stardates”—a mysterious calendar that incorporates decimals into every date. Deeper analysis of the “Star Trek” timeline reveals that, despite being based on an actual astronomical date system, the Starfleet version never made much sense and is therefore somewhat confused.
The writer and director’s guide for “Star Trek” from 1967 stated that “the progression of stardates in your script should remain constant but don’t worry about whether or not there is a progression from other scripts.” For those who would like to give it a shot, however, becoming familiar with the Julian date system can be a good place to start.
Technical advisor Kellam de Forest of “Star Trek: The Original Series” revealed that the Julian day, a solar day measurement used in the 365-day Julian solar dating system that preceded the Gregorian calendar, served as the model for the futuristic calendar system. The Julian day system is the calendar of choice for many scientific applications, including astronomical software, because it generates a continuous count of dates from the start of the Julian period, making calculations between two dates simple and uninterrupted. To calculate a Julian date, first add the Julian day, which is the solar day since the Julian calendar’s inception. Next, add a decimal point to represent the percentage of the day that has elapsed since noon in Universal Time Code (UTC).
Astronomers often use only the last five digits of the Julian date, and even “Star Trek” only uses four of them, despite the fact that the Julian date computes days that can reach the millions.
Stardates Are Designed to Be Hard to Calculate
The purpose of the Starfleet calendar system, according to the “Star Trek” writer’s handbook, was to minimize the significance of the in-universe date. According to the guide, “We invented ‘Stardate’ to avoid continually mentioning Star Trek’s century (actually, about two hundred years from now), and getting into arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then.”
Speaking on “Inside Star Trek: The Real Story,” a 1988 documentary, de Forest stressed that this almost wasn’t the case because the original script had Gregorian dates in it. De Forest thought this was not appropriate for the future spacefaring society after reading the script. He proposed the Julian-inspired idea as a remedy, and the tech advisor thought it had a future feel because of the decimal notation.
Samuel A. Peeples, writer of “Star Trek: The Original Series,” recalled that although “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry appreciated the idea as a starting point, his version was always intended to be a little esoteric. This is according to “Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and Man Behind Star Trek.” Peeples states, “We attempted to establish a system that would be undetectable unless you understood how we accomplished it.
Over cocktails, Roddenberry and Peeples conceived of the new stardate system, considering the peculiarities of space and relative time, and coming to the conclusion that any continuity faults pertaining to dates in “Star Trek” might be attributed to these problems. As the “Star Trek” handbook stated, “Stardates are a mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode.” To put it another way, don’t give it too much thought.
mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode.” To put it another way, don’t give it too much thought.
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