Stardates

Stardates Explained

The original purpose of 'stardates' was to avoid pinning Star Trek down to any specific date in the future. On air dialogue places the date between 200-800 years in the future. The first on air reference that even comes close to creating a specific relationship between stardates and conventional dates was in the Classic episode 'Charlie X' which took place on stardate 1533.6 and Kirk mentioned it was Thanksgiving. We know it had to be in the 23rd century thanks to the introduction from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Assuming Kirk meant the U.S. holiday and that the episode was taking place close to 300 years from the air date (as the Encyclopedia assumes), that would mean stardate 1533.6 was sometime on Nov 21, 2266.

In the classic series, 1 stardate was (usually) 1 day, so stardate 0000.00 would be Midnight on 9 Sept. 2262 or very close to the 101st anniversary of the Federation (on stardate 0032.0). But the mission of the Enterprise would have ended on or about Stardate 5943.7 (or sometime in late 2278) which is would have made the mission of the Enterprise something over 12 years and 8 months.

There is another theory, that stardates relate only to shipboard time. If we assume that a year is 1000 stardates, then stardate 5943.7 would be 5.9437 years from the Enterprise's departure date. The first movie, where Decker says Kirk hasn't logged a single star/hour in 18 months, takes place on stardate 7411, about 1.5 years after the end of the original mission. This places the Enterprise original departure date at 2:04am GMT on 10 May 2265 (or 7:04pm PDT on 9 May 2265) and her return date sometime around 12:00am GMT on 5 April 2272. The events of ST:TMP took place on SD7411 or 2:45pm GMT on 31 Oct 2274. Star Trek II took place 2286 (or 78 years prior to Encounter at Farpoint in 2364) on SD8210. Star Trek V took place on SD9521. If Enterprise-A has a chronograph reading of 9521, she has been deployed for almost 10 years when the events of Star Trek V occurred (meaning the original Enterprise would have been lost some time in early-2287 and Trek V takes place in late 2296). Assuming the Enterprise had a chronograph reading of 8210 in 2286, she was deployed for a minimum of 8.2 years as a Starfleet training vessel (or since late 2278). That means the Enterprise served out another 4 or so years after the events of ST:TMP prior to being re-assigned to the Training Fleet.

So far this squares (more or less) with the official word from Paramount. In TNG, however, stardates seem to be a more or less universal calendar meaning that at some point, the Federation changed the system. The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation takes place around SD41000.0, assuming 1000 stardates = 1 year and the first season of TNG was in 2364, the calendar change would have been no earlier than 2323 (an interesting date).

This means that in 2323, the Federation instituted a massive calendar reform, using Stardates to replace the myriad of standard calendars used by the various Federation members (and the Gregorian calendar used on Earth).

This seems to work reasonably well and gives us a basis to convert stardates to calendar dates during the Classic Era, the Movie Era and the period leading up to and including the Next Generation Era. It also squares with Roddenberry's explanation of stardates as being dependent on vessel location and speed, and requiring analysis to obtain a meaningful reading (at least during the Classic Era)

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