How do you actually enterpret a stardate ? Can anyone help me on this ?
CBS (ended 1994)
How do you actually enterpret a stardate ? Can anyone help me on this ?
As par my understanding...
In the original series, there was no system to the stardates, they were just 4 digit numbers followed by a decimal digit, randomly assigned to episodes ranging from about 1000-6000.
In TNG, stardates where updated to 5 digits and a decimal point, supposedly to indicated the passage of time from the Original Series. The first digit is a "4", and the second is the season number. So, for example, an episode in Season 5 would have a stardate of 45xxx.x. The change from 45xxx.x to 46xxx.x is roughly equivalent to one year for us (assuming one season is one year, which is pretty close, given evidence in the shows). In season 1, the remaining digits seem to be random, but starting with season 2, they increment approximately evenly throughout the course of each season. DS9 and Voyager pretty much keep the same system set up by TNG, but in this case, the second digit is not the season number, but rather the equivalent year in the TNG scale.
For example, DS9 started in TNG's sixth season, so Stardates in DS9's run are 46xxx.x (first season) up to 52xxx.x (season 7, 7 years later).
VOY started in DS9's 3rd season, so their Stardates in season 1 begin with "48xxx.x" and continue on to 54xxx.xxx (7 years later).
The date in terms of our calendar is mentioned a few times, and can be used a rough guide for translation. For example, in the Voyager episode "Eye of the Needle" (season one, stardate 48579.4) Chakotay says its the year 2371, so we can assume stardates 48000.0 to 48999.9 approximate to the year 2371, and other dates in our calendar can be approximately calculated, which is also a pretty consistent with dates in our calendar given in DS9 and TNG.
This system can only be used for TNG, DS9 and Voy though, since there was no system in TOS and stardates didn't exist in Enterprise. Also, the produces themselves have said that stardates are mostly arbitrary aren't aren't designed to make sense, and there are some contraditions in the episodes.
Hope this helps!
| pjhasham wrote: |
| No it wouldn't: stardates on TOS never started with 6 (the show was set during the 2260s). I think the first time stardates were ever used would have been 0.0. |
2007 = 07
May = 05
14 = .14
you get 0705.14 or
2007 = 07
14 = 14
05 = .05
or 0714.05
| TelFan7 wrote: |
2007 = 07 May = 05 14 = .14 you get 0705.14 or 2007 = 07 14 = 14 05 = .05 or 0714.05 |
| Tronman100 wrote: | ||
|
I agree. It seems like a fun way to sell some calandars and give the date a trek-sound. But then how would you differentiate between dates in say 1999 and 2099. Since we're at 07xx.xx would we use negitive numbers? And what about the stardates in the shows that end with a number higher then 31 after the decimal. What days would those represent?
But since there does seem to be an offical way to figure out stardate accepted by canon, does anyone know what the current day (roughly) would be? I'm not good enough at math to figure it out myself. 
| lennydonkey wrote: | ||||
I agree. It seems like a fun way to sell some calandars and give the date a trek-sound. But then how would you differentiate between dates in say 1999 and 2099. Since we're at 07xx.xx would we use negitive numbers? And what about the stardates in the shows that end with a number higher then 31 after the decimal. What days would those represent? But since there does seem to be an offical way to figure out stardate accepted by canon, does anyone know what the current day (roughly) would be? I'm not good enough at math to figure it out myself. |
| Tronman100 wrote: |
| I believe that method started with Franz Joseph, the author of The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual, and was probably used in the calendars because it was easy to represent georgian caldendar dats, but it's not the canonical representation used in the series. |
The word is "Gregorian."
| pjhasham wrote: | ||
The word is "Gregorian." |
Stardates were just created to keep the tmeline in the star trek universe. There is no way we can find out what the specific date the episode is occuring on.
Example: stardate 48687.3 is in season 1 of Voyager but we are not able to tell what month or date it is.
