When “Star Trek” was being developed back in the mid-1960s, creator Gene Roddenberry didn’t want to make the show’s Julian year explicit. It was to be set in the future, yes, but Roddenberry wanted to discourage any potential nitpicking of the timeline. Most of the early developmental materials merely said that “Star Trek” took place “about 200 years from now,” and all of the dates were to be given in a new, fictional time-measuring metric called stardates. The original “Star Trek” pilot took place on stardate 1312.4, which initially had no meaning. No one, not even the “Star Trek” showrunners, assigned any span of time to any of the digits in a stardate. It just sounded futuristic.
Also, ridding the galaxy of the Julian calendar was logical in a sci-fi context. “Star Trek” takes place in a galaxy overseen by a multi-planetary Federation, and all of those planets would likely have days and years of dramatically different lengths. Why would, say, Vulcans, agree to measure time based on the movements of Earth? A new standard system, based on no planet’s time, would likely be the most amenable compromise.
The original pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” was set on stardate 1312.4, and the show’s last episode, “Turnabout Intruder,” was said to be set on stardate 5928.5. Questions will immediately arise, of course. How close did those stardates cleave to the three years that elapsed between the airing of the two episodes? Do 4,600 stardate “units” elapse every three years? And what did the decimal points represent? No one has an answer, as there originally wasn’t one.
Eventually, however, both fans and Trek showrunners began to figure out Trek’s relation to the Julian calendar, realizing that the original series took place in the mid-to-late 2260s. From there, Trekkies began bending over backward to explain how stardates actually work in the “Star Trek” universe, and they came up with a system that works … kind of.
Stardates were inconsistent, but we read them anyway
The idea for “stardates” came from writer Kellam de Forest, who recalled early, unused “Star Trek” scripts having months and days. He decided on a “space” dating system that was based on what real-life astronomers already used, a Julian Day System, that numbered days instead of measuring by the movement of Earth. De Forest talked about his system in the 1988 making-of documentary “Inside Star Trek.”
In a series bible, it was further explained that, yes, each number in a stardate is a day, and the decimal is the hour of the day. 1313.5, it was explained, was exactly one day before 1314.5. The “.5” indicated that it was noon, meaning that clocks were now separated into ten hourly spans instead of 24. Confusingly, stardates only ever have one number past the decimal, so the actual minutes of a Captain’s Log remain vague. Every decimal would equal two hours and 24 minutes of time. The decimal hour system is especially confusing, given that Starfleet officers would also talk about their shifts in recognizable military fashion. “My shift starts at 0900,” etc.
That means, however, that there are definite inconsistencies in stardates. If stardate 1312 was the year 2265, then the stardate system would have only started up three and a half years earlier (1,312 days = about three and a half years). Also, stardate 5928 would, by that gauge, take place 12 and a half years after stardate 1312, when in actuality, it only took place three years later.
The stardates didn’t take on any consistency until “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1979. That film was set sometime in the 2270s, on stardate 7410. That means it’s set 6,098 days after “Where No One Has Gone Before,” or close to 16 years. If 1312 was the 2260s, then 7410 would indeed be the late 2270s. The rest of the movies followed suit, with “Wrath of Khan” set on stardate 7130, and so on.
The stardate flip from Star Trek to Star Trek: The Next Generation
None of the above information, it should be noted, was stated in canonical dialogue on “Star Trek.” The stardate measurements are extrapolated entirely from expanded universe lore, production notes, and fan nitpicking. And while we may be able to directly suss out the way stardates work, dramatically, they are meant to be vague, implying that Starfleet operates by its own byzantine systems of measurement.
Further complications about stardates arose, however, in 1987 with the debut of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” The pilot episode of that show, “Encounter at Farpoint,” begins on stardate 41153.7. That system, fans soon discovered, was easily cracked. The “4” at the start was intended to be a nonsense number by writers, but many fans took it to mean that “4” was the 24th century. The second number was — and this is fun — the season of TV that “Next Generation” was in. 41000 was the first season, 42000 was the second, and so on. The third, fourth, and fifth digits, then, would simply be dividing up the years into decimal fractions (tenths, hundredths, and thousandths of a year). The decimal point still divided the day into ten portions.
That means each digit in the revised stardate measures out to one milliyear. To do the math for you, 1/1000 of a year is eight hours and 45 minutes.
At the very least, the “Next Generation” dating system has stayed wholly consistent throughout all the “Trek” shows that came after. “Star Trek: Voyager” debuted a year after “Next Generation” went off the air, and was set on stardate 48315.6. The first episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” was set on stardate 57436.2, nine years after the start of “Voyager,” and the third season of “Star Trek: Picard” is set on 78183.1, or in the first few years of the 25th century.
Why did “Star Trek” make the flip from the original “one number per day” dating system to “one number per milliyear” system?
That has never been explained. We Trekkies just have to ignore it.
Don’t bother comparing on-screen data with the above numbers
As mentioned, the original function of stardates was to make “Star Trek” merely sound more futuristic, and no palpable system had been put into place yet. It’s also worth noting that episodes were shot and aired out-of-order, making a consistent chronology impossible to track. As such, try not to let it bother you when stardates jump back and forth from episode to episode. One might also want to ignore some of the early dates on “Next Generation” that added additional decimal places to the day; the episode “The Child” takes place, for instance, on stardate 42073.1435, as read on a computer panel in Dr. Pulaski’s office as she’s giving an examination to Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis, who went through her own travails on the show).
Of course, if it’s “deci-day” the .1435 would be about 3:20 a.m., which is an odd time to have an examination. We don’t know what kind of sleep cycles Starfleet officers have; is there even a “night shift” on a ship that runs all day and all night? And if a starship is a 24-7 machine, then the actual hours of the day would mean a lot less to its workers. There would be no day or night on a starship, just the times you work and the times you sleep.
This is certainly convenient for nonhuman species, who may require a different amount of sleep than humans. Some may come from a planet with 10-hour days. Or 50-hour days. The idea that everyone would “go home” at the end of a shift and all sleep at the same time is churlish on “Star Trek.” Let’s just hope that, when Starfleet officers go on shore leave, that there is some miracle technology that can miraculously cure their cosmic case of jet-lag.
