Just had a thought while watching TNG.
In “Code of Honour,” the episode begins as stardate 41235.25. Then, after Natasha is captured, Picard voices that “one whole day” has gone by and the stardate is 41235.32. Does this mean one day in TNG is equal to 0.07 (stardate)? Or do the last 5 numbers have no meaning at all?
I know it’s a widely discussed issue in this community. Maybe I’m on the completely wrong track and maybe there is another consensus. But I thought it would spark conversation. Cheers!
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I’m a big believer in “stardates are nonsense, and should remain nonsense,” but there were efforts made to standardize them in the '90s. They weren’t particularly consistent efforts, though. The full history can be found here.
In early TNG, this was the explanation:
A stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: “41254.7.” The first two digits of the stardate are always “41.” The 4 stands for 24th century, the 1 indicates first season. The additional three leading digits will progress unevenly during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point is generally regarded as a day counter.
By TNG season 6, they were going with:
A Stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: “46254.7”. The first two digits of the Stardate are “46.” The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. The following three digits will progress consecutively during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point counts tenths of a day. Stardate 45254.4, therefore, represents the noon hour on the 254th “day” of the fifth season. Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible.
I guess when you’re traveling around faster than the speed of light, time and date stop meaning the same thing as they do back home, so it stands to reason that you couldn’t map stardates to any standard calendar.
At least, that’s my new headcanon.
Stardates should be a standard calendar at least amongst themselves.
I suppose it could go either way. That would be true if we see stardates as a universal system that applies anywhere and everywhere. If we instead imagine them to include encoded information about local space time, it makes sense that they might be inconsistent but always moving forward.
I am, of course, using “makes sense” extremely loosely here.
“4 stands for the 24th century” so… just a couple of centuries until another y2k style panic?
The headings / bearings they use are all over the place too, remember looking it up and it feels like the writers just picked whatever numbers best fit the flow / cadence of dialog they were looking for
And they nailed it especially with Sir Patrick Stuart’s short monologues.
Not always. On DS9, when the Defiant was departing the station, the heading was given as 180 mark zero - meaning, traveling exactly backward from their current position. This made sense because when docked, the Defiant’s nose is buried in the docking ring.
Yeah, some shows did have their own consistent-ish systems, but I think some shows used a system that seemed to be relative to the center of the solar system, others from the perspective of the ship (which makes more sense to me, like naval bearings) - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heading.
It was a quick lookup from a long time ago, I was working on a 3d space game and was curious if ST had a consistent model I could just use.
Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible.
Hand successfully waved.