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Stardates are a means of specifying absolute dates in the fictional Star Trek universe. They are often used in place of Gregorian calendar dates. One of the stated reasons for stardates was the need to establish the events in the series as taking place far into the future without tying the episodes down to a particular date. The in-universe behavior of stardates is much less transparent than that of any known calendar because out-of-universe writers chose the numbers more or less at random, depending on the era of Star Trek in question. Image File history File links Circle-question-red. ... Image File history File links Information_icon. ... Datateknologerna vid Ã…bo Akademi r. ... The current Star Trek franchise logo Star Trek is an American science fiction franchise. ... A fictional universe is a cohesive imaginary world that serves as the setting or backdrop for one or (more commonly) multiple works of fiction. ... The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world. ...

Few explanations have seriously tried to delve into the reasoning behind stardates or bothered to explain all the data points. For example, Franz Joseph, the author of The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual and Star Trek Blueprints, adopted the convention of writing a Gregorian calendar date in the superficial form of a stardate, so that, for example, "stardate 9802.13" represents February 13, 1998. Aside from the name and appearance, this is clearly unrelated to the stardates used in Star Trek. As such, most of those explanations are mere creative inventions that give little reason to be universally accepted. Franz Joseph (born Franz Joseph Schnaubelt) (1914–1994) was an artist and author loosely associated with the 1960’s American television show Star Trek. ... The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual (Ballantine Books 1975, reprinted in 1986, 1996, and 2006) is a fiction reference book by Franz Joseph about the workings of Starfleet, a military, exploratory, and diplomatic organization featured in the television series Star Trek. ... February 13 is the 44th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean [1]. // Coated in ice, power and telephone lines sag and often break, resulting in power outages. ...

Observed stardate properties

Stardate numbers generally increase with time, although locally they have been observed to increase with time at different rates, both within particular episodes as well as between. In some cases future stardates have a lower number than past stardates even when lower stardates are clearly in the future, not just in an episode aired later. The occasional decrease with time was more prevalent during the original series than during Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), in which stardates increased more consistently. There are relatively few instances where stardates are given to more than a single decimal. The decimal following a stardate is usually omitted in conversation. Stardates do not replace clock time, which is still commonly used and often shown next to stardates on displays. The starship Enterprise as it appeared on Star Trek Star Trek is a culturally significant science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s. ... The title as it appeared in most episodes opening credits. ...

Relationship to the Gregorian calendar

Stardates almost always replace explicit Gregorian dates such as July 6, 2367, and are used in the same fashion as Gregorian dates to identify a unique point in time. Other than that, stardates display few features of a planetary calendar system. There is no evidence of special stardate units to replace the Gregorian units that are still used. Even the explicit Gregorian dates are not extinct, as evidenced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Conundrum" where crew biographies are given in Gregorian years, and in a number of Star Trek: Voyager episodes. Finally, stardates are not being retroactively applied to the past: the Gregorian calendar is used to describe centuries in general (i.e., "a time traveler from the 29th century")and always used for references to time before the 23rd century (presumably because the Stardate was politically conceived as part of the Federation charter.)Mentions of a given century of course will relate particularly to human members of a given crew, as it specifically tailored to Earth centuries and a point in human evoloution- an Earth year would be an entirely different time period to a Vulcan or Bolian year. Earth-born Human crewmen would for example remember their birthdays according to the date on Earth when they were born. They would also know the stardate on which they were born, but would be unable to celebrate it again because the stardate lacks the rotary qualities of a planetary calendar. Fortunately the majority of time travellers fom the future featured in Star Trek happen to be human, so naturally they might explain which century they're from in human terms. The current Stardate is a day/date spanning the entire Federation, regardless of planetary orbits, rotations and time percieved in any one place. All Starfleet vessels, and presumably their installations, would run by this clock.It is fair to say that the Federation have adapted the clock to suit the majority of members rather than simply keep Earth's hours - there are frequent references in Star Trek Deep Space Nine to a day being 26 hours long. This could be an average rotation of several Federation planets. On Bajor, it would be 2pm on one hemisphere, 2am on the other, but to any Starfleet crewmen the Stardate (Federation time) would be the same wherever he beamed down. So each planetary system would have it's own 'local time' (in Earth's case, the Gregorian calendar) but for the sake of interstellar travel and communication the artificially created but spacially accurate Stardate keeps all the Federation uniform. July 6 is the 187th day of the year (188th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 178 days remaining. ... The 24th century (Gregorian Calendar) comprises the years 2301-2400. ... The title as it appeared in most episodes opening credits. ... The crew attempt to discover their identities. ... The starship Voyager (NCC-74656), an Intrepid-class starship. ... The 29th century (Gregorian Calendar) comprises the years 2801-2900. ... Space station Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ST:DS9 or STDS9 or DS9 for short) is a science fiction television series produced by Paramount and set in the Star Trek universe. ...

The purpose of stardates

The in-universe reason for the complexity observed in stardates is currently unknown, although it is possible to eliminate common misconceptions. Stardates are too complex mathematically to be the calendar of an Earth-like planet adhering to known laws of physics. They also are too complex to be the calendar of non-relativistic spacefarers adhering to known laws of physics. Since Star Trek: Enterprise, we also know that stardates are too complex even for the environment of warp and impulse travel at that time—which does not fall into the category of known laws of physics—because the Gregorian calendar is used there as a matter of course, without exhibiting the complex properties observed in stardates. Whilst the numbers themselves are basically nonsense made up by television writers, the purpose for a universal date system within an interstellar alliance(within the Star Trek universe) is obvious. The Federation Stardate was most probably conceived of during the writing, signing or amending of the Federation Charter, or when some of the founder planets were merging they're militaries into Starfleet, exchanging scientific information and equipment and the construction of the first Federation facilities meant a precise schedeule would have to be followed. A universal, decimel calendar system is a natural progression from four or five totally different annual calendars, and the actual units would be devised through negotiation, presumably based on an average of the length of a day on each of the given planets. The stardate also adjusts for the expansion of the universe, you could use it with equations to work out how long it would take you to get somewhere, or what the date would be on a given planet light-years away. Since Star Trek Enterprise is set before the coming together of the Federation it makes sense that Archer would still refer to his day as an Earth date, and the ship's clock would probably be set to coincide with that of Admiral Forrest at headquarters back on Earth. The starship Enterprise (NX-01) Star Trek: Enterprise is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. ... The starship Enterprise (NX-01) Star Trek: Enterprise is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. ...

Backstage information

The Original Series

Gene Roddenberry created stardates as an abstract idea without much thought to actual implementation, choosing to leave the idea up to the imaginations of the viewers. There is a clear note in the original Star Trek writer's guide instructing the writers to pick any four digits for the stardate, but to try to ensure that they increase within episodes once a day with noon at .5. The corresponding notes in the TNG guides included a note about the second digit standing for the season and the increase within the season from 000 to 999, but they still retained the once-a-day rule of increase within the episodes. Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Gene Roddenberry Eugene Wesley Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American scriptwriter and producer. ... The current Star Trek franchise logo Star Trek is an American science fiction franchise. ...

When pressed for an explanation, Roddenberry said the following for Stephen Whitfield's book "The Making of Star Trek":

This time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth's time as we know it. One hour aboard the USS Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three Earth hours. The stardates specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading.

Roddenberry admitted that he did not really understand this, and would rather forget about the whole thing (from Whitfield's book):

I'm not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. If so, I've been lucky again, and I'd just as soon forget the whole thing before I'm asked any further questions about it.

The Next Generation and beyond

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, a slightly more systematic system of stardates was used. They were 5-digit numbers, initially starting with four (symbolically to represent the 24th century), and followed by the season number. Within these thousand-unit ranges, subranges were allocated to writers of episodes to use. After the first season, these increased monotonically between episodes. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager the same system was kept, incrementing to 48xxx in what would have been TNG season 8, and wrapping round to 50xxx and beyond in season 10. In mathematics, functions between ordered sets are monotonic (or monotone, or even isotone) if they preserve the given order. ... Space station Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ST:DS9 or STDS9 or DS9 for short) is a science fiction television series produced by Paramount and set in the Star Trek universe. ...

In this era each television season is deemed to occupy a year of time in the Star Trek universe. This keeps the fictional universe running at the same rate as the real world, so characters age at the same rate as their actors. Thus, in this system, 1000 stardate units is just about an Earth year. It is also generally assumed that the stardate system is aligned such that a stardate divisible by 1000 is close to the start of a year in the Gregorian calendar.

Within a single episode, TNG writers have most commonly increased stardates at the rate of one unit per Earth day, contradicting the 1000 units per year used on the larger scale. Although closer to a usable system than they were in the original series, stardates remain inconsistent and often arbitrary. For example, Ron Moore has said flatly that stardates do not make sense and shouldn't be examined closely. Ron Moore at a Battlestar Galactica Convention Ronald Dowl Moore (born 1964 in Chowchilla, California) is an American screenwriter and television producer who is known for his work on Star Trek. ...

External links

• Stardate article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
• The Stardate FAQ which primarily develops one particular theory of stardates which has gained some currency
• Determining Calendar Dates From Stardates which has calculations and calculators based upon information from the television series and movies
• Goofs for Star Trek III, an IMDb page which lists several observed errors in Star Trek III, including one error related to stardates, one to Gregorian dates and one to timespans (minutes).