Since TNG the system set up by Okuda has been more or less consistent, with a progression of 1000 stardate units a year.

Anything from the TOS period (including DIS and SNW) is still up for grabs, and since in post-DIS shows it’s been a bit wonky, but it’s still the best system we’ve got.

SFA: “Vitus Reflux” starts with Darem saying it’s Stardate 868858.7, which works out to 3191, so that was very satisfying to hear.

Yes, they did - on the face of it - switch to a Berman-era Stardate system of 1000 stardates to a year and 2364 (TNG Season 1) as a baseline for 41000.

But things got weird really fast.

So Burnham travels 930 years ahead of Discovery’s original time (2258) to land in 3188 (as her suit computer said in DIS: “That Hope is You, Part 1”) and spends a year in that time before Discovery itself showed up (DIS: “People of Earth”), so the year should have advanced to 3189.

Yet Burnham’s log in “People of Earth” detailing how she spent her year without Discovery is dated 865211.3. If we work backwards to TNG: “Encounter at Farpoint”, which took place on Stardate 41153.7 in the year 2364 (TNG: “The Neutral Zone”), that makes the 865000s the year 3188 instead, which can’t really be.

Furthermore, if we are following the 1000 stardates equals 1 year convention, 221 stardate units brings us only to March 22 of that year, so we can’t even say that she landed at the start of 3188 and made her log at the end of that year.

Then comes Season 4’s DIS: “All is Possible”, which has the stardate 865661.2, allegedly a week after the previous episode DIS: “Choose to Live”, which places it back in 3188, and 661 stardate units takes us only to around August 29!

Season 4 starts five months after the end of Season 3 (as stated in Season 4’s premiere DIS: “Kobayashi Maru”), and it’s highly unlikely that Season 3 took place in the space of one month (between March and August is only six months). So whichever way you slice it, the Stardates are off by at least a year, if we’re still following the TNG convention.

But that’s not all. Season 5’s DIS: “Under the Twin Moons” is on Stardate 866274.3, which places it in 3189. However, this is also an impossibility since, as I’ve noted, Burnham arrived in the 32nd Century in 3188, then spent a year before reuniting with Discovery (3189), then months passed between Seasons 3 and 4, and also between Seasons 4 and 5, so at a minimum it should be 3190. And in the very next episode DIS: “Jinaal”, they definitively call the year as 3191.

If we lived in a sane universe, DIS Season 3 would have covered Stardates 865000-866999 (3188-3189), Season 4 Stardates 867000-867999 (3190), and Season 5 Stardates 868000 onwards (3191) and we could breathe a sigh of relief. But the given stardates don’t.

One way to resolve it is to throw out what we knew about TNG stardates and just live with the idea that the 1000 stardate units stretch out over the course of 2-3 years. However, that idea makes this old Trek chronologist’s face twitch.

He said in SFA: “Kids These Days” that he added an aging program to himself 500 years ago and he appears to remember the kids from Protostar, so this is the Voyager Doctor.

And I was right!

Annotations for 1x03 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/34543028

Thanks!

Annotations for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x01 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/34296905

Annotations for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x02 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/34297028

Annotations for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x01 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/34296905

I do apologise if people are waiting for my annotations. I also apologise for any arrogance in assuming people are waiting for them.

I haven’t found a window where I can sit down and actively listen to do them. I’m working on “Original Sin” right now and it’s taking a bit of time because (as an English nerd in high school), I have a bit to say about the use of poetry and Shakespeare in this episode.

I mean, it’s being very heavily hinted that Lear is Kali.

Annotations for 1x07 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/30720634

It was in the TOS Writer’s Guide as far back as April 17, 1967, where it was stated (page 8):

Hyper-light speeds or space warp speeds (the latter is the terminology we prefer) are measured in WARP FACTORS. Warp factor one is the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second (or somewhat over six hundred million miles per hour.) Note: warp factors two, three and four are so on are based on a geometrical formula of light velocity. Warp factor two is actually eight times the speed of light; warp factor three is twenty-four times the speed of light; warp factor four is sixty-four times the speed of light, and so on.

It was subsequently mentioned in the behind-the-scenes book The Making of Star Trek in 1968 and Franz Joseph’s Star Fleet Technical Manual. The TOS scale was finally made canonical when it appeared in on a viewscreen in ENT: “First Flight”.

The TNG scale was established in the series’ Writer’s Guide in 1987 establishing Warp 10 as the absolute limit (and infinite speed), so the scale had to be adjusted accordingly.

That’s correct as far as the TNG-era scale is concerned. In the TOS/SNW era it was a simple speed = warp factor^3 equation, meaning Warp 6.25 is about 244c.

While not stated explicitly on screen, it was clear in behind-the-scenes documentation, and it was also clear that Enterprise in TOS exceeded Warp 10 in a handful of episodes, which I cited in my original comment. How fast a particular Warp Factor is may have been inconsistent, but the scale itself definitely changed between the two eras.

The thing I freeze framed on was the close-up of the helm control. Here we see the warp speed control and the impulse and weapons controls.

What’s interesting at the warp speed control is that it indicates the speed at Warp Factor 6.25, but that seems to be less than half speed. If the dots at the bottom of the throttle circle are correct, 6.25 is about two-fifths the top speed of the ship, which means theoretically they have a top speed of about Warp 15.6, which is just a bit higher than the Warp 14.1 we saw Kirks Enterprise achieve in TOS: “That Which Survives”, although Scotty said there that the ship wasn’t structured to even take Warp 11 for any length of time. The Kelvans did modify Enterprise to take that speed in TOS: “By Any other Name”, though. That beings said, the specifications of Enterprise usually indicate a cruising speed of Warp 6 and a maximum speed of Warp 8.

On the other side, the impulse throttle circle and the dots at the bottom seem to indicate that they are also at two-fifths impulse power (which may different from speed), and there appears to be a speed limiter next to the circle, although the speed indicator on the inside goes about a third higher than that. That’s actually consistent with the idea that full impulse isn’t the top impulse setting but there’s a limit placed on it (traditionally 0.25c) so as to avoid time dilation issues.

But I could be wrong and for all you know those dots are just to swipe left or right to get other controls visible.

Another interesting bit is the weapons controls. SNW: “What is Starfleet?” stated that Enterprise had six phaser banks and two torpedo tubes. The buttons here indicate two forward phaser controls - one ready to fire and one ready to charge. There are also two photon torpedo buttons, one ready to fire and one ready to load. Does that mean a single button fires three phaser banks?

There’s also a bunch of indicators above the impulse control (where Ortegas dismisses the warning pop-up alert) which seem to be communications or sensor indicators because they talk about band limits and Rx levels (received signal strengths).

Annotations for 1x06 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/30326603

You are correct that the eels were not named in ST II. However, they were named in the script.

Outside of the script, they are named in Vonda M. McIntyre’s 1982 novelisation of the movie, Shane Johnson’s (as she then was) book Star Trek: The Worlds of the Federation (1989) and in Greg Cox’s novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (2005).

Yep, that was established in 1x01, Joachim being the son of Joaquin and his unaugmented wife Tina (who does not appear to have survived to join them).

The Beholder stuff is left as a dangling mystery in SNW: “Through the Lens of Time” but any idea that it’s going to involve Batel is not.

I keep finding questions coming up in my head. Why would her chimerical DNA make Batel and the Vezda recognize and attack each other? Is it some kind of genetic memory, in which case any race that had encountered the Vezda would have the same reaction, and does that mean a Gorn or an Illyrian would have the same reaction? Or is it only a combo thing?

I was expecting, given what happened in “Through the Lens of History”, that it was actually the Gorn part of her that reacted. And that could have led into a revelation that the Gorn were created or designated as Vezda killers, a predator species to rid the galaxy of them. Which would then explain why they turned their predator instincts on the rest of the galaxy once the Vezda were apparently gotten rid of for good.

Or, the ancient race that imprisoned the Vezda created this telepathic alphabet that would send a message to the descendants of the people who helped them the first time around - so M’Benga and Uhura would read the messages as Swahili, La’An in Mandarin (which means La’An, despite being related to a Sikh, is ethnically also Chinese), maybe Scotty would read it as Gaelic, who knows? That would certainly make more sense than the random inscriptions somehow being related to M’Benga for whatever reason.

Or Batel would actually travel back in time to be the Beholder and we see her setting up the messages in a sort of bootstrap paradox - the messages were there because they were always meant to be there. A bootstrap paradox is hinted at in Batel’s dialogue but never quite explicated.

I don’t know. The more I think about the flaws in the plot the more I think it could all have been fixed with a little bit of thought and effort.