Federation Commander

I was curious what FJ had in mind with some of his stardates.

0965 - Articles of Federation; first wave of DDs/SCs/CAs/Tugs authorized
1200.5 - Federation-Romulan Treaty
3030 - Second wave of DDs authorized
3199.5 - Organian Treaty
3220 - Second wave of CAs authorized
3640 - Second wave of Tugs authorized
3669 - Second wave of SCs authorized
4444 - Four replacement CAs authorized
4699 - Third wave of DDs authorized
4990 - Third wave of Tugs authorized
5099 - Third wave of SCs authorized
5930 - Third wave of CAs authorized
6066 - First wave of DNs authorized

I notice that the Federation-Romulan Treaty is dated about 2000 stardates before the Organian Treaty. Since "Balance of Terror" indicates the Federation-Romulan War took place "a century ago," I suppose that FJ intended 20 stardates = 1 year. Just to illustrate this, I put it in vaguely SFU terms, using the Organian Treaty date Y156 as set-in-stone reference (because it's as good a dating system as any):

Y44 - Articles of Federation; first wave of DDs/SCs/CAs/Tugs authorized
Y56 - Federation-Romulan Treaty
Y147 - Second wave of DDs authorized
Y156 - Organian Treaty
Y157 - Second wave of CAs authorized
Y178 - Second wave of Tugs authorized
Y179 - Second wave of SCs authorized
Y218 - Four replacement CAs authorized
Y230 - Third wave of DDs authorized
Y245 - Third wave of Tugs authorized
Y250 - Third wave of SCs authorized
Y292 - Third wave of CAs authorized
Y299 - First wave of DNs authorized

Hence the Defiance (part of the second wave of CAs) is constructed after "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (in which it is stated there are only 12 CAs in the fleet) and before "The Tholian Web" (SFTM follows The Making of Star Trek in considering Defiance to have not been one of the original 14).

I realize the canonical SFU timeline doesn't match this, nor does any official or unofficial Star Trek timeline that I know of. I can't even be sure FJ was really completely intentional in setting dates; however, I'd like to imagine he was.

My personal opinion is anyone who ever did any kind of timeline just threw stuff at the wall to see where it stuck. (We did somewhat better, trying to make a consistent story out of random unmatching datapoints.) I don't think any of the timelines existed before SFB started doing one so they can darn well match ours. I think trying to connect the dots from one timeline to another is a waste of time.

The thing about stardates is that there was never any official method of converting them to our standard of dating. That was the whole point of them - they were invented by Gene Roddenberry to obfuscate when Star Trek actually was taking place. It was only in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that we got an official (but still temporally fuzzy) answer, as the film began with the words "In the 23rd century..." emblazoned on the screen. That was placed there by director Nicholas Meyer, who put it in there so his father would understand when the film was meant to occur.

For the record, that tidbit of info is from the director's commentary on the STII dvd/blu-ray.

FYI, the TNG-era shows were much more precise about the exact year in which they occurred - or will occur.

I imagine most ST/SFU fans who wanted to invest serious time into their hobby looked into the issue of stardates and timelines and came to the same conclusion: it is an exercise in futility. No matter what system someone comes up with, there are always inconsistencies.

Steve Cole is right. Stick with the SFU timeline. It's at least as good as any other. It is very consistent within its own universe which is a lot more than can be said about any of the others, the "official" franchise included.