"Captain's Log, stardate [totally bogus made-up number]." Highly illogical.
On Star Trek, we hear a lot of "stardates," meant to mark some futuristic date. An example is stardate 47457.1, which is Captain Picard's birthday. The weird thing is that stardate 47457.1 is either the equivalent June 16th, November 4th, January 8th, or January 10th, depending on how you count. Let's go deep-nerd on this.Β
In the original Trek TV series, stardates were, in a word, bogus. In the series bible, theStar Trek Guide, writers were basically told to wing it. Here's a snippet (emphasis added):Pick any combination of four numbers plus a percentage point [ed. note: tenths digit], use it as your story's stardate. For example, 1313.5 is twelve o'clock noon of one day and 1314.5 would be noon of the next day. Each percentage point is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of one day. The progression of stardates in your script should remain constant but don't worry about whether or not there is a progression from other scripts.Stardates are a mathematical formula which varies depending on location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors, can vary widely from episode to episode.
This obviously wasn't thought through very well, as it boils down to "Pick a number and stay near it." Show creator Gene Roddenberry later said:When we began making episodes, we would use a stardate such as 2317 one week, and then a week later when we made the next episode we would move the star date up to 2942, and so on. Unfortunately, however, the episodes are not aired in the same order in which we filmed them. So we began to get complaints from the viewers, asking, "How come one week the star date is 2891, the next week it's 2337, and then the week after it's 3414?"He then went on to explain that the whole "location in the galaxy, velocity of travel, and other factors" thing was a hedge to cover up the fact that the dates simply weren't consistent to begin with, even if the episodes had aired in order.
(excerpt - click the link for the ST:TNG)
