Daystrom Institute

(Originally posted on Reddit)

Some of you may know that I cut my teeth on Star Trek nerdery in the 1990s on USENET and rec.arts.statrek.tech as, among other things, a Trek chronologist, doing up and figuring out timelines before Michael Okuda came up with his Star Trek Chronology and started setting some of those years in stone. That never really leaves you, so every time someone mentions years and dates on any show, my ears perk up and my brain files that away to do math later.

So given this obsession, I'd like to go into why I'm dating SFA as taking place in 3191 even though Memory Alpha is (for the moment) going with 3195.

Looking at it, I can see that the Memory Alpha dating is based on a couple of things:

First is an assumption that the Burn takes place in 3069, which is reflected throughout the wiki. This is because in DIS Season 3, Burnham arrives in the year 3188, spends a year as a courier before Discovery arrives in 3189. In Season 3, we are told that the Burn occurred about 120 years prior. Note that the dialogue is not exact on this point, but that makes the Burn, for Memory Alpha, around 3069. I'm not sure that I'd date it that exactly, but there we go.

Second is this article from Paramount, which declares, "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is set in the 32nd century, at the upper end of the Star Trek timeline. More specifically, it takes place 125 years after The Burn, a catastrophic event that ravaged the galaxy, and hobbled the Federation."

So Memory Alpha takes that at face value, and puts SFA at 3069-ish+125=c.3195. Again, that is based on a 3069 baseline, and really, it could be earlier than that because nobody's ever said that it's exactly 120 years. It's always "about" or "more than".

Except that, with the broadcast of SFA: "Kids These Days", 3195 can't possibly be true.

Now, I acknowledge that stardates in the DIS era have been all over the place and I've expressed confusion as to how they line up with the Gregorian calendar in my prior annotations, but I'm still stubbornly sticking to my assumption that the Berman-era convention of 1000 stardates to 1 year as established by Okuda is still in effect.

Taking that into account, let me bring you through my working:

Regardless of when the Burn took place, we have a definitive dating for DIS Season 5. DIS: "Jinaal" says the year is 3191 - no ifs, ands or buts. They were setting up the Academy the previous season, so SFA must take place around that year, either just prior or after. This is important because "Jinaal" establishes an objective baseline that doesn't depend on vague qualifications like "about" or "around". But so far, so good - 3195 can still work since it's definitely after.

Then we see "Kids These Days"'s opening scene taking place on Stardate 853724.6, which puts it (853000-41000) 812 years after TNG Season 1. As TNG: "The Neutral Zone" establishes TNG Season 1 taking place in 2364, 812 years later gives us 3176.

"Kids These Days" then jumps ahead 15 years - which makes it 3191, not 3195. So while both years can be consistent with DIS Season 5, 3191 is starting to look closer to the mark.

Nahla says in "Kids These Days" that this is the first Academy class to return to San Francisco in over ~~120~~ 100 years. She says later that episode that she's had over 120 years to think about what she could have done differently as a mother. 3191 is "over 120 years" after 3069, so that's also consistent.

So given these data points, I think on-screen evidence - especially the stardates - point us towards 3191 as the year SFA takes place, not 3195, which would be way out of any margin of error.

And regardless of what Paramount says, I think on-screen evidence trumps press statements. And if you really want to make both the press statement and the on-screen dating evidence be consistent, then you've got to push the Burn's baseline year back to 3066 or 3067 (125 years prior to 3191), because, again, nobody said it happened exactly 120 years before 3189.