Stardates are a fictional alternative to calendar dates in the Star Trek TV series, movies and books. They are typically represented as a four or five-digit number, with a decimal point followed by one or two more digits. Three distinct versions have been used. (Star Trek: Enterprise was set in the 22nd century, prior to the other series, and did not use stardates.)
The original series (TOS)
The original Star Trek TV series aired for three years in the 1960s and was set about three hundred years later, in the 23rd century. There were also six motion pictures with the original cast, and an animated series and numerous books. TOS stardates were four digits followed by one decimal. There was no real system to them, except that they generally increased over time.
The Next Generation (TNG)
Star Trek: The Next Generation aired for seven seasons in the 1980s and 1990s, and was set about one hundred years after the original series, in the 24th century. It was followed by two spin-off series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, which each aired for seven seasons and overlapped chronologically, and by four movies with the TNG cast. The stardates on all of these were five digits, usually with one decimal but occasionally more. These stardates had a definite system, in which the second digit incremented between TV seasons, and the following digits increasing from -000.0 to -999.9 during the course of the season. The first season, which began airing in 1987 and was set in 2364, had stardates beginning with 41, so year numbers can be found by adding the first two digits to the year 2323. In addition, the decimal part represented the time as a fractional day, and the last whole digit incremented each day. However, these stardates could not be converted to exact calendar dates, partly because of the contradiction between the fact that they incremented by one every day, and by one thousand every year, even though there are only 365 days in a year.
The reboot
In 2009 a new movie franchise was started with the TOS characters and an all new cast. It also introduced an all new type of stardates, which is simpler and based upon years of the Common Era. These stardates are simply the current four digit year, followed by two decimals. Accounts vary about how to interpret the decimal, either as simply a count of the days of the year (although three digits would be needed for days after 99) or as a fractional year, similar to Julian years used by astronomers.
Contemporary stardates
| Airdates | ||
| Negative | ||
| MJD | ||
| YYMM.DD | ||
| Main |
Although stardates are used only in stories set centuries in the future, fans have used various methods to convert a contemporary calendar date into something that resembles a stardate.
The official web site at startrek.com suggests using the calendar date in the form YYMM.DD. This has the Y2K bug, however, so 9912.31 was followed by 10001.01.
Some, such as Andreas Schmidt, simply project stardates backwards, with stardate 0.0 occurring in 2323 and negative stardates prior to that.
Andrew Main's FAQ uses "negative issue numbers" in brackets before each sequential series of four-digit stardates, which increment by five units each day and last about five years, with the year 2010 occurring during issue [-28] and the episodes in TOS during issue [0]. This method has been adopted by Google Calendar.
Others, such as TrekGuide.com, devised formulas such that the current stardate would be approximately the same as what Captain Picard, Sisko or Janeway would be putting in their logs in the 24th century, as portrayed in the most recent episode, until they ended in 2001. For instance, when one episode aired on 1987 September 28, the stardate in the captain's log was 41153.7. Thus, stardates in this system incremented by one thousand per year, just as on TV, or on average about 2.7 per day. The TV seasons began in September and ended in May, so the contemporary stardate would rollover at some point in between, and 1987 July 15 seems to have been arbitrarily set to 41000.0.
Astronomers have actually been using something similar to date star observations for a long time. Julian dates count days from the year 4712 BCE, so that 1987 September 28 was JD 2447066. Modified Julian dates drop the first two digits, so MJD 47066.0 looks just like a TNG stardate. During the Apollo program, NASA used truncated Julian dates that dropped three digits, which looked like the stardates from the TOS era, so that date would be TJD 7066.0.
Timeline
| Series | Stardate | Year1 | Released |
| 22rd Century | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | None | 2151 | 2001-09-26 |
| None | 2155 | 2005-05-13 | |
| 23rd Century | |||
| Movies 11 12 | 2258.42 | 2258 | 2009-05-08 |
| 2012-06-29 | |||
| The Original Series | 1312.4 | 2265 | 1966-09-22 |
| 5943.9 | 2269 | 1969-03-14 | |
| The Animated Series | 1254.4 | 2269 | 1973-10-27 |
| 7403.6 | 2270 | 1974-09-14 | |
| Movies 1 2 3 4 5 6 | 7412.6 | 2272 | 1979-09-07 |
| 9521.6 | 2293 | 1991-12-06 | |
| 24th Century | |||
| The Next Generation | 41153.7 | 2364 | 1987-09-28 |
| 47988.0 | 2370 | 1994-05-23 | |
| Deep Space Nine | 46379.1 | 2369 | 1993-01-03 |
| 52861.3 | 2375 | 1999-05-26 | |
| Voyager | 48315.6 | 2371 | 1995-01-16 |
| 54973.4 | 2378 | 2001-05-23 | |
| Movies 7 8 9 10 | 48650.1 | 2371 | 1994-11-18 |
| 56844.9 | 2379 | 2002-12-13 | |
| 1 From Star Trek Chronology | |||
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