I’m trying to figure out what order the various series and movies are set in.
Is this about right?
The earliest setting:
Enterprise
A few decades later, happening roughly simultaneously:
Discovery
Short Treks
Section 31
A few decades later:
Strange New Worlds
A few years later, with older versions of some of the Strange New Worlds characters:
Star Trek: The Original Series
The Animated Series
A decade or two later, with older versions of the Original Series characters:
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The Wrath of Khan
The Search for Spock
The Voyage Home
The Final Frontier
The Undiscovered Country
A few decades later, happening roughly simultaneously:
The Next Generation
Deep Space Nine
Voyager
Lower Decks
A few years later, with older versions of the Next Generation/Voyager characters:
Prodigy
Generations
First Contact
Insurrection
Nemesis
A couple of decades later, with older versions of the Next Generation characters:
Picard
Several decades later:
Starfleet Academy
A separate timeline:
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek Beyond
If I understood correctly, at some point Discovery was taking place in the 34½ Century (or whatever) with the Federation a rump state (centuries after the incipient decline and fall hinted at in Picard) and a “darker and edgier” galaxy.
Okay, I just looked it up on Wikipedia. Apparently Discovery started out in the 23rd century, which is after Enterprise but before Strange New Worlds. Then in the second season, they time travelled to the 32nd century, around the time of Star Fleet Academy.
I can’t speak for Short Treks or Section 31, but Discovery’s first two seasons were set, in-universe, in the years 2256-2258 (before they jumped ahead in time to the 32nd Century); Strange New Worlds, as a direct spin-off from the early seasons of Discovery, started out in 2259.
Section 31 takes place in the “Lost Era”, the time period between the end of the TOS movies and the beginning of TNG. I think there is some confusion around this one because it’s a spinoff of Discovery but there were temporal shenanigans involved in where a certain character ended up:
In Discovery, Georgiou has an interaction with the Guardian of Forever. We don’t see where the Guardian ends up taking her but it looks like she jumped back from the 32nd century to early in the 24th century rather than going back to where she started in the 23rd. Why? They don’t explain it in the movie but I would assume she had her reasons for wanting to skip over some time. In any case, she’s in the latter half of the Lost Era which we know because she interacts with a Lt. Rachel Garrett, who ends up being the Captain of the Enterprise-C by 2344.
Nah, don’t even worry about it. Trekkies live for this stuff.
They had cameos from almost every series. The ones I can remember offhand are Riker, Troi, Kira, Quark, Tom Paris, Harry Kim, T’Pol, Zephram Cochrane, Q, Sulu, Grand Nagus Rom, Leeta, Nick Locarno, Wesley Crusher and Martok. T’Pol was an especially impressive cameo because Jolene Blalock had essentially retired from Star Trek after having a less-than-positive experience filming Enterprise.
Two LDS characters also did a crossover into live action in the SNW episode “Those Old Scientists” which is a hilarious episode.
The Short Trek entitled “Calypso” happens potentially many hundreds of years after the 32nd century, as a man finds the abandoned USS Discovery, under AI control, waiting in vain for its long-dead crew to come back.
This far, we haven’t seen any Trek further into the future than “Calypso”.
The upcoming series Starfleet Academy takes place shortly after the 32nd century adventures of Discovery.
At least from a chronological standpoint, in recent decades, the producers have generally been pretty good about framing “when” these shows and films occur in the timeline, relative to other works, as well as relative to the Earth calendar that we know.
IIRC, back in the original series’ days, Gene Roddenberry didn’t necessarily want the series to be set in a particular year, but a more nebulous future time, hence the use of “stardates” – and, sometimes, contradictory references to “actual” years, because the producers and writers probably didn’t keep a firm “series bible” about things like dates.
By the 1980s (the films with the original cast, as well as TNG), the producers were more clearly staking out a timeframe, and actively working to keep some internal consistency.
This reminds me of a question I’ve had since I saw a trailer for Starfleet Academy and saw that it was set in the 32nd century. I stopped watching Discovery after the first episode of season three because I found the time jump and premise for the collapse of the Federation too hard to swallow. Am I going to be able to watch Starfleet Academy without being hopelessly confused, or do I need to force myself to watch season three (and possibly subsequent seasons) of Discovery first?
I think you should be fine and if there is anything from Discovery that is particularly relevant to an episode they’ll probably include it in the previouslys. They will probably reference “The Burn” which was the plot of season 4 where dilithium stopped working for a while. They might also reference recent conflicts with the Breen which was part of season 5. But I don’t think there will be anything that requires watching those seasons or else it won’t make sense. Well, except apples. If Admiral Vance offers you an apple, do not eat it.
I don’t know how confusing SA will be without watching all of Disco, but I can tell you that Disco in no way improved in later seasons.
ETA: I just realized you don’t know why “the burn” happened! Trust me, that plot point was one of the very stupidest pieces of shit ever written. (A Kelpian kid was really sad and wished dilithium would go away so it did.)
i had heard that Discovery went downhill beginning in season 3, which is one of the reasons I opted not to watch it. I wasn’t aware that Kelpians had such powers.
