# Star Trek: Do "star dates" have any structure or are they just a number the writers picked out of a hat? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [June 8, 2025, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327 "2025-06-08T13:17:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/1 "2025-06-08T13:17:46Z")
Title says it all. Often in a Star Trek episode we hear something like, “Star date 40100.3…” (I made that up) Were star dates ever figured out as a rational system or was the star date only whatever the writers that day thought sounded neat? If it was a rational system can we equate star dates to our current calendar system? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/2 "2025-06-08T13:26:01Z")
There was a rational system updated to a different rational system, modified by mistakes and adjustments, another rational system or two, and other glitches and such > **[Stardate](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Stardate)** > > A stardate was a date in a variety of systems employed by the United Federation of Planets and other societies. It was usually expressed as a number of digits with a decimal separator, e.g. 5928.5 or 2263.02. Stardate systems were used in certain... For example: > A Stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: “46254.7”. The first two digits of the Stardate are “46.” The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. The following three digits will progress consecutively during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point counts tenths of a day. Stardate 45254.4, therefore, represents the noon hour on the 254th “day” of the fifth season. Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible." ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/3 "2025-06-08T13:33:40Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > There was a rational system updated to a different rational system, modified by mistakes and adjustments, another rational system or two, and other glitches and such Awesome! Perhaps the shortest thread ever. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/4 "2025-06-08T13:47:44Z")
And all of those created upon noticing the numbers on the script drafts _were_ pulled out of each writer’s hat. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/5 "2025-06-08T13:58:42Z")
Back in the ST:TOS days they were 4 digits plus a decimal. IIRC … From the ancient text _The Making of Star Trek_\* they started with a more or less random number in the 2000’s then just incremented the numbers by a random couple hundred-ish as they wrote the scripts. But then they broadcast those finished shows during the original season(s) out of order. So from the POV of the audience seeing each episode broadcast for the very first time, the star dates jumped around both increasing and decreasing from show to show. Which resulted in the need for Rodenberry and crew to invent a Treknobabble reason the “dates” didn’t appear to be “chronological”. So “Subspace mumble mumble” * * * \* > **[The Making of Star Trek: Stephen E. Whitfield, Gene Roddenberry: 9780345234018:...](https://www.amazon.com/Making-Star-Trek-Stephen-Whitfield/dp/0345234014)** > > The Making of Star Trek \[Stephen E. Whitfield, Gene Roddenberry\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. The Making of Star Trek ---
**Author:** ![Kzbre5m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f08c70/32.png) [@Kzbre5m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kzbre5m)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/6 "2025-06-08T14:09:54Z")
I’m always surprised? Amazed? Something… that reports aren’t: > Captain’s Log, stardate, um… 40, err, uh, computer? > _Stardate is 40100.3._ > Yeah, what you say. I mean, I have to look at my cell phone (or computer) to find out the date, or day of the week, or month. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/7 "2025-06-08T14:12:40Z")
I assume this means that if someone carefully watched/read all Star Trek everything and noted all the star dates mentioned in those episodes/movies/books/whatever that we could not arrange them in a useful, chronological, way. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/8 "2025-06-08T14:13:51Z")
It does seem unlikely that someone in space will be able to discern one day from the next without a computer telling them when they are. ETA: A wrist watch might suffice assuming it is kept wound but even that will drift over time. Or a digital watch as long as the batteries work or solar cells. Their accuracy will drift too. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/9 "2025-06-08T14:15:20Z")
I’m pretty sure there’s a pinup calendar in Engineering. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/10 "2025-06-08T14:21:53Z")
Probably Orion slave girls. ---
**Author:** ![Kzbre5m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f08c70/32.png) [@Kzbre5m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kzbre5m)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/11 "2025-06-08T14:22:02Z")
I’ve heard somewhere that submarines have the same type meal each day of the week – Pizza Friday, for example – to keep everyone on which day it is. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/12 "2025-06-08T14:28:23Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. Does this mean _television_ season? Or the condition of the leaves on space trees? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/13 "2025-06-08T14:34:43Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I assume this means that if someone carefully watched/read all Star Trek everything and noted all the star dates mentioned in those episodes/movies/books/whatever that we could not arrange them in a useful, chronological, way. I’m not real sure what you mean. Here’s some guesses: If each series episode / movie / written story / fanfic / has a stardate mentioned somewhere in it, you can obviously sort those into stardate order. But what use is that? No part of at least early ST was meant as a season long “story arc”. Each episode, etc. is freestanding. Any idea that episode X was intended to follow episode Y in a dramatic sense is misguided. OTOH … If the Treknobabble was to be believed, stardates had meaning, and there was a way for Star Fleet HQ to make chronological sense of the reports they’re getting from ships all over their part of the galaxy. But that takes more knowledge of ship location, speed, etc., than we have. So even if we knew the (nonexistent fictional) magic formula, we don’t have enough of the inputs to the formula to do the math and get a result that stardate X is before, after, or the same as stardate Y. OTGH … At least as to ST:TOS season 1, if you wanted to know the order the scripts were started to be written, sorting the episodes by star date would tell you that much. Which would probably be at least a smidgen dramatically revealing. Because like any fictional “universe” they don’t figure out 100% of everything before they begin. There’s a certain amount of making it up as they go along, and a certain amount of only filling in details of the sketchy universe as the need arises for a particular episode. So one could observe the TOS universe fleshing out as one watched season 1 in stardate order. But … Once they had to invent the Treknobabble reason for broadcasting non-monotonically increasing stardates, I suspect (but do not know) they abandoned any sense of chronologicality at all. So for e.g. seasons 2 & subsequent, the dates no longer corresponded to script-chronological order. Each number was just a random number of the same general magnitude as the others and may be greater or lesser than the script(s) coming just before it or after it. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/14 "2025-06-08T14:47:00Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I’m not real sure what you mean. I’m not sure why you are unsure. Dates (of any kind) sort things in chronological order. Star dates are presumably there to do the same. They mark time so we know Event-A happened before Event-B. Obviously using Earth-time is useless. It is not the same thing as Vulcan time or Kronos (Qo’noS) time (Klingons). So, some scheme to mark time was invented. In Star Trek it is called Star Dates. Given that, my original point was if we could line-up the star dates in the fictional universe. It seems we cannot because it was inconsistent and varied over time (which is not surprising at all but would be cool if we could do it). ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/15 "2025-06-08T14:50:33Z")
[![](https://stowiki.net/w/images/Wiki_Images/sto_images/b/b8/Sto_temporalsummary.jpg) ](https://stowiki.net/w/images/Wiki_Images/sto_images/b/b8/Sto_temporalsummary.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/16 "2025-06-08T15:31:29Z")
Television season ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/17 "2025-06-08T16:02:53Z")
**From _The Making of Star Trek_ (1968), pp. 197–199:** In the words of Gene Roddenberry: _This time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel’s speed and space warp capability… One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise a different times may equal a little as three Earth hours. The Star Date specified in he log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within the Galaxy in order to give a meaningful reading._ _I’m not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense._ ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/18 "2025-06-08T18:40:03Z")
> [@](#): > > A Stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: “46254.7”. The first two digits of the Stardate are “46.” The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. So _Star Trek_ is limited to having only ten seasons of shows set within any particular century (and in practice, probably nine)? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/19 "2025-06-08T18:54:59Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I’m not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. I took that to mean correction for time shifts while traveling at near the speed of light using impulse engines. Who knows what warp does to the clocks, also. I suspect the real reason was to not set the show at any particular time in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327/20 "2025-06-08T18:59:25Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Who knows what warp does to the clocks, also. My understanding is no one in Star Trek ever travels over the speed of light. Warp is still sublilght speed but it contracts the distance between A → B. Think of it like a tablecloth that is bunched-up so instead of six feet across it becomes six inches across. That’s what “warp” is. It warps space. Not sure if that would affect a clock. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-do-star-dates-have-any-structure-or-are-they-just-a-number-the-writers-picked-out-of-a-hat/1019327.md?page=2)