Not “limited,” so much as if a series happened to be extended for longer than nine seasons, the producers would have to implement some different system for assigning stardates within an episode. I can’t see the studio or producers deciding, “well, we were going to approve a tenth season, but we’re out of stardates, so we’re cancelling it.”
While the explanation of how stardates were assigned by the writers/showrunners, starting with TNG, in this thread is correct, my understanding is that it’s a production continuity contrivance, which isn’t ever actually described as an in-universe explanation of the stardate system.
FWIW, no Trek TV series has ever gone longer than seven seasons, and the last one to run that long was Voyager, which ended in 2000. In more recent series, nothing’s gone past five seasons.
More than one Star Trek show takes place in the 24th Century. Collectively, it’s at least ten seasons already just counting the three shows I can think of off hand.
Clearly the result is faster than light. But, the spaceship is never moving faster than light because that is impossible. It’s right in the name…“warp speed” because they warp space. They shorten the distance between them and the destination. So, while going slower than light speed, they arrive faster than light would taking the long way.
Indeed, this has been proposed as a legit possible way to make long space journeys. Don’t hold your breath though. (See: Alcubierre Drive)
In the beginning, I invented the term “Star Date” simply to keep from tying ourselves down to 2265 A.D., or should it be 22 A.D.?
The Star Date was originally moved up in each new episode, but the shows weren’t aired in the order they were filmed. He came up with his “scientific” explanation for this when fans started asking how the dates were arrived at.
In the LD/SNW crossover, Boimler asks “What’s the stardate, then?”, is told 2291.6, and replies “Ah. Yes. Five digits. Totally normal date to be living in.”.
1000 star dates/year/tv season is the pattern, with 40XXX.X being ST:TNG season 1. DS9 season 1 is 46XXX.XX because it debuted the same year as TNG season 6.
Who knows what warp does. But impulse engines let you travel at relativistic velocities, and we know that screws up the clock.
When I first watched Star Trek back in 1966, I did appreciate that unlike other sf shows that I saw they understood that you couldn’t go faster than light without some sort of trick, like warp. However much we laugh at it today, it was a big advance at the time.
It pretty much was the ONLY way to envision a cohesive spacefaring society with far flung outposts and ships without diverging into total fantasy (or anarchy). Stargate uses wormholes but in a lot of ways they are even more problematic. [and you may have to send a ship to where you want the thing to connect and without FTL drive that too will take a long time]
Sure, first time on TV maybe. But Heinlein, for example, was dealing with the issue at least as early as Starman Jones, where the main character explains (unnecessarily, if I remember correctly) how the ship uses known folds in space to punch through massive distances as they hit light speed. There was plenty of ideas for a writer.
