Continuing voyages of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

The refit Enterprise

This timeline is dedicated to the voyages of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) between 2273 and 2285, covering the period of the second five-year mission under James T. Kirk, the Belle Terre Expedition, and the years the Enterprise spent as a training vessel for Starfleet Academy.

2273

Admiral James T. Kirk

Stardate 7412.4 (August 2273)

A massive cloud which destroyed three Klingon cruisers was heading directly for Earth. James T. Kirk assumed command of the refit USS Enterprise over Captain Willard Decker and launched the ship as quickly as possible. Spock arrived from Vulcan and assisted Montgomery Scott with the engines. The Enterprise entered the mysterious cloud. Inside was a vessel 78 kilometers long which called itself V'Ger. Its probe inspected the bridge, killing a security officer and Ilia. The probe returned, this time in the form of an android Ilia, redesigned to more easily investigate the human infestation aboard the ship. Concerned with their lack of information, Spock left the ship in a thruster suit and mind-melded with V’Ger. When awakened in sickbay, Spock had an epiphany. V'Ger was a vast machine intelligence, as admirably logical as Spock had hoped to become. Yet without a soul or personality, V’Ger wandered without purpose or hope, unable to understand even a simple feeling. Decker and the Ilia-probe merged with V'Ger, allowing the entity to ascend to a higher plane of existence. Rather than return to Earth, Kirk accepted Scott’s suggestion that the ship needed a proper shakedown and ordered the ship to go “Out there. Thataway.” (TOS movie: The Motion Picture)

August 2273

Spock and Christine Chapel met for the first time since the end of the first five-year mission. (TOS comic: "Spock: Reflections, Issue 2")

Enterprise vs. Klingons

Stardate 7413.2-7414.1 (August 2273)

The Enterprise's shakedown cruise was interrupted when a squadron of Klingon battlecruisers attempted to seize the refit starship. Kirk disabled the lead vessel by channeling all phaser power through the engines, delivering a massive blow that disabled both the battlecruiser and the Enterprise. Kirk's bluff that this was a viable weapon convinced the Klingons to retreat. (TOS comic: "Renewal")

August 2273

The Enterprise retraced V'Ger's journey. (TOS comic: "Debt of Honor", pages 38-44)

Alternate events (August 2273)

The Enterprise returned to drydock to finish its refit before commencing its second five-year mission. The crew was granted a two-week leave. Alternate version of events to Ex Machina, Debt of Honor, and Renewal. (TOS episode: "Shadow of the Machine")

Stardate 7435.5 (August 2273)

As Kirk, Spock, and McCoy coped with personal fallout from the V'Ger encounter. Kirk realized his headstrong nature got the better of him in ousting Decker. Spock faced his own demons in integrating his long-suppressed emotions with logic. McCoy found himself outdated and unable to match Dr. Chapel’s widespread knowledge of the Enterprise’s diverse new crew. He also dreaded reuniting with Natira when she asked for help. Freed of the totalitarian rule of the Oracle, the machine-god that controlled Yonada, the Fabrini were building a new civilization on Daran IV. Traditionalists were warily allied under Rishala—the pacifistic new high priestess—on one side, and Dovraku—a terrorist leader who saw V’Ger’s ascendance as a sign that the Oracle would soon be reborn—on the other. (TOS novel: Ex Machina)

Alternate events (September 2273)

The Enterprise departed on a seven-and-a-half-year survey mission to the Aquarius Formation. (TOS novel: Provenance of Shadows)

Stardate 5960.2

The Federation outpost on Sherman's Planet was devastated by an earthquake. A Klingon ship commanded by Kang picks up a survivor, Jean Czerny. However, when Kang learned she developed a new strain of quadrotriticale, Kang invoked an obscure Klingon tradition, in which Czerny belonged to him, and refused to hand her over to the Enterprise. (TOS novel: Pawns and Symbols, Chapters 1-4)

Stardate 7416.2

The Enterprise returned to Earth following its shakedown cruise. Admiral Fitzpatrick gave the crew their first new assignment, transporting Raytag M'Gora, an escaped Normedian prisoner who has been certified insane, and Federation Ambassador R’Kgg to Thallus, the planet from which Raytag escaped. en route, strange manifestations appeared, including a creature claiming to be Dracula, who killed R'Kgg by puncturing his neck. (TOS comic: "The Haunting of Thallus!")

The Enterprise at the haunted house

Stardate 7417.4

The ship was diverted from course to deliver Raytag to a waiting prison satellite, but the message had been a Klingon ruse. The Enterprise approached what appeared to be a haunted house floating in space, where a landing party found the Frankenstein monster strangling a young woman. Projections were the result of a young film archivist with a Klingon thought-enhancer. In league with the Klingons, Raytag has been killed by an overload of psionic pain which burned out his receiver and reflected the signals back to the Klingon ship. The young film archivist, the Klingon thought-enhancer, and Raytag's body were delivered to Starbase 16. (TOS comic: "The Haunting of the Enterprise!")

Stardate 7420.1

In orbit of Yannid VI, Ambassador Phral would be taken to a treaty signing to admit his planet to the Federation. But Phral materialized with a dagger in his back. Investigating, McCoy found that Phral had been dead for at least ten minutes prior to having been beamed up. (TOS comic: "The Enterprise Murder Case!")

Stardate 7489.6 - 7492.1

A Vulcan scientist named T’Uerell, behind many disasters in the Alpha Quadrant in the 22nd century, reappeared. Kirk had encountered her in 2270. This time the crew thwarted a plan to conquer the Federation, and learned T’Uerell had worked with strange cybernetic creatures assimilating Klingon vessels. Many ships had been destroyed in the resulting conflict. During the attack, subspace was damaged in a three light-year radius. Kirk asked Starfleet to develop the Omega Directive. (Legacy, Missions 9-10)

The colonist takes phaser fire

Stardate 7493.5

Aboard the shuttle Conrad, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and three security officers traveled to the colony world Calibus VII, where McCoy would be honored for recent efforts in curing the Appalian viral pox, which had ravaged this system for months. But after they landed in the colony's "town square" they encountered animated corpses. As they took cover in a building, McCoy realized that the creatures were the colonists. The security officers became infected, and remotely activated the shuttle launch sequence. Kirk, Spock and McCoy destroyed the shuttle, stranding themselves on the planet. (TOS comic: "Star Trek: Infestation, Issue 1")

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy searched a facility for clues to the infection, and discovered Thirty-Seven, an "articulated artificial intelligence unit" created by Robert Durant Williams. Williams experimented unsuccessfully with infusing human DNA into robot brains. Then a mysterious woman named Britt arrived and seemed to put Williams under her spell. The robots they created spread an infection throughout the colony's population but left Britt unaffected. McCoy found Britt’s data and reverse-engineered the virus, manufacturing vats full of an antigen. Britt arrived to stop them, but after a battle, she fell into a vat of the antidote and appeared to dissolve. Rockets dissipated the antidote throughout the atmosphere. It didn’t reverse all of the physical effects of the virus, but otherwise restored the colonists and security officers. Kirk declared General Order 7, to quarantine the planet. (TOS comic: "Star Trek: Infestation, Issue 2")

Resisting the tractor

Stardate 7493.5-7494.4

A mysterious radio signal lead the Enterprise to a 900-year-old shipwreck on a planet’s moon, automated and artificial. The landing party rescued and revived two aliens who had been in suspended animation. But the ship was caught by a powerful tractor beam, and escaping cracked the ship’s dilithium and rendered the ship nearly inoperable. (TOS comic: "Called Home")

Stardate 7495.3-7505.0

At impulse, the ship traveled for six days to Forma VI, site of a depleted mine which the crew hoped might have enough residual or hidden dilithium aboard to repair the engines. But Klingon Captain Kodrash of IKS Kandar also seemed interested in acquiring the crystals. His landing party followed Kirk’s party into the mine, but neither group was able to find dilithium. Fortunately, Sulu discovered an old, crashed Klingon cruiser on the surface with dilithium aboard. (TOS comic: "Dilithium Dilemma")

Stardate 3708.2

With a cloud of deadly Vega radiation approaching Andrea IV, the Enterprise had 11 hours to rescue a small group of inhabitants there. Upon beaming down, however, Kirk, Spock and McCoy were shocked to discover giant statues of themselves at the settlement. The Andreans were certain the landing party would save them, yet refused to evacuate. Under the statues, Spock engaged equipment which dispersed the Vega cloud using solar energy collected over the eons. Spock realized that evolved Andreans living underground as energy beings were temporally transcendental, experiencing all times at once. As a result, Andreans built the statues and solar collectors centuries ago. (TOS comic: "Tomorrow or Yesterday")

Stardate 6714.3

The ship was en route to interview the Eebix of Pelham Five. With no space capability of their own, the Eebix volunteered their services to Federation vessels. (TOS comic: "Chekov's Choice")

Stardate 7523.5

En route to Starbase 14, the ship transported a critically ill agricultural engineer with Denebian rheumatic fever, who required a heart transplant within 24 hours. In the Agena system, the Enterprise was held in stasis and Spock taken by a pair of alien craft. Searching for Spock on the surface of Agena IV, the landing party discovered a struggle between organics and machines. Machs' records showed that the Orgs were descendants of Earth refugees from the Eugenics Wars, and the Machs were their robots' descendants. McCoy implanted a Mach-designed artificial heart in the engineer, who intended to stay on the planet and teach the Orgs hydroponic techniques. (TOS comic: "The Expansionist Syndrome")

McCoy is abducted.

Stardate 7537.2-7540.2

Leonard McCoy’s ex-wife and new husband conspired to steal the doctor’s patents. They triggered an outbreak of Rigellian fever at a fuel depot on Tarsus II to get McCoy away from the ship, then kidnapped him. Anton Zauber then surgically altered his appearance to become identical to McCoy and took his place aboard the ship. But the disgraced duplicate behaved differently enough from McCoy to raise suspicions in Kirk, Spock and Chapel. (TOS comic: "The Real McCoy")

Enterprise v. Rakor.

Stardate 7541.1-7542.5

While in orbit of Telos, Kirk granted sanctuary to Klingon fugitives Morg and Chetar, who’d spoken out against their government and been sentenced to death. Kirk prepared to take them to the nearest starbase, where they could make a formal request for asylum, when the K’t’inga class Klingon battlecruiser IKS Rakor arrived. Captain Tunzos had been ordered to take the criminals back. (TOS comic: "Double Bluff")

5,000 year-old starship carving.

Stardate unknown

Starbase 15 alerted Kirk that Abaris would collide with another planet in three days. The Enterprise raced to rescue archeologists on the planet. But when a transporter mishap displaced the landing party, Spock, Hikaru Sulu and Greywolf were forced to search for them and the archeologists through an underground maze. After everyone had been found, the archeologists showed the Enterprise crew an odd artifact: a 5,000 year-old carving of a starship. (TOS comic: "Aberration on Abaris")

Hester in Endeavor’s shuttle

Stardate 7641.8

En route to R&R on Starbase 8, the Enterprise discovered USS Endeavor adrift in the Theta Eridani system. Endeavor's fate had baffled Starfleet for 22 years. The crew were dead, and her logs recorded having picked up a distress call from a Janet Hester on the planetoid Mycena. "Janet Hester" was the name of Lieutenant Karen Hester-Jones' great-grandmother, thought to have died at age 36. But Endeavor had beamed up an 89 year old Hester, and afterward the crew went berserk and killed each other. Investigating, the older Hester was found dead in a crashed shuttle on the surface of Mycena. McCoy discovered an early-model transporter and research facility. Madness began to spread on the Enterprise, which turned out to be a form of possession. Hester's six colleagues had been atomically dispersed, but their combined consciousness lived on as electrical impulses in space. The consciousness thought Karen Hester-Jones was Hester, whom they hated. They were directed to Dr. Hester's body in the shuttle. When the beings swarmed into the vessel, Kirk and Sulu blew it up. (TOS comic: "Experiment in Vengeance!")

Stardate 7673.6

Barak-7 in the Thorian-V star system had a unique magnetic field which blocked all communications. McCoy and Spock took a shuttle to explore the planet, but engine filters became clogged with magnetic dust, forcing a hard landing. A young woman about to be killed as a human sacrifice escaped and ran to them. Spock and McCoy stunned pursuing native humanoids, but their phasers became clogged. McCoy and the girl escaped, but Spock was captured. Spock was kept as a slave to work on a mountain being sculpted into a monument of ruler Ragnok. Meanwhile, McCoy and the woman met up with her brother, K'Barrgh, and his followers. Although torn over his Prime Directive obligations, McCoy showed K'Barrgh's people how to make and use bows and arrows, which they used to overthrow Ragnok. K'Barrgh took over, declaring that the mountain would be sculpted into a likeness of himself instead. His followers prepared to sacrifice Ragnok's wife. Montgomery Scott succeeded in adding damper screens to a rescue shuttle, and Kirk was able to retrieve Spock and McCoy. (TOS comic: "Domain of the Dragon God!")

The shuttlecraft Halley became severely damaged within the Hohweyn system while ferrying James T. Kirk, Scotty, Hikaru Sulu, and Pavel Chekov back to the Enterprise, with no hope of rescue, no hope of repairing their craft, or restoring communications. The shuttle crew managed to signal Spock aboard the Enterprise in order to be rescued. (TOS novel: The Kobayashi Maru)

A battle between the Enterprise and the Klingon battlecruiser Ghargh was stopped by a mysterious and powerful alien being named Weyland, ruler of the planet Cragon V and a member of "a continuum of beings" who observed various universes. He punished three Enterprise crewmembers by displacing them in time. He transported Hikaru Sulu to Japan in 1600, Montgomery Scott to Scotland in 1746, and Pavel Chekov to Russia in 1942. He also rendered the engines of the Enterprise and the Ghargh inoperative, causing their orbits to begin to decay. Pleasantly surprised by the honorable actions of Sulu, Scott and Chekov in their respective pasts, and by the willingness of Kirk and Kral, the commander of the Ghargh, to form an alliance to meet with him, Weyland eventually returned the three Starfleet officers to the Enterprise and restored control to the two ships. (TOS novel: Home Is the Hunter)

Stardate 7935.6

The Enterprise evacuated Psychiatrist Carl Wentworth and his patients from Andronicus. Wentworth had founded a private clinic protected by a dome of transparent neutronium shielding. However, radiation was leaking into the dome. Wentworth's assistant, Andrea Manning, had a history with Scotty. En route, a bizarre apparition appeared in Engineering and left Scotty in a coma. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Christine Chapel overheard Wentworth reveal that he was using Andronican mind-control techniques, while Andrea was turning energy into matter to make imaginary things real, taking revenge on Scotty by actualizing his subconscious memories of Scottish folklore. (TOS comic: "... Like a Woman Scorned!")

Stardate 8036.2

With Spock taking a leave of absence to attend a conference, Kirk's old friend Patrick Brady was temporarily assigned to the ship as acting first officer while Spock's Deltan protégé Lieutenant Tenaida was made acting science officer. The Enterprise had been assigned to transport both a Federation negotiating team and a delegation from the Kaldorni. The Kaldorni and another race, the Beystohnai, laid claim to Yagra IV and the Federation was to negotiate between them. En route, murders and sabotage unfolded, the work of Srrawll Ktenten, a feline shape-shifter. (TOS novel: Enemy Unseen)

Adventures at a Glance

2273

• Enterprise Logs: "Night Whispers" (TOS short story)
• Stardate 7412.1: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TOS movie)
• Stardate 7413.2: Renewal (TOS comic)
• Stardate 7438.7: Ex Machina (TOS novel)
• The Kobayashi Maru (TOS novel)
• Home Is the Hunter (TOS novel)
• Enemy Unseen (TOS novel)
• Firestorm (TOS novel)

2274

• Ice Trap (TOS novel)
• Shell Game (TOS novel)
• Death Count (TOS novel)
• The Prometheus Design (TOS novel)
• Triangle (TOS novel)

2275

• Stardate 9250.0: The Wounded Sky (TOS novel)
• Rihannsu: My Enemy, My Ally (TOS novel)
• Doctor's Orders (TOS novel)
• Spock's World (TOS novel)
• The Better Man (TOS novel)

2276

• The Covenant of the Crown (TOS novel)
• Timetrap (TOS novel)
• Rihannsu: The Romulan Way (TOS novel)
• Rihannsu: Swordhunt (TOS novel)
• Rihannsu: Honor Blade (TOS novel)

2277 2278

• Rules of Engagement (TOS novel)
• Deep Domain (TOS novel)

2279

• New Earth: Wagon Train to the Stars (TOS novel)
• New Earth: Belle Terre (TOS novel)
• New Earth: Rough Trails (TOS novel)
• New Earth: The Flaming Arrow (TOS novel)

2280

• New Earth: Thin Air (TOS novel)
• New Earth: Challenger (TOS novel)
• The Pandora Principle (TOS novel)

2281
2282
2283
2284

• Dwellers in the Crucible (TOS novel)

2285

• Strangers from the Sky (TOS novel)
• Stardate 8130.3: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (TOS movie)
• Stardate 8141.5: "The Wormhole Connection" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8149.2: "... The Only Good Klingon..." (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8150.7: "Errand of War" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8151.7: "Deadly Allies" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8163.5: "Mortal Gods" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8173.5: "Who is Enigma?" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8180.1: Saavik's Story: "Pon Far!" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8185.35: Saavik's Story: "Blood Fever" (TOS comic)
• Stardate 8210.3: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (TOS movie)