Forum:Pocket Timeline chronology question about Novelizations

Ten Forward → Pocket Timeline chronology question about Novelizations (Reply | Watch)

I'm looking to add a more detailed chronology of Where Time Stands Still. It's an eBook with a backstory that takes place immediately after The Time Trap TAS episode. The The Star Trek Fiction Timeline (a.k.a. Pocket Books Timeline) places both of these stories in the year 2270. The Pocket Timeline specifically references the Alan Dean Foster novelization of The Time Trap, not the TAS episode, in its chronology.

The TAS episode, according to a few sources I found, has stardates that place it in 2269. The Pocket Timeline & Alan Dean Foster's novelizations place the TAS stories in 2270, but the episode stardates place The Time Trap in 2269. As it stands right now, Where Time Stands Still is listed on the 2269 year page with both 'episode' and 'novelization' in the information row, even though the two media differ on what year the story took place. Which dates do we choose to use in our articles, or should we separate the novelizations in our chronologies and make a note on the episode article pages and on the chronology year pages?

The Pocket Books Timeline is a definitive, valid source - if it states a specific year, wtihout any other contradicting source, then that is the correct date.

I'm not sure what source you might have that says the stardates take place in a different year. Stardates by themselves don't really contain definitive year information -- captainmike 23:22, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification about the stardates! I took another look at The Time Trap transcript, and the only date reference written is a stardate. I think there are a handful of TAS episodes like this that are placed in the wrong year on the wiki. I'll scan through them and correct the chronologies to be consistent with the Pocket Timeline.

While we're on the subject of stardates, if the Pocket Timeline lists a stardate that conflicts with the stardate in the episode, which one should we list on the year page and in the episode Infobox? For example, Pocket calculates the stardate of 'The Infinite Vulcan' as 5503.1, which conflicts with the episode's stardate in the transcript. If I understand the sources document correctly, the most recent reference/information we have about a work is the winner. Correct? Trekstar (talk) 02:19, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

not really.

The two rules of thumb are that "canon" - the film/television versions of the episodes - are the most definitive. Other than that, the most frequently quoted info is promoted in importance. For example if it is quoted as stardate 1234 in a number of sources, but one source calls it stardate 4321, then the 1234 is "more definitive".

However, in terms of stardates - there's no real reason to say one is "right" and another is "wrong" - if they're both from valid sources. there are at least 3 (and possibly more) stardate systems that work differently - and they've been shown to work non-sequentially. there's no reason an episode couldn't have two stardates and both be valid. this happened in a number of comics - if you read the comic it quotes one stardate, and the DC comics timeline quotes another (adjusted to fit a different system). So both are valid. there's no "winner" because it's not a contest and we're documenting the information, not vetting it. -- captainmike 03:28, 24 January 2021 (UTC)