Introduction

This is the timeline, covering everything from the Big Bang to the End of the Universe, from a “Star Trek” perspective. I’m not setting myself up as an expert on history. If I follow a fairly conventional approach, it reflects the way history is treated in “Star Trek” (apart from all the alien visitors, of course). I have tried to be as accurate as possible, both in the dating of events, and in my descriptions. Things are included either because of a “Star Trek” reference, or because I found them interesting, or because they are famous historical “mysteries” that might be something to do with “Star Trek” aliens. Or not.

After a lot of mind-changing, I’ve placed entries for individuals at approximately the time I think they became important, rather than their date of birth. This might seem odd, but I found it very disconcerting that Arthur Conan Doyle was associated with entries for the American Civil War. I hope the arrangement I’ve chosen gives a clearer picture of how events and individuals matched up.

I have included a lot of things for the period 1965 to 2010, not because they’re especially important, but because that’s the “future” the original “Star Trek” was predicting. A lot of things (luckily) didn’t happen the way “Star Trek” thought they might, but a lot of things that the writers of “Star Trek” hadn’t thought of did. For example, the world wasn’t devastated in a huge war during the 1990s, but most people do now carry a communications device in their pockets that makes Captain Kirk’s communicator look a bit old-fashioned, to say the least. Accurately predicting the future is impossible. I’ve tried to reconcile what really happened with “Star Trek” as far as I can, most notably by shifting a great chunk of “Star Trek” future history from the late twentieth century into the middle of the twenty-first. I would argue that the basic principle has been established in “Star Trek” itself, with the move of World War III from the 1990s to the 2050s, but that’s just my opinion, and you may well feel that I’ve taken the whole thing too far, and/or ignored better alternative explanations that have been made. If you prefer Greg Cox’s version of the Eugenics Wars, then you’re welcome to use that in your own version of events. As far as possible, I haven’t tried to include “background” from other writers if I can come up with something myself. For that reason, this timeline bears only a superficial resemblance to the Okudas’ “Star Trek Chronology”. Their book was compiled under restrictions that don’t apply to me, so I’ve tried to go at this in a fresh way. Most importantly, no matter how badly-written everything is, it hasn’t been “cut and pasted” or otherwise copied from other sources.

I find it very helpful to know what series an episode title comes from, and so I’ve used the following abbreviations:
TOS “Star Trek” 1966-1969
TAS “Star Trek” (Animated) 1973-1974
TNG “Star Trek: The Next Generation” 1987-1994
DS9 “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” 1993-1999
VOY “Star Trek: Voyager” 1995-2001
ENT “Star Trek: Enterprise” 2001-2005
DCY “Star Trek: Discovery” 2017-
PIC “Star Trek: Picard” 2020-
LDS “Star Trek: Lower Decks” 2020-
PDY “Star Trek: Prodigy” 2021-

I hope the timeline entries explain themselves. I’ve tried to make sure that the fold-down contents boxes on each page only link to events that are specifically part of “Star Trek” continuity. Those events themselves are roughly colour-coded. If they’re in green, then I think that they just about work, both on internal chronological evidence, and by my stardating. Items flagged in red have problems. Sometimes they’re only minor, but other times they really don’t work at all. This isn’t intended as a “nitpicking” guide, so the problems are related more to my attempts to apply stardates consistently, not to how the stories themselves handle chronological matters.

The entry for a story follows this general pattern:

SERIES “Story Title”

My assigned dates, with stardates and any alien calenders I thought applied

Estimated Duration: A guess at the overall length of the story, from start to finish, based on internal evidence, and stardates where they’re available.
Chronology: A listing of stardates, along with other relevant information about the duration of the story.
Continuity: Any information I have about how this particular story relates to other stories in “Star Trek”.
Comment: Occasionally, I haven’t been able to resist the temptation to editorialise. I’ve tried to keep my personal opinions out of the rest of the timeline as much as I can, so if you find these sections annoying, feel free to skip over them. I have tried to avoid putting anything in them that you really need to know to understand the timeline.

If I haven’t anything to say on a particular topic, I’ve not included it in the entry. I would rather some entries were very sparse, if it saves people having to wade through a load of stuff I felt obliged to put in just for the sake of it.

Events in alternate timelines are highlighted, for clarity.

Where Do the Specific Dates Come From?

At one stage, I tried to be as accurate as the source material was. If it was vague, so was my timeline. In the end, I decided that it was causing too many problems. If the object of the exercise was to place events by both stardate and conventional date, it is up to me to prove that everything can happen in the time I allot to it. More importantly, it is only honest to point out exactly where the overall conventional chronology invalidates my stardates, and the interpretation I have placed on the stardates used in a particular story. There are very, very few occasions where a story takes place on a specific and easily determined conventional date, and they are flagged up in the timeline. In general, the dates assigned to a story are purely my own, basically to prove that everything I say happens in September 2370 will actually fit in. Again, to keep events straight in my own mind, I have compiled a whole set of “year to view” calendars for each of the “Star Trek” series, including Bajoran calendars for “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. They are available as a PDF file, here: http://atavachron.wdfiles.com/local--files/calendars%3Acalendars/Trek%20Calendars.pdf.

The timeline itself begins with an overview.


Welcome
Timeline

by StrauchiusStrauchius on 14 Jan 2015 13:22, last updated on 27 May 2022 10:36