Star Trek Chronology Notes

Vulcan Dates


Some dates are not Earth Old Calendar dates, but Vulcan. Two different systems are in use: Vulcan Years and Vulcan Old Date. The former was used in the animated episode "Yesteryear" and is apparently the current system in use on Vulcan. 8877 Vulcan Years is equal to the Earth date 2232 A.D., the date of Spock's Kahs-wan maturity test. It is this dating system which is used in certain Tech Fandom books notably the Star Fleet Medical Reference (which happens to footnote that they are dates Post-Surak which does not follow certain sources). Vulcan Old Dates seem to be used strictly in the novels and are longer than 4 digits. A Vulcan year is equivalent to 123.02 Earth days according to the U.S.S. "Enterprise" Officer's Manual which originally appeared in Geoffrey Mandel's Star Fleet Handbook. Gene Roddenberry's novelization of Star Trek-The Motion Picture supports this in a footnote (9 Vulcan years is approx. 2.8 years)--very close. Spaceflight Chronology, on the other hand, states that Vulcan years are LONGER than Earth years...and it would seem that the authors of Trek fiction may be working by this. The date 140005 is given for the death of Zakal in "The Lost Years" AND for the year of The 80,000 departing Vulcan in "The Romulan Way"--yet it cannot be considering the later references in "Romulan Way" place the migration at at least 100 A.D. In any case, the V.O.D. given in "Lost Years" for the present day return of the "Enterprise" from her 5-year mission is wrong. Romulan dates in "The Romulan Way" are expressed in A.S. (After Settlement) and I've steered away from trying to convert them over to Terran years. The length of a Romulan year is unknown and the novel is confusing enough in the constant switching between Vulcan, Romulan, and Terran years--not to mention the subjective time expenditure aboard the sublight generation ships. Problems very much like this also cropped up with the novel "The Final Reflection." Even using the length of the Klingon year expressed within, the resulting timeline for that era is somewhat uneven. The author adds further con- fusion by featuring Spock as a 7 year old child and McCoy as a baby --at the same time. Their ages should be reversed!
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