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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