Editing Stardate (section)

== Original stardate ==
The original 1967 ''Star Trek Guide'' (April 17, 1967, p.&nbsp;25) instructed writers for [[Star Trek: The Original Series|the original ''Star Trek'' TV series]] on how to select stardates for their scripts. Writers could pick any combination of four numbers plus a decimal point, and aim for consistency within a single script, but not necessarily between different scripts. This was to "avoid continually mentioning ''Star Trek''<nowiki/>'s century" and avoid "arguments about whether this or that would have developed by then".<ref>{{cite web | last=Onion | first=Rebecca | title= Pages from the Official Star Trek Writers' Guide, 1967 | url= http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/05/14/star_trek_pages_from_the_writers_guide_for_the_original_series.html | work= [[Slate magazine]] | date=14 May 2013 | publisher= [[The Slate Group]] | access-date= 15 May 2013}}
</ref> Though the guide sets the series "about two hundred years from now", the few references within the show itself were contradictory, and later productions and reference materials eventually placed the series between the years 2265 and 2269. The second pilot begins on stardate 1312.4 and the last-produced episode on stardate 5928.5.<ref name=okuda_1ed>{{cite book|last=Okuda|first=Mike|author-link=Michael Okuda|author2=Okuda, Denise|title=Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future|isbn=0-671-79611-9|publisher=Pocket Books|year=1993|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/startrekchronolo00okud}}</ref> Though the dating system was revised for ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', the pilot of ''[[Star Trek: Discovery]]'' follows the original series' dating system, starting on stardate 1207.3, which is stated precisely to be Sunday, May 11, 2256.<ref>{{Cite episode |title=The Vulcan Hello |series=Star Trek: Discovery |network=CBS |date=September 24, 2017 |season=1}}</ref>