Star Trek famously treats space as the final frontier, but the franchise hasn’t forgotten about how it navigates time, either. I’m not talking about the countless time-travel episodes here, but rather the infamously complex stardate system that’s existed in several forms since The Original Series. While stardates aren’t necessary to understand what’s going on, Star Trek has long made use of the fictitious system put in place to keep track of events. However, the beloved sci-fi saga has been far from consistent with how stardates work.

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