Star Trek - the Chronology

An attempt (again, wildly incomplete until it's not) to watch the Star Trek Universe chronologically.  A straightforward version exists on Wikipedia.  Others have put together lists as well, which do good work.  I'm curious about how such a viewing alters the experience - not recommended for the uninitiated.

I would love some help with this, if anyone is a Trekkie novel buff, for example.  There is real value in seeing things in new ways.  Seeing  the Star Trek world in its imagined unfolding, from our past to our present and future, helps envision what Roddenberry's world might have to offer us, if we were to work toward inhabiting this future.

I'll make note of when to watch in particular episodes in [bold face in brackets].  Real world dates will be outlined in 'far left' bold italics.  I'll track watching //within slashes//, both in the timeline and viewing notes

The Big Bang (approx. 13.8 Billion Years BCE)

"Death Wish" - ST:V (Season 2:18)

• The Wikipedia timeline didn't add this one initially, so I've needed to now come back around and add it out of order unfortunately.  It's approximately a 30 second visit so i didn't go back and start over.  [8 or so minutes into the episode, they pop back to the Big Bang when Q (Quinn?) is trying to hide]  //3.17.2020// //8.30.21//

3.5 Billion Years BCE

"All Good Things" - ST:TNG (Season 7:24-25)

• Q and Jean Luc (JL) Picard bond at the erstwhile beginning of life.  [Briefly near the end of episode 24 (23:17 min. from end on Paramount +)] //4.27.14// //4.29.23//
• On reviewing in the real time of TNG, the impact of this moment is quite compelling, where Picard causes the extinction of all humanity. //5.3.20// - just realizing that this isn't the proper moment to watch this, rather, I'm seeing it while watching the finale as part of "Encounter at Farpoint". 

sometime around 101,001 BCE

"The Chase" - ST:TNG (Season 6: 20)

• Early in the episode, an artifact from this era is discovered, and a holo-recording of a progenitor of all humanoid life in our part of the galaxy appears to all of those taking part in "the chase" [just before the 40:00 mark] //4.17.24//

100,000 BCE (approximate)
"The Girl Who Made the Stars" - ST:D (Season 2 - Short Trek 5)

• Michael Burnham's father (Mike Burnham), comforting his young daughter afraid of the dark during the night, tells the tale of a young girl in Ancient Africa who braves facing the Night Beast, and thereafter creates stars and becomes a warrior. //1.22.20//

43,000 BCE (approximate)

"Tattoo" - ST: V (Season 2:9)

• The alien who Chakotay encounters near the end of the episode provides him a vision of their visit to earth 45,000 years prior where they encountered the ur-anscestors of those who would become the Native American tribes of the Western Hemisphere [at about the 39:00 mark] //8.25.21//

30841 BCE
"Requium for Methuselah" - ST (Season 3: 19)

• Mr. Flint is born

2731 BCE Era (approximate)
"All Our Yesterdays" - ST (Season 3: 23)

• Spock and Bones bounce back to some Ice Age era, when humans may or may not exist in the world (and it may not be earth).

Spock's ability to overcome his primal instincts, which are taking over throughout the episode, is the earliest (chronologically, at least) example of the common Star Trek theme that people are a product of their environments much more than they are innately good or evil (or greedy, etc.).  This is an important Utopian theme that runs throughout the series.  The implication is that if we can successfully build a good and just world, people will become good and just naturally.  It's an argument for creating the change that we want to see in the world, and trusting that we inhabitants of that world will deserve it, eventually. //4.29.14// //3.21.20//

500 BCE
"How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth" - ST: TAS (Season 2: 5)

• Kukulkan visits earth, influencing and giving direction to the Mayan civilization.

late 1100s (or Q's approximation thereof)
"Qpid" ST:TNG (Season 4: 20)

• Whether the crew are actually transported back to 12th Century England or just a facsimile, they get to play out a fictional history (of an already fictional history) of Robin Hood and his Merry Men saving Vash. //11.13.20//

1150s (or thereabout)
"Anomaly" ST:E (Season 3:2)

• The Sphere-Builders are beginning their work at this time...

"Harbinger" ST:E (Season 3:15)

• A Sphere-Builders shows up in a giant anomaly, and slowly dies in Sick Bay throughout the episode...

1334
"Requiem for Methuselah" ST (Season 3: 19)

• Mr. Flint recalls the rats in the streets of Constantinople of this era...

mid/late 1300s

"Inner Light" ST:TNG (Season 5: 25)

• Picard experiences a life within the culture of Kataan for most of the episode as Kamin, an iron weaver. Kataan's sun went nova about 1,000 years before the Enterprise encounters a probe that is sent out at the end of Kamin's (Picard's) life on the planet.
• I think as the episode ends, and Picard starts playing the flute that he learned to play over his mediated lifetime, there is an argument for the fundamental value of mediated experience. A life that you haven't, actually, lived can be equally as impactful and meaningful having experienced it in another way (say watching, reading, or otherwise inhabiting it) //12.13.20//

1484
"Dragon's Teeth" ST:V (Season 6: 7)

• We meet a couple of Vaadwaur who are preparing to put themselves in statis in the midst of a massive battle.  The couple plan to enter statis for 5 years, but end up being out for 892 years until Voyager's crew find them and wake them up. [pre-credits teaser scene] //7.28.22//

16__ (very approximate)
"All Our Yesterdays" - ST (Season 3: 23)

• Kirk lands in a sort of late-17th Century version of the English Restoration-style religious fanaticism.
• The dates of the eras for "All Our Yesterdays" are very approximate, in fact, because, it assumes that the planet of the Library developed at approximately the same rate as earth's history.  //3.21.20//

1691 (?)
"The Magicks of Megas-tu" - ST: TAS (Season 1: 8)

• The Enterprise crew arrive during the Salem Witch Trials (or an approximation of them), and are put on trial by the Megans, who last encountered humans during the trials and felt they were too barbaric to be allowed continued existence.  //4.1.20//

early 1860s (?)
"The Q and the Grey" - ST: V (Season 3: 11)

• This is made quite clearly NOT the era of the American Civil War (Q admits as much), but Janeway & Q spend some time in the American Civil War (albeit one happening within the Q Continuum). //12.8.21//

Late 1800s
"North Star" - ST: E (Season 3: 9)

At some point in the late-19th Century, the Skagarans take a number of humans back to their home world (or colonized world) as slaves.  Eventually, the humans overthrew the Skaggs, and made them into the second-class citizens.  An interesting line, in the third act, about how humans have long memories after Archer says that it's been 300 years since the humans were brought as slaves to a new world.  Imagine similar lines being spoken on earth in the present day had slave revolts resulted in an overthrow of the dominant Western culture. ||Alternate history where the Southern United States is overthrown in the late 1790s and earliest 1800s and the South, the Caribbean and some of Central and South America form an Afro-American nation, which becomes a Western Hemisphere rival to the US.|| //3.2.17//

1893
"Time's Arrow" - ST: TNG 

• "Maybe it's worth giving up cigars for, after all"- Mark Twain ca. 2369 (in response to Counselor Troi's explanation of how the 24th Century has eliminated poverty, despair, hopelessness, and power run amok generally).

One of the 19th Century's greatest humanists remarks on the achievement of the humanist project (at least seemingly) in the Star Trek universe. //5.5.14// //12.13.20//

1920s

"Past Tense: Part 2" - ST: DS9 (Season 3:12)

• Kira and O'Brien bounce back on their search for our lost heroes in time to a street outside a speakeasy //6/1/20//

1930

"The City on the Edge of Tomorrow" - ST (Season 1: 28)

• The re-write of this episode famously has Kirk making the ultimate decision to allow his new love, Edith Keeler, to die, rather than his being held back from saving her (to the detriment of the entire future) by Spock.

1944

"Zero Hour" - ST:E (Season 3:24)

• Archer & Enterprise are hurled back to the mid-20th Century. [it's not exactly clear when Enterprise entered this time, but sometime around 39:00 until the end of the episode] //6.23.23//

"Storm Front" - ST: E (Season 4:1-2)

• An alternate history in which Germany occupies the Eastern United States during the Second World War. [Starting immediately after the "previously on" at the opening of the episode and through the entire two-parter]
• Daniel's shows up in Sick Bay looking TERRIBLE! [starting around the 10:30 mark, and occasionally through Part 1] and he is in some kind of temporal flux.
• The coolest bit is that the main characters from Guys & Dolls seem to have formed the resistance movement in NYC when Germans invade the East Coast and the US government has retreated into the heartland.

At times it's obnoxiously Utopian, reading the racist/sexist American 1940s as magically cured by a common enemy. //7.7.23//

July 1947

"Little Green Men" - ST: DS9 (Season 4:8)

• A rare Ferengi-centric episode, in which Quark, Rom and Nog find themselves trapped in post World War II American paranoia (in a little place called Roswell, NM).   [Much of the episode occurs in "real time". Time displacement about the 14 min. mark, and return to the DS9 timeline around the 42 minute point on Hulu)]

For some reason the most intentionally politically relevant Star Trek series tended too often toward 'joke episodes'. Some small critique seeps through in the selection if the paranoid Red Scare America, but overall a lazy episode.  Some small critique of American greed and gullibility (culpability) is here, but without teeth (even sharp Ferengi teeth). Cute but not memorable. //8.26.15// As it turns out, I saw this ep in the "real time" of DS9 on the exact same day of the year 6 years later! //8.26.21//

early/mid 1950s (estimated)

"Far Beyond the Stars" - ST: DS9 (Season 6:13)

• Ben "Benny" Sisko suffers another bout of Orb-itis, and spends the episode in a Prophet-inspired vision of himself and the DS9 crew as pulp sci-fi magazine writers (among other professions - e.g. Wof is a pro-baseball player named Willie).  Benny receives an illustration of DS9 from his editor, and agrees to write a story about it - he sees himself, a black captain of a remote space station.  The episode is a poignant examination of what is reality and what is fiction (and where do we find ourselves in that spectrum). //2.7.22// 

"Shadows and Symbols" - ST: DS9 (Season 7:2)

• [Starting at about the 30-minute mark] Ben "Benny" Sisko is back - but this time, he finds himself commited in a psych ward, writing his stories of Captain Benjamin Sisko on board Deep Space Nine on the walls in pencil. In. 2375, The Prophets are having a bit of a crisis with the closure of the Wormhole.  As the scenes bounce back and forth between the scenes in the 1950s & the 2370s, the implication is that Sisko's actions (on both sides of the time divide) will determine the fate of Prophets.  Eventually these visions from the 1950s are revealed to "false visions, but I record them here as lived experience nonetheless. //3.22.22//

1957

"Carbon Creek" - ST: E (Season 2:2)

•  T'Pol tells the story of real "First Contact", in the form of her great grandmother and her crew crash landing in a sleepy town called Carbon Creek.  While waiting for a rescue they're not sure is coming, they settle into daily life in the town, taking odd jobs and becoming part of the community.  In the end, one of the crew opts to stay on earth, and the crew claims he died in the crash  [The 1950s storyline begins immediately after the opening credits]

Another "novelty" episode.  This time with Vulcan - Ha!  A critique of the traditional nuclear household  (in a threesome of Vulcans), but there's also a proto-Spock story here, too.  All Star Trek aliens are ultimately different kinds of humans, and the final message we take away from this incident is that balance is key.  Americans are clearly crazy (Humans in Star Trek narratives are Americans, and upstart civilization late to the game, who without noticing how it happened are somehow in charge now, I guess...), but to tilt too far any other direction (French Vulcan intellectuals or Russian / Germanic Klingon pride/honor people) is to lose out on the uniquely-American gumption that (so the story goes) leads to the development of the Federation.  //8.27.15//

1967

"Future's End" - ST:V (Season 3: 8)

Henry Starling sees Captain Braxton's ship crash land on earth in the mountains. [From the start until the opening credits (at 1:05)] //6.4.23//

1968

"Assignment: Earth" - ST (Season 2:26)

•  The Enterprise uses its good ole slingshot time warp technology to study "Earth's most turbulent moment in history", 1968.

 Our heroic rescue from these dangerous times are only thanks, of course, to the interference of a super-technologically advanced planet.  Seems like they could've done something about W.  //7.30.16//

1969

"Tomorrow is Yesterday" - ST (Season 1:19)

• The Enterprise first encounters slingshot space travel accidentally and is zapped back to a week before the moon landing. 

Novel use of getting back home and undoing any historical intervention. //7.30.16//

early 1970s?

"Past Tense: Part 2" - ST: DS9 (Season 3:12)

• Kira and O'Brien bounce in to the same street in San Francisco.  Run into a couple of "flower power" kids //6/1/20//

late 1970s

"Mercy" - ST: Pic (Season 2:8)

• The FBI agent's memory of encountering two Vulcans while out wandering in the woods at night.  He stumbles upon them and then flees, but they catch up to him and try to erase his memories via a mind meld, but it is interrupted by their being beamed away. [Opening scene of the episode (after the "previously on" segment), and again the memory is completed at around the 36:00 mark.] //4.21.22// //4.8.23//

1982

"Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" - ST:LD (Season 3:8)

• The team find themselves in a holographic version of Sydney, Australia, chasing the Romulan triplets who are the villains of Boimler's movie. [starting around 13:45 until 14:45] //3.9.23//

1986

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

•  The Enterprise crew (this time aboard a Klingon Warbird) uses its good ole slingshot technology… this is sounding familiar. Going back in time to save the world with the help of two humpback whales. 

Comments made recently: http://stogie10.blogspot.com/2016/07/celebrating-american-hope.html?m=1 //7.11.16//

• On the subsequent pass through, the first thing that's apparent is the comedy ("Do you two like Italian?" & Scotty ranting about traveling millions of miles from Edinburgh to visit the plexiglass company.
• This also marks, I think, the first very explicit morality tales in the series.  There were probably a few episodes in TOS & TAS that you can point to that critique present day social problems (in this case the ecologically destructive ways of the late 20th Century).  This is a staple of later series, but this may be the first example of it in the whole run.
• Also, smoothie Kirk has time to futureGoogle & memorize a D.H. Lawrence quote about whales to impress (and surely eventually seduce) the 80s doctor. //4.26.20//

1996

"Future's End" - ST:V (Season 3: 8-9)

• The Voyager is sucked back to 1996 after being attacked by a 29th Century vessel. 

Star Trek has always had its own time as the subject at hand. When they do so explicitly it's always a bit clumsy and hilarious. In 1999 - companies with names like ChronowerX, money-grubbing executives, hacker-culture as dominant.  

• On re-watch the temporal paradox implications are most noticeable.  ChronowerX's existence is the entire reason for the information age.  In our universe (which is more parallel to theirs than most, I expect), Henry Starling is Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. [Voyager arrives around the 6:20 mark and spends most of the remainder of the 2-parter until 43:30 of Part 2 when they get back to the present] //11.29.21//

1992 - 1996

• The Eugenics Wars were to have happened during this time (ST).

1999

• Voyager 6 is launched (see Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

2000
"11:59" - ST:V (Season 5: 23)

• Neelix becomes interested in earth history, and explores the relationship between mythic and social history.

More commentary on the small-mindedness of our own time.  This and the next several entries in the timeline (and the past several come to think of it, 1930 - 2040 or so) explore the philosophical question of history and fate.  All past events lead to the present, and these episodes call into question how we reach the future - the hopeful future of the Star Trek universe.
All evidence in our current world speaks to the contrary of the hope of finding a way to make things work - to accomplish the goal of allowing our technology to save us from ourselves.  It's clear that we could make a better world, with what have available to us.  But the only way we can imagine getting there is through some great turmoil.
 //8.3.16// //7.19.22//

2004
"Carpenter Street" - ST:E (Season 3:11)

• Highlight of the typisch Amerikanisch stereotype has to be in the opening sequence when he eats the last piece of pizza in the box, which is in the bathroom sink...
• The real story is about how dark the aughts and the present time is.  Recognizing how far gone most of us are in the modern era - that we are so immersed in the capitalist endeavor, that we will sell out others for our own gain.  That we will sell others for our gain. [Starting at the opening of the episode until 7:45 when we get back to Enterprise's time, then Archer & T'Pol go back to 2004 around 12:30, and we are there for the rest of the episode (with Archer & T'Pol returning to Enterprise around 40:30).]

//8.5.16// //3.2.17//  //6.20.23//

2022
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" - ST:SNW (Season 2:3)

• La'an and James T. Kirk get blasted back to 2022 Toronto and witness a terrorist attack on a bridge that they both remember from history, and discover a sinister Romulan plot to change the future in the past. [Starting just before 9:45 until around 54:45] //7.2.23//

2024
As it turns out, two years from now is kind of epically important year for the Star Trek Universe, with the turning point seeming to be The Europa Mission, which includes in its crew none other than Renée Picard.  When I first learned that Picard's second season was going to occur mostly in 2024, I had hoped that what they would need to fix was somehow to be responsible for starting World War III, which starts in 2026 in the STU (and, given Russia's current activities in Ukraine, possibly also ours as well!), but 8 episodes in to the new season it seems perhaps even a bit more diabolical than all that. //4.21.22//

ST: Pic (Season 2:3 - 2:10) 

[Starting at around the 10:00 mark of "Assimilation" (ST: Pic,  Season 2:Episode 3, shortly after the opening credits break) the Crew jumps back - Kirk Style - to 2024; to solve the problem that Q has created; at the 26:00 mark, 3 of our crew beam down to different locations in Los Angeles.  They stay here in 2024 until the 34:00 mark in "Farewell" (episode 10)]

• Almost immediately upon arrival in 2024, we lose Elnor, and it's not clear whether restoring the timeline will save him.
• Agnes attempts a mini-assimilation link up with the Borg Queen, which will be significant later, but mostly, Cristobal, Seven, and Raffi find themselves in the Southern California  of our world (almost) and that of the Northern California (almost) Sisko and Co. will encounter later this year.
• We learn that an ancestor of Picard's (Renée Picard) is an essential part of the Europa Mission, which will be essential in humanity's development toward the Star Trek Universe we know, and away from the tyrannical military dictatorship we saw at the start of this season.  It's the choice between following Europa's mission of exploration versus Adam Soong's vision of genetic manipulation toward a more perfect humanity.

"Past Tense, Pts.1 & 2" - ST: DS9 (Season 3: 11-12)

• "Past Tense" is a bit of a hilarious (and quite thoughtful) philosophical experiment and behind the curtain commentary on Star Trek time travel plots.  Most explicitly, the scenes when O'Brien & Kira are beaming through time in an attempt to find Sisko & Co. who've been lost in one of the formative historical moments of the early 21st Century.  They beam into the 1930s & the late 1960s in random searching of 12 possible moments in history when they might be lost (naturally, they only have enough chronotron particles to visit 7 or so...).  The two dates seem random, but both are references to TOS episodes that riff on this same theme: Making (or not un-making) history anonymously. //9.18.16//

• Reviewing the episodes on the next go round in "real time" (which is to say, the real fictional time of 2371 where the DS9 characters are coming from), this version of 2024 feels a lot more prescient than it did in September 2016. It feels a bit like perhaps where we might actually be in three more years had Trump won a second term (or his doofus coup had been successful). //7.26.21//

2032
"One Small Step" - ST: V (Season 6:8)

• We see the initial incident of the Ares IV in the pre-episode set-up, then later we get video footage from the 21st Century Ares IV mission, which Chakotay, Paris and Seven try to recapture the module within a spatial phenomenon. [Opening sequence before the credits, then; 12:30 minute mark for less than a minute; again starting just before the 31:00 - 34:00 minute mark (audio and some more video continues until around 35:00 mark)] //7.25.22// //8.7.22//

2037

"E²" - ST: E (Season 3:21)

• Enterprise is blasted through a vortex over a hundred years into the past, where they turn themselves in to a generational ship to help the present day Enterprise succeed in its mission with the Xindi. [starting at the 9:30 mark for a few minutes] //7.6.23//

2048

"Past Tense: Part 2" - ST: DS9 (Season 3:12)

• Unshown scene of Kira and O'Brien who return back from this era "worse than any period in earth's history that actually existed" //6.2.20//

2050
"11:59" - ST:V (Season 5: 23)

• The photo of Shannon O'Donnell Janeway and her family that Neelix gives Captain Janeway as a gift briefly comes to life. [Right before the 45:00 minute mark at the tail end of the episode] //7.19.22//

2053
"New Eden" - ST: D (Season 2: 2)

• World War III occurs on earth, and the church and signal emanating from the planet in the Beta Quadrant begin at this time. [Footage from the moment when the church was transported to the Beta Quadrant begins at around the 42:00 mark at the very end of the episode, recovered from a soldier's helmet camera]

On a second viewing while catching up on Discovery in the lead-up to the 4th season, this is one of the episodes that really stand out in a bit of a lost sophomore season. //11.30.21//

2063
//8.5.16//

Star Trek VII: First Contact

• This is no time to talk about timelines, but a quick word about timelines.  Like "Past Tense", First Contact starts early with the complete unexisting of "our timeline" - that is, the threat of unmaking the world we know.  Again, fortunately, the Enterprise is caught in a chrono-temporal bubble or some such, so while they witness the change in the timeline on the planet below, but are able to go back in time and "fix" things.

It's this notion of fixing, that I think is key to all of these time travel stories (as well as to the new alternate timeline movies with Chris Pine Kirk).  Fundamental, is the idea of "belonging" - that is, you belong in your own specific timeline.  The Enterprise crew that we know don't belong in a timeline where all 9 billion inhabitants of earth are Borg.  That said, based rules established by the Star Trek multiverse, each of these universes inherently already exists.

The question is, in these temporal bubble moments, is the timeline that our Enterprise inhabits being changed, or are they being moved into a parallel timeline/universe where whatever conditions they observe always already (threw in some Heidegger!) existed.

More comments made recently. 
//9.20.16 & 7.20.16//

• On the re-watch from the Enterprise-E's time perspective, the Star Trek future history of the 21st Century feels more and more plausible. The first time around in 2016, "Past Tense" felt like a stretch, and First Contact's World War 3 that sets up the world Zephraim Cochrane's people find themselves in seemed entirely impossible.  Now with American democracy more and more likely on the wane in the next couple of election cycles, some sort of massive war event seems prescient. //1.5.22//

2074

"Time's Orphan" - ST: DS9 (Season 6: 24)

• Near the end of the episode, 18-year-old Molly returns through the time portal she first fell through on the planet Golana, and encounters her 8-year-old self, and directs her back home. //3.5.22//

late 2070s

"Memorial" - ST: V (Season 6: 14)

• The crew, starting with Tom, Nelix, and Chakotay, experience memories from a massacre that occurred around 300 years ago //8.20.22//

2119

"Broken Bow" - ST: E (Season 1:1)

• A video clip of Zephraim Cochrane talking about the development of higher Warp engines and humans setting out to explore the galaxy. [starts just after 18:00 and continues (audio, then video again) for about 30 seconds] //6.8.23//

2121

"Broken Bow" - ST: E (Season 1:1-2)

• Jonathan Archer, as a boy with his dad, and he is working on a model starship. [first minute of the episode and again at 18:40, and then just before 52:30, and finally in the closing seconds of Part 2] //6.8.23//

Real time of Star Trek: Enterprise -

2151

"Shockwave, Part 1" - ST: E (Season 1:26)

• Daniels brings Archer back to the night before Enterprise's first mission to tell him the disaster at the start of their episode isn't their fault. [starting at around 15:45 until 20:00] //6.10.23//

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 1:1-20)
Season 1 of Star Trek: Enterprise includes a lot of one-off, standalone, "alien of the week" episodes, which is typical of a new Star Trek series - needed to explore new characters and explore what works and what doesn't in a new series.  A few gestures toward the Temporal Cold War, particularly in the season finale, but this new prequel show spent a lot of time looking backward in time - to the 90 years of fictional time since first contact and the Vulcan's tendency to hold back human progress into space.  The show also looks back the 55 years since The Original Series, and nostalgically re-introduces some themes and species (Andorians, anyone?).

2152

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 1:21-26)

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 2:1-19)

Season 2 of Enterprise is more one-off episodes - 'rut-roh, Hoshi's disappearing!' - and also a further exploration of the Temporal Cold War.  The Suliban feature prominently, and time is a common theme.  Time travel, storytelling, abandoned minefields, past rivals returning... The series is the closest in time between the time it aired and the era its portraying - 150 years.  I think this relative proximity makes it harder for the showrunners to simply imagine 22nd Century humans as inhabiting an entirely different headspace.  //2016//

2153

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 2:20-26)

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 3:1-15)
Season 3 is a fantastic re-direct; really revitalizing the show from its loss of steam.  Rather than a lot of one-off episodes and a Temporal Cold War that was hard to get invested in as a major arc, the cliffhanger from Season 2 kills off millions of humans in Florida with a Xindi attack on earth.  The Xindi, this season explains, are several related species who live in the Delphic Expanse.  As it turns out (have i mentioned this post contains spoilers?), the Expanse is an attempt by transdimensional beings to take over our space, and they convinced the Xindi that humans were destined to destroy them - thus the attack on Florida (well, they were trying to destroy earth, not just Florida, but were stopped mid-attack).  Season 3 is about trying to thwart the next Xindi attack.

2154

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 3:16-24)

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 4:1-17)
Season 4 starts in the midst of the Temporal Cold War, with Archer stranded in late-WWII America, and trying to re-set things right by getting the pesky alien-assisted Nazis out of North America.  The season as a whole has the sense of being rushed and thrown together - as if Rick Berman and Brannon Braga were looking over their shoulders at the looming cancellation and trying to cram all of the story-lines they had plotted for seasons 4 - 7 or so into one fun season.  The Eugenics Wars holdovers - the Augments - get an arc; the complete overthrow of Vulcan political order gets an arc; Andorians, Tellurites, Vulcans and Humans trying to forge a complex peace treaty (which will lead to the Federation) gets an arc; plus the reason that Klingons looked suspiciously like spray-tanned humans in TOS gets a fun and kinda hilarious arc.  Plus the mirror universe; anti-alien (i.e. globalization) radical organization Terra Prime.

• Re-watching Season 4 in particular redeems the quality of Enterprise.  While it was on, it was fun to have Star Trek back on the air, but i think Season 4 shows that this could have been every bit as good a series in the long run - great major story arcs coupled with fun and exploratory in-between eps.  Enterprise was the first series since TOS that really tried to dig through the real fears of the era it was created in.  In retrospect, Enterprise forsaw even Trumpism to some extent... Earth wasn't ready for the Federation... but it needed it.  The U.S. (which has always been represented by humans in Star Trek) isn't ready for globalism... but it needs it.  

2155

Star Trek: Enterprise (Season 4:18-21)

The Geneva Conventions are updated and re-affirmed as confirmed in ST:D (1:3).

2158

Commander Thy'lek Shran allegedly dies. 

2161
"These are the Voyages..." - ST: E (Season 4: 22)

• The real time of this episode occurs in 2370, during Season 7 of Star Trek: TNG.  Riker is Hamleting a decision, and procrastinating by going to the holodeck to watch Jonathan Archer's mission while en route to the founding of the Federation. //4.29.2017//
• Re-watching this episode from Riker's perspective during "The Pegasus" episode of TNG reemphasizes just how unjust a finale this is for Enterprise. Painfully short shrift for a series that was better than it was given credit for at the time. //3.24.21//

"Zero Hour" - ST:E (Season 3:24)

• Daniels drags Archer to the founding of the Federation to convince him not to take any risks on this mission, and give it to someone else. [starting around 10:00 until 11:50] //6.23.23//

"Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" - ST:LD (Season 3:8)

• Rutherford disarms a bomb at the Founding of the Federation event previously seen in the Enterprise finale. [starting around 17:30 until 19:15] //3.9.23//

2164
The USS Franklin is lost, as seen on some grainy footage in Star Trek Beyond. [At the 1:01 point in the film]

early 2170s
The crew of the USS Defiant are sent back to this time when a temporal accident occurs on board, and they crash land on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant in "Children of Time" (ST: DS9 5:22).

early 2200s (very approximate)

"Battle at the Binary Star" - ST: D (Season 1: 2)

• T'Kuvma tells the story of discovering the Sarcophagus as a child while speechifying to bring the 24 Houses of the Klingon Empire together in a common goal of declaring war on the Federation.  The flashback is depicted in this episode. [scenes occur at the very beginning and very end of the episode] //11.18.21//

2233
Star Trek

The opening scene of Star Trek also opens an entirely new timeline, in which we see James Kirk born and George Kirk die.  [Through 11:30 or so until the opening title shot]. //3.26.23//

In the standard, non-Kelvin universe, Kirk is born in Riverside, Iowa.  In the 2009 movie, he is born on the USS Kelvin.
//9.23.2017//

2234-ish
"The Girl Who Made the Stars" - ST:D (Season 2 - Short Trek 5)

• The realtime of this episode where Michael Burnham's father (Mike Burnham), comforts his young daughter when she is afraid at night and tells her a story... //1.22.20//

early 2230s (probably)
"Perpetual Infinity" - ST: D (Season 2: 11)

• Michael's memory of the death of her father (she thought it was both of her parents, but her mother leaves from this point into the future).  This date is also in her mother's first log entry. [starting around 1:30 until 3:00, and again at the 9:30 mark until she jumps forward 950 years]
• Several scenes through this year and the next decade or so, where Michael's mom is remembering the scenes in her life when she was observing Michael's development.  //7.10.19// //7.10.23//

"Project Daedalus" - ST: D (Season 2: 9)

• During an argument with Spock, Michael has a flashback of her sitting in a closet, crying, while the attack on her parents is occurring. //12.3.21//

"Brother" - ST: D (Season 2: 1)

• A flashback to Michael's arrival on Vulcan when she first meets Spock (an in-auspicious beginning). Also her reading Lewis Carroll with her adopted mother. //1.28.19//

"Light and Shadows" - ST: D (Season 2:7)

• Michael returns to Vulcan, and has a flashback to a time when she and Spock are starting to connect. (just noticed) 

"Unification III" - ST:D (Season 3:7)

• A brief snippet of Michael and Spock as kids, with Spock teaching Michael the Vulcan Salute //7.22.23//  [sometime before 12:00]

"If Memory Serves" - ST: D (Season 2:8)

• Michael and Spock experience an earlier moment on Vulcan, when Spock rescued Michael (perhaps led by the Red Angel). //12.1.21//

"The Vulcan Hello" - ST: D (Season 1: 1)

• A flashback to Michael's education on Vulcan, where the testing computer asks Michael about the last Klingon attack on human colony (wherein her "parents" were killed).

"Battle at the Binary Star" - ST: D (Season 1: 2)

• Another flashback of Sarek mind-melding with Michael after a terrorist bombing at the learning center. //11.18.21//

Late 2230s (estimated)

"If Memory Serves" - ST:D (Season 2:8)

• Michael runs away from home; Spock catches up with her.  The scene is viewed via Michael's memory (via Talos IV's natives).  Michael displays the unique cruelty of an older sister of the middle school age. //10.11.20//

"Memento Mori" - ST: SNW (Season 1:4)

[Flashes of the memory occur throughout the episode.] //5.26.22//

"All Those Who Wander" - ST: SNW (Season 1:9)

[Around the 31:00 minute mark] //7.7.22// 

• La'an's memories as a child aboard the SS Puget Sound when it is attacked by the Gorn, and her brother saves her.  

2239

"Yesteryear" - ST:TAS (Season 1: 2)

• Spock travels back through the gate called The Guardian to recover their own timeline. Traveling to Vulcan, and meeting himself as a 7-year old preparing to undergo a coming of age trial. 
• Reclaiming some of these in betweens (now viewed out of order), because individual episodes of The Animated Series didn't have their time travels included in earlier lists. //3.22.20//

"The Sound of Thunder" - ST:D (Season 2:6)

• We briefly see Saru send his signal using Ba'ul technology, which eventually reaches Phillipa Georgiou, presumably this same year... 

"The Brightest Star" - ST:D (Season 1 - Short Trek 3)

• Date is estimated, but Saru makes contact with Philippa Georgiou (unknown to him at the time). She is not yet a captain, so I'm guessing this is perhaps 10-15 years prior to her introduction to Michael Burnam in 2249. //1. 24.19//

early-2240s (?)

"Ad Astra per Aspera" ST:SNW (Season 2:2)

Una remembers a moment from her childhood when she had been injured, and her parents are debating whether to seek medical care for her, which would expose her genetically altered status.  [just after the "previously on" scene at the 1:00 mark until around 1:45 mark, and again briefly around 38:25]. //7.2.23//

Mid-2240s

Star Trek

Post-title sequences in Star Trek featuring a tween-age Kirk totally totaling his step-father's classic car.  Subsequent scene is Spock's own adolescence, and the pains of being a half-human on Vulcan.  [just after opening title shot until the 17:15 mark]. //3.26.23//

"Lethe" - ST:D (Season 1:6)

Also around this time would be the scenes of Sarek's memories.

2245
Admiral Jonathan Archer dies.

2247

"New Eden" - ST: D (Season 2: 2)

• A yearbook signature "recording" from her classmate, Mae Ahern, is shown briefly near the end of the episode as Tilly is trying to discover the nature of the apparition who has begun haunting her. //11.30.21//

2249

Michael Burnham graduates from the Vulcan Science Academy.

Sarek drops Michael Burnham off at the Shenzhou. ST: D (Season 1:2).  Some time before this, perhaps this very same year or in the years prior Sarek is seen choosing Spock's future over Michael Burnam's when he is told that only one of his non-pure-blood Vulcan children will be able to be part of the Vulcan Expeditionary Group.  ST: D (Season 1:6)

Sometime in the 2240s or early 2250s (or possibly any time prior to 2255)

"Project Daedalus" - ST: D (Season 2: 9)

• We see Ariam and her husband Stephen walking on a beach (probably in Hawaii), laughing, and announcing to friends that they eloped, and that they are coming home soon. [first seen immediately following the opening credits, and then again the same scene is viewed in her eyes in the closing moments of the episode (and briefly reprised in the following episode during her funeral)]. //12.3.21//

Sometime between 2249 & 2254

Star Trek

Spock turns his back on the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, eschewing their offer and choosing to enter Star Fleet.  [starting at the 17:15 mark until 19:45]. //3.26.23//

Closer to 2254
"Q&A" - ST:D (Season 2 - Short Trek 1)

Spock is newly assigned to the Enterprise as an ensign, and meets Number One (not that one) and they get stuck in an elevator. And they sing songs... //1.22.20//

Even closer to 2254
"The Trouble with Edward" - ST:D (Season 2 - Short Trek 2)

The Enterprise's science officer leaves (to make room for someone else!) to also (ha!) take command of a science vessel, and they "accidentally" create the Tribbles //1.22.20//

2254
"The Cage" - ST: TOS (Season 1:1)

100 years after Season 4 of Enterprise.  The pilot that didn't make has a lot of elements of the series - a "Bones" figure, who is the elder mentor to the captain.  Pike has the same discontent that will haunt Kirk later in the series - not sure whether he should be here at all.

Also the year when Pike leads a disastrous away mission to Rigel VII in "Among the Lotus Eaters" (ST: SNW 2:4)

2255 (estimated)
"Terra Firma" - ST: D (Season 3:9 & 10)

• Georgiou is sent through a door by The Guardian of Forever to the day when Lorca attempts to overthrow her, and she is given the opportunity to remake her historical path. [Starting at 24:45 of Part 1, these eps are entirely in this year until Georgiou returns passing out / dying at 31:45 of Part 2] //12.7.21// //7.28.23//

Star Trek (2009) 

Bar fight and subsequent enlisting of James T. Kirk into Starfleet.  Kirk meets Uhura & "Bones". [just after opening title shot until the 19:45 mark until ...] //3.26.23//

Real time of Star Trek: Discovery (Seasons 1 & 2)

mid/late 2250s
"Ask Not" - ST:D (Season 2 - Short Trek 3)

• A mini-Kobayashi Maru for an Enterprise applicant where Pike tests her, and then hires her as an engineer for his ship.  No good way to know when exactly this falls (before or after "The Cage", but this is a best guess. //1.22.20//

May 2256
ST: D (Season 1: 1-2)

There has been an "easy read" of the first couple episodes of Star Trek: Discovery as a Trump-America allegory where a nationalist Klingon Empire regroups and begins to mess up everyone's happy socialist utopia.  Sucks.

But it's useful to recall, that even in this reading, less than one lifetime later (namely James Kirk's lifetime), Klingons and the Federation are on the border of peace and understanding (see Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country).

It's easy to read Star Trek as meaning something; and especially something that you want it to say.  But even at the most cynical - our current struggle with understanding what is happening in America, Star Trek's clear answer is that the end result will be resolution and progress.  Worf will serve on the Enterprise, and there is unfortunate history that leads up to that.

The best, simplest take-away is to always assume progress and togetherness.  We will win.  But it will take time.  That said, who wants to be on the wrong side of history?
//10.1.2017//

November 2256 - 57
ST: D (Season 1: 3 - 6)

While each episode is building an exciting arch in a way that no previous Star Trek series has, the first several 'real-time' episodes of the series are also moral and ethical vignettes - doing what's right vs. following orders; recognition of a sentient "creature's" inalienable rights; familial obligations and standing up to racism in an evolved, logical society. //10.23.2017//

ST: D (Season 1: 7-9)

Episode 7 is a hilarious fun-fest, and at the same time a serious project in character development.  The next two episodes are heavy, and get to the mid-Season finale (yeah, other Star Trek shows didn't have these...) at the peak of exciting insanity. //11.20.2017//

• Harcourt Fenton Mudd is re-connected with his lost love, Stella.

ST: D (Season 1: 10-15)

The crew heads to the mirror universe and back.  On their return (because tracking timelines in two universes seems a bit obsessive...), they're 9 months further in the future, and the Federation has all but lost the war with the Klingons.  Thanks to the Terran Emperor, the Federation wins (or at least ties), and life goes on...

What's not clear, is which life we're operating in here.  This could be the standard Star Trek world we've come to know, or the Kelvin timeline (nothing major enough has occurred - Vulcan has yet to be destroyed, etc.).  It may also be its own separate timeline - which would be a waste, I'm afraid.
But this may very well be the orthodox Star Trek world, but if so, it is telling how close the Federation came to losing the war.  Kirk's racism against Klingons in the movies, and the underlying animosity, is understandable to some extent. //2.15.2018//

"Runaway" - ST:D (Season 1 - Short Trek 1)

• Date is again estimated, and we see Tilly making her start on Discovery as an applicant to the command program. //1. 24.19//

"Under the Cloak of War" - ST:SNW (Season 2:8)

• Nurse Chapel and Doctor M'Benga are on J'Gal during the Klingon War with their memories  [Right after the opening credits until 13:00, then starting just before 15:30 to commercial break at 16:30, a short scene around 20:15, and just before 26:00 until 29:45, and again just before 31:15, then the perspective shifts at 35:20 to Admiral Dak'Rah's, then back to Chapel & M'Benga at 36:50 until about 38:00. And finally at 39:10 we're back with M'Benga using Protocol 12 before he goes into his (unseen) battle...] //7.31.23//

2258
Season 2 of Discovery starts with the "red signals" and Spock is at the center of the mystery.

ST: D (Season 2)

The second season of Star Trek: Discovery takes place very near the same time of the Kelvin Universe's primary conflict - the destruction of Vulcan.  In Michael Burnam's universe, the crew discover another existential threat, Control (or perhaps C.O.N.T.R.O.L.?).  They trace The Red Angel through space and time, chasing 7 signals throughout the galaxy, and eventually find the answer in the past and the future. //7.11.19//

• We learned from the Trek display at ComicCon 2019 that Michael Burnam's disappearance takes place in 2257 (at the very end of season 2).  Unlike the convention established by all previous Star Trek series, where each season takes place over the course of a calendar year, allowing actors to grow a year older as their characters do, it seems Discovery is happening much closer together (well except for now, when the U.S.S. Discovery is blasted into the far far future!)

"Unification III" - ST:D (Season 3:7)

• An image of Spock, in emotional distress (seemingly sometime after Discovery departed for the future) //7.22.23//  [sometime before 12:00]

The "present day" of Star Trek (2009) - 

Star Trek

This update is a rare joyful sequel long after the previous iterations.  It allows for a new timeline that has started, but at the same time shows us how our old friends first (might have) met and become so vital to each other's lives.  I challenge you to watch this movie (or this series) and then not see the built-in camaraderie (albeit in a differing timeline) in the first season of TOS (which is a bit lost in its characterizations, but a lot might be made up for in this sequence of movies...)

• A fascinating entree into our familiar characters.  Seeing them as younger versions of themselves trapped in an alternate timeline.
• Crisis on Vulcan & Jim Kirk's got crazy chubby hands!
• Most interesting is the moment when the characters come to realize [about 1:11 in] that they are actually in an alternate timeline.
• Also, seeing Kirk become captain of the Enterprise for the first time ever and at the same time watching Spock (and Michael Burnham's) mom die (in Winona Ryder form here), while also live on in subsequent seasons of Discovery is...fascinating.  //2.6.19// //3.26.23//

Real time of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

2259

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 1: 1 - 10)

We get to meet Spock's wife!  And Pike's (?) girlfriend? before the Enterprise is put out a few days/weeks earlier than planned. //7.8.22//

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 2)

I love learning more about the back stories of TOS crew intermingling, like Spock and Nurse Chapel's history of sexytime, meeting an alternate timeline Kirk through almost an entire episode, and Uhura meeting the Smoke Monster from Lost (?).

• The beginning and end of Season 2 seem to imply that the Gorn (a sort of absurd TOS holdover) were going to become the main enemy of the Federation in this brief mini-era. 
• The season is a great balance - even a straight alternating - between zany / fun and deep / philosophical, with time traveling back to the 21st Century, Spock becoming human, animated guests from the Cerritos, and Star Trek's first musical episode!
• And the cliffhanger!, my gawd! the choice we won't get to see resolved for at least a year... //8.22.23//

likely in the early 2260s

"Through the Valley of Shadows" - ST: D (Season 2: 12)

• Christopher Pike encounters a time crystal, which causes him to experience a future memory of a disaster aboard his future ship, which results in his being injured, paralyzed, and his face deformed as he appears in "The Menagerie" (ST:TOS 1: 11 & 12). 

2263.02
Star Trek: Into Darkness shows this as the day/month/week (not sure how stardates work!) of Spock's death in the Kelvin timeline.

2264

Tuvok is born.

2265
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" - ST (Season 1: 3)

Real Time of Star Trek: The Original Series

2266 - 67

"Strange New Worlds" - ST: SNW (Season 1:1)

• Captain Pike experiences the future memory of his near death experience that will happen before James T. Kirk takes command (timing is a little iffy while they retcon this new series into the canon). //5.12.22//

Star Trek (Season 1, episodes 1 - 14)

• An episodic "monster of the week" season.  The show was created during a point in television history when any kind of over-arching narrative for a series was not done.  Television needed to be episodic so fans could come and go as needed.  Nonetheless, the first season establishes much loved characters and relationships.

Each episode grapples with social, psychological, political and philosophical questions through alien species, amazing technology, and not yet understood powers and phenomena.  "The Menagerie" anticipates The Matrix, and demonstrates why the preference for the blue pill isn't always a bad thing.  "What are Little Girls Made Of?" grapples with fascism and eugenics.
We also get to meet Harvey Mudd, again... for the first time.

"A Quality of Mercy" - ST: SNW (Season 1:10)

• Captain Pike encounters another time crystal - and finds himself living out his captaincy seven years in the future, and a few months after the accident that would nearly have killed him. //7.8.22//

"Ephraim and Dot" - ST: D (Season 2 - Short Trek 4)

• An adorable episode, which starts here in 2267 and continues a bit crazily through unto Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  It's a really fun ride, that spans much of TOS crew's run.  //1.22.20//

Star Trek (Season 1, episodes 15 - 29)

• The back half of this season wanders at times into zaniness frequently (Alice & her Wonderland rabbit showing up in "Shore Leave"; a Gorn battle in "Arena"; and a lovey-dovey Spock in "This Side of Paradise"), but also features some of the greatest episodes in the entire series like "Space Seed" and "City on the Edge of Forever".

• Most of this series occurs exactly 300 years in the future of the actual time of the series.  //8.9.19//

2267
Star Trek (Season 2, episodes 1 - 15)

Season 1 introduced the Klingons and the Romulans, and established most of our character relationships.  Pavel Chekov joins the crew on episode 1 of the second season (he was meant to be the Davy Jones of the group)...

The stakes feel higher in the first few episodes... (Spock kills Kirk!  the Greek Gods were powerful space aliens!  NOMAD, our own creation, returns with plans to destroy all of us!  The Mirror Universe!).

Star Date 4523.7 ("a Friday", according to the guys from Temporal Investigations)

"Trials and Tribble-ations" - ST: DS9 (Season 5:6)

Written during the 30th Anniversary season of Star Trek.  I watched "The Trouble with Tribbles" from TOS and this episode in real time - switching between them as i recognized landmarks.  The best moment, perhaps, is when Bashir is truly baffled when they encounter Klingons on the station without the forehead ridges. //12.21.19// //11.17.21//

2268

Star Trek (Season 2, episodes 16 - 26)

Season 2 has continued to focus on big stakes "monster of the weeks", but also several more encounters with the Klingons.  One episode, "Return to Tomorrow" features Diana Muldaur, marking her first appearance of many.  I must admit that many of these episodes feel unfamiliar to me - I know that i've seen them (in fact, my ArFives assure me of it), but I don't know that I know well what comes next in them.

2268 - 69
Star Trek (Season 3)

Now, I love Star Trek (I hope that's clear if nothing else is on this damnable blog), but Season 3 starts to occasionally jump the shark a bit.  "Spock's Brain"!, Knives!, Uhura sees herself as old! (ok, it's mostly just "And the Children Shall Lead").  Oh, and Abraham Lincoln shows up.

• This season is at times so dumb, but then you get an episode like "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" (itself a kind of dumb episode), and Spock's soliloquy when he is merged with the bodiless Medusan near the end of the episode gives us a profound moment when he bemoans the utter loneliness of the human condition of having a body.  This is what Star Trek (and sci-fi writ large) give us - an ability to see outside of ourselves.  And therefore back in to ourselves.
• I do not mean to overstate the nature of such thoughts, but these kinds of mini-philosophizations are scattered throughout all of the series and movies.  The idea that the fact of having bodies makes humans inherently lonely (as compared to species that might share everything or at least much more of their actual existence with each other) is significant and profound.  It makes you think about the fact that no matter how connected you may be to family, friends or others around you - you are you and only you, and most of you doesn't ever get out and we base a civilization around that.  Pretty fucked up...
• As the season progresses, though, I do feel like they start to figure out character development.  Episode 19 - "Requiem for Methuselah" for example, builds the future McCoy - Spock love/hate relationship.
• The series goes out with a bang with frackin' Abraham Lincoln, time travel, and a huge step backward for feminism (see episode 24 :( ) //3.21.20//  

2269 - StartDate 5943.7
"All Our Yesterdays" - ST (Season 3: 23)

• Spock recognizes (and accepts) he can't go back to the ice age he's been longing for...

Real time of Star Trek: The Animated Series

2269 - 2270
Season 1 revisits several locales and characters from the original series.  Harry Mudd makes an appearance, and the crew revisit the "amusement park" planet from the TOS episode "Shore Leave".  The animated format (and Saturday morning cartoon style) allowed for even more extreme plot lines and antics.  Por ejemplo, "The Terratin Incident", in which the crew all turn tiny and have to operate the Enterprise while they're an inch tall and shrinking!  Some new convenient inventions, like personal force fields in place of space suits.

• Particularly of note in season 1 are episodes written by Walter Koenig and Larry Niven (as well as Trek alumni D.C. Fontana & Marc Daniels and more...) //4.8.20//

2270
Season 2 is brief, and much more of the same.  An introduction of the holodeck - it existed long before we first meet Data there in nearly 100 years.  Sad that there were so few episodes, and the run feels cut short. //4.19.20//

early 2270s
"Flashback" - ST: V (Season 3:2)

• The false childhood memories that Tuvok experiences during this episode would have taken place around this time when he is age 10 or so... 
• Of course, it turns out that the memory is actually a virus that lives within memory patterns, and has infected Tuvok, but lain dormant for 80 years, but we do get a view of a childhood version of Tuvok (then Janeway, followed by Tuvok's former colleague, Dmitry who is killed in 2293. //11.14.21//

Real time of the TOS Movies - (comments)

2273
Star Trek: The Motion Picture

• It's easy to bemoan the grandeur of some of the scenes, with Scotty & Kirk taking fraking FOREVER!!!! to park the shuttle, but it's easy to forget that it had been more than a decade since we had seen our friends in the flesh.
• These theatrics also serve to create the optics of the future of Star Trek.  As Kirk is first finding his way around the ship, it looks like Next Gen hallways he is making his way through, and Engineering sets the scene for the climax of Part 2
• The movie also takes place 3 years after our Enterprise crew were last seen.  McCoy and Spock both seem to have gone through the full on hippy experience (albeit for different outcomes, i'm sure).
• On returning, Spock seems like an old friend who has done a bit too much LDS... he's lost, but i think by all but attaining the Kolinahr, and then saying, "meh", we recognize full Vulcan / Human fusion potential in the new Spock.
• Bones seems to have experienced a severe case of GTFO, but then gets (wait for it, 1970s!) DRAFTED (ha).  This might be the earliest support of the argument that Star Fleet (and therefore Star Trek) isn't always on the up and up and all to the good...

But GOD, there are SO MANY slow pans over the top of annoyingly plastic or electronica looking scenes.  It's like the movie was directed by the set director, but the set director mostly creates RPG miniatures scenes in his basement and is VERY proud of them.

Importantly, I believe this film represents the first visit of the "real time real time" Star Trek universe to visit earth - we see the Golden Gate Bridge, with sweet repulsor things.  Never before, I think, had Star Trek (actual or animated) ventured to earth in what was meant to be the future.  The subsequent movies, and TNG did this a lot, but worth noting how new this is for this universe. //4.19.20//

2278
"Cause and Effect" - ST: TNG (Season 5:18)

• The USS Bozeman encounters a temporal anomaly.  Also, we learn THIS! (and literally{until I came across this next one in 2022!} the next scene we see after Kelsey Grammer is Kirstie Alley) //4.19.20//

2280 (approx)

"Gravity" - ST: V (Season 5:13)

• We meet a teenage Tuvok, who has fallen in love with a Terrellian Ambassador's daughter, and been kicked out of school because he doesn't want to reject emotion in the standard Vulcan manor. [Starting from the opening scene to the opening credits, we are returned to the memory at the 21:00 - 24:00 mark, and again in the last 2 minutes of the episode.] //5.17.22//

2285
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

• So many little parallels to the first movie.  The little man in a spacesuit waving to the Enterprise as it pulls out of space dock.  And a first visualization of the Kobiyashi Maru scenario (although Chris Pine's attempt took place chronologically prior to this).
• The line: "Scotty, we need Warp Speed in 3 minutes or we're all dead" is the core TOS line and mentality.  This is, clearly, the greatest of Star Trek movies, and not least because it is when we lose Spock (for the first time).
• The most important quote from the movie, is the line from Spock: "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few (or the one)".  This will be an ongoing conversation / debate for the next 100 years, and is revisited in Star Trek: Picard. //4/21.20//

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

• When I was younger, I always thought of Search for Spock as kind of a throwaway, but on a re-watch (or a re-re-watch), it feels more substantial.  
• The first time in our viewing experience (traditionally!), when Star Fleet officers - heroes, really, don't do what they are told... when the concept that Star Fleet isn't entirely perfect and always doing the right thing might first be introduced.
• It feels something like Picard, without the modern day sensibility...
• The mystical-religio parts at the very end are very much forgotten by me... Even from my last viewing, and I find them to be pretty okay despite my skeptical position...
• Also, I was today year's old when i realized that the character Saavik, played by Kirstie Alley was traded to a different actress.  (I expect there is a story there, but it's a shame for Star Trek). 

This also marks the moment of the destruction of the original NCC class Enterprise (NCC-1701) //4.22.20//

2286
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

• It's a simple setup with a few weeks having passed since the conclusion of part 3, and the crew of the newly dubbed HMS Bounty have decided to return home to Earth to face the music of having stolen (and subsequently destroyed) the Enterprise.  A Klingon representative on earth also wants Kirk extradited to Qo'onoS, which is roundly rejected by Star Fleet, but sets up the final movie of the set.
• Also the time travel dream sleep sequence is ridiculously hokey.
• But they get home, and Kirk swims to save the planet earth.  Yay!! //4.26.20//

The Enterprise A (NCC-1701-A) is constructed with James Kirk as the first captain of the vessel.


2287 (aka Stardate 8454.1 {ergo wtf})
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Kirk's opening scene holds up - i think - silly, but kind of harmless fun.  The Nimbus III (even the name, blech) stuff is worse...

• Overall, the movie remains a mess.  The fight with god.  The parallelism of Kirk knowing he was not going to die as he fell from the mountain at the start of the movie, and his certainty that his time has come after sending Spock and Bones back to the ship, because:

"I know, I've always known, that I will die alone"

Oy. //4.28.20//

 - also, sometime in between these two movies the budding romance between Scotty & Uhura is abandoned (thankfully).  It was a silly (and out of nowhere) subplot.

2290

"The Emissary" - ST: TNG (Season 2:20)

The Klingon ship T'Ong crew enters cryogenic sleep.  At this time the Klingon Empire is at war with the Federation, and when the crew awaken 75 years from now, they are ready for a tussle.

2293
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 

• Sulu is a MF captain!!!  

"Flashback" - ST: V (Season 3:2)
Written during the 30th Anniversary season of Star Trek.  ("Stardate 9521")

• Interesting is that this episode actually bounces around in its own timeline - first starting near the end of VI 
• and then it bounces back to 3 days earlier prior to the beginning scenes of the movie.
• You would actually need to view the latter part of this episode first (in the opening scenes of ST:VI:TUC) and then come back and watch the earlier scenes - although this doesn't fix all of it... it's all over the place. //5.1.20// //11.14.21//

Back to ST:VI:TUC

• There is a moment [at about the 13:45 point (right after Polaris cites regulations to Kirk - a little in-joke)], and we get a glimpse at the helms controls and it looks like an awesome 90s synthesizer...
• What is kinda great about this movie (which is really a good one, maybe 2nd or 3rd best) is that it [appropriately] repositions Spock at the center of the Star Trek universe - supplanting Kirk.  

Star Trek: Generations
Later in the same year (presumably after returning to Space Dock at the end of VI), we see Kirk, Scotty & Chekhov as guests at the launch of the Enterprise B.

• Somehow Tuvok's human twin is serving onboard 
• And Guinan is beamed aboard and "rescued"
• And Kirk saves the ship before getting sucked out into space - and into The Nexus. //5.2.20// //8.3.21//

early 2300s (approx)

"Remember" - ST:V (Season 3:6)

• B'Elanna experiences the memories from this era of Korenna Mirrel via vivid dreams.  The dreams reveal a forgotten part of Enaran history in which they perpetrated the genocide of a portion of their population who they referred to as "Regressives" (people who rejected use of some of their technology). //11.15.21//

2311

The Tomed Incident & The Treaty of Algernon

early 2310s

"The Stargazer" - ST: Pic (Season 2:1)

• A memory is depicted of Picard at around age 7 - 9 in the solarium of Chateau Picard with his mother. [first around the 9:30 - 12:00 minute mark]  //3.4.22// //4.4.23//

"Watcher" - ST: Pic (Season 2:4)

• Brief flashes of Picard's childhood at Chateau Picard with his mother intermixed with Picard and Jurati entering the abandoned estate to find rest and respite. [briefly around the 5:30 until 6:30 mark] //4.6.23//

"Two of One" - ST: Pic (Season 2:6)

• Brief flashes of Picard's childhood at Chateau Picard with his mother. [before and after the opening credits, starting at 2:00 and again later around 17:45, 23:00, and finally around 34:30 in the scenes when he is on the brink of death and when he is reminiscing with Renée Picard] //4.7.22// //4.7.23//

"Monsters" - ST: Pic (Season 2:7)

• Tallinn and Picard are trapped in a childhood nightmare of Picard's while his mother has been abducted (by a monster).  It's a strange, alternate fantasy version of his actual childhood memories. [before and after the opening credits and throughout the episode, there are scenes throughout interspersed with "modern day" (2024) and weird psychology session scenes with old Picard where he's in conversation with James Calliss, which turn out to be sometime later in his life... or maybe never, starting immediately after the "previously on..." scene.  These early 2310s scenes start at 6:30 through to the 32:00] //4.15.22// //4.7.23//

"Hide and Seek" - ST: Pic (Season 2:9)

• As Picard and his crew return to Chateau Picard to stave off the Borg Queen's plan, he experiences the latest memories of his mother with scenes interspersed throughout the episode alongside the real-time scenes in 2024. [starting at 9:20 and continuing through the episode with the latest moment starting at the 41:00 mark.] //4.28.22// //4.8.23//

2327

"Tapestry" - ST: TNG (Season 6:15)

• Q sends Picard back to a pivotal moment in his personal history - the moment he fights 3 Nausicaans in a bar when he was 21 years old. In the present, he's on an operating table and the artificial heart he gets in 2327 is about to critically fail him, but he takes the opportunity to make the more sensible choice this time around... //1.20.21//

2341

"Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus" - ST:LD (Season 3:8)

• We encounter a holographic version of "The Algae Crisis", an evidently turning point moment in Federation History [starting around 10:30 until 11:15] //3.9.23//

2342

"We'll Always Have Paris" - ST: TNG (Season 1:24)

• In an early insight into Picard's history, we meet an ex-girlfriend of Jean-Luc's.  He visits the holodeck to create the exact circumstances of April 9, 2342 - when he had an evening rendezvous planned, but he skipped out on her because he was leaving in the morning. //5.5.20//

"Tattoo" - ST: V (Season 2:9)

• Chakotay has a flashback to his teenage years when he encounters a symbol on a planet in the Delta Quadrant that he previously saw as a teen while walking through the Central American rain forests with his father.
• The episode alternates between this moment from Chakotay's adolescence and the present day. Note: exact year is estimated //8.25.21//

2344

Source of the embattled Enterprise C from "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG Season 3:15).  We meet the crew, but don't actually see this moment in time, but it is an edifying episode about this point in (future) history //9.20.20//

2346

"Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night" - ST: DS9 (Season 6:17)

• Kira Nerys travels back in time using the Orb of Time (which we're allowing is a thing now, I guess) to Bajor during the occupation and meets her parents (and her 3-year-old self).  We get to see Terek Nor in its early days. //2.27.22//

"Bloodlines" - ST: TNG (Season 7:22)

• Jason Vigo (Picard's alleged biological son) is born after Picard's "brief, but intense relationship" with Vigo's mother back on earth before shipping out.

late 2340s

"Dark Frontier, Part 1" - ST:V (Season 5:15)

• Seven of Nine is reading logs from her parents time observing the Borg, and we get a scene [from about 14:00 to 19:00] on board the USS Raven when her parents begin tailing a Borg cube.  The memories continue throughout the episode with Seven's father, Magnus, observing the Borg from onboard the cube a few months further on from the first scene. [starting at a commercial break at 29:30 to 31:30]. Seven's parents are seen making a practice of beaming drones who are regenerating to observe them directly (alien abduction while you're asleep in bed! I wonder if that is a Borg trope as well?). [56:00 to 57:45].  Another scene with Seven and her parents where they have been detected, and are being pursued by the Borg. 
• This last scene may be into 2350 unless they "slip away" this time, so all of this may be happening in 2349 and into 2350, but it could be a bit earlier at the start, as it seems the Hansen's mission of observing the Borg lasted around 2 years. [110:00 to 112:30 plus a few brief flashes at the 117:00 mark]  //5.26.22//

"The Voyager Conspiracy" - ST:V (Season 6:9)

• The briefest of glimpses of Seven's parents on their mission aboard the Raven as she describes her conspiracy theory. [around the 36:00 minute mark.] //8.9.22//

2349

Professor Paul Manheim departs for his experimental mission, where the Enterprise discovers them 15 years later.

2350

"The Raven" - ST:V (Season 4:6)

• Seven of Nine briefly sees images of herself [at around the 37:00 mark] on board the USS Raven when she and her parents were assimilated.  Throughout the episode, Seven experiences hallucinations which tie back to this moment near the end of the episode. //2.2.22//

Six-year-old Annika Hansen is assimilated by the Borg.

2351

"Eye of the Needle" - ST: V (Season 1:7)

• Voyager's crew communicates with a Romulan science vessel in the Alpha Quadrant via a micro-wormhole, and send messages to Star Fleet (hopefully) via Telek R'Mor, who promises to deliver them in 20 years' time. //8.3.21//

"True Q" - ST: TNG (Season 6:6)

• Amanda summons the image of her parents holding her as a baby [just before the 21:00 mark]

early 2350s (approx.)

"The Emissary" - ST: DS9 (Season 1:2)

• Sisko experiences several of his earlier memories, most notable, perhaps, is his initial flirtations with his wife, Jennifer //12.20.20//

2354

"Scorpion, Part 2" - ST:V (Season 4:1)

• Seven of Nine briefly sees images of herself [at around the 41:00 mark] as a young child (Chakotay actually seems to be experiencing the vision, and describing it to Seven) as Voyager tries to stop her from taking control of their ship and returning toward the nearby Borg ships.

2355

Jake Sisko is born.

late-2350s

"Lineage" - ST: V (Season 7:11)

• a series of Belana's memories when she was young, and on a camping trip with her father and some cousins. [Starting around the 12:00 mark and continuing throughout the episode.] //10.13.22//

2358

"The Pegasus" - ST: TNG (Season 7:12)

• a mutiny occurs aboard the USS Pegasus, where Will Riker served less than a year after graduating the academy.  Described by Will to Picard [around the 25:00 minute mark]

2362

"Identity Crisis" - ST: TNG (Season 4:18)

• In the first few minutes of the episode, we see archival footage of Geordie on a mission with his previous crew from the USS Victory (before he came aboard the Enterprise).  The Enterprise returns to Tarchannen III to solve the 5-year-old mystery. 
• We see a bit more of the video around 16:30 (and again 22:30) in to the episode while Geordie and Susanna Leijten are looking for clues as to what happened, and then Geordie creates a holodeck recreation of the away mission at 27:45.  //11.11.20//

Real time of Star Trek: The Next Generation

2364

"All Good Things" - ST:TNG (Season 7:24)

• "Encounter at Farpoint" - JL's arrival on the Enterprise [Throughout both parts starting at around 9:00 until 10:30, then again at 19:40, 37:40, 49:50, 53:20, 1:01:30, 1:11:10, 1:19;00, 1:22:40, and finally at 1:25:00]

Picard comes across a bit crazy in these moments, which is cool.  Interesting will be to view this episode alongside "Farpoint" when the chronology gets there. //4.26.14// //4.29.23//

The re-write of the events of the first episode is fun - with Picard erratically taking the crew off course, delaying the pick-up of Riker (which sets up the plot of the whole first episode), and eventually leading them to their demise (until they get a reset and rescue) //5.3.20//

"The Bounty" - ST:Pic (Season 3:6)

• We get a few brief glimpses of Riker's first meeting with Data on the holodeck of the Enterprise [in the first half of the episode]  //4.12.23//

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 1)
So, confession time - I Started in on re-watching Season 1 sometime around the end of Season 2 of TOS in this timeline (but just went back & did "All Good Things" & "Encounter at Farpoint" together over the last few days.)

• In watching all of these first season eps together (remember, for over 25 years I've watched this series - my favorite of all of the series - asynchronously), it is surprising how instrumental Tasha Yar is to the show.  And therefor how shocking it was when she dies near the end of the first season.  So harsh and so senseless...
• The season (prior comments available) is a healthy balance of "monster/problem of the week", character development (including the aforementioned Yar) and building out the world (Ferengi, Q, Lore, the Holodeck {seriously, an important character in the series})
• The most crazy fraking thing about this season is that it seems there are two Picard-centric episodes at the end of the season (24 & 25) - well, I had seen the end of "We'll Always Have Paris" with Data demonstrating the Goldilocks Theory of Temporary Anomalies.
• Near the season's end ("Conspiracy - ep. 25), Picard & Riker get to blast the fuck out of Dexter Remmick, the most annoying Star Fleet officer we've met to date this season, i suspect... //5.5.20//

"Shades of Gray" - ST:TNG (Season 2:22)

• Riker is dreaming as he sits facing death, flashing through scenes from season 1 and earlier in season 2.  "He's reliving memories, it's a natural reaction to neural stimulation" //6.4.20//

2365

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 2)
Season 2 is a significant step up from season 1.  It's not peak TNG, but it is quite good.  So much so that I agree with this Twitter thread, which is by a Trek newbie who started watching season 2 as a way to better connect with the series.

• The season does a lot of character building - everyone gets a focus episode - and Guinan is a useful character to emit such development.
• Episode 9 - "The Measure of a Man" - is perhaps the series' best episode (I know, I know you "The Inner Light" fans - it's awesome, for sure, but I think this one may be more important).
• Also, the introduction of the Borg in "Q Who", episode 16, is fundamental to Star Trek of the future.  Q sets the Borg (inadvertently, i think) on humanity.
• "wishing for a thing does not make it so..." 
• Also, this season mark's the Riker's Beard moment for the series, which I was today year's old (9/11/20) when I learned is the opposite of jumping the shark.

By the end of this season, we know and love the core crew.  Doctor Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur, who guest-starred in a couple TOS episodes) was a welcome stand-in for the season (and an old flame of Riker's dad, which is fun!). //6.4.20//

2366
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 3)

Season 3 begins what I would call the "hey days" of TNG.  Particularly, Riker becomes the sex-with-aliens stand in for Kirk, and Geordi also gets the first of his unfortunate romance episodes (falling in love with a hologram after another shitty holo-date).

• This is the first season of any Star Trek show to feature the "cliff-hanger" ending (part 1 as the season finale and part 2 as the season premiere).

"False Profits" - ST:V (Season 3:3)

• The two Ferengi who are lost on the far side of an unstable wormhole in "The Price" (ST:TNG - 3:8) encounter a Bronze Age civilization on a planet in the Delta Quadrant where they begin a seven-year reign of profit posing as prophets foretold in the civilization's religious writings.

The season continues a strong run with the Ferengi becoming a more regularly occurring adversary, and their species becomes a more fleshed out complex civilization.

"Kobayashi" - ST:Pro (Season 1:6)

• In the closing moments of the episode, we see video footage of Chakotay, who is captain of the Protostar, declaring an emergency, where the ship will be subsequently abandoned.  This moment in time is re-visited in the next episode "First Con-Tact" (ST: Pro 1:7) [in the early seconds of the episode].
• A scene [starting at about the 8:00 min. mark] where the Diviner asks for the Drednok create a progeny for him, and thus we get Gwyn's origin (although not yet, necessarily a full sense of what is going on in Prodigy or what the USS Protostar is doing in the Delta Quadrant.

"Things Past" - ST:DS9 (Season 5:8)

• Upon encountering a plasma storm aboard a runabout, the 4 passengers (Sisko, Dax, Odo & Garak) awaken to their consciousnesses having been awakened within the bodies of 4 Bajorans living on Terok Nor 9 years (plus or minus) earlier.  Their bodies remain in the present, and suffer the physical damage taken in this past time.

The exact position in the timeline for this episode is somewhat estimated, but Garak seems sure it's 7 years ago, but that our foursome seem to be in an alternate timeline, because 7 years ago Odo would have been in charge of security on the station, but they continually encounter his predecessor, Thrax.   //12.6.21//

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 3) - continued

• Also the first season where really get to see more of the characters' foibles
• Geordi's flailing romantic tendencies, sure, 
• but also Riker's lost ambition/career direction/life direction in the finale, but also in an episode like "Menage a Troi".
• Picard also gets one of his more interesting romantic interests, when we first encounter Vash during his "Captain's Holiday".
• Our first experience of Worf as a "fallen klingon", rather than just another "neat alien crew member" //9.30.20//

2367

"The Emmisary Pt. 1" - ST:DS9 (Season 1:1)

• Captain Benjamin Sisko engages Locutus of Borg and the cube at Wolf 359 along with the rest of the fleet.  His wife dies and he and his son, Jake, escape in a pod during the first 4:30 of the episode. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 4)

A lot of (even) deep(er) dives into the characters early in the season: Picard goes home ("Family", ep. 2) and fights with his brother; Data goes home ("Brothers", ep. 3) and fights with his brother; Dr. Crusher becomes literally the last (and therefore most interesting) person in the universe ("Remember Me", ep. 5); Worf is a BabyDaddy and meets his son ("Reunion", ep. 7)

• Patrick Stewart directs his first episode in this season ("In Theory"); Jonathan Frakes helms a couple of additional episodes after first directing "The Offspring" in Season 3
• We also get Miles O'Brien and his brilliant wife Keiko as series semi-regulars this season.  His character growth (acknowledging his Cardassian racism; a bit of a lout when it comes to fancy food; jealous type) sets up the more complex character development of future series. 
• In addition to the continual character development throughout the season (particularly for Data), the season also has several episodes that set up what will be the primary arc of the larger Star Trek universe for TNG besides the Borg: the Federation / Klingon / Romulan triad. //11.17.20//

2368

"Survival Instinct" - ST:V (Season 6:2)

• Memories from 8 years in Voyager's past, where Seven of Nine had crash landed with a small contingent of Borg, and they were separated from the Collective [Opening sequence, with additional scenes throughout the episode] //7.22.22//

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Season 5: 1-8)

I think Season 5 is Peak Star Trek... After mopping up a good two-parter with "Redemption"  to start the season, 4 of the next 5 episodes are "Darmok", "Ensign Ro", "The Game" and "Disaster" (I know, that one may not deserve honorable mention, but it's a fun character-building episode).

• Peak Star Trek (or at least peak TNG) perhaps occurs in episodes 7 & 8 of this season with the two-part episode "Unification".  To be clear, "Unification" is not the best episode(s) of TNG (that honor likely falls to "The Inner Light" later this same season, though that's debatable, I suppose), but it is a great episode - and amongst the most important in the entire series with regard to future history. Particularly the import that Romulan & Vulcan (& Romulan & Federation) as featured in...

"Unification III" - ST:D (Season 3:7)

• Video footage from the TNG episode (Pt. 2) [starting at 12:10 until just before the 13:00 minute mark] 

ST:TNG (Season 5: 9-18)

As the season continues after "Unification", it continues to be full of all-time classic episodes like "Conundrum", "Cause and Effect" & "I, Borg".

• "I, Borg" is not only a great episode in terms of its moral implications where Picard and the Enterprise crew consider committing genocide against the Borg, It also sets up a lot of the plot of Star Trek: Picard.

"Old Friends, New Planets" - ST:LD (Season 4:10)

• Nick Locarno and his Nova Squadron are walking Star Fleet Academy grounds planning their Kolvoord Starburst that leads to the inquiry in "The First Duty" [starting at 1:20 until 2:50] //11.2.23//

ST:TNG (Season 5: 19-25)

• The season ends with Data (followed by most of the main crew) making their way back to the late 1800s earth, where they will meet Mark Twain & Jack London and neatly wrap things up in the Season 6 premiere. //12.13.20//

"Time's Arrow" - ST:TNG (Season 5: 26 & 6:1)

• Unless this episode happens to occur over the New Year's holiday, then these episodes close out 2368. 
• 2368 will mark the last year for the next many years when a year is almost entirely dominated by one series (or movie).  For these next several years the order of the chronology will bounce between episodes of the series (first between TNG & Deep Space 9, and later DS9 & Voyager)

2369

Star Trek: TNG (Season 6: 2 - 11)

After "Time's Arrow", Season 6 starts off with this bunch of sometimes fun, but rarely the classic episodes from the previous season.  Scotty shows up in "Relics", which isn't as cool as when Spock showed up last year in "Unification".  

"Before and After" - ST:V (Season 3:21)

• Kes encounters her father, but doesn't recognize him, and as she tries to ask for help with her condition, she flashes further back to her birth, and then her pre-birth and back again. [from 39:30 to 42:00] //12.11.22//

Real time of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (w/ TNG continuing)

Star Trek: DS9 (Season 1: 1 - 5)

After establishing the primary drives of the series: the wormhole that brings DS9 significance, Cardassian resentment after losing control over Bajor, Bajoran extremism after decades of occupation, and bureaucracy outside of the confines of Star Fleet, the series starts off with a couple of character episodes for Kira and Odo.

 remainder of ST: TNG Season 6 & ST: DS9 Season 1 (exact order in the 2nd link of this post)

• The rest of Season 6 of TNG is still close to peak trek (2nd only to Season 5 in my estimation, unless a future season of DS9 changes my mind - which is possible as I don't think I've ever watched it all the way through, and definitely didn't watch it as it aired, because I was in college for much of it).  Some classic episodes include "Timescape" (directed by Adam Nimoy!), "Tapestry", and "Frame of Mind", plus Picard falls in love (although that is off-set by another unfortunate Geordi romance ep)...
• DS9 on the other hand stumbles through what a lot of first seasons of series struggle with, namely figuring out just what the frack this show is really about...  There are some fun episodes (e.g. "Move Along Home" & "The Storyteller"), but a lot of the season is still figuring things out and not knowing some things (like why is O'Brien such a dick for most of this season).

"Descent" - ST:TNG (Season 6:26 & 7:1)

• TNG's final cliffhanger season finale is a doozy.  Lore returns at the end of Season 6 having arranged the kidnapping and brainwashing of his brother, Data.  It's a great story, but also furthers the development of "the new Borg" that started with Hugh in "I, Borg", gets characterized in Star Trek: Voyager once they encounter 7 of 9, and becomes the predominant Borg culture once we reach the days of Star Trek: Picard.

2370

"Cupid's Errant Arrow" - ST:LD (Season 1:5)

• A flashback of Mariner's aboard the USS Quito where they're telling about a recent event aboard the Enterprise where Lore joins up with the Borg!, and they all have a good laugh before one of them turns in to a shapeshifter parasite.  [About the 7:00 - 8:00 mark] //12.20.22//

ST:TNG (Season 7) & ST:DS9 (Season 2)

The final season of TNG is like a welcome victory lap, while also including a few absolute classic episodes.  DS9 meanwhile lays the groundwork for its own future seasons as well as the future of the Star Trek universe with the two-parter "The Maquis" and the trio of episodes to start Season 2.

• In "Journey's End" we get to witness young Wesley's next phase beginning, when he joins a minor colonial rebellion, and meets The Traveler for another time, and they agree to begin a new journey together.  

Admittedly, this felt a little lame at the time (and still does now), but with Discovery's creation of the mycelial network as an alternative mode of interstellar transport to warp, it starts to feel a bit more like a truly "different path" narrative.

• DS9's second season deepens our knowledge of the Trill, Odo's possible origins, and Cardassian culture and relations with most everyone.  Plus, a new Klingon restaurant opens on the promenade!
• Starting with an alternate future in "Parallels", Worf and Troi begin dating, which lasts about half the season, and is strange, but interesting for both characters.
• Bajoran religious politics becomes a bigger deal this season with the appointment of a new Kai late in the season on DS9.
• Meanwhile, just at the end of TNG's run Ro Laren joins the Maquis.

"StartDate 479.88" 

"All Good Things" - ST:TNG (Season 7:24)

• Worf and Deanna days - JL in a low-cut gray shirt [Throughout Pt. 1]
• Picard sits down to the poker table with his crew, which "he should have done a long time ago".

Finally, we meet the Jem'Hadar in the finale of season two of DS9, setting up The Dominion War over the next few years. //5.23.21// //4.29.23//

2371

ST:DS9 (Season 3: 1 - 7)

As DS9 begins its (very brief) solo run as the only Star Trek show in existence, it does so by creating some large historical framework for the entire Star Trek Universe.  With the introduction of the U.S.S. Defiant, Star Fleet is declaring its militant reaction to the discovered threat of The Dominion (although a temporary peace is established in these first two episodes with the Founders).  Even the fun throwaway episodes in this sequence provide the key characters some world building for each of them (Dax, Kira & Quark x 2!).

Real time of Star Trek: Voyager (w/ DS9 continuing)

"Relativity" - ST:V (Season 5:23)

• Katherine Janeway beams aboard Voyager before the first episode of the series, and near the end of the pre-credit scene, Seven of Nine appears on the bridge.  [From the beginning of the episode until about the 11 minute mark; and she's back again around the 37:45 mark] //7.19.22// //6.3.23//

"Shattered" - ST:V (Season 7:10)

• Chakotay heads to the Bridge, and encounters a Captain Janeway who wants to arrest him, as a Maquis spy who has snuck aboard just after they've departed on their first mission. [Just a few moments after the opening credits] //10.11.22//

"The Voyager Conspiracy" - ST:V (Season 6:9)

• We see Voyager just after it was thrown into the Delta Quadrant [Starting around the 10:00 minute mark, and throughout the episode we get some flashbacks and some video footage of Voyager's first episode.] //8.9.22//

ST:V (Season 1: 1 - 9) & ST:DS9 (Season 3: 8 - 17)

The final Star Trek series of the 20th Century kicks off with another series settling on the "now for something completely different" mantra of exploring non-Enterprise-based stories in the Star Trek Universe, while continuing the tradition of firmly setting these new stories within the canon of the previously existing series. 

• Quark even gets the distinction of being the DS9 character who gets to send the Voyager crew on their way from DS9 as they track down a lost Maquis ship only to get thrown across the galaxy!
• Early Voyager episodes take turns focusing on different crew members, as the other series have done, so we start to get a feel for how Star Fleet brass like Janeway & Tuvok will fit into a crew with former Maquis members Chakotay & Torres as well as brand newcomers like Neelix and The Doctor.
• Meanwhile, DS9 continues build out the mythology, delving deeper into Cardassian galactic-politics (is that the larger form of geo-politics?) and Bajoran religio-politics.
• Of particular interest, I think, is the two-parter "Past Tense" which shows our own near future in the year 2024, which feels much more prescient now than it did either when it first aired or even during my pass through earlier in this chronology. //8.5.21//

"Fury" - ST:V (Season 6:23)

• An older Kes re-appears in Engineering [shortly after the opening credits and through to the 35:00 minute mark] and subdues her younger self and takes her place among the crew while trying to find a way to change her past (and subsequently the entire next five seasons of the Voyager's crew. //9.26.22//

"Before and After" - ST:V (Season 3:21)

• Kes re-experiences her and Neelix's introduction to Captain Janeway as they agree to become a part of the crew early in the first season. [Starting at 38:35 until 39:30] //1.18.22//

Star Trek: Generations

• I find Generations a better watch at this era of the Star Trek Universe than I have on previous viewings.  It's still not one of the better offerings of Star Trek movies, but with all of the new world problems of the Delta & Gamma Quadrants, a Dominion War looming, the Maquis / Cardassian / Bajoran hate triangle, it's kind of comforting to have a story which has at its core a Klingons & Romulans behaving badly plot.
• Of course there's the whole dumb Nexus / Malcom McDowell / Kirk behaving badly thing, which struggles to hold onto its own interior logic (e.g. why is it exactly that to get in to the Nexus you have to be right in front of it, but when you leave you can go {seemingly} anywhere and at any time so Kirk and Picard can go back to right before they stop Dr. Soran instead of a week earlier to stop him blowing up the first sun he succeeded in destroying and setting up everything to blow up the second one, thus getting Kirk killed in a fist fight {and decidedly not alone as he claims he will do in the 5th movie!!!}).  On the upside, though, we get more Guinan who I have always enjoyed learning more about.

ST: V (Season 1: 10 - 16) & ST:DS9 (Season 3: 18 - 26)

Voyager, which finishes its first season before DS9 finishes its third (according to the best episode-by-episode chronology out there), ends on a bit of a whimper with "Learning Curve", an examination of the struggles to integrate the Maquis crew with that of Voyager's. That comes to make sense when you learn that the first four episodes of season two were meant to be a part of this first season, and the inaugural season was supposed to end with the much more interesting "The 37's".

• The way it ends up being structured, however makes this last set of episodes of season 1 have an overall theme of the two crews (Maquis & Star Fleet) breaking apart and then coming together.
• On looking through the Arfives, I discovered that I actually did watch all of Voyager once before - finishing in 2014 - which may actually have inspired this project. I do recall previously thinking that the whole Seska subplot wasn't very well done (what with her deciding to leave Voyager and ally herself with the Kazon), but in the context of the era, and her status as a double agent on the Maquis ship, I enjoyed it much more this go round.

Deep Space Nine in the meantime continues to grow its mythology to great effect. The two-part Cardassian-focused episode, which concludes with a failed attempt to wipe out The Founders by a joint effort between the Tal Shiar & Obsidian Order builds out a bunch of groundwork for the upcoming Dominion War, but also all the way up through what's going on in Star Trek: Picard.

• We also get another mirror universe episode (which I don't feel like I have fully integrated into this chronology yet), which is always fun.
• Even the deeper dive into alien cultures episodes in this set are highly successful in 1) not annoying me and 2) giving us a deeper appreciation of Bajoran ("Shakaar"), Ferengi ("Family Business"), and Trill ("Facets") culture...
• ... culminating in a grand reveal that Star Fleet (and perhaps all of the great powers in the Alpha Quadrant) have been infiltrated by changeling spies sent to disrupt and distract them so the Dominion can conquer. //8.16.21//

"The Sound of her Voice" - ST:DS9 (Season 6:25)

• The audio from Lisa Cusack that the Defiant picks up turns out to be from 3 years ago...  The crew is able to carry on conversations with her, but they're separated by 3+ years so are unable to save her in the end. //3.8.22// 

2372

"Relativity" - ST:V (Season 5:23)

• Seven beams back to Voyager during a Kazon attack, and later Janeway comes back to the same time...  [Around the 35:00 minute mark; and again near the end of the episode in this truly bonkers episode] //7.19.22// //6.3.23//

"Before and After" - ST:V (Season 3:21)

• Kes and the crew tries to start treatment for her (future) chroniton-radiation contamination. [Starting around 36:00 until 38:35] //12.11.22//

"Shattered" - ST:V (Season 7:10)

• Chakotay is treated by the Doctor, where he gets a chroniton-based treatment, which allows him to move anywhere on the ship, regardless of which timeline he's in.  Later (after a visit to the Bridge in another year), he goes to Engineering after the two bridge security officers who were bringing him to the Brig disappear in a temporal anomaly. [Immediately following the opening credits, and again a few times throughout the episode] //10.11.22//

ST: V (Season 2) & ST: DS9 (Season 4)

DS9 gets off to a rather dark start this season with Worf joining the cast amidst a Klingon invasion of Cardassian space, and the cancellation of the Khitomer Accords, followed by Jake's future suicide, and Bashir and O'Brien's falling out of bromance.  Voyager, meanwhile, starts off with "The 37s", which was originally meant to be the finale of season 1, and it has that feel of a grand episode.

• Watching these two series in this way, switching back and forth between episodes (with an occasional set of two or three in a row from the same series) provides an insight into the overall tone of each individual series as well as giving us moments when the shows get their chance to go against the grain like the spooky episode "Persistence of Vision" for Voyager and DS9's "Little Green Men".
• DS9 returns to Earth in "Homefront", which is one of the deepest dives into 24th Century Earth, as well as the worst Star Fleet corruption at the highest levels when a military coup is attempted in response to a perceived Dominion incursion. 

"Bar Association" - ST:DS9 (Season 4:16)

• By magical happenstance, I got to this episode on Labor Day 2021.  In the episode, Rom starts a union for Quark's bar employees, and organizes a strike. //9.6.21//

Voyager continues to encounter and complicate the relationship with the Kazon, while the remainder of Season 4 of Deep Space 9 heads inevitably toward The Dominion War (which starts sometime in 2373). //10.25.21//

2373

ST: V (Season 3: 1-16) & ST: DS9 (Season 5:1-13)

The first several episodes of this season of Voyager are all jumbled up and out of order as outlined in the episodic chronology project. Voyager gets to connect both TNG & TOS in those early episodes, and in the final episode of this portion of the season (pre-First Contact), we get the set-up for two major turning points in the series: Torres & Paris's relationship and the introduction of The Borg.  Meanwhile Sisko & Co. get their own encounter with TOS cast (and crew!) and DS9 begins delving even deeper into its characters while approaching peak DS9 all while feeling The Dominion War in the background. //1.5.22//

• Despite the Dominion War having started, the early episodes are a lot of relationship building and getting deeper in to what drives our now familiar characters, particularly with Odo (in episodes like "Things Past" & "The Ascent"

"The Visitor" - ST:DS9 (Season 4:3)

• Ben Sisko reappears on DS9 a year after he vanished, believed dead, in a warp drive accident as a result of a once every 50 year inversion of the wormhole. Later in the same year (or early the next year), the station is evacuated due to the Klingon War [from around 12:20 until 14:15 & then 15:15 to 20:00, plus another snippet around 22:15]  //8.23.21// //3.28.23// //5.30.23//

"Shattered" - ST:V (Season 7:10)

• Chakotay and Janeway briefly encounter one of the Macrovirus from "Macrocosm (3:12)" of this season, but escape through another temporal barrier. [Around the 22:00 minute mark] //10.11.22//

Star Trek First Contact

Having just watched "Blood Fever" (V 3: 16), where Voyager has encounters The Borg in the Delta Quadrant for the first time, the "sudden" invasion of the Borg that Picard narrates he has been dreading for 6 years feels a bit more timely.  Before the Borg directly attack Voyager (who they have likely witnessed approaching their territory), they launch an attack on Earth - which they must have been planning for a long time, complete with contingencies (like a plan to head for the 21st Century in case their direct assault fails). //1.5.22// 

ST: DS9 (Season 5:14-26) & ST: V (Season 3: 17-26)

• Voyager has more character and world building for the rest of the season while the Borg loom large in the background until the final episode when they directly engage (and broker a temporary treaty) with the Borg amidst the threat of an even more dangerous species.
• Deep Space 9, meanwhile, prep for the Dominion War, which similarly looms large in the back end of Season 5 - building alliances in the Alpha Quadrant (with the Cardassians primarily, among others) again until the final episode of the season when all out war begins. //1.29.22//

2374

"Before and After" - ST:V (Season 3:21)

• Kes tries to find some data about the chronoton radiation she is exposed to during the "Year of Hell" two-parter (ST:V 4:8 & 9).  [After the 27 minute mark, the episode takes place during the "Year of Hell" episodes the following season; at about the 36 minute mark we appear to join the present time.] 
• After experiencing her childhood, birth, and life as a zygote, she hurtles back forward, landing in the "present" timeline, and based on her knowledge of the events ahead, she starts a new timeline where (hopefully) the Captain and Torres survive the "Year of Hell". //1.18.22//

"Latent Image" - ST:V (Season 5:11)

• Images from 18 months in the past emerge from the Doctor's camera, and later in the episode the Doctor experiences deleted memories that occurred either very early this year or late the prior year (definitely happened prior to Seven of Nine joining the crew. [At 25:00 - 35:00 the Doctor experiences the full memories that have been deleted from his program] //5.2.22//

"The Voyager Conspiracy" - ST:V (Season 6:9)

• The briefest of glimpses of Janeway on board the Borg cube, when she was negotiating a cease fire, and bringing Seven on board to guide Voyager. [a little after the 36:00 minute mark.] //8.9.22//

"Shattered" - ST:V (Season 7:10)

• Chrono-inoculated Chakotay and Janeway meet Borg drone 7 of 9, who they work with to solve the temporal crisis of the episode. (This is also the year in which they encounter unconscious crew in a different time-stream (under the influence of the Dream Aliens); unless it is the following year and they are under the spell of a telepathic pitcher plant. [Later in the episode starting around 18:00 until 21:00] //10.11.22//

ST: DS9 (Season 6: 1-7) & ST: V (Season 4: 1-7)

• On Voyager Seven of Nine is introduced to the crew in episode 1, and soon joins the crew (amongst some early skepticism).  During episode 2, Kes leaves the ship as her psionic powers expand, and gives Voyager the departing gift of propelling them beyond Borg space and 10 years closer to home. The rest of the early episodes (leading up to the "Year of Hell") of this season are problem of the week type stories with the notable exceptions of Torres & Paris fully entering into an acknowledged relationship over the course of a few episodes.
•  Deep Space 9, meanwhile is fully enmeshed in the Dominion War with Star Fleet having lost the station, and reduced to excursions aboard the Defiant, Klingon ships, and a stolen Jem'Hadaar ship.  Odo, Kira, Jake Sisko & Rom, meanwhile, remain at Terok Nor, and (along with Leeta & Quark at the end) form a resistance group, which helps Star Fleet retake the station (just in time for Worf & Dax's wedding at Quark's bar).

ST: DS9 (Season 6: 8-26) & ST: V (Season 4: 8-26)

• I find the relationship between Jadzia Dax and Worf to be one of the most precious in all of the Star Trek canon, and these episodes of DS9 frequently explore the complexities of dating within Star Fleet (and especially on the front lines of the Dominion War) as a side-bar plot, which is very enjoyable. (Especially enjoyable as opposed to having an entire episode about Geordi's or Picard's or Kira's latest fling).  Unfortunately, the back-end of this season also features the Odo / Kira (Kodo?) relationship, which is less fun, but you know... The war goes on and problem of the week episodes go on (with a lot of time travel, oddly, so there are several episodes from this section of the show peppered throughout the past many years of this chronology now). //3.11.22//
• Voyager, meanwhile, starts to hit its stride with several Seven of Nine episodes, and The Doctor (or at least one iteration of his program) finding himself hundreds of years in the future as part of a historical interpretive museum exhibit in "Living Witness", which is actually quite a good episode (and sets up a very plausible guest appearance for Robert Picardo on Star Trek: Discovery if they wanted to do a bit of fan service!)  At the end of the season, it seems that all of of the crew's dreams are going to come true, and they will get home, but then no, they were renewed for 3 more seasons so they just got a 100 light year jump start give or take... 

2375

ST: DS9 (Season 7: 1 - 10) & ST: V (Season 5: 1 - 10)

• On Voyager they just keep on "wagon-training", while adding new allies (mostly) by their interactions with new alien species.  
• DS9's final season jarringly introduces us Ezri Dax, and the series alternates between episodes continuing The Dominion War and enjoyable character vignettes that provide us a chance to start saying goodbye to familiar friends (most notably in this first part of the season in "It's Only a Paper Moon" with the focus being on Nog returning from a battle and experiencing PTSD symptoms). //4.24.22//

Star Trek: Insurrection

The third of the Next Gen movies sees Worf once again show up on the bridge of the Enterprise fresh from his posting on DS9.  This time, however, there is very little pretext for his being here beyond it being a movie, and he's one of the stars.  I have reviewed all of the movies before, and I guess my current take on this one is slightly more positive, but ultimately, I was right - it's top level episode material, stretched into a feature film.  I will say, the theme of a problematic Federation, which is trending toward losing its way at times fits in to the Federation recognizable in DS9, where expediencies are sometimes chosen in the Dominion War rather than the moral true north always being the selected path. //4.26.22// 

ST: DS9 (Season 7: 11 - 26) & ST: V (Season 5: 11 - 26)

• Almost all of the back half+ of the final season of Deep Space Nine feels like an elaborate multi-part episode (particularly the last 7 episodes). The series, perhaps more than any other has done (though I suspect Picard may match, perhaps both for itself and for TNG), has wrapped up neatly nearly all of side plots and character destinies in these final episodes. //7.12.22//
• On Voyager there is a lot of Seven of Nine drama, particularly in the solid two parter, "Dark Frontier", where she re-encounters the Borg Queen, and is tempted to defect. //7.20.22//

mid/late 2370s

"Dominion" - ST:Pic (Season 3:7)

• Vadic is seen kept captive with 9 Changelings at the Daystrom Institute undergoing quasi-Nazi level experimentation in an effort to allow Star Fleet (or Section 38) to create genetically perfect replicas of any of their enemies (or frenemies, I suppose).  (Called Project Proteus?) [brief interspersed scenes starting at the 29:30 minute mark] //4.19.23//

2376

ST: V (Season 6: 1 - 26)

It's remarkable just how much of this season I've watched (all of it), and looking back on it, how little of it I seem to remember.  And yet, it's a very compelling season of Voyager.  The first season where Voyager is out on its own as the sole STU property, and you can feel them trying to make it 'mean more' to the larger mythology (like DS:9 did with the Dominion War), but it's harder because of their disconnect from Star Fleet and the Alpha Quadrant.  It does this by building out the Borg culture (see episodes like "Survival Instinct" & "Collective", and also looks back at its own timeline a fair amount with Kes returning in "Fury" or Seven looking back at the start of their mission in "The Voyager Conspiracy".  Overall it's a fairly good season, which is somewhat forgettable (seriously, you did not need to make Fair Haven a recurring setting!). //9.15.22//

2377

ST: V (Season 7: 1 - 26)

Another uninterrupted calendar year where Voyager is the only STU property to have anything happening, and this season includes 4 two-parters (or technically 3.5).  In a foreshadowing to Picard's focus on artificial life's rights and place in society, the two-parter "Flesh and Blood" begins the conversation about holographic life's rights, which is paid off (although not fully enshrined in Federation Law) in "Author, Author", where The Doctor is given the right to at least own his own creative work.  Tom & B'Elanna have a baby, and Neelix finds a Talaxian settlement where he settles down in the penultimate episode (although he does get a cameo in the finale too!).  It's an okay ending for my not favorite, but a pretty ok instantiation of the Star Trek Universe. //12.9.22//

2378

"Before and After" - ST:V (Season 3:21)

• At the start of the episode, Kes is 9 years old (an elderly Ocampan woman) and wakes up in Sick Bay.  Because of a radical care plan to extend her life created by the Doctor, she experiences this episode in reverse chronological order. [Up until about the 27 minute mark the episode occurs in this year.] //1.18.22// 12.11.22//

2379

Star Trek: Nemesis 

• A  Romulan Revolution occurs and a massacre in the Senate Chambers sets off the threat of a new Romulan War with the Federation.  A Reman-born clone of Jean Luc Picard is the spark of the conflict, and also potentially Picard's start of his special relationship with the Romulans that he has in the Picard series. //12.11.22//

Real time of Star Trek: Lower Decks

2380

ST: LD (Season 1: 1 - 10)

We meet the crew of the USS Cerritos via a few of their ensigns (the Lower Deckers) a la this series' namesake, a final-season episode of TNG.  The season is full of call backs to previous series, with the most common theme of "Second Contact" (sort of a stellar mop-up job for dotting i's & crossing t's after the real ships like the Enterprise have met a new culture and solved one of their problems). //2.10.23//   

"A Mathematically Perfect Redemption" - ST:LD (Season 3:7)

• We see the moment that Peanut Hamper gets left by the Cerritos, and that scene gets expanded on with her existing there until she builds a warp nacelle, and crash lands on a planet where the local bird people see her as a semi-religious figure. [It's not entirely clear how much of these scenes take place in 2380 and when the following year starts, but it starts at the beginning of the show, and we rejoin the present of the 3rd Season around the 10 or 12 minute mark]. //3.8.23//

2381

ST: LD (Season 2: 1 - 10)

The USS Ceritos starts to get bigger and better assignments (although still gets some animal wrangling - "Mugato, Gumato" - and errand running - "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie"), and the Pakleds are growing into the primary enemy of the series.  Plus, we meet the first Tamarian to serve in Star Fleet.

We also meet Jen as a background character, who saves Mariner, and now they're kind of a thing.  Captain Freeman gets to make her first first contact and decides to pass up on a promotion to a larger ship... but instead she is arrested! //3.2.23//

"Seventeen Seconds" - ST:Pic (Season 3:3)

• Picard and Riker are drinking in a bar (or possibly a simulation of a bar?), reminiscing about the birth of Will's first son. [after the opening credits at 4:40 until around 6:45 ] //4.11.23//

ST: LD (Season 3: 1 - 10)

Season 3 seems super-sized with callbacks and tropey good times (both Star Trek and otherwise), starting with swiping a ship from dry dock.  "Bold Boimler" starts a new path (a la Yes Man), and we get a ride aboard the Delta Flyer and a whole episode aboard DS9.

We get one cliffhanger at the end of a follow up to "Crisis Point", an homage to the new rules that apply to Star Trek movies, where we learn that Brad Boimler's transporter clone, William, may not be quite as dead as he was reported to be... And a pretty classic finale to the season where the entirety of the California-Class of starships comes to the rescue of the Cerritos when an AI controlled Texas class ship turns on our crew. //3.12.23//

"Those Old Scientists" - ST:SNW (Season 2:7)

• The crew of the USS Cerritos is exploring a portal that Pike's Enterprise had    [beginning of the episode until Boimler gets sucked through at 4:30, and they return at 45:00 until 46:00]  //7.23.23//

ST: LD (Season 4: 1 - 10)

Great Voyager (episode 1) & Deep Space 9 (episode 3) callbacks early on in the season as some of our ensigns have gotten promoted to junior lieutenants. 

• The season is largely a Tendi arc, with her eventual return to a life of Orion piracy.  We also learn the original source of Mariner's discontent and self-destructive tendencies stemming from her time adjacent to Nova Squadron. //11.2.23//

early 2380s

(it's not entirely clear when this happens, but after Nemesis and before Prodigy Season 1 is for sure) 

"Preludes" - ST:Pro (Season 1:16)

• We see memories and stories of the crew and their arrival at the mines. [throughout the episode until around 20:00 ] //3.21.23//

"Asylum" - ST:Pro (Season 1:11)

• We witness the USS Protostar's christening with Janeway seeing Chakotay off.  [staring at the 10:45 until 11:30 when we learn it's a holodeck simulation] //3.19.23//

Real time of Star Trek: Prodigy

2383

ST: Pro (Season 1: 1 - 10)

We meet Dal and the new kid crew of the USS Protostar, some kind of experimental ship that our crew discover buried in the mining colony where they have all been imprisoned.  

The first season of Prodigy is broken up in to two parts (actually, it was split in to three by hiatus for seasons of Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, but logistically it sets up in two parts - the first 10 episodes entails the kid crew liberating, adventuring with, losing and subsequently recovering the USS Protostar. //3.19.23//

ST: Pro (Season 1: 11 - 20)

Episode 11 begins the dual nature of the season, tracking both the kid crew who soon discover their ship has some kind of AI weapon (which looks similar to the Discovery Season 2 villain) that causes Star Fleet technology to attack itself when it interacts with the Protostar and simultaneously showing us Admiral Janeway as she tracks Chakotay's lost ships.

• We encounter a wacky lone Star Fleet officer on a faraway outpost all alone, plus an encounter with a Borg cube
• We re-encounter Captain Okona, who just a couple years ago was DJ-ing at a Star Fleet who's who mixer (see Lower Decks). //3.22.23//

"Future Imperfect" - ST:TNG (Season 4:8)

Riker wakes up 16 years in the future, where he is captain of the Enterprise.  And has a son! [starting at the 3:00 mark before the credits until around the 30:00 mark, when it all starts to unravel] //3.22.23//

mid/early 2380s

"Stardust City Rag" - ST: Pic (Season 1:5)

• A video recording of Bruce Maddox and Agnes Jurati sharing an intimate moment together that must be sometime before the synths ban in 2385. [starting at 11:37 until the 12:30 mark] //3.31.23//

2385

"Broken Pieces" - ST: Pic (Season 1:8)

• We see the beginnings of the planning of the Mars attack on Aia, The Grief World, where the Zhat Vash members experience the coming destruction caused by artificial life (it's not clear if this is the same threat as in Season 2 of Discovery or Season 1 of Prodigy, but it seems like the end of everything), so they plan an attack by synthetics. [starting immediately after the "previously on..." sequence until the around 4:45] //4.1.23//

"Absolute Candor" - ST: Pic (Season 1:4)

• We see Picard in his role of assisting the Romulans in their resettling project. [starting immediately after the "previously on..." sequence until the opening credits, right around the 6:10 mark ] //3.31.23//

"Children of Mars" - ST:D (Season 2 - Short Trek 6)

A rare view of earth, and a rare view of non-Star Fleet life at a school on "First Contact Day" in 2385, just as the attack on Mars begins that sets off the events of the first season of Star Trek: Picard. //3.22.23//

"Maps and Legends" - ST: Pic (Season 1:2)

• We meet the synthetics, and witness their bombing attack on Mars from the inside. [starting immediately after the "previously on..." sequence until the opening credits, right around the 5:15 mark ] //3.26.23//

"Remembrance" - ST: Pic (Season 1:1)

• Video footage of the attack is shown during Picard's interview. [14:00 minute mark] //3.30.23//

"The End is the Beginning" - ST: Pic (Season 1:3)

• We see images of the the attack on Mars, then get a scene later the same year where Picard is railing against Star Fleet, and in the midst of the fight, Picard resigns. [Mars attack until 1:40 mark, then until the opening credits at 6:10] //3.30.23//

2386

"Stardust City Rag" - ST: Pic (Season 1:5)

• We reencounter Icheb as he is being harvested, then momentarily rescued by Seven of Nine, who then grants his request to end his suffering. 
• It feels like a cheap, unnecessarily cruel ending for a character we just got to meet again. [starting immediately after the "previously on..." sequence until the 3:30 mark; a few more passing moments as Seven retells the story around the 33:00 mark.] //3.31.23//

2387

Star Trek (2009) 

Future 'flashback' mind meld (129 years from now) that Nimoy-Spock shows Kirk.  Nero's planet dies, and he wreaks revenge on Spock in the past. [starting around the 1:17 mark through to about 19:40]. //3.26.23//

2390

"Timeless" - ST:V (Season 5:6)

• Harry Kim & Chakotay are 'stranded' in time 15 years in the future after an experimental "slipstream" disaster that finds Voyager crashing into an ice planet.  Harry is war-weary, cynical - Chakotay is the same principled leader he was with the Maquis and as a first officer on Voyager...  plus Geordi shows up! [from the start of the episode until 7:15; again at 17:00 until around 28:20; then around 29:20 to 31:10, and back and forth through the end of the slipstream flight around 36:40 and in the future until around 40:30, when this timeline is erased (though we do see another brief moment of it in a log entry at around 45:00).] //3.16.22// //3.28.23//

2392

"The Visitor" - ST:DS9 (Season 4:3)

• Ben Sisko reappears on earth at the home of his son, Jake, and his wife, Korena. Jake has become a successful author of two books, but at this point, realizing that his father's accident has linked the two of them together through subspace, he decides to rededicate himself to studying subspace mechanics so he can save his father. [starting around 23:15 (interspersed with the 2450 scenes) until 29:20]  //8.23.21// //3.28.23// //5.30.23//

2394

"Shattered" - ST:V (Season 7:10)

• Janeway & Chakotay enter Astrometrics, and meet Naomi Wildman and Icheb seventeen years in the future. [Around the 15:00 mark until about 18:00] //10.11.22// //3.29.23//

2395
"All Good Things" - ST:TNG (Season 7: 24)

• Jean Luc's present - in the Vineyard, and beyond - (25 years after JL and Geordi served together - altAllhough seemingly in this episode's alternate timeline rather than actual reality {where it would have been 2404 or so}) [Throughout both parts, starting at 5:30 till 9:00, then again at 14:45, 31:00, 47:15, 53:45, 1:02:10, 1:12:45, 1:19:25, 1:22:30]. Troi is dead, unmarried to both Riker and Worf.  Picard was an Ambassador (rather than Admiral as the go to honorific).  Geordi's wife is also being appointed the head of the Daystrom Institute (which may also be quite different in this timeline).  Importantly, Data also survives to this time in this timeline! //4.29.23//

2396

"No Win Scenario" - ST:Pic (Season 3:4)

• Picard is at a restaurant when a bunch of Academy cadets crowd around him and ask him about his adventures. [starting immediately after the "previously on" at 2:15 until 4:05, then again at 22:00 until 22:50, then starting around 50:45 and alternating between the present he meets Jack Crusher and crushes him...] //4.12.23//

Real time of Star Trek: Picard

2399

ST:Pic (Season 1: 1 - 10)

We meet an older, retired, and increasingly surly Jean Luc Picard (who learns he's dying in episode 2!), and we get a whole new crew of misfits: his troubled, former protégé, Raffi; Dr. Agnes Jurati; an exciting flyboy captain, Chris Rios; Seven of Nine!; Elnor the Warrior Nun...

Basically, they save the galaxy and Star Fleet from itself... per uzhe... //4.1.23// 

sometime around 2400 (between Picard seasons)

"Mercy" - ST:Pic (Season 2:8)

• A memory of Raffi's where she is speaking with Elnor, and manipulating him into staying in Star Fleet. [from around 32:00 to about 34:00 mark]. //4.8.23//

2401

"Fly Me to The Moon" - ST:Pic (Season 2:5)

• A brief glimpse of the very beginning of this season and Laris's conversation with Picard before he is called away for the encounter with the Borg Anomaly. [right around the 2:30 mark]. //4.6.23//

ST:Pic (Season 2: 1 - 10)

A strange encounter with a reconstituted Borg in the first episode ends in Picard auto-destructing a reconstituted Star Gazer, and he wakes up in the same solarium we last saw him in around 90 years ago. 

We get a brief glimpse in episode 2 of this new Confederation era, and it's terrifying - we're not sure what's going on, but the same ole crew assembles (plus The Borg Queen!), and they realize they need to go back to 2024 to fix what Q has changed (seemingly something even worse than getting Trump elected again... though maybe not, the crowd at the Eradication Day ceremony seems very Trumpist).

[and then from about the 10:00 minute mark of Episode 3 until the 34:00 mark of Episode 10, we're stuck in 2024] //4.9.2023//

ST:Pic (Season 3: 1 - 10)

It's the 250th Anniversary of Frontier Day (a celebration of the launch of Jonathan Archer's Enterprise in 2151).

Remarkably, this is later the same year as the previous season, although it seems like A LOT has happened.  Beverly Crusher, who has been out of touch with all of her friends from the Enterprise for over 20 years reaches out to Picard for help while Raffi is working as a low-level operative for Star Fleet Intelligence (or some sub-contractor of Star Fleet Intelligence). //4.21.23//

2402

"The Last Generation" - ST:Pic (Season 3: 10)

• We get to see all of the regulars from this season "1 Year Later" with Jack getting posted to his first Star Fleet assignment (which happens to be Seven's first command!), and finally one last game of poker. [starting around 49:00 and through until the post credit scene!] //4.21.23//

2404

"Endgame" - ST:V (Season 7: 24)

• The crew are attending a 10-year reunion event of Voyager's return to Earth 23 years after their entry into the Delta Quadrant.  Janeway is working on a project to change Voyager's return trip to the Alpha Quadrant. [Interspersed throughout the episode starting with the first 15:00 minutes of the episode; 22:00 to 28:00; 33:50 to 38:00; just before 40:00 to 42:45] //12.9.22// 
• The premise is a problematic one that is a repeat of several Trek episodes (e.g. "All Good Things", "Timeless" & "The Visitor") where the "wrong" future has occurred, and our heroes work to rectify the problem, thus destroying the current existing history for many of the characters. //5.4.23//

2410

"Firstborn" - ST:TNG (Season7:21)

• Alexander from this era returns from the future to arrange a fake assassination attempt on Worf to change his future, and encourage him to become a warrior (rather than the diplomat he has become) //4.14.21// [He first appears around the 9:00 minute mark, in the background, and he remains central to the whole episode, only revealing his identity around the 38:00 mark.] //5.7.23//

mid-2410s

(it's not entirely clear when this happens, but it's meant to be "a few decades" before Chakotay and his crew are sent to the year 2435 by a temporal anomaly) 

"Preludes" - ST:Pro (Season 1:16)

• The Divner regains his memories of the USS Protostar arriving at their planet "a few decades after First Contact".  [staring around 10:45 until around 13:00 ] //5.30.23//

2422

"The Visitor" - ST:DS9 (Season 4:3)

• Jake Sisko arranges to "get the band back together" aboard The Defiant as another of the once every 50 year inversion of the wormhole is going to occur, and they hope to save Ben Sisko from his subspace purgatory.  They fail, but Jake is briefly able to visit the subspace spot where Ben (evidently) has been spending his time and it becomes clear that Jake has abandoned his life in favor of trying to save his father's. [starting at 31:00 till 36:00]  //8.23.21// //3.28.23// //5.30.23//

2435

"Preludes" - ST:Pro (Season 1:16)

• The Divner regains his memories of the USS Protostar arriving at their planet, after First Contact had caused political destabilization.  The Protostar is captured by his people, and sent back as a weapon to cause Star Fleet's demise  [staring after 10:45 until around 13:00 ] //5.30.23//
• (exact year confirmed in ST:Pro (Season 1:20))

2450

"The Visitor" - ST:DS9 (Season 4:3)

• The "real time" of this episode, from whence Jake Sisko retells the story of his father's disappearance, which caused Jake to (eventually) quit writing. He is visited by a young groupie who wants to be a writer herself, and she spends the night, so... you know.
• Then, his father shows up, and Jake kills himself in his father's presence in order to return him to the moment of the accident which happened in 2372, thus obliterating this whole timeline for everyone (this includes Jadzia Dax's survival into old age where she had gotten married to Julian!)... [starting at the beginning of the episode until 7:50, and periodically through the episode as Jake continues telling the story] //8.23.21// //5.30.23//

mid-2500s

"Countdown" - ST: E (Season 3:23)

• A Sphere-Builder female from the future is contacting the Reptilian Xindi who have stolen the Weapon on their recommendation, and later several of the Sphere-Builders are hanging out in a cloud land discussing possible timelines. [starting around 16:40 for a minute and a half and then again around 20:00, and finally again around 30:45] //6.23.23//

"Zero Hour" - ST: E (Season 3:24)

• The Sphere-Builder are in their cloud land discovering fewer and fewer timelines that lead to what they want. [back in the clouds at 3:50] //6.23.23//

mid-2550s

"The Expanse" - ST: E (Season 2:26)

• The Humanoid Figure says this is the era when The Federation will cause the destruction of the Xindi World. [meeting happens from 7:30 until 9:10] //6.15.23//

2554

"Azati Prime" - ST:E (Season 3:18)

• The Battle of Procyon 5 
• A Super Tense episode where the crew is preparing for an incursion of Xindi space. The SphereBuilders are waging a temporal (Cold?) War using the Xindi as a weapon against pre-Federation Earth.
• Fascinating episode where Archer's turn from skeptic to diplomat turns the tone of the episode of a desperate attempt to save humanity in its space infancy versus a considered attempt to save The Federation... [starting at 13:00 Archer enters the Enterprise-J, "400 years in the future" until 16:20] //6.2.23//

late 2500s

Source of the time-traveling shuttle in "A Matter of Time" - ST:TNG (Season 5:9). ["Professor Rasmussen" appears around the 2:30 before the opening credits and his ship from this era vanishes back into history at the 44:00 mark.] //5.31.23//

2700s

"Broken Bow" - ST: E (Season 1:1)

• A Humanoid Figure appears in 2151 from this era. [starting just before the 20:00 minute mark for about 40 seconds, and again at the 1:00:30 mark]
• Archer enters the chamber where this guy has been transmitting to, and he seems in some sort of flux, which may be future adjacent. [starting at the 1:14:30 mark and periodically until 1:19:00] //6.8.23//

"Cold Front" - ST:E (Season 1:11)

• The same Humanoid Figure is punishing the Suliban for failing his previous mission, whilst sending him off on a new one (which isn't articulated). [Very beginning of the show until the opening credits.] //6.10.23//

"Shockwave, Part 1" - ST: E (Season 1:26)

• He shows up again asking for the Suliban to abduct Archer. [starting at around 33:30 until 34:00] //6.10.23//

"The Expanse" - ST: E (Season 2:26)

• Several Suliban ships show up surrounding Enterprise, and convince Archer to come aboard and meet our Humanoid Figure friend to explain the attack that had just occurred on Earth. [from 7:30 until 9:10] //6.15.23//

latter-2800s

"Future's End, Part I" - ST:V (Season 3:8)

• A Time Ship from the 29th appears suddenly in Voyager's path, and begins an attack on Voyager, stating that they must destroy Voyager lest they (Voyager) be responsible for the destruction of all of earth's solar system.
• Captain Braxton departs from this era to try to destroy Voyager. [The rift through which Braxton's ship from this era appears around 3:45 and Voyager disappears into (along with the time ship) at around 6:20, then the rift opens again at 40:45 and stays open (or opens and then recloses and then reopens again when a different Braxton shows up) until 43:30] //11.29.21// //6.4.23//

2875

"Relativity" - ST:V (Season 5:23)

• Seven is beamed (through time?) from Voyager just prior to its first mission, and Seven returns to this time period when "she is recruited" for her time heist for a 3rd time.  [Around the 11 minute mark; she returns to this future at about the 23:00 minute mark and again throughout the rest of the episode] //6.3.23//

mid-3000s (maybe around 3052?)

"Cold Front" - ST:E (Season 1:11)

• Daniels brings Archer into his quarters, and activates some sort of timeline machine.  I don't think they're actually in this Century, but the technology comes from this era, and they observe Daniels' source Century on the timeline. 
• We do learn later in the episode that this incident created a tachyon disturbance, so they may have traveled forward in time. [Around the 20:00 mark] //6.10.23//

"Shockwave, Parts 1 & 2" - ST: E (Season 1:26 & Season 2:1)

• Archer appears in the 31st Century, which to Daniels' horror has been decimated. They create a way to communicate with the present [starting at around the 40:00 until the end of the episode, then immediately after the opening credits of the Season 2 premiere and alternating throughout the episode until about 32:45] //6.10.23//

The mysterious vessel at the center of "Future Tense" (ST:E 2:16) is from this era.

mid-3060s

"Terra Firma, Part 1" - ST: D (Season 3:9)

• A Kelpian appears in a distress signal recording that Discovery finds coming from the source of the Burn. [Around 21:10 - 21:55, then 23:10] //7.27.23//

Su'Kal is born (although I don't know a lot about Kelpien gestation, but it's fairly likely that this is the same year that the distress signal was sent from the location of the source of the Burn). 

"That Hope is You, Part 2" - ST:D (Season 3:13)

• We see a holographic recording of the death of Su'Kal's mother, and a few minutes later a message from Su'Kal's mother asking whoever found him to help him through. [starts just before the 47:00 mark until just before 18:15, the earlier scene is from 51:00 to 51:50] //8.2.23//

3074

"Living Witness" - ST:V (Season 4:23)

• The real time of this episode is in this year, just five year's after the start of the Burn.  The episode is a museum tour (at the Museum of Kyrian Heritage) where a species who encountered Voyager sometime (probably in 2374 in fact!), and we see our cast re-created in a "simulation" that the society has created to explain Voyager's war crimes against the Kyrians. [Starting at the opening of the episode, we get "footage" of what's going on in Voyager in 2374, but it's all happening in 3074.  Around 19:00 The Doctor appears in the museum exhibit] //7.10.23//

3100s (sometime in that Century... probably)

"Living Witness" - ST:V (Season 4:23)

• The closing minute of this episode features another museum or academic presentation from the "future" of the Kyrian culture, and The Doctor and his Kyrian cohort are "re-created" in a similar simulation.  Hard to tell if it's 50 years, 100 years, or 500 years later... 

It's impossible to tell whether this later presentation is the "true" real time of this episode.  The real implication of the episode, though, is that learning lessons from history that isn't directly observable (which is to say... history) is dubious as best.  I don't mean to say that we shouldn't learn lessons from history, but those lessons are more often thematic than analytic... [starting around the 44:00 mark to the end.] //3.1.22// //7.10.23//

3176

"People of Earth" - ST: D (Season 3: 3)

• An audio recording of a Star Fleet officer from Earth putting out some call for help. [Starting around the 6:30] //7.17.23//

3178 (approx)

"The Galactic Barrier" - ST:D (Season 4:10)

• Flashbacks of Ruon Tarka during his imprisonment with the Emerald Chain. [they start around the 18:00 bouncing back and forth between present until 22:00, then again 27:00 to 38:45] //7.10.23// //9.4.23//

early 3180s (precisely 950 years after Gabrielle Burnham jumps in the Red Angel timesuit for the first time)

"Perpetual Infinity" - ST: D (Season 2: 11)

• Michael views Gabrielle Burnham's mission logs - the first of which starts the day of the death of Michael's father and Gabrielle's disappearance.  The logs continue as Gabrielle chronicles her jumps (all brief, because she is anchored in this year). [Starting around the 10:00 mark when she first jumps, and Michael continues to watch and listen to logs through to the end of the episode around 45:30] //7.10.23//

Real time of Star Trek: Discovery - (Season 3 {& After?}...)

3188

"That Hope is You, Part 1" - ST:D (Season 3:1)

• Michael Burnham arrives in the Late 32nd Century and meets Booker, a kind of animal empath smuggler guy, who introduces her to the Post-Burn World.  He tells her that all time travel technology was destroyed after "The Temporal Wars".  She meets the Federation Liaison  //7.17.23//

"People of Earth" - ST: D (Season 3: 3)

• Scenes of Michael living through the year [After the "previously on" scene and around 1:10 to 3:30] //7.17.23//

3189

Star Trek: Discovery (Season 3: 2 - 13)

Discovery arrives in the 32nd Century a year after Michael, and immediately it's unclear who is in charge.  Philippa Georrgiao for sure wants to be in charge, and Saru is acting Captain, but Michael is the star of the show, and knows her way around this century a bit more than everyone else...

• The most engaging encounter of Trill that we have ever had, which engages very viscerally and cosmically with memory and trauma and joy.
• Georrgiao begins experiencing 'episodes' in episode 6, after learning (in episode 5) that the Terran universe from whence she comes is getting further away from their prime universe in the 32nd Century.
• "How much of who Spock became was because of who his sister was?" - the 32nd Century President of Ni'Var. 
• The Emerald Chain quickly establish themselves as the big bads of Season 3, and by the end of the season become a vehicle for The future Federation's hope.

God, Ensign Keeley is a bad ass - she becomes Saru's Number One, and shows what a heroic presence she will be (particularly in 3:13, "That Hope is You, Part 2".  I know the end of the episode makes Michael that "Hope", but Michael never gets that opportunity unless Keeley leads the team to do their part getting Discovery to drop out of warp. {weirdly, the very closing moments of Season 3 could have (and would have) been an awesome ending and Coda to the entirety of a series, and a perfect epigraph (is that an end quote?) for our role in humanity and how weird it is that we're here by Gene Roddenberry... //8.2.23//

3190

Star Trek: Discovery (Season 4:1 - 13)

But then there is a Season 4, and there is an Anomaly (The DMA), which (naturally) threatens to destroy all Federation adjacent life in the galaxy.

• Gray gets a body (an update of the Picard golem).
• Some side excursions - like Tilly's venture as a camp counselor in episode 4 ("All Is Possible") to some Star Fleet Cadets.
• Zora gains emotional consciousness, and becomes a life form (and member of the crew!)
• Book teams up with Tarka for a multi-episode arc, which reads as genuine even though it could have been gimmicky.
• The final episode is quite remarkable:
• Truly made of the most Star Trekky material there is, learning the language of an incomprehensible power
• When everyone thinks they are all about to die, Keeley reflects that she is pretty happy with the way things turned out - having made friends and family from friends, and finding purpose in her work ("just imagine, some people never find their purpose," she said). 
• The build-up to the end is poignant and powerful
• Once again, the ending feels as if it could be the full conclusion of Discovery - it feels celebratory and satisfying - it's as if the showrunners always thought they were going to be cancelled... //9.13.23//

the Far Future

Star Trek: Lower Decks (Season 1: 3)

An idyllic outdoor classroom being taught about Starfleet history where Boymler gets mentioned, and we learn that the most important officer in Star Fleet history is Miles O'Brien.

11 years before 4190s-ish

"Calypso" - ST:D (Season 1 - Short Trek 2)

• Craft looks at an image of his wife and child.  We flash back to it in his memories later [7:45 for a few moments, then later around 13:15] //9.14.23//

4190s-ish

"Calypso" - ST:D (Season 1 - Short Trek 2)

• According to the computer - who calls herself "Zora" - almost 1,000 years have passed since the crew of the Discovery abandoned the ship, and she was ordered to remain here.  A lovely, poignant episode, written by Michael Chabon. //1. 24.19//
• Having now gotten to know Zora in Discovery Season 4, this episode is even more enjoyable.  She says she has been trying to evolve herself, but is still computer in her absolute devotion to her orders / programming to remain when she could leave and fly Craft home.
• And we get to SEE her!!!, delightful. A fitting end to the Star Trek Timeline //9.14.23//

*The Goldilocks Theory of Temporary Anomalies states that whenever you find yourself in the midst of a temporal anomaly, and there exists a "middle ground" (or wu wei), that is the appropriate choice for your particular paradox.  For example, if you find yourself as the 3rd in a set of 5 versions of yourself in the course of some set of actions - congratulations!, you are in fact the real you!  In the unfortunate case that there may be an even number of yous present (say 2 or 4), I am sorry to say that in fact, none of you have ever been real... but enjoy the ride, nonetheless!