lordjedi said:
Gaffer Tape said:
Did they think people wouldn't understand the dates unless they were made to reflect our own? I don't know. It seems pretty clear to me that bigger number=later date than lower number, so I don't get why they changed this at all.

I think they figured the original stardate system was confusing. I know that I never really understood how a stardate worked. I knew that bigger number=later date, but I always figured the number was just random. I know it was explained somewhere, I just don't know where. I honestly didn't even notice that the stardate reflected the actual year in the movie.

Yeah, you're right. In the original series, they were completely arbitrary. They simply existed to make it seem more exotic and (at the time) help disguise when the series took place in relation to us. Later series (TNG, DS9, and VOY) used a system where the second number was the TNG season number equivalent, but that's really the only major step in making stardates have any logical sense.

Since it's so arbitrary, I wouldn't have even noticed except that Nero/Spock's stardate only had four digits when it should have had five. Then I realized that it was very close in number to the Kelvin stardate, and that left me scratching my head. It annoys me. There was no reason they couldn't have done that correctly.