The following is the opinion of Captain Andy Baxter and does
not reflect the opinions of this website or of Anthony Butler.
Hate-email should be addresssed to Baxter@starships.explorer.ufp.
Copyright 1998.



The Captain's Ranty Room 

Rant #3


"The Stardate Rollover Fiasco"

By Andy Baxter



So the Stardate has rolled over once again.  Now we're at
Five-THREE-zero-zero yada yada.  You'd think that would make
no difference whatsoever.  Just another date, another notch on the 
old calendar.  These useless meanings we've attached to random
points have no effect on the cosmological realities of the universe 
or any other such thing, right?

Wrong!  Without fail, every time it rolls over from 999 to 000,
tons of stuff happens, and I want to know why.  When I was 
captain of the Aerostar, at the end of the year the Borg invaded 
the Delta Quadrant and we found a way home.  At the end of my
first year commanding the Explorer, Kelly and I were nearly killed
by the Starshine kids and all these questions about what had happened
in the Delta Quadrant after we left were answered.  

And I'm not the only person who notices these things.  I asked around.  
Captain Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine told me, after some nudging,
that he recalled all sorts of weird things happening at year-ends.  For
instance, at one year's end, the Klingons declared war, next year, same
time, the Dominion took over Deep Space Nine, and the year after that
one of his officers was brutally murdered and the mysterious wormhole
prophets were seemingly destroyed along with the wormhole itself.  And
I won't even go into what happened the year after that.  And Jean-luc
Picard's publicist told me the same thing.  One year it was a Borg invasion,
which I found odd since the same basic thing happened to me.  Another
year the Klingons had a civil war, and then again with the Borg another 
year.  They had just as hard a time explaining it as I did, and still do.


And it's the little things too.  Now that we're in the Explorer's second
year of operation I'm noticing little differences.  Panels and carpets 
around the ship are taking a slightly different hue.  I think Yeoman Briggs 
is forced by some sort of contract to slightly redecorate every year. 
And I'm noticing the differences in my crew, too.  J'hana has started to
sport this little Andorian belt with her uniform.  Lt. Hartley's growing
her hair longer and keeping it in a ponytail more often.  Lt. Tilleran
is doing this weird thing with braids.  And worst of all, I feel a goatee 
coming on!

Maybe this is how it was intended.  Maybe scientists saw these patterns
and decided to work the stardates around the odd occurences.  Or maybe
the fates are just conspiring to drive me crazy.  Maybe there's an external
force controlling the adventures of my crew and I, and that external force
can stop them whenever he, she, or it pleases.  Just pull the plug and leave
me and the other people on the Explorer in some sort of la-la land for all
eternity.  Is that so far-fetched?

Damn right it is!