The Trickiness of Stardates
I'll take a stab at this one...
For The Original Series I'm not entirely sure how they did the stardate system, but when The Next Generation rolled around, they used the following method: Let's say that the stardate is 47889. The way the writers came up with this number was as follows: 4 - because it was the 24th century, 7 - because it was the 7th season, and 889 - to represent how far along in the season (in terms of 001 to 999) that they were.
Not a wholly accurate system, by any means, but it worked.
When Deep Space Nine and Voyager came about, they used the same system, based on the current system of stardates, and just rotated the numbers as necessary.
Well, I think that this is accurate, and I hope that it was helpful. If it helps, I think that there is a section in the Next Generation Players' Guide by LUG that talks about Stardates.
Greg
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