Alternative Calendar: Difference between revisions

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== Film ==
* The Rebel Alliance/New Republic in ''[[Star Wars]]'' uses the Battle of Yavin as its zero point, and these are the dates used in most promotional materials. The Empire and the Old Republic had their own calendars, as well. A "Standard Year" in ''Star Wars'' is based on the day of Coruscant, the Galactic capital, and is 368 days of 24 hours each (as opposed to our 365.2524 days of 24 hours each). This extra 66.24 hours may not seem like a lot, but it adds up. Since people obviously didn't date based on the Battle of Yavin before there was a Battle of Yavin, there's a few more schemes.
** The easiest is the date of the Ruusan Reformation which, helpfully, took place ''exactly'' 1000 years before the Battle of Yavin (The author of ''Essential Guide to Warfare'' speculates the unveiling of the Death Star was intentionally timed to coincide with the anniversary). It is centered on a reorganization of the Republic government after the Battle of Ruusan and (apparent) disappearance of the Sith. Metawise it was created by the book ''[[Darth Bane]]: Rule of Two'' to explain how the Republic stood for a thousand years (as mentioned in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'') and there hadn't been a full scale war since the formation of the Republic (''[[Attack of the Clones]]'') yet the Republic had been protected by the Jedi for a thousand '''generations''' (''[[A New Hope]]'') and there were several wars in the Old Republic era (''[[Tales of the Jedi]]'', ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'').
** Before ''that'' was created, the [[Living Force]] campaign resorted to using local time for the Cularin system to express the year in universe.
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* H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human future history (e.g. ''Little Fuzzy'', ''Uller Uprising'') uses Atomic Era dating, starting the year zero A.E. at 2 December 1942 by the C.E. calendar (the date of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction). Characters occasionally speak of Nth Century Pre-Atomic dates to refer to dates before that time.
* [[Austin Tappan Wright]] devised a fictional calendar for ''[[Islandia]]'', which is explained in more detail in Basil Davenport's treatise on Islandian history. When Islandians found out about the Gregorian calendar, they liked the idea, but adapted the month names so they would have the right seasonal connotations for the ''Southern'' hemisphere. Thus, "Octen" and "Noven" are roughly the northern April and May.
* [[Terry Pratchett]]: Most places on the [[Discworld]] use a 800-day calendar with eight-day weeks (the usual seven used in our world, plus Octeday). The year is divided into two half-years of thirteen months each (one month two weeks long, the other twelve four weeks long): Ick, Offle, February, March, April, May, June, Grune, August, Spune, Sektober, Ember, and December. The idea's also played with in ''[[Discworld/Wyrd Sisters|Wyrd Sisters]]'', which mentions several different calendars used by different countries and kingdoms, including one used by the Theocracy of Muntab, which counts ''down'' instead of up. No one's sure why, but most agree it's not a good idea to be around when it hits zero.
** Note that it's usually only wizards and astronomers who think of a year as 800 days long. To the average Discworlder, concerned with practicalities like harvests and weather, a Disc "year" lasts for one turn of the seasons, which takes only 400 days.
** Ankh-Morpork itself has restarted its calendar several times in its history, though dates are usually given in Unseen University's Ankh-Morpork Years. At least one of these restarts is a [[Retcon]] to make up for inconsistent dating.
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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Star Trek]]'''s famous stardates, though these are much more complex than most. They also use straight-up AD/BC.
** The writers of ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' made up stardates as they went along without any sort of linear progression or continuity. Early fans who tried to use them to reconcile episodes' production order and air date order tended to end up as inmates at Tantalus Colony. When an interviewer asked James Doohan how stardates worked, Doohan replied (paraphrasing), "Sorry, even Scotty couldn't figure that out." An early [[Hand Wave]] offered during the run of ''TOS'' suggested they were dependent upon multiple factors including galactic positioning and current velocity.
** Parodied in ''[[Futurama]]'':
{{quote|'''Zapp:''' Captain's journal. Stardate: uhhh...