When Does "Star Trek: Short Treks: The Escape Artist" (2019) Take Place?
"Short Treks: The Escape Artist" is a science fiction short film written by Michael McMahan that released January 3rd, 2019. So when is "The Escape Artist" set?
It takes place on the fictional Star Trek timeline in the year:
We know this because Harcourt 'Harry' Fenton Mudd is accused of "penetrating a space whale", referring to the events of "Star Trek: Discovery" season 1 episode 7 "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" (2017), which takes place in late 2256 AD. So it must be after 2256 AD and before Mudd’s death. It is otherwise unplaceable.
~late 2200s AD
We know this because Harcourt 'Harry' Fenton Mudd is accused of "penetrating a space whale", referring to the events of "Star Trek: Discovery" season 1 episode 7 "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" (2017), which takes place in late 2256 AD. So it must be after 2256 AD and before Mudd’s death. It is otherwise unplaceable.
Although the famous "stardate XXXX.X" captain's records that open most episodes and some films were mistaken for years on the Gregorian calendar, there is no one-to-one relationship between them. As identified in the biography "Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek": "They marked off sections on a pictorial depiction of the known universe and extrapolated how much earth time would elapse when traveling between given points, taking into account that the Enterprise's warp engines would be violating Einstein's theory that nothing could exceed the speed of light. They concluded that the 'time continuum' would therefore vary from place to place, and that earth time may actually be lost in travel. 'So the stardate on Earth would be one thing, but the stardate on Alpha Centauri would be different,' Peeples says." so they are relative to long distance travel and not an absolute calendar. HOWEVER, actual years on the Gregorian calendar began to be used later.
It is an early chronological short film in the Star Trek universe and can be watched at its timeline point or as an extended flashback before the TV series "Star Trek: The Original Series" (1966).
