Anyone who has tuned in to Star Trek: Picard may have noticed that there are several changes on how things usually work in the franchise. For instance, the new CBS All Access series completely ignores stardates although this was a major part of how an episode would start. Interestingly, showrunner Michael Chabon revealed that the show doesn't want to be bothered with that since it's just too confusing.
Chabon recently responded to a fan's question on his official Instagram account to explain why stardates don't exist in Picard (via Comicbook.com). According to the showrunner, he never really liked how stardates work and doesn't want to worry about it too much.
"Stardates, in my view, and I know this is going to make some people mad, are a uniquely perverse form of uninformative information," Chabon wrote. "Using a Stardate tells you precisely nothing. Even people who know how to interpret and convert them have to go off and interpret and convert them to have them mean something."
Chabon continued by comparing stardates to a temperature reading. "Giving an audience the stardate is like if I wanted to know if I needed to put on a sweater or not, and you told me the temperature outside in Kelvin. 'It's 207 out,'" he wrote.
This might be a shocking response for hardcore Trekkies but it's also easy to understand why stardates don't matter in Picard. After all, Patrick Stewart's character is no longer a part of Starfleet and he doesn't need to announce the stardate at the beginning of an episode. Still, it could be unnerving to notice that this particular part of Star Trek tradition doesn't appear in the new show.
What do you think of Chabon's thoughts on stardates? Sound off in the comments below.
Related: Star Trek: The Next Generation Cast Reunite in Awesome Picard BTS Photo
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