Talking About 'Star Trek': Did Kirk's Enterprise complete its five-year mission?
Did Kirk's Enterprise complete its five-year mission?
Yes. It did. The original Starship Enterprise, registry number NCC-1701, completed its five-year mission under the command of Capt. James T. Kirk.
This much was confirmed by the fact that Kirk is an Admiral in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as well as certain other plot points, such as the fact that the Enterprise has undergone an extensive refit and that most of the crew has been reassigned to other duties within Starfleet. (Kirk’s line to McCoy about his fitness to command after being at a desk job for two-and-a-half years includes the words. “five years out there, dealing with unknowns…”)
What is not clear - on screen, anyway - is when, exactly, the five-year mission ended.
Right now, the canonical reference works The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future and its companion work, The Star Trek Chronology, state that Kirk’s five-year mission ended a short time after Turnabout Intruder.
In The Star Trek Chronology: A History of the Future, the writers explain that Where No Man Has Gone Before is the series’ second pilot episode and is set in the year 2064, during the first year of Kirk’s five-year mission. The Man Trap, which was produced later but aired first, is set in the year 2266.
Thus, if we accept the premise that each season depicts events 300 years in our future, then the Enterprise returns to Earth sometime in the year 2269 after Turnabout Intruder.
Some fans often mention Star Trek: The Animated Series as the continuation of the original five-year mission, and there is some logic to that argument. The show, despite its cheap animation, starred the voices of most of the Original Series’ cast (except Walter Koenig….the budget didn’t allow for his participation as a voice actor), was written by many veterans from the live-action show, and was created by Gene Roddenberry. As such, it was just as “real” Star Trek as the Original Series.
However, sometime in the late 1980s, Gene asked Paramount Pictures to not consider Star Trek: The Animated Series as canon. It was, I assume, a business-related decision rather than a creative one. So, even though it starred Bill Shatner and most of the main crew, CBS Studios (the current owner of Star Trek) pretends it doesn’t exist. So…in the official canon-level Star Trek Chronology, the Enterprise returns to Earth in 2269, Kirk is promoted to Admiral and becomes Chief of Starfleet Operations, Spock and Dr. McCoy leave Starfleet, and Chief Engineer Scott supervises the refit of the famous starship.
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