Captain's log


The captains log was a form of log entry record-keeping that was used since the first captains sailed Earth's seas in ancient history. The log was used to inform the captain's superiors of what was happening on a mission and to record historical facts for future generations.

Acting captains could choose to make updates to the captain's log directly, as was Spock's habit, instead of using an acting captains log. () 

On some occasions, the person acting as captain also kept an acting captain's personal log. () 

The Doctor used an ECH log while he was the acting captain of the  as the Emergency Command Hologram. ()

In the 2150s, the United Earth Starfleet simply used the day, month, and year of the Earth Gregorian Calendar to record dates in starlogs. The captain's log was known in this period as the captain's starlog, while an acting captain would keep an acting captain's starlog. ()

When breaking and entering a closed curio shop on the Akaali homeworld as part of a covert mission in 2151,  suggested that Captain Jonathan Archer shouldn't mention that in his log. ()

By the mid-2160s, stardates were used. ()

Benjamin Sisko recorded his first captain's log on stardate 48960.9. ()

Appendices

See also 
Military log
Personal log
Captain's Log: William Shatner's Personal Account of the Making of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek: Fan Collective - Captain's Log

Background information 
"Captain's log," spoken by William Shatner, were the first two words viewers heard on the first Star Trek broadcast, , on September 8, 1966.

Obviously, the "real" purpose of the log is to inform the audience about key plot points; it should be noted that in some of the first episodes of the original series, Kirk's log sometimes broke the fourth wall and described information that neither he nor the crew could be aware of. For example, in , Kirk describes "… but unknown to us…". There clearly wasn't time to make some other log entries; for instance, in , Kirk appears to have made a log entry about his crew's skulduggery against the episode's villain while he, Kirk, is sitting next to that same villain.

Presumably, these log entries were created after the events had transpired, when the captain had time to update his log, and it was either Starfleet procedure or just Kirk's personal habit to record such logs in the present tense.

External link 
 

cs:Kapitánův deník
ja:艦長日誌
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