From the original series to the movies, we see Kirk go from an active guy to a man with a toupee and girdle whining about getting older, Scotty from a fit and capable engineer to a heavier and bumbling dolt, and Data the android who allegedly doesn't age turn to a puffy middle-aged android.

In a society that values youth, how do you feel about how the aging process was portrayed in all this? For instance, did it seem realistic to you to have the original crew still active in space when past their prime? Post away.

I like to think that as health science progresses, the date at which you are "past prime" gets further and further out. So no, I don't really have any problem with the idea of a 60+ year old running around like a thirty or forty something - particularly given that we know McCoy lived into the Next Generation, and while his extreme longevity appears to have been unusual, it's not hard to think that people are living well into their hundreds - making 60 middle age.

Having Kirk complaining about his aging doesn't bother me - it's no different than Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon moaning "I'm getting too old for this shit." I don't know that I would call Scotty bumbling - he had a bad movie (they all had a bad movie that time out), and any deficiencies he exhibited in "Relics" were germaine to the "fish out of water" premise of the story.

As for Data... that's just real life intruding on the fantasy. Theoretically, Data looked no different at the end of Nemesis from how he appeared in "Farpoint".

That got somewhat canonized, I would say, later in TNG. In the de-evolution episode, Dr. Crusher tells Barclay that he has another 70 to 80 years to live. He was probably around 40 there, right? So that would make 110-120 average life span.

Isn't 120 accepted as the maximum life span before the body simply gives out, disease or no? I suppose in the 23rd and 24th centuries, you can still keep getting artificial bits to keep up, but maybe most people realize it's not really worth it. (I can totally see McCoy doing it, though, although 137 isn't really that much past 120, and I suppose, as a doctor, he took somewhat good care of himself.)

I sort of liked Kirk's griping- made him more human- although it was always more of a "life is going by" thing than a "I don't have long to live" one. Come to think, in the main body of the movies, II-V, he was only about fifty in the Trek world.

On the other hand, Picard, who was older to begin, not only not aging, but turning into an action hero, leaves something of a bad taste. The TOS movies, true to their nature as movies and not two-hour episodes, handled this angle much better than the TNG ones.

Gilmel, even more canonically, the episode "Half a Life" had characters dying at sixty.

But those were non-humans practicing a ritual suicide.

But even so, the implication was that 120 was a natural lifespan.

I feel that falls into this discussion, too. (I was going to add that to my first post, but saw the discussion started.) There are aliens with longer life spans (Vulcans), ones with shorter life spans (Ocampas), and those that age in reverse (the humanoids on that episode of ST: TAS and Voyager).

We don't have to limit ourselves to talking about the human characters aging.

Hmm, I don't know about that. Did Logan's Run's death at 30 imply that the average human lifespan was 60? I never got the impression David Ogden Stiers was only halfway through his life in that episode. The title seemed more metaphorical then literal.

But I do still think 110-120 was considered an average lifespan in TNG. Some other comments to that effect may have been made, too. Maybe in regards to Sisko's dad on DS9? I'm drawing a blank on the particulars.

For some reason I also remember thinking that the show established 120 as the limit. Also, I know it's not canon, but in the DS9 relaunch books, Vaughn is about 102-104 (?) and still on active duty, though he does complain of aches and pains, etc.

I always thought it was weird that Kirk and Co. were very old yet still flying around saving the galaxy. Are there no other competent officers in Starfleet? I like these guys a lot, but still....for me it required a certain suspension of disbelief. Not to mention that in all of Shatner's books that I have read, Kirk is somehow "miraculously resurrected"/"pulled through time"/whatever so he can team up with whoever we know in whatever time and save the galaxy (again)- which was why I stopped reading the ones he wrote. As far as disbelief, it's almost the reverse of the Wesley situation, who was too young for me to really believe that he saved the ship multiple times (even though I was 12 and totally had a crush on him).

No, but an alien race dying of unnatural causes at 60 doesn't say anything about the natural lifespan of humans, which was what was being discussed at the time.

I still wish Kes hadn't been killed off in Voyager. I think it would have been very interesting seeing her age over the course of the series.

I still feel it falls into the general topic, and I feel it's a valid point. Different cultures handle aging differently. Some accept it, but the aliens in "Half A Life" felt they had lived past their usefulness at 60. And topics do change frequently in threads, so I have no problem with that.

Kes, the stupidest and worst character arc in the series. Notice i said ARC, not the character...but when they turned her from some goodie twoshoes nice girl to a homicidal oldie it made no sense...but its not like i cared, Voy sucked anyways

That was completely not my point, though, RealChic. I was pointing out that regarding human lifespans, which is what Gilmel was talking about and nelamm was responding to, aliens committing suicide at 60, while an interesting topic in and of itself, does not tell us whether the human lifespan has been lengthened to 100, 120, or 130 or on average was still 80, with a few exceptional cases like McCoy.

Maybe Beverly or somebody has a line of dialogue in that episode that does relate to the canonization of a longer human lifespan - and if so, I'd love to be reminded of it - but the aliens themselves do not, quite apart from the interesting topic they present as allegory for the modern human condition.

Speaking of the allegory, however, I think it's fairly weak. I can't remember the backstory the aliens provided for why they committed suicide, but it strikes me as one of the preachier moments in Trek history. As a sideways discussion on elective euthanasia, a la Kevorkian, it really doesn't stand up, since even proponents of that concept aren't arguing that we should just start euthanizing people at a certain age regardless of any other factors. It's hard to become invested in an episode in which the crew is seen as so obviously "right" - the White Europeans/primitive savages complaint that I see more and more in NextGen.

I don't think that episode was saying anything about euthanasia. It was more of a commentary on how different cultures view the older members of their society. In that particular society, they decided that the elderly were more of a burden on society than an asset to it and collectively decided that it was better for them to die "honorably" before going through any of the indignities of old age. Obviously, the writers were disagreeing with such a practice, and on that, I fully agree with the writers. The man they chose to focus on was a successful scientist who had many productive years of his career ahead of him, and the point was that by deciding on some arbitrary age at which people become "too old," society loses out.

And therein lies my problem. The disagreement is so obvious that there's no real challenge in it. Trek's allegorical preaching really only works when there's some valid opposition to what it's preaching, and while ageism is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed, the way in which it was presented in this episode was so hamfisted, especially since there's no direct correlation between what is going on in the episode and what's going on in real life. Confining Timnus to a forced retirement colony or something might have made it more relatable, but even that would have been anvilicious. But killing him just made it so easy to agree with the writers that it became a non-issue.

I think the allegory that the show was trying to represent was to not follow tradition for tradition's sake. Lwaxana's speech about the Betazoid woman who refused to continue wearing the wig with the bird in it speaks directly to that. And then we get Timicin's daughter coming in and speaking along the same lines to him about his Resolution.

The idea of tradition for tradition's sake is completely applicable to real life and is something that I, at least, find relatable. How many things do we continue to do that may be ultimately harmful to individual people, though most wouldn't complain and want to go along with it, or to society as a whole? The fact that Timicin is old and being told he must commit suicide is the poignant mask the episode wears, but I think the questions it raises are deeper than "how do/should we treat our elderly."

I like this episode for what it says. It is my favorite Lwaxana episode because she's necessary to the plot and not an annoyance or distraction. She's also not being all diplomatic about the issue like the rest of the crew. She's speaking out as only Lwaxana can. She's also 100% right, in my opinion. Tradition for tradition's sake is wrong if anyone is suffering for it.

That makes sense. Guess I just haven't seen the episode in a while, and I'm no longer in the mindset to give the Trek writers any credit for subtlety, even NextGen, which has become increasingly unwatchable the older it gets.

Well, I don't know how subtle they were trying to be. I just know what I took from it.

Some discussion about "Rascals" in the TNG forum and my viewing of "Time's Arrow" a few days ago has led me to wonder about the childhoods of people (human or alien) in increasingly long-lived cultures. Guinan, for example, is at least 500 years old. And Vulcans live around 200 years, yes? Even humans increasing to just 110-120 years is a huge addition to a lifespan that now is around 80-90.

So, how long do we give people to be children, or not yet fully mature socially, when they live an average of 120, 200, or 500 years? Are you still a child or adolescent in your 50s if you live 500 years? Are you still not considered to have socially come of age until you're 80 if you live 500 years? Humans likely still consider people socially mature at 18 or 21 because biologically we mature in our teens and the increase in lifespan is gradual, but what about races that have been biologically long-lived from the get go?

I can't help but think of Tolkien. Hobbits lived usually around 120 years, so coming of age happened at 33, and people in their twenties (or tweens, as Tolkien called it), like Pippin was, are considered immature and troublesome like we consider teens. Are Vulcans like this, too? Are El-Aurians? Would humans become like that?

In re: "Logan's Run" - in the movie, the executions happened on the thirtieth birthday in accordance with the dictum, "You can't trust anyone over thirty." (Ironically enough, in order to remember that phrase, you have to be over thirty...)

In the novel, it happened on the twenty-first birthday, being a somewhat sarcastic take on the youth culture that was beginning to take over America at the time.

Neither one had anything to do with natural lifespan - in fact, Logan's profession was "sandman", chasing down and killing those who tried to avoid ritual execution...

I know. My point was that Timicin's ritual suicide had nothing to do with natural lifespan, either. That's exactly why I brought up the artificiality of ritual suicide in Logan's Run.

Human biology has established that as the limit. There's a difference between life span and life expectancy. The human life span is and always has been (a few chapters of Genesis notwithstanding) 120 years. That's how long a body can last without just stopping of its own accord, absent disease, homicide, suicide, or accidents. Life expectancy is the measure of the average age a person can expect to reach in a given society. In most of the Western world, that's around 75, give or take. In other cultures where disease, murder, and war are more prevalent, that number is lower.

effulgent, I can sort of swallow Kirk & Co. in the movies- Shatner and Nimoy, for example, never even hit sixty, and the character of Kirk was a bit younger, I think.

This page deals with the phenomenon of "Stronger Aliens." The one I've always had the most trouble with is how long Klingons last, but it explains it somewhat well.

A trivial thing, but I feel it relates:

I rented ST:III over the weekend, and on one of the vignettes they were talking about costume design (well, this creepy lady was), and they showed one of the outfits on it. It started from the feet up, and it scrolled up, revealing knee-high boots, and a miniskirt. When it finished scrolling up, it revealed Nichelle Nichols in that outfit (it was the one she wore during Kirk's get-together at his apartment, which you can't see the full version of in the movie). She had to be in her early 50s around that time...and her legs seemed to be in pretty good shape. Funny how people say you can't wear a mini-skirt after 50.

ETA: How can I mention ST:III without mentioning Spock's rapid aging process in that movie (due to Genesis)? (Sorry for forgetting.) I've seen discussion about how he should've went through more than one pon farr because of his aging, but I can't figure out for the life of me how that would work.

Interestingly, Uhura continued to wear a skirt as part of her uniform, at least in V (I think) and VI (I'm sure- she on a bridge railing in one scene), even though every woman had started wearing pants (again) in TMP. She wore pants in I, II, III, and IV, though.