Episode of the Week : The Deadly Years

[Marsden]

I hear what you are saying, but it wasn't aging it's radiation damage that simulated advanced aging.

What's that mean? I don't know. It almost makes running them through the transporter a better solution. But it doesn't "de age" them but cures the damage from the radiation.


While there's some merit to the opinion that the 2nd half of Star Trek isn't as good as the first half it still pretty good. I don't dismiss any of the seasons or parts of the seasons. I wonder if the sale to paramount made the difference or was contributing to it. Harvey would correct me, he knows. He knows.

Oh, I voted 7.

The problems don't drag this down that much for me. I do wonder how screaming protects you from radiation, but I washed out of medical school after I was expelled from the Academy.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

6 here.

Basically, it's, instead of going to the Roman planet or the gangster plant, let's have the cast get old. Within that context of cheesy high-concept (or, if not, then something that can be pitched in one sentence) and the limited expectations therein, they manage to pull it off.

 

[Timo]

it wasn't aging it's radiation damage that simulated advanced aging.

It was aging, though, in every medical sense. The heroes developed all the usual "symptoms of aging", and none that would not be associated with aging, and they developed those in a succession perfectly mimicking aging (even if accelerated).

For radiation damage to do that is less plausible than for an exotic phenomenon to cause our heroes to believe that this is happening!

That "the comet did it" is an educated guess, but for all we know, it wasn't the correct guess. Sure, the comet no doubt and for real introduced an exotic element to the situation that was otherwise lacking in elements that could explain the aging. But it doesn't follow that this element would actually explain the aging...

Giving Kirk adrenaline wouldn't kill him. But it would shake him, and might shake him out of the belief that he was old. Or it might kill the bug that was in his blood and was making him think he was old (and would make McCoy think that he was old, rather than bugged - if he believes one falsehood, he would probably believe another as well).

In any case, a show that makes good use of a number of guest stars, even when based on a rather minimalist gimmick plot. Didn't I vote already? Damn. Must be the years piling on. Let's give this one a seven.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[HarryM]

I voted it a 7 as well, despite the gimmick story it's still quite watchable.

 

[Melakon]

A friend always thought it was funny how the camera focuses on Kirk's writhing crotch to show him getting younger again.

 

[Hatshepsut]

It was aging, though, in every medical sense...

Except that aging involves thermodynamically irreversible chemical changes in your body cells. You can't go back from being old to being young again, as far as the sciences of chemistry and biology can tell.

Kind of disappointing for life extension buffs, yet it's the price we pay for being a multicellular organism with alternation of generations built into the developmental program our genes specify for us. We are the diploid "fruiting bodies," our eggs and sperm the haploid gametes, for what is essentially a continuous critter that lives forever by replacing its bodies periodically (when we have sex and babies). Evolution!

 

[The Old Mixer]

Fast aging and de-aging was good enough for the animated Fab Four....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrQAILGak2U

 

[Timo]

Except that aging involves thermodynamically irreversible chemical changes in your body cells.

And, as far as McCoy could tell, this is what happened.

Incidentally, this is also what happens as the consequence of "radiation damage", so that doesn't count as a pseudoscientific explanation for the events, either. We just have to assume that McCoy was utterly mistaken the first time around and there was no arthritis with its associated irreversible changes (which more or less means pleading "illusions"), or then that McCoy's cure reversed the changes despite reputedly only consisting of adrenaline (which means pleading "heroes lie to the invisible audience for no discernible reason")...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sybok Was Wrong]

A friend always thought it was funny how the camera focuses on Kirk's writhing crotch to show him getting younger again.

This is the image that sticks out for me too! (bad choice of words-sticks out?)

The sheer incompetience of the man in the red shirt is hilarious too. Entertaining!

The makeup is fun- to compare now, to how the actors actually did age.

Kirks love interests dress was so very 60's and such an unnecessary character.

This was an effortless episode, in that everyone is on top of their game with a predictable story. Was this not the episode where the production learned they were cancelled?

 

[Metryq]

The halfway point of the series and it's mostly downhill from here.............

Allegory for the need to rejuvenate TOS, or perhaps the futility of sustaining something past its time?

 

[Captain Tracy]

While I think the whole 'Scream'/ ''Adrenaline', as well as The 'Broken Code 2' angle was pretty clever, HOWEVER,...

Isn't just a re-hash of the same problem they faced with the MIRI-Virus (Rush to find the cure while you grow old,.. or Die) ?

Personally, I found MIRI's 'Biological War' back-story more intriguing than the arbitrary "Mysterious Comet" explanation. - AND the MIRI back-story dove-tails nicely with the SPACE SEED & PATTERNS OF FORCE back-story of Earth 1990s WWIII

I think STOCKER is one best features of this story. He is respectful to KIRK and CREW, admits his limitations, AND he is NOT a butt-head like: NILZ BARRIS, GEORGE FOX, FERRIS, HEDFORD, etc. even though he has a personal agenda to get to his next duty.

When he takes the Con ,.... ehe hehe heh,.. when the Romulans attack, the ONLY thing STOCKER seems to be able to do is call for someone from "Facilities' to come and clean-up the mess he made in the Captain's Chair,.. Seriously, check out his highly-suspicious "Body English" while he has his melt down LOL!!

Perhaps the scene might have had even more impact, had the scene used a "Ferris"-type falling apart at the seams, but I like STOCKER the way he was written and played, seems like a good guy (for a Chair-Bound Paper-Pusher) anyway.

Have to give this one a 6, with minus points for being more of a Science-Fantasy, by not having a "Hard" Science Fiction back-story like in MIRI, and minus points for directly ripping-off the MIRI threat in terms of a dramatic device; BUT, I give it Plus Points for the Adrenaline/Scream solution to the Puzzle of the Mystery. Plus points for the whole STOCKER falls apart/ KIRK retruns to save the day via Code 2

 

[Melakon]

Was this not the episode where the production learned they were cancelled?

Unlikely, "Deadly Years" is a second season episode. Sybok is wrong again.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I haven't played my copy in a long time, but I think it was on the album Inside Star Trek that DeForest Kelly raved about the opportunity this episode afforded them as actors to play the aging process. To him, that kind of thing set Star Trek apart from the usual TV series.

Another actor who must have loved this one was Walter Koenig. He got a lot to do, including a comical dialogue with George Takei at their bridge station.

It's an okay episode, but it could have been vastly better.

"The Deadly Years" would have made a good tear-jerker. Have the disease affect some likeable guest stars instead of the regulars, and let McCoy fail to save them. One of them is a cute child actor who gets progressively frailer and sicker, and then dies. There wouldn't be a dry eye in the house. And there would be no problems with science and plausibility like the actual episode's resolution is rife with.

Come to think of it, that could have been one of the most powerful and realistic episodes of the series. The actual episode we got comes across a little too safe, with too pat an ending, and it has the feeling of something that rolled off the assembly line, in the sense that its "story beats" follow the "All's Well that Ends Well" formula of series TV.

 

[Marsden]

Come to think of it, that could have been one of the most powerful and realistic episodes of the series. The actual episode we got comes across a little too safe, with too pat an ending, and it has the feeling of something that rolled off the assembly line, in the sense that its "story beats" follow the "All's Well that Ends Well" formula of series TV.

Concur.

 

[feek61]

Was this not the episode where the production learned they were cancelled?

Unlikely, "Deadly Years" is a second season episode. Sybok is wrong again.

Actually he is correct. They were waiting to hear if they were picked-up for the balance of the season and rumor was that they would not be picked-up. According to Bjo Trimble who was on set during the filming of this episode; there was crying and depression between takes on the set and then once the camera would roll, she was amazed how the actors immediately got into character and how professional they were. Eventually they did find out at the 11th hour that the rest of the season had been pick-up but there were a few days that they thought "The Deadly Years" was the last episode.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Beverly Washburn was an ex-child actor from SHANE.....and certainly cute in SPIDER BABY. Her death scene as Lt. Galway was actually removed to put in more commercials in the syndicated remastered episode.

Yes, but that's not Star Trek's fault. What is: the episode does nothing to endear her to us, and her death serves no dramatic purpose other than to increase Kirk's jeopardy. Thus the audience misses out on a more intense experience.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I haven't played my copy in a long time, but I think it was on the album Inside Star Trek that DeForest Kelly raved about the opportunity this episode afforded them as actors to play the aging process. To him, that kind of thing set Star Trek apart from the usual TV series.

Another actor who must have loved this one was Walter Koenig. He got a lot to do, including a comical dialogue with George Takei at their bridge station.

It's an okay episode, but it could have been vastly better.

"The Deadly Years" would have made a good tear-jerker. Have the disease affect some likeable guest stars instead of the regulars, and let McCoy fail to save them. One of them is a cute child actor who gets progressively frailer and sicker, and then dies. There wouldn't be a dry eye in the house. And there would be no problems with science and plausibility like the actual episode's resolution is rife with.

Come to think of it, that could have been one of the most powerful and realistic episodes of the series. The actual episode we got comes across a little too safe, with too pat an ending, and it has the feeling of something that rolled off the assembly line, in the sense that its "story beats" follow the "All's Well that Ends Well" formula of series TV.

I suggest checking out Phase II's "To Serve All My Days," guest-starring Walter Koenig. That's my favorite effort from them.

 

[velour]

The old man makeup job on Spock looked awful. The ones for Kirk, McCoy and Scotty were surprisingly ok though. I thought Shatner gave a good performance as a grumpy old man. So did Kelly, then again, McCoy was always a cantankerous old man, nothing new there.

I loved how Kirk called Stocker a "chair bound paper pusher". How the heck did Stocker become a commodore anyway? Even a paper pusher should know not to violate the neutral zone.