Spocks age after TSFS

[SithHappens]

Not sure if this has ever been discussed but how did the regeneration of spocks body affect his age after TSFS?

We see most of the movie he is younger but is rapidly aging. I am assuming this is connected to the genesis planet and when he is removed he returns to aging normally.
it seems massive coincidence that he ages to the point he was prior to his death, of course the reason is Nimoy age and playing the character, but in reality what are the chances he would age rapidly to his pre death age and be transported from genesis just as he hits it.

 

[NCC-73515]

Since they don't age a lot visually (Tuvok doesn't look like he's 100, Spock and Sarek didn't change much in the 75 years between TUC and TNG), there was a lot of time to get him out and still have him look like he did when he died. But he should've grown a massive beard XD

 

[SithHappens]

Of course that raises another question. I believe Kirk and spock were similar ages. So for them to visually age at the same rate seems odd. As you say tuvok visually was much younger than Shatner or Nimoy but playing an older character.

 

[Timo]

Half-Vulcans don't have to conform.

Yes, despite the unchanging face, Spock could be biologically significantly older after Genesis than he was before it, considering how his looks after Genesis stabilize for a century whereas they kept changing at all time intervals before Genesis (why, sometimes really drastically, as if he were a different person altogether! ).

Might be why he dies so young, barely 175 or so by his internal chronology: he was actually 275, having been reborn through Genesis to the biological age of 160!

But we could also say that Genesis did something funny to his pace of aging, not (just) to his biological age, and that he would have aged very differently (that is, without the fancy plateau stage) after the 2280s had he not been killed and then hit with the rejuvenating wave...

Also, he had been super-aged twice before Genesis. Possibly his baseline biological age was already in the three digits as TOS/TAS concluded?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Therin of Andor]

Since they don't age a lot visually (Tuvok doesn't look like he's 100, Spock and Sarek didn't change much in the 75 years between TUC and TNG)...

Remember that Nimoy (born 1931) and Lenard (born 1924) are actually quite close in age, despite playing father and son.

 

[Spock .]

I always thought that Spock's growth was somehow related to the planet's growth. As the planet matured, so did he. Then the planet was destroyed, stopping that growth or breaking the tie.

 

[Timo]

...It's pretty weird that Spock didn't explode on the bridge of that BoP right when the planet blew. Or even burp particularly loudly. He's made of reconfigured matter just like the planet (save, perhaps, for a small core of original matter, the size of a baby). And a planet would appear more robust than a body, as a first approximation: if there's something so wrong with the matter that the planet spews lava all the way up to orbit, how come there's nothing wrong with the body?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Spock .]

...It's pretty weird that Spock didn't explode on the bridge of that BoP right when the planet blew. Or even burp particularly loudly. He's made of reconfigured matter just like the planet (save, perhaps, for a small core of original matter, the size of a baby). And a planet would appear more robust than a body, as a first approximation: if there's something so wrong with the matter that the planet spews lava all the way up to orbit, how come there's nothing wrong with the body?

Timo Saloniemi

That's a good point. We don't see anything else that was separated from the planet, so it's hard to know for sure. However, the movie seems to indicate that he was affected by the energies of the planet, not actually tied to it, similarly to the plot in Insurrection. The protomatter is what caused the instability and eventually resulted in the planet being destroyed.

 

[MAGolding]

...Also, he had been super-aged twice before Genesis. Possibly his baseline biological age was already in the three digits as TOS/TAS concluded?

Timo Saloniemi

ONce was in "The Deadly Years". Which was the other time?

 

[Timo]

"Lorelei Signal", in TAS.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

"Lorelei Signal", in TAS.

Timo Saloniemi

Thank you.

 

[publiusr]

I always thought that Spock's growth was somehow related to the planet's growth. As the planet matured, so did he. Then the planet was destroyed, stopping that growth or breaking the tie.

The planet itself was dying at the last—so it all makes sense. His casket was empty…that was his matter, not proto-matter…and being on the Bird of Prey with its own fields shielded him from the planet’s fate one way or the other.

He’d have been toast either way if left behind.

 

[Spock .]

The planet itself was dying at the last—so it all makes sense. His casket was empty…that was his matter, not proto-matter…and being on the Bird of Prey with its own fields shielded him from the planet’s fate one way or the other.

He’d have been toast either way if left behind.

I agree. The problem with the planet was not directly linked to Spock's growth. However, I am interested in the fact that no one else started growing really fast on the planet. If Spock's growth was related to the planet's growth, or even affected by the planet's energies, shouldn't the others have grown faster, too?

 

[Kor]

Bah, protomatter. That's something for the "character assassination" thread when it comes David Marcus. The simple fact that the Genesis planet was the result of the Genesis device going off in a nebula, instead of on a planetoid as intended, should have been enough to explain the instabilities and everything.

Kor

 

[Timo]

His casket was empty…that was his matter, not proto-matter…

But only a babyful of it, since at one point Spock was but the size of a fire extinguisher. The rest he somehow got from somewhere when growing up - supposedly magically, rather than by eating a lot of Genesis fruit and getting fat and tall from that. So Spock being "original matter" doesn't really cut it.

and being on the Bird of Prey with its own fields shielded him from the planet’s fate one way or the other.

That might work, yes.

Bah, protomatter. That's something for the "character assassination" thread when it comes David Marcus. The simple fact that the Genesis planet was the result of the Genesis device going off in a nebula, instead of on a planetoid as intended, should have been enough to explain the instabilities and everything.

But the writers didn't want the instabilities explained. They wanted Genesis destroyed. And any "it failed to work because of X" would be effort wasted, because Genesis could then always work whenever X was absent.

Establishing that it would never work in the first place was better done by invoking protomatter. But even that was too little, since Genesis still remained a potent one-shot-suffices planetkiller...

OTOH, for all we know, Genesis did go off on a planetoid. After all, there was at least the planetoid Regula available; it would be a logical candidate for Genesis Planet, and in studio reality obviously was the Genesis Planet (it was dropped in the same spot of the starscape simulation where Regula had previously been).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Desert Kris]

I hope my reply won't sound insensitive to Leonard Nimoy in the role of Spock, and just to the tendency of humans (and Vulcans) who inevitably age. The last time I watched through all the TOS films, Nimoy/Spock looked the most unchanged, facially, and vocally, in TMP and TWoK. In TSFS, watching them back to back after all of TOS, this is when he looks more noticeably older, a much more lined face just two years after TWoK (and seemingly hardly changed in the three or so years between TMP and TWoK). I was unsettled to realize that and illusion that I had long believed of Spock/Nimoy hardly seeming aged actually ends by the time of TSFS, which has an in-universe explanation for why the new version of Spock born on Genesis could very well have been aged passed the point of the age the original Spock died at. I know it's habit for the sake of comfort to assume that the new Spock aged up to exactly where he left off, but speculation up-thread plus the visual evidence I observed suggests a more complicated answer.

 

[Therin of Andor]

an in-universe explanation for why the new version of Spock born on Genesis could very well have been aged passed the point of the age the original Spock died at. I know it's habit for the sake of comfort to assume that the new Spock aged up to exactly where he left off, but speculation up-thread plus the visual evidence I observed suggests a more complicated answer.

And if, after directing ST III, Nimoy had decided not to continue as Spock, they could have plucked Spock off the planet a few minutes earlier and the role could have continued over the next few movies with Joe W Davis.

(Wow! He was also Buddy Holly in "Mr. Rock 'n' Roll: The Alan Freed Story" in 1999.)