life-extension technology in Star Trek (or lack thereof)

[SoM]

to find out that Worf is about fourteen

There's surely no way they'd let a Klingon teenager on the bridge (if Klingons are adults by fourteen Earth-years old, you'd expect them to behave accordingly. Which isn't exactly "mature", but is at least not "teenager".)

You have to take into account species like the Occampa and the JemHadar, not every species/culture physically and intellectually matures at the "standard" Human rate. Klingons could be actual adults by their mid-teens. Alexander was of adult size (if a bit thin) when a Human of the same age would be of child's height.

You missed the point - Timo was saying that Worf's S1 behaviour could be accounted for by his being, essentially, a kid. My point was that if he's a kid - regardless of his chronological age - they surely wouldn't have him on the bridge (let alone his having been promoted - I'm not sure whether he was a Lt. jg or full Lt in S1, but either way he wasn't at the bottom of the officer tree, and wasn't in a speciality like medicine to have jumped past Ensign on commission). Plus, the Starfleet Academy course is three/four years by itself!

no way they'd let a Klingon teenager on the bridge

Wesley.

Nepotism!

 

[Timo]

My point was that if he's a kid - regardless of his chronological age - they surely wouldn't have him on the bridge

If the point was to have a Klingon in Starfleet, then certain shortcomings could surely be overlooked. It's not as if Worf actually did any damage by being a brainless hothead anyway - Picard turned down all of his input as a matter of routine, as if he had been instructed by Starfleet to treat the politically convenient but immature officer as pure window dressing.

Plus, the Starfleet Academy course is three/four years by itself!

Not for the Ocampa, I guess...

Plus, at fifteen, Worf might already have had plenty of Klingon military training that would allow him to skip most of the Academy.

In this putative alternate treatise of the character, that is. The way Worf was actually and eventually described in TNG precludes the possibility of him already being a full Klingon warrior when he goes to the Dark Side and joins the Federation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It might also have been interesting to find out that Worf is about fourteen in "Encounter at Farpoint", in human years, explaining why he behaves accordingly...

There's surely no way they'd let a Klingon teenager on the bridge (if Klingons are adults by fourteen Earth-years old, you'd expect them to behave accordingly. Which isn't exactly "mature", but is at least not "teenager".)

Klingons have relatively long lifespans, though; if Kang and Koloth are any indication, 14 Klingon years would be about 30 Earth years. Reposition that into, say, a human being raised by someone like, say, the Salarians from Mass Effect who typically live about thirty to fourty years. A fourteen year old human might achieve a relatively high rank only because he has more life experience already than a middle-aged Salarian of superior rank. On the other hand, Klingon childhood and maturation is implied to be jaw-droppingly quick; Alexander gives a date for his birth as Stardate 43205, which corresponds to a couple of months AFTER Worf's holodeck bootycall in "The Emissary." It really sort of depends on which calendar we're using.

Either way, Worf's emotional immaturity is a matter of hormones and biochemical urges (he's horny all the time and he's ready for a fight) but he's dealing with those hormonal changes in the position of someone who has the life experience of a middle-aged human.

We don't really know how old Worf was when Khitomer was massacred, but he evidently remembers enough from his Klingon past -- and enough of Klingon culture -- that he didn't have to go off and re-connect with his heritage later in life. Seems the Rozhenkos raised him simply because too few of Mogh's living relatives survived the massacre to care for him or otherwise weren't contacted until Worf was already an adult... so I'm guessing he would have been about 5 or 10 Earth years at the time. In the Klingon lifecycle would have made him a grade schooler, but at that age he would have BEEN a grade schooler for almost the entirety of that decade before slowly growing towards puberty (which, curiously, he did not fully experience until Insurrection).

 

[marksound]

Wouldn't population be a concern? I seem to remember something like that in "Mark of Gideon" ...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

"Mark of Gideon" was just plain stupid. After first titpoing around the obvious fact that their entire population is engaged in a tremendous orgy (because, seriously, if nobody on your planet has any privacy at all, that means they're all having sex, giving birth and using the john while elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder).

The simplest solution is to put together a military and start a war with somebody. The next simplest solution is to colonize a nearby planet. The next simplest solution is to just get over yourselves and stop having sex in public. And failing all that, natural social evolution would have forced much of the population to either starve to death or resort to cannibalism, or at the very least going crazy and killing each other just to have a tiny bit of privacy; either way, the problem should have resolved itself LONG ago. The fact that it didn't means the entire species is composed of complete morons with no sense of privacy or appropriate conduct and no forethought whatsoever for the consequences of their actions.

So what they do? They go to elaborate lengths to kidnap an alien, construct an equally elaborate facsimile of his starship -- apparently right in the middle of a public place, a few inches from the ongoing orgy -- and try to trick him into giving the president's daughter an STD.

That entire planet is overdue for a darwin award. The Federation should grind them all down and serve them as cheeseburgers.

 

[Timo]

if nobody on your planet has any privacy at all, that means they're all having sex, giving birth and using the john while elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder

Which is how humans in Europe did it for the past couple of thousand years, too.

Privacy in that sense is an extremely recent invention, basically a luxury afforded through conquest of more habitable and sheltered space by technological means.

the entire species is composed of complete morons

Well, they did make it explicit that they refuse to consider contraceptives because of abstract philosophical reasons, or "love of life". It's not something they can get over without ceasing to be.

They could just as well say we're complete morons for having to seek privacy for sex. That sort of self-imposed idiocy is life-hindering masochism at its worst, lacking rational basis.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

if nobody on your planet has any privacy at all, that means they're all having sex, giving birth and using the john while elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder

Which is how humans in Europe did it for the past couple of thousand years, too.

Bullshit.

Gideon depicts a society so overcrowded that the bodies of the population are literally pressed up against the walls of the building just because they have no place else to go. Such conditions never existed in Europe, not thousands of years ago, not ten years ago. Even modern cities, which have a higher population density than any time in history, aren't that tightly packed.

The people of this planet are essentially humanoid cattle: crammed so close together it's hard to imagine they have a lot of room for a lot of difficult industrial labor or intellectual prowess (how many poems can you write while standing in line for six hours to use the bathroom?). They are conceived, born, live and die in a planet-sized corralle and they're too stupid to take even the simplest measures to improve their situation.

So post a giant sign on one street that says "Walk this way for breathing room" and put a meat grinder underneath it. They're packed so close together that they won't notice they're walking into it until right before they fall in... and then they'll probably jump in anyway because of their "love of life."

They could just as well say we're complete morons for having to seek privacy for sex. That sort of self-imposed idiocy is life-hindering masochism at its worst, lacking rational basis.

Sex IN GENERAL lacks a rational basis, so that's a nonsequitor. More to the point: you don't see a lot of that sort of behavior in sentient species -- e.g. walking down the street, pause for thirty seconds so some random stranger can impregnate you, then go about your business. Animals, yes, but not sentient creatures in control of their own cultures and destinies.

 

[Timo]

Gideon depicts a society so overcrowded that the bodies of the population are literally pressed up against the walls of the building just because they have no place else to go

...Inside one building, an important one where many people would be doing business. Obviously, the same isn't going on outdoors, on a world with actual open terrain and bodies of water.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x16hd/themarkofgideonhd0006.jpg

People today live in conditions exactly as cramped as that. In a busy street, it's literally shoulder to shoulder. In a standard apartment in a really big city, it's easily twenty people living in five square meters of floor space, not just wandering through it on their business.

you don't see a lot of that sort of behavior in sentient species

Forgetting for now that we only have one species to meet the specs...

...What behavior? Sex? We certainly do. Out of those twenty people living in the five square meters, any two might be having sex, with the other eighteen politely ignoring the noises. Going out is an option only with terrain and weather permitting, and in a big city, or in a rural setting in winter, that's not often.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

It might also have been interesting to find out that Worf is about fourteen in "Encounter at Farpoint", in human years, explaining why he behaves accordingly...

There's surely no way they'd let a Klingon teenager on the bridge (if Klingons are adults by fourteen Earth-years old, you'd expect them to behave accordingly. Which isn't exactly "mature", but is at least not "teenager".)

Klingons have relatively long lifespans, though; if Kang and Koloth are any indication, 14 Klingon years would be about 30 Earth years. Reposition that into, say, a human being raised by someone like, say, the Salarians from Mass Effect who typically live about thirty to fourty years. A fourteen year old human might achieve a relatively high rank only because he has more life experience already than a middle-aged Salarian of superior rank. On the other hand, Klingon childhood and maturation is implied to be jaw-droppingly quick; Alexander gives a date for his birth as Stardate 43205, which corresponds to a couple of months AFTER Worf's holodeck bootycall in "The Emissary." It really sort of depends on which calendar we're using.

Either way, Worf's emotional immaturity is a matter of hormones and biochemical urges (he's horny all the time and he's ready for a fight) but he's dealing with those hormonal changes in the position of someone who has the life experience of a middle-aged human.

We don't really know how old Worf was when Khitomer was massacred, but he evidently remembers enough from his Klingon past -- and enough of Klingon culture -- that he didn't have to go off and re-connect with his heritage later in life. Seems the Rozhenkos raised him simply because too few of Mogh's living relatives survived the massacre to care for him or otherwise weren't contacted until Worf was already an adult... so I'm guessing he would have been about 5 or 10 Earth years at the time. In the Klingon lifecycle would have made him a grade schooler, but at that age he would have BEEN a grade schooler for almost the entirety of that decade before slowly growing towards puberty (which, curiously, he did not fully experience until Insurrection).

Memory Alpha has Worf being born in 2340; Khitomer was attacked in 2346, so he was five or six. Apparently he went back to Qo'nos at 15 do do his Klingon adulthood rites (that's about the age most human cultures traditionally have them too, but it looks like Klingons are completely physically adult by that point). TNG starts in 2364, so he was 24 or so.

Alexander is eight years old when he's in his teenage/young adult rebelliousness/getting his father's attention when he shows up as a new recruit in DS9.

 

[Pavonis]

It's hard to say how a Human/Klingon hybrid will mature. It could be that the hybrids of any species mature and develop differently from the norm for either parents' species, and possibly different from other hybrids. For example, a hybrid with a Klingon mother might develop differently than one with a Klingon father.

Alexander was 3/4 Klingon, and 1/4 Human and was adolescent at about 8 years of age (assuming, among other things, that 1000 stardates is about one Earth calendar year). B'Elanna was 1/2 Human and 1/2 Klingon, and what little we saw of her childhood indicates that she didn't age as fast as Alexander, but that even she, at the age of 5, looked older than a typical Human 5-year-old.

 

[Timo]

It might also be that there exists advanced biotech to make possible such hybrid offspring in the first place, apparently available at a reasonable price since the hybrids are so common - and that anybody could obtain and misuse such technology for personal body modification. Alexander might have bought pills designed for balancing the natural growth spurt differences between Klingons and humans, and then adjusted the dose to obtain a warrior's body somewhat ahead of time. Both humans and Klingons would frown on the practice, but hybrids are already outcasts...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Gideon depicts a society so overcrowded that the bodies of the population are literally pressed up against the walls of the building just because they have no place else to go

...Inside one building, an important one where many people would be doing business. Obviously, the same isn't going on outdoors, on a world with actual open terrain and bodies of water.

And what would a gigantic forest composed of billions upon billions of PEOPLE actually look like? I don't suppose it would look all that different from a forest made out of trees... except, like Gideon from orbit, it wouldn't be green.

People today live in conditions exactly as cramped as that. In a busy street, it's literally shoulder to shoulder. In a standard apartment in a really big city, it's easily twenty people living in five square meters of floor space, not just wandering through it on their business.

Yes, in major cities where people voluntarily flock because that's where their business actually is. THEY HAVE A CHOICE. Project that onto a planetwide situation where there isn't any place you can go that DOESN'T have those conditions: the entire surface of a planet with the population density of downtown Tokyo.

It's either leadership fail or widespread logic fail to allow things to get that bad. Either way, it's a world begging for a darwinian weedwacker.

you don't see a lot of that sort of behavior in sentient species

Forgetting for now that we only have one species to meet the specs...

Not in Star Trek we aren't.

Out of those twenty people living in the five square meters, any two might be having sex

You have a fascinating imagination there, Timo.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There's surely no way they'd let a Klingon teenager on the bridge (if Klingons are adults by fourteen Earth-years old, you'd expect them to behave accordingly. Which isn't exactly "mature", but is at least not "teenager".)

Klingons have relatively long lifespans, though; if Kang and Koloth are any indication, 14 Klingon years would be about 30 Earth years. Reposition that into, say, a human being raised by someone like, say, the Salarians from Mass Effect who typically live about thirty to fourty years. A fourteen year old human might achieve a relatively high rank only because he has more life experience already than a middle-aged Salarian of superior rank. On the other hand, Klingon childhood and maturation is implied to be jaw-droppingly quick; Alexander gives a date for his birth as Stardate 43205, which corresponds to a couple of months AFTER Worf's holodeck bootycall in "The Emissary." It really sort of depends on which calendar we're using.

Either way, Worf's emotional immaturity is a matter of hormones and biochemical urges (he's horny all the time and he's ready for a fight) but he's dealing with those hormonal changes in the position of someone who has the life experience of a middle-aged human.

We don't really know how old Worf was when Khitomer was massacred, but he evidently remembers enough from his Klingon past -- and enough of Klingon culture -- that he didn't have to go off and re-connect with his heritage later in life. Seems the Rozhenkos raised him simply because too few of Mogh's living relatives survived the massacre to care for him or otherwise weren't contacted until Worf was already an adult... so I'm guessing he would have been about 5 or 10 Earth years at the time. In the Klingon lifecycle would have made him a grade schooler, but at that age he would have BEEN a grade schooler for almost the entirety of that decade before slowly growing towards puberty (which, curiously, he did not fully experience until Insurrection).

Memory Alpha has Worf being born in 2340; Khitomer was attacked in 2346, so he was five or six.

About what I figured. If Alexander is any indication of the Klingon lifecycle, Worf would have been the equivalent of a fourteen year old when he was adopted. That seems a bit awkward, except going by Worf's putative family history, his family always had a pretty close cultural/social relationship with humans anyway (much like Duras was close with the Romulans) and the Rozhenkos might have actually been family friends at the time.

Apparently he went back to Qo'nos at 15 do do his Klingon adulthood rites

Probably more like 8 or 10, about the same age Alexander was when he joined the Rotarran. Old enough to make a choice, but young enough that he still went back to Galt when it was over.

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

Apparently he went back to Qo'nos at 15 do do his Klingon adulthood rites

Probably more like 8 or 10, about the same age Alexander was when he joined the Rotarran. Old enough to make a choice, but young enough that he still went back to Galt when it was over.

In "The Icarus Factor," Worf celebrates the tenth anniversary of his Rite of Ascension. Since it's the second season, that makes him about 25, so his actual Rite of Ascension would have taken place at about 15.

I don't think Alexander would have gone through that before joining the Rotarran. Perhaps some sort of preparation is necessary before doing it - like service on a ship, or going on a hunt, or whatever (Worf killed a kid playing soccer; maybe that counts ). Plus, looking at the rest of the new recurits that episode, the Klingons were hurting for people, and would take just about anyone willing, adult or no, just as long as they were halfway competent (and only halfway, as Alexander's performance showed ).

 

[SoM]

Alexander wasn't really MEANT to be eight when he appeared on DS9, though - it was a straightforward case of SORAS, similar to Molly O'Brien between her birth and Rascals (who, as an unhybridised human, has no biological excuse).

In-continuity, given the number and variety of weird anomalies that litter the Trekverse, perhaps he fell into a time-dilation anomaly at some point between ST:G & DS9 S6, and emerged a decade older a year later.

 

[Pavonis]

I think the easiest explanation is that stardates and calendar years - for any homeworld - don't coincide.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Apparently he went back to Qo'nos at 15 do do his Klingon adulthood rites

Probably more like 8 or 10, about the same age Alexander was when he joined the Rotarran. Old enough to make a choice, but young enough that he still went back to Galt when it was over.

In "The Icarus Factor," Worf celebrates the tenth anniversary of his Rite of Ascension. Since it's the second season, that makes him about 25, so his actual Rite of Ascension would have taken place at about 15.

Did he say ten YEARS anniversary? I cannot recall if he was measuring in human or Klingon years.

I don't think Alexander would have gone through that before joining the Rotarran.

This is Alexnader we're talking about... I doubt he would have gone through that EVER.

 

[TheRoyalFamily]

I don't think Alexander would have gone through that before joining the Rotarran.

This is Alexnader we're talking about... I doubt he would have gone through that EVER.

That's what I was getting at

 

[Dream]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Son'a from Insurrection.

So yeah, that's what happens to you when you try to extend your life...

 

[Timo]

Yes, in major cities where people voluntarily flock because that's where their business actually is. THEY HAVE A CHOICE.

Well, hardly. Except of course between doing that and dying of hunger.

Project that onto a planetwide situation where there isn't any place you can go that DOESN'T have those conditions: the entire surface of a planet with the population density of downtown Tokyo.

Why? "Mark of Gideon" doesn't call for any of that. All we hear is that they have a population problem, and one of their buildings is seeing a lot of traffic. That's the extent of it, although of course we're free to postulate whatever we wish beyond the canonical parameters.

It's either leadership fail or widespread logic fail to allow things to get that bad.

Yup, plus a damn interesting concept dramatically.

You have a fascinating imagination there, Timo.

Naah. I just browse National Geographic, plus various eyewitness accounts on how things were a hundred years ago right around where I live. An entire room dedicated to just the privacy of two people is an incredibly rare luxury that only exists in a very narrow window of time and space. And I can still practically touch the window frames from where I stand.

It's not my fault the world currently harbors a very small group of perverts who think sex should be a "private" thing...

Timo Saloniemi