Crew age and nu-Trek

[YARN]

How old are Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in relation to Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov?

If I recall correctly, in TOS Kirk was supposed to be in his early 40's or late 30's as the captain, where the junior officers were in their early 20's.

It appears that they are much closer in age now. Any guesses as to how much?

 

[Christopher]

The only TOS characters whose ages were definitively established were Kirk (34 in "The Deadly Years"), Chekov (22 in "Who Mourns for Adonais?"), McCoy (137 in "Encounter at Farpoint"), and Scotty (chronologically 147 in "Relics"). The other characters' ages were only conjecturally given in the Okudas' Chronology. The only core character whose age in the Abramsverse is inconsistent with anything we know from canon is Chekov, who's 4 years older in the new timeline. Kirk's birth year is the same; Spock is slightly older, which is consistent; and McCoy and Scotty are mid-30s just as they should be. Uhura and Sulu are older in the movie than the Chronology speculated they were, but it wouldn't be the first time the book's speculations have been "disproven" by new productions.

The only other character whose age might be inconsistent is Pike, since the first movie took place only about five years after when "The Cage" would've taken place, creating a discrepancy of at least a decade between Jeffrey Hunter's and Bruce Greenwood's ages. But since we don't have canonical ages for either version of Pike, it could be that Hunter was playing 5-6 years older and Greenwood 5-6 years younger. And it's not like we haven't had casting discrepancies before, like James Cromwell being far older than Zefram Cochrane should've been as of 2063.

 

[YARN]

The only TOS characters whose ages were definitively established were Kirk (34 in "The Deadly Years"), Chekov (22 in "Who Mourns for Adonais?"), McCoy (137 in "Encounter at Farpoint"), and Scotty (chronologically 147 in "Relics"). The other characters' ages were only conjecturally given in the Okudas' Chronology. The only core character whose age in the Abramsverse is inconsistent with anything we know from canon is Chekov, who's 4 years older in the new timeline. Kirk's birth year is the same; Spock is slightly older, which is consistent; and McCoy and Scotty are mid-30s just as they should be. Uhura and Sulu are older in the movie than the Chronology speculated they were, but it wouldn't be the first time the book's speculations have been "disproven" by new productions.

The only other character whose age might be inconsistent is Pike, since the first movie took place only about five years after when "The Cage" would've taken place, creating a discrepancy of at least a decade between Jeffrey Hunter's and Bruce Greenwood's ages. But since we don't have canonical ages for either version of Pike, it could be that Hunter was playing 5-6 years older and Greenwood 5-6 years younger. And it's not like we haven't had casting discrepancies before, like James Cromwell being far older than Zefram Cochrane should've been as of 2063.

Hey man, read the first chapters of one of your books online. Pretty good!

So Kirk is now 8 years older rather than 12 years older?

 

[Christopher]

Hey man, read the first chapters of one of your books online. Pretty good!

Thanks. Feel free to, you know, buy the whole thing.

So Kirk is now 8 years older rather than 12 years older?

Relative to Chekov, you mean? Technically, yes, but that's an odd way of putting it, since Kirk's birthdate isn't the one that changed. Better to say that Chekov is now 8 years younger than Kirk rather than 12 years younger.

 

[YARN]

Hey man, read the first chapters of one of your books online. Pretty good!

Thanks. Feel free to, you know, buy the whole thing.

Wouldn't you be better off if I just paid you directly?

 

[Franklin]

Ages of the characters in "The Deadly Years" based on the canonical citations by Christopher and the assumption that the year in the episode was 2267. Their ages in 2258 (the time of ST09) are in parentheses:
-- Kirk, b. 2333, 34 (25).
-- McCoy, b. 2227, 40 (31).
-- Scotty, b. 2222, 45 (36).
-- Chekov, b. 2245, 22 (13).

The ages of Spock, Uhura, and Sulu are open to speculation. Shatner and Nimoy are the same age, but most think Spock is three years older than Kirk. Nichols is only about a year and nine months younger than Shatner and Nimoy, though it's likely Uhura was younger than that realtive to Kirk. Takei is about six years younger than Shatner, so that would make Sulu 28 when Kirk was 34, even though Sulu's birthdate on Memory Alpha is 2237.

All of the actors playing those parts in ST09 were older than the characters were in 2258, but not so far off that they couldn't play those ages convincingly.

As has been noted many times on this board, Chekov's character is the only one with a rather large age discrepency across TOS and ST09. He says he's 17 in the movie. He "should" be 13. Call the change in his age artistic license to get him on board with the other six more quickly than it happened in TOS.

 

[YARN]

Ages of the characters in "The Deadly Years" based on the canonical citations by Christopher and the assumption that the year in the episode was 2267. Their ages in 2258 (the time of ST09) are in parentheses:
-- Kirk, b. 2333, 34 (25).
-- McCoy, b. 2227, 40 (31).
-- Scotty, b. 2222, 45 (36).
-- Chekov, b. 2245, 22 (13).

The ages of Spock, Uhura, and Sulu are open to speculation. Shatner and Nimoy are the same age, but most think Spock is three years older than Kirk. Nichols is only about a year and nine months younger than Shatner and Nimoy, though it's likely Uhura was younger than that realtive to Kirk. Takei is about six years younger than Shatner, so that would make Sulu 28 when Kirk was 34, even though Sulu's birthdate on Memory Alpha is 2237.

All of the actors playing those parts in ST09 were older than the characters were in 2258, but not so far off that they couldn't play those ages convincingly.

As has been noted many times on this board, Chekov's character is the only one with a rather large age discrepency across TOS and ST09. He says he's 17 in the movie. He "should" be 13. Call the change in his age artistic license to get him on board with the other six more quickly than it happened in TOS.

Very precise answer. Thank you.

I always had the sense of Kirk as being significantly older than the Junior Officers (i.e., a decade or so).

 

[Christopher]

I consider this Pavel Chekov to be a different individual, genetically, than the original. I assume the others still look the same in-universe despite what we see, just as Saavik or Tora Ziyal or any other recast character is supposed to; after all, Spock Prime recognized Kirk and Scotty on sight. But Abramsverse Chekov is not only four years older, he's also a Wesley Crusher-esque prodigy, whereas Chekov Prime never really seemed all that exceptional in the brains department. So I think of this Chekov as sort of a cross-temporal older brother who was given the same first name by his parents. Perhaps Andrei Chekov and his wife always intended to name their first son Pavel, but in this timeline they had a different son four years earlier.

 

[JustAFriend]

In Hollywood, the camera adds 20pounds to your weight and you have to be 15 years younger than possible for your character.

...that's why movies have Ph.d. scientists who are 20 years old and always smokin' hot...

 

[Timo]

...In essence, Pavel and Pyotr just switched places (that is, names) between the universes.

And yes, any character younger than Kirk could be a completely different individual with a familiar name, "altered" because of Nero's meddling. Uhura, too, appears different: she now is a cunning linguist rather than a switchboard operator, and is romantically interested in Spock - although whether thanks to different body chemistries or just slightly different career histories, we don't know.

Spock's age is somewhat more strongly established than those of the other characters quoted as speculative, because of TAS "Yesteryear" where the only variable is the year in which the episode (stardate 5373, FWIW) took place - a variable in all TOS episodes as well, basically, and not that much of an issue. We learn that Spock was seven years old in a time period that was 30 years in the past of the episode's framing story, sharp. Just a tad older than Kirk, then, and quite in keeping with the various live-action portrayals.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

My impressions upon watching TOS was that Kirk, Sulu and Uhura were about the same age, McCoy and Scotty were older, Chekov younger. Spock, being an alien, was a big question mark. "The Counter-Clock Incident" suggests he's the oldest of the crew, a teen when Robert April commanded the Enterprise.

Other than Spock's age (three years older than Kirk according to the deleted birth scene), the new film seems about the same.

I consider this Pavel Chekov to be a different individual, genetically, than the original. I assume the others still look the same in-universe despite what we see, just as Saavik or Tora Ziyal or any other recast character is supposed to; after all, Spock Prime recognized Kirk and Scotty on sight. But Abramsverse Chekov is not only four years older, he's also a Wesley Crusher-esque prodigy, whereas Chekov Prime never really seemed all that exceptional in the brains department. So I think of this Chekov as sort of a cross-temporal older brother who was given the same first name by his parents. Perhaps Andrei Chekov and his wife always intended to name their first son Pavel, but in this timeline they had a different son four years earlier.

That's a horrible explanation, IMO. Chekov is clearly supposed to be the same guy from The Original Series. It's much easier to say Chekov Prime underwent some relativistic time dilation that his alt-self didn't -preserving their different ages and giving a common birthdate.

As for his genius levels, he was considered sharp for a 17 year old in STXI - but maybe he was just an early starter. What's amazing at 17 is probably a little more mundane at 22.

 

[serenitytrek1]

Kirk is 25

Spock is 27

I am not sure of Uhure but if you read the star fleet academy series (The Edge) it states she was 20 when she first joined Starfleet so my guess is she is about 23 or 24 at this present time.

Chekov is 17 obviously

I would say Sulu is about 25.

Bones is already a qualified doctor and has been married and divorced so I will say he is about 30 or 31,

Scotty about 30 or 31 also.

 

[Franklin]

The desire was obviously to bring all seven TOS movie characters back to the big screen. That required one retconn, Chekov's age. Not the biggest deal, really. If he had been in uniform at age 13 or 14, I think everyone would've had a cow.

As far as him being some kind of whiz kid goes, in TOS it did seem as if he was being groomed for command and moving along the path rather quickly. He was navigator, sometimes a science officer (or at least manned Spock's station on the bridge), and then started to go on landing parties. By TMP, which was only three years after the end of Kirk's first five year mission, he was head of security on the Enterprise even though he was not yet 30.

It's really too bad they (writers and producers) didn't continue his growth and let him be the captain of the Reliant in TWOK. It wouldn't have required that much re-writing to do it. Just make Terrell his first officer and not much else in the story has to change.

Koenig was actually eight years older than Chekov.

 

[Christopher]

My impressions upon watching TOS was that Kirk, Sulu and Uhura were about the same age...

I don't see that, since Kirk was a seasoned captain and Sulu and Uhura were just lieutenants. Kirk was young for the captain of a capital ship, but still had more than a decade of service behind him.

In reality, Nichols is just a year younger than Shatner, while Takei is six years younger. But Zoe Saldana is two years older than Chris Pine and John Cho is eight years older!

That's a horrible explanation, IMO. Chekov is clearly supposed to be the same guy from The Original Series.

In theory, sure, but "clearly?" We don't have as much evidence for that as we do for some of the other characters. Spock Prime never recognized him on sight; and of all the characters, he's the one whose birth comes latest after the timeline divergence, where changes in history would be accumulating more. So of all the characters, he's the one it's most logical for.

It's much easier to say Chekov Prime underwent some relativistic time dilation that his alt-self didn't -preserving their different ages and giving a common birthdate.

I don't think that's easy at all. It's a totally ad hoc assumption of a rather convoluted set of events. Conversely, the idea of parents in two different timelines having different children instead of exact duplicate ones makes a wealth of sense and arises naturally from the alternate-timeline premise (indeed, realistically it'd be all but inevitable), so it's actually a much "easier" explanation.

And really, does it even matter whether they have the same birthdate? It's not a date on a calendar that defines either version of the character, so I don't see it as something that needs to be the fixed benchmark that everything else is arranged to preserve.

Not that it really matters either way, of course. It's unlikely to come up in any future films; it's just a matter of what the individual fan prefers to think.

 

[Harvey]

But Abramsverse Chekov is not only four years older, he's also a Wesley Crusher-esque prodigy, whereas Chekov Prime never really seemed all that exceptional in the brains department.

The writers did toy with the idea of Chekov being a student of Spock, but that idea was never clearly realized on screen. I'm not sure it's fair to say the character wasn't that smart, though. Outside of the excessive nationalism and occasional naivete of youth he seemed to be as capable as anyone else on the bridge.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, as capable, but not a supergenius.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Kirk in TOS was so ridiculously young for his job that they made a point of it in the writers guide.

What, you didn't notice that every other starship commander we saw in the series - other than Pike, the proto-Kirk - was greying? Tracey, Wesley, Decker...

As for Chekov - it's just a movie. Chekov is Chekov, that's why he's there. This kind of hair-splitting is like the old joke about the historian who tried to prove that Hamlet wasn't written by William Shakespeare, but by another guy named William Shakespeare.

 

[DaveyNY]

...In essence, Pavel and Pyotr just switched places (that is, names) between the universes.

And yes, any character younger than Kirk could be a completely different individual with a familiar name, "altered" because of Nero's meddling. Uhura, too, appears different: she now is a cunning linguist rather than a switchboard operator, and is romantically interested in Spock - although whether thanks to different body chemistries or just slightly different career histories, we don't know.

Spock's age is somewhat more strongly established than those of the other characters quoted as speculative, because of TAS "Yesteryear" where the only variable is the year in which the episode (stardate 5373, FWIW) took place - a variable in all TOS episodes as well, basically, and not that much of an issue. We learn that Spock was seven years old in a time period that was 30 years in the past of the episode's framing story, sharp. Just a tad older than Kirk, then, and quite in keeping with the various live-action portrayals.

Timo Saloniemi

I see what you did there...

And frankly...





"I Like It!"

 

[Christopher]

And yes, any character younger than Kirk could be a completely different individual with a familiar name, "altered" because of Nero's meddling. Uhura, too, appears different: she now is a cunning linguist rather than a switchboard operator, and is romantically interested in Spock - although whether thanks to different body chemistries or just slightly different career histories, we don't know.

Actually Uhura has routinely been portrayed as an expert linguist in Trek tie-in literature. As with her first name Nyota, it's something that's been accepted conventional wisdom about the character for generations and was finally made canonical in the film. We do know from "The Changeling" that she's fluent in both Swahili and English, at least.

As for her romantic interest in Spock, see their scenes together in "The Man Trap" and "Charlie X." There is definitely a canonical basis for that relationship. The movie didn't add anything to Uhura's character that wasn't potentially there. It just gave her development she was never given in the original show.

 

[ROBE]

I remember a character in a comedy show wishing his parents had never met so he could be two different people.