Does the TNG crew still feel older than you?

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I've been a trekkie since about 1986, watching TOS reruns while sitting on my dad's lab as a 4-year-old. I watched TNG when it first ran. I'm now about to hit 36 year old, and it occurred to me that when I watch TNG, even the earliest seasons, the crew still feels a lot older than I am, even though most of the younger cast (not Stewart, obviously) were actually my age, or quite a few years younger than I am now. I'm a married guy, several kids, quite a few letters after my name. It's not like I feel like a kid in every day life. But I swear, Riker, Troi, Crusher, Data, Geordi, Yar - they all feel old enough to be my parents, even though if I went back to 1987, we'd actually be of a similar enough age to, like, date. I guess it's a product of 'meeting' them when I was so young. Or else, I just have no ability to guess age (which is probably also true).

Anyone else feel like that?

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

From my perch at 72, all except Sir Patrick are younger than me. They felt like peers or even kids to me back it the first run days.

 

[Qonundrum]

I'm an x'er who feels out of sync or from a different generation (certainly not the millennial stereotype). The TNG crew make me feel more like peers as well. Just rewatched "Pen Pals" along with other season 2 greats. The ending is a bizarre letdown but everything else is magnificent, particularly Riker telling Wes not to be intimidated by anyone's age. Which is also a refreshing change from season 1 when everyone told Wes to shut up...

 

[urbandefault]

I was 27 when TNG premiered in 1987. So, not really.

 

[Marynator]

I was five years old when Next Generation started, and so to me they all seemed much older (even Wesley!), and even when watching today I still feel I'm just a few years younger than them, I feel like those characters acted a little older than they really were, you know what I mean? Only Wesley sort of seems younger to me now, but as I'm 35 but I look and feel like I'm in my early 20s, he doesn't seem too far off from me.

 

[jaime]

I was five years old when Next Generation started, and so to me they all seemed much older (even Wesley!), and even when watching today I still feel I'm just a few years younger than them, I feel like those characters acted a little older than they really were, you know what I mean? Only Wesley sort of seems younger to me now, but as I'm 35 but I look and feel like I'm in my early 20s, he doesn't seem too far off from me.

I am about the same age as you, so a little older than Sisko up there (op) but...hmm. I don’t know if I still see all of them as older. The younger end of the spectrum, well, I guess I don’t see Wesley as anything approaching a peer or ‘I might be a bit like that in a few years’ and can possibly see more of that is say Riker or Troi. Funnily enough, in that oldest of teenage tropes, I can suddenly see the appeal in say Troi or Beverly at a stretch as crush figures (hence not using the dancing doctors surname, that would be a weird sentence.) whereas younger to actual teenage me (TNG through the power of its later showings here in the EU finished once I was well into teenage years.) would have been making Googley eyes at Ensign Ro, or Sito Jaxa...the main cast were all a bit ‘old’ as it were. I wonder if other people have gone from fancying say Wesley...or Riker...to moving on to say Riker from Wesley, or Picard even.
The middle characters, Data and Geordi...well, they seem to still be the ‘huh, they’d be cool people to hang around with’ they were then. O’Brien and Keiko definitely have more resonance now I am where I am, but then, I always found them believable and cool anyway.
Worf...well. Worf Is Worf. No one can work out if he’s a growling teenager or old man anyway.
Yar. Hmm. I think I am just meh about the character now, whereas once I thought she was awesomely cool. I believe I shed a tear when I was about ten and she died. The way things turn out for the character and actress both kinda mess with how I see her character now.
Still.
Data and Geordi are still pretty constant. And Ro. Because.

 

[Mojochi]

I'm just past mid-forties. So it really depends on when you mean. I do feel like most of the cast/crew (Besides Picard) appear to me as younger than myself at the beginning of the show (Which they were) but by Nemesis, some 15 years later, no, they still feel slightly older (And were)

I guess I have a fairly realistic perspective, when it comes to my own age & stuff I watched long ago. It's the current ages of the cast that through me, like every time I see Levar Burton, I think "Whoa". I've gotten more use to seeing Spiner & Frakes look old, since they've been looking that way longer, but that gray & face filling out on Burton just knocks me back

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I know what you mean, it's hard to unlearn emotions. If somebody feels older than you when you're a kid, it's hard to stop feeling that way even though it's no longer true. At 35 I'm older than most professional athletes but somehow they still feel 'older than me'.

And it may also be a Gen Y thing, a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who have spouses, children and lucrative jobs still feel like kids.

 

[Khan 2.0]

Well what about watching TOS seeing Shatner, Nimoy in their early 30s. Yet they feel... well they feel of completely other era (1960s obviously but also the far future) its become so iconic/classic its not really relateable in a oh wow I'm now older than Kirk/spock were in tos way

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Remember it’s people currently in their 30s who coined the term ‘Adulting’.

 

[Mojochi]

It doesn't help that some people who were old when I was young... are still old. Shatner, for example was 63 when they made Generations, & on his way out of the franchise. I was 23. Now it's almost a generation later (Pun intended) I'm so much older now.... but he's... still just old, perceptually speaking

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

I'm an x'er who feels out of sync or from a different generation (certainly not the millennial stereotype).

Perhaps you are a xennial, like me.

 

[tomalak301]

I was 10 when TNG ended so yeah they will never feel younger.

 

[USS Firefly]

I was 10 when TNG ended so yeah they will never feel younger.

I am now picturing you as very young untill i realiseer i was also ten when TNG ended

 

[F. King Daniel]

They were forever older than me until I saw a recent photo of Jonathan Frakes who somehow morphed into a trim white-haired 30 year old. He is season one skinny.

 

[dauntless]

I was 9 when it originally aired, so no - they don't feel any different to me.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

It's not unlike seeing a photo of your folks from before you were born; they may look younger, but you still perceive them as older.

 

[Greg Cox]

I was 27 when TNG premiered in 1987. So, not really.

LIkewise.

 

[Jayson1]

Patrick Stewart is forever older than I am guessing most of us. He is one of those people like Morgan Freeman who was never young!


Jason