Kirk: old too soon?

[Nebusj]

I don't agree with him. The average lifespan for a human, barring incident or extreme illness, has been a steady 70-80 for some 10,000-100,000 years. Even with the leaps and bounds in medicine in the last 100 years or so, that hasn't changed.

But it has changed. It's risen dramatically across the world. Life expectancy for a man in the United States in 1915 was 53, for a woman 58. Today it's something like 76 for a man, 81 for a woman. (It's hard to be precise because of differing calculation methods.)

There are thirty countries where the life expectancy is eighty years or more today. Only in Sierra Leone is life expectancy as short as it was in the United States of 1900.

You might argue that the oldest human beings can expect to get hasn't changed much in the past century, but I'm not even sure of that. The number of centenarians has been rising quite noticeably in recent decades.

Is that because people are eating better and not dying in famines, plagues, and wars as much as before? Quite likely. Because we're better at taking care of people? Also quite likely. And we're better at taking care of people because society knows more, and is wealthier, and more strongly feels that individual health is a positive public good, too. Those seem to me trends likely to continue in our world and, certainly, in Trek's timeline.

 

[FormerLurker]

Life expectancy in 1915 was based as much on "You'll get killed being hit by a truck because we don't have safe driving rules" as it was "You'll get some incurable disease", versus based on "If you don't die falling out of that skyscraper you're building, you might live to 70 or so". Modern medicine and superior safety precautions across the board hasn't raised life expectancy so much as it has made that expectancy possible.

The question then becomes, how long is that expectancy? We have ancient texts, century and millenium old texts, including the Bible, that state that expectancy to be between 70 and 120. We have people reaching ages coming more and more close to that extreme every year, but what of the quality of life? That is where the advances promulgated in TOS come into play. Yeah, 20th and 21st century medicine and the other things can make it so you live 80, 90, 100 years. But is it worth it if that same medicine can't keep you vital for that same time? Better to have a shorter life that you can enjoy, than a longer one that is of no value to you, isn't it?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Worf's popularity skyrocketed whenever he was being unapologetically alien.

I think that Worf was popular because he was the only one in that cast who was allowed to act recognizably human.

 

[Timo]

Life expectancy for a man in the United States in 1915 was 53, for a woman 58. Today it's something like 76 for a man, 81 for a woman. (It's hard to be precise because of differing calculation methods.)

Regarding methods, just to make this clear, isn't this actually the average lifespan we're talking about above? That is, it's heavily affected by poor people dying at the age of 1 or younger. This figure has gone up and down in history a lot, even when healthy and wealthy kings have consistently lived to their seventies or so.

The upper limit might be built in to our bodies in a way modern medicine cannot circumvent. It can just ensure that most of us get there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Walker]

The longest confirmed human life is 122 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

She must have been, not one in a million, but one in a billion.

Other species? As I understand it-based on records of individual animals-a tortoise in a zoo may reach one and a half centuries. (I have to wonder how much of this is due to a cold blooded metabolism and a torpid lifestyle)

It is thought, but not confirmed, that one species of mammal, the bowhead whale, may have a longer maximum lifespan than humans.

It has been suggested that a few other animals, such as the Greenland shark, may reach two centuries.

 

[Nebusj]

Life expectancy for a man in the United States in 1915 was 53, for a woman 58. Today it's something like 76 for a man, 81 for a woman. (It's hard to be precise because of differing calculation methods.)

Regarding methods, just to make this clear, isn't this actually the average lifespan we're talking about above? That is, it's heavily affected by poor people dying at the age of 1 or younger. This figure has gone up and down in history a lot, even when healthy and wealthy kings have consistently lived to their seventies or so.

The upper limit might be built in to our bodies in a way modern medicine cannot circumvent. It can just ensure that most of us get there.

Yes. That is my point. It is wrong to say the natural lifespan of a human being is 70-to-80 years and the body is just worn out after that point. We already know that better nutrition, better health care, and safer societies allow people to expect to live well into their 80s. It is reasonable to suppose that even better nutrition, even better health care, and even safer societies will allow people to live longer yet, and have meaningful, happy lives doing so.

There is surely some upper limit past which human bodies can't go. As more people are able to live healthier lives we are probably going to find that upper limit is higher than we currently think. 150 years, as Admiral McCoy seems to suggest? That seems high to me. 125 years? That seems possible. Higher than current expected lifespans? Without serious doubt.

 

[Franklin]

Kirk was made too old too soon in TUC, not TWOK.

TWOK was just a mid-life crisis of confidence combined with Kirk's realization (one we all reach at some point) that he's not immortal. TWOK could have been titled, "Star Trek II: How Kirk Got His Groove Back".

 

[Tim Walker]

Something like that would probably create a distance between the characters and the audience, no matter how much science fiction style sense it might make. David Gerrold once very perceptively wrote that Star Trek was not about 23rd century men, it was about 20th Century men in a 23rd Century world. For the sake of us being able to relate to the characters, that's how it's got to be.

That is a great way to articulate how I feel when I see posters wanting a new Trek series to be a more realistic depiction of the future. We would never be able to relate to it.

To be financially viable, Trek has had to have a very broad appeal. Not just to science fiction fans, or Trek fandom. So I doubt that The Powers That Be would approve of protagonists with Transhuman traits.

Consider the commanding officers in the different Trek series. Not only were they merely human (that is, lacking Transhuman traits), but it was decades before we finally got commanders-Sisko and Janeway-who weren't white males.

 

[Timo]

It is wrong to say the natural lifespan of a human being is 70-to-80 years and the body is just worn out after that point. We already know that better nutrition, better health care, and safer societies allow people to expect to live well into their 80s. It is reasonable to suppose that even better nutrition, even better health care, and even safer societies will allow people to live longer yet, and have meaningful, happy lives doing so.

Is that really likely? The figure indicating average life expectancy of 80 or so in the western world is already free of the effect of hordes of dying children. It is also free of most types of violent death, including "mundane" ones such as traffic or domestic accidents - even those are of marginal importance only. It very much reflects the average age an adult is likely to reach until hitting hard biological limits, then.

Perhaps if we all became health freaks, the "fat middle" of the statistics would also slim down and raise the average a bit more. But where's the incentive? People obsessed with health today are actually rather likely to die young, of sports accidents, misnutrition or -medication, malpractice or sheer stress. And most simply won't have such long-term plans.

For all we know, people reaching hundred in good health are genetically disposed to do so, and the top of the pyramid just can't be helped, not until we invent biological manipulation mechanisms that give us access to eternal life. Although I bet we find ways to transfer life from our bodies to something more versatile before that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Walker]

Came across a comment once that age 80 is the "fragility barrier". Beyond that we see the degenerative diseases of old age.

Only a tiny percentage make it to their hundredth birthday, and only a handful live much beyond that.

 

[GNDN18]

The initial draft of TWOK emphasized the aging of all the major characters. From Forgotten Trek:

Bennett had already decided that one of the film’s major themes would be the aging of the characters. In the drafts that followed, Kirk was consistently confronted with a son he knew little about, Spock was often preoccupied with death, and, in the later versions, McCoy had to struggle with his feelings for a much younger woman, who had made it clear that she was interested in him.

Nicolas Meyers, who took the best parts of the drafts written by Bennett, Sowards, and Peeples, retained the unifying themes of friendship and age. Memory Alpha recounts Meyers saying:

This was going to be a story in which Spock died, so it was going to be a story about death, and it was only a short hop, skip, and a jump to realize that it was going to be about old age and friendship. I don't think that any of those other scripts were about old age, friendship, and death.

The final cut focused on Kirk's mid-life crisis, to be sure, but the theme of aging and being recalled to duty was part of the story from beginning to end.

 

[eyeresist]

Came across a comment once that age 80 is the "fragility barrier". Beyond that we see the degenerative diseases of old age.

Only a tiny percentage make it to their hundredth birthday, and only a handful live much beyond that.

But that number is increasing.

http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/how_many_people_live_to_100_page1.html

This article says "people are living longer. For example, the 2010 census showed a strong increase in the number of people aged 90 to 94 (up 30.2%) and those aged 95 to 99 (up 29.5%). It is just that people are not living beyond 100."

So 100 is another age barrier. It's not impossible that it will be surpassed, perhaps via gene therapy breakthroughs.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

TWOK was just a mid-life crisis of confidence combined with Kirk's realization (one we all reach at some point) that he's not immortal. TWOK could have been titled, "Star Trek II: How Kirk Got His Groove Back".

I would totally go see that movie.

To be financially viable, Trek has had to have a very broad appeal. Not just to science fiction fans, or Trek fandom. So I doubt that The Powers That Be would approve of protagonists with Transhuman traits.

Interestingly, when Roddenberry & co. started up TNG in the late 80s, several of the characters had "more than human" traits.

Data - An android many times smarter, faster, and stronger than a normal human.
Geordi - Enhanced sight, and able to see and detect many things not visible to ordinary humans.
Worf - A Klingon with greater strength and stamina than most humans.
Troi - A half-Betazoid able to sense emotions in others.
Wesley - Boy genius.
Guinan - Often hinted to have powers greater than we knew, sensing the altered history in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and facing down Q with some sort of hand gesture (in "Q Who", IIRC).

Really, that's about as many superpowers as the average team of X-Men or Avengers.

 

[Timo]

Excellent point. Did DS9 go overboard trying to avoid this? Its characters were "human or worse" - average people hobbled by various issues, such as lost spouses, fallibility of youth, marital troubles, a dark past in terrorism, etc. Even the one alien with "superpowers" had those toned down to such a degree that the writers didn't really know what to do with them: Dax never got to use her past lives for plot resolution, merely as a setup for a plot. And the other one out-Worfed Worf in being feared, despised and dismissed for his alien abilities...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timewalker]

Was the average human life-span in the TOS era as long as the TNG era? If it wasn't, Starfleet retirement age might have been sooner.

FWIW, Trek does give us an official figure for retirement age - at least if we accept the cartoon take on it, and assume it hasn't been outdated in the intervening two decades or so. Robert April was forced to retire at 75, and while he may have championed against that, he may have failed.

Is this retirement age, higher than usual for a military service today (a quick googling gives about a decade less for extended service in the USN), a sign of increased lifespans, or at least increased productive lives? We don't hear of the ages of other characters affecting their careers in the 23rd century. In "The Deadly Years", the addled Kirk is deemed to be 60-72 years old in physical terms, and unfit to command, but we don't learn whether the former alone results in the latter, or whether Kirk just ages very poorly for a modern human.

I seem to recall Scotty's age being mentioned in connection with his retirement (which got more than a little extended by spending 75 years in a transporter beam).

In "The Deadly Years" Kirk's apparent physical age wasn't the reason for being unfit for command. The reason was because he'd developed dementia. That's a physical change in the brain that makes it difficult at best for the victims to perform situation-appropriate actions, follow a conversation, and retain short-term memories. And if it's the early-onset kind, it can happen to people in their 40s.

We don't know how long 23rd century humans live. We can't say there have been no advances - for all we know, Vulcans introduced a longevity pill in 2063 already, and everybody has been reaching 130-150 since, barring accidents and illnesses and failure to get that miracle pill every Thursday. But we have no explicit cases of people living long, either. Except for Flint, but him living for thousands of years and being considered a freak for that doesn't mean living for 150 years would be uncommon.

I tend to think of Flint as an alternate universe version of a Star Trek/Highlander crossover.

After all, once someone has seen the Highlander series (with one of the characters, Methos, being at least 5000 years old), how can they not associate Flint with the Immortals?

 

[eyeresist]

Excellent point. Did DS9 go overboard trying to avoid this? Its characters were "human or worse" - average people hobbled by various issues, such as lost spouses, fallibility of youth, marital troubles, a dark past in terrorism, etc. Even the one alien with "superpowers" had those toned down to such a degree that the writers didn't really know what to do with them: Dax never got to use her past lives for plot resolution, merely as a setup for a plot. And the other one out-Worfed Worf in being feared, despised and dismissed for his alien abilities...

DS9 characters did tend to have dark back-story, but they were still presented as being exceptionally awesome:
Sisko was a great commander, Kira was a great freedom fighter, Odo was a great security chief, O'Brien was a great engineer, Quark was a great bartender, Julian was a great doctor.
I'd say Dax and Worf were actually the exception to this, being awesome in set-up (and holosuite simulations) but usually nerfed in practice.

 

[Timo]

Oh? I'd say they were exceptionally average... Or perhaps a bit below that.

Sisko was an unwilling and underperforming commander who had to be whipped back into shape (by gods!) to take the DS9 job; Kira killed one unarmed bathing Cardassian and then "liberated" a lot of places after the Cardassians had already left; Odo couldn't even get Quark arrested; Quark himself was stuck tending to a backwater bar when his relatives owned entire moons or rose to positions of highest leadership; and O'Brien was the man Picard could leave behind.

Okay, Julian was a great doctor. But then again, he was a superman in secret, something that wasn't known in the early seasons when he wasn't that great a doctor yet.

In "The Deadly Years" Kirk's apparent physical age wasn't the reason for being unfit for command. The reason was because he'd developed dementia.

That's the thing, though: Kirk has dementia (which can hit you at any age), but what cinches it (and prevents McCoy's professional opinion from making a difference) is that the computer establishes him to be 60-72 years old biologically. Apparently, everybody at that age is always addled by dementia and unfit for command!

Okay, that's not really what convinces our guest star: everybody can see that Kirk is in poor condition and getting worse. But in terms of the hearing, the opinion of the computer, narrow-scoped as it is, seems surprisingly important.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timewalker]

Excellent point. Did DS9 go overboard trying to avoid this? Its characters were "human or worse" - average people hobbled by various issues, such as lost spouses, fallibility of youth, marital troubles, a dark past in terrorism, etc. Even the one alien with "superpowers" had those toned down to such a degree that the writers didn't really know what to do with them: Dax never got to use her past lives for plot resolution, merely as a setup for a plot. And the other one out-Worfed Worf in being feared, despised and dismissed for his alien abilities...

DS9 characters did tend to have dark back-story, but they were still presented as being exceptionally awesome:
Sisko was a great commander, Kira was a great freedom fighter, Odo was a great security chief, O'Brien was a great engineer, Quark was a great bartender, Julian was a great doctor.
I'd say Dax and Worf were actually the exception to this, being awesome in set-up (and holosuite simulations) but usually nerfed in practice.

No, Dax and Worf were actually pretty good at being annoying, boring, and a waste of screen time.

In my opinion, of course.

 

[Ronald Held]

Oh? I'd say they were exceptionally average... Or perhaps a bit below that.

Sisko was an unwilling and underperforming commander who had to be whipped back into shape (by gods!) to take the DS9 job; Kira killed one unarmed bathing Cardassian and then "liberated" a lot of places after the Cardassians had already left; Odo couldn't even get Quark arrested; Quark himself was stuck tending to a backwater bar when his relatives owned entire moons or rose to positions of highest leadership; and O'Brien was the man Picard could leave behind.

Okay, Julian was a great doctor. But then again, he was a superman in secret, something that wasn't known in the early seasons when he wasn't that great a doctor yet.

In "The Deadly Years" Kirk's apparent physical age wasn't the reason for being unfit for command. The reason was because he'd developed dementia.

That's the thing, though: Kirk has dementia (which can hit you at any age), but what cinches it (and prevents McCoy's professional opinion from making a difference) is that the computer establishes him to be 60-72 years old biologically. Apparently, everybody at that age is always addled by dementia and unfit for command!

Okay, that's not really what convinces our guest star: everybody can see that Kirk is in poor condition and getting worse. But in terms of the hearing, the opinion of the computer, narrow-scoped as it is, seems surprisingly important.

Timo Saloniemi

Basically Agree with Timo on DS9 cast

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Excellent point. Did DS9 go overboard trying to avoid this? Its characters were "human or worse" - average people hobbled by various issues, such as lost spouses, fallibility of youth, marital troubles, a dark past in terrorism, etc. Even the one alien with "superpowers" had those toned down to such a degree that the writers didn't really know what to do with them: Dax never got to use her past lives for plot resolution, merely as a setup for a plot. And the other one out-Worfed Worf in being feared, despised and dismissed for his alien abilities...

I assume you mean Odo here? I'd say that he definitely qualifies as having superpowers. Heck, most superhero comics would ignore the conversion-of-mass questions just the way DS9 did, although I think comic book/ST writer Peter David tried to address it in the early DS9 novel that he wrote.

But yes, I'd definitely agree with you that the DS9 characters were largely created in reaction to what TNG did. Piller & Berman certainly went out of their way to inject more conflict into the mix.