Picard And Aging

[Danja]

Star Trek allows people to grow old:

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-trek-vs-star-wars-picard-luke-leia-han-old-age

 

[thribs]

Picard is 93 but that’s like someone who is 60 by the 24th century. He should still be pretty active.
Worf should still be quite relatively young since Klingons have a longer life span.

 

[BillJ]

The article is idiotic. They are two franchises that are telling distinctly different stories. And I'm not much of a Star Wars fan.

 

[Masiral]

I especially love the comparison of David Schimmer to Luke and Leia. The Skywalkers led a rebellion, toppled a galactic empire, then picked up the pieces before watching it all fall apart again. Schimmer got paid a million dollars an episode to sit on a couch in a fake coffee shop and pause for laughter.

It's not even new to the franchise - Obi-Wan Kenobi was 57 in A New Hope.

 

[DaveyNY]

Apparently, being a Jedi (if it doesn't get you killed early) ages the Hell outta ya.

 

[Yistaan]

Apparently, being a Jedi (if it doesn't get you killed early) ages the Hell outta ya.

Well Qui-Gon was canonically 60. It's the Tatooine sun that aged Obi-Wan.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Picard is 93 but that’s like someone who is 60 by the 24th century. He should still be pretty active.
Worf should still be quite relatively young since Klingons have a longer life span.

Why? Why do you keep saying this? We've never seen an example of a 90-year-old man looking like a middle-aged man. Star Trek has pushed the idea that people live longer, sure, but they still age normally.

Worf could very well look like a 60-year-old man, and there is just a plateau where Klingons stop aging for a bit.

 

[SolarisOne]

Star Trek has pushed the idea that people live longer, sure, but they still age normally.

Sounds like perfect hell to me.

 

[Yistaan]

I'm telling you Picard is kicking himself now for spending the entirety of the episode 'Rascals' complaining about the miraculous de-aging gift he was given, and then hastily undoing it as soon as possible due to vanity reasons. I'll bet he regrets it now.

 

[Timo]

The thing about Picard is that he's a decade older than Stewart, so there's some change in the way people age right there.

The TNG writers sorta try and maintain that: say, Admiral Jameison at 84 is an old geezer and a retiree not because of his age, but because a crippling space disease has made him old at 84 already. But the other spinoffs haven't much featured elderly characters, in terms of either character years or actor years. Or then they do, and the fifties-sixties flag officers who boss around our main heroes are in fact seventies-eighties, and we simply don't need to know.

What Trek pulled an epic fail on is letting its absolute main character, Jim Kirk, grow old. But he always was the Peter Pan in the movies, which milked that concept for all its dramatic worth. Still, it's too bad Shatner hasn't gotten a chance to do Star Trek: Kirk, with a slightly different approach to aging than the current show.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paterson]

I assume that future people age like we do, like we've seen most of them, Sisko's father being a prominent example, and just chalk an odd appearance of a cranky admiral in terrible makeup to the "wouldn't it be nice to have a cameo" pile.

 

[Yistaan]

I assume that future people age like we do, like we've seen most of them, Sisko's father being a prominent example, and just chalk an odd appearance of a cranky admiral in terrible makeup to the "wouldn't it be nice to have a cameo" pile.

Joseph Sisko was outright stated to have health issues though.

 

[picardjean-luc]

Picard is 93 but that’s like someone who is 60 by the 24th century. He should still be pretty active. Worf should still be quite relatively young since Klingons have a longer life span.

And Vulcans too. Commodore Oh might've looked like someone in her late 40s/early 50s, but her actual age is between 70 and 80, only a decade-or-so younger than Picard....

 

[Jedman67]

Farpoint established that Admiral McCoy was around 130, and looked it.
for that matter, I know people in RL in their 90's who looked and acted much younger.

 

[Yistaan]

The Zhat Vash could explain why Noonien Soong was such a recluse. He was always hiding from them. But it remains to be seen why Oh and the Zhat Vash did nothing about Data and the EMH's for years (no attempts on Zimmerman's life etc).

Also, advanced AI was a concern outside of Data, as seen in Moriarty the hologram. Yet no Zhat Vash were out there destroying holodecks on a regular basis.

Also, the Romulans literally were in hiding since the Tomed Incident until the start of TNG. Presumably Oh was in Starfleet even when the Romulans were in hiding.

What would be the point of her working as an undercover agent for an empire that has no relations with the Federation she's infiltrating?

 

[picardjean-luc]

Farpoint established that Admiral McCoy was around 130, and looked it.for that matter, I know people in RL in their 90's who looked and acted much younger.

There's a Trek novel (forgot the name) which claims that McCoy reached an age of 137 years because he cloned his own replacement organs from his DNA (kidneys, livers, and lungs) so he just replaced his old organs once they've stopped functioning.

Hence McCoy's case might be an outlier attributable to his medical knowledge, The maximum humanoid's life expectancy in 24th century is likely the same as in the 21st century: between the age of 100 and 110. Probably a larger percentage of humans would've reached this age, but only a much smaller number could live beyond age of 120 and it's usually because of some medical intervention....

 

[BillJ]

There's a Trek novel (forgot the name) which claims that McCoy reached an age of 137 years because he cloned his own replacement organs from his DNA (kidneys, livers, and lungs) so he just replaced his old organs once they've stopped functioning.

In "Encounter at Farpoint", Data tells us that McCoy is 137.

Hence McCoy's case might be an outlier attributable to his medical knowledge, The maximum humanoid's life expectancy in 24th century is likely the same as in the 21st century: between the age of 100 and 110. Probably a larger percentage of humans would've reached this age, but only a much smaller number could live beyond age of 120 and it's usually because of some medical intervention....

I can't remember the name of the episode, but it was either season three or four where they are going on a mission in Jem'Hadar space and Dax tells O'Brien that he will die in his sleep at the age of 140.

 

[Jedman67]

There's a Trek novel (forgot the name) which claims that McCoy reached an age of 137 years because he cloned his own replacement organs from his DNA (kidneys, livers, and lungs) so he just replaced his old organs once they've stopped functioning.

Hence McCoy's case might be an outlier attributable to his medical knowledge, The maximum humanoid's life expectancy in 24th century is likely the same as in the 21st century: between the age of 100 and 110. Probably a larger percentage of humans would've reached this age, but only a much smaller number could live beyond age of 120 and it's usually because of some medical intervention....

I've read perhaps 2 trek novels. Most viewers don't consume much in the way of spinoffs and tie in novels.
I think McCoy being 130 in EAF is meant to demonstrate that the average human lifespan is quite a bit longer in the 24th century.

With RL people even in good shape start to decline by their 70's, which increases in the 80's and 90's if they live that long. I would guess that 60% of people who live to their 80's hit their 90th birthday. Even if you want to say 80%, reaching 90 today is huge. The implication therefore, is that living past 120 is common in ST. Perhaps at 130 even McCoy is an exception.

 

[eschaton]

Given scientists are already researching ways to extend the human lifespan which show some promise, it would be kinda ridiculous to presume that absolutely no progress whatsoever has been made by the 24th century. Particularly because things like fixing broken bones and the like can be done just by flashing a light over a person.