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What the heck is the point of having two timelines?

Nothing says "this is not your parents'/grandparents' Star Trek" like blowing up a founding member of the Federation (different reality aside).

If they'd blown up Earth instead, would Spock have pursued kohlinahr sooner and more enthusiastically (well, as enthusiastic as a kohlinahr acolyte can be, that is)
 
Plus, his Genesisized body might not live as long as he might have if he hadn't gone into the warp core.

Yeah, Genesis was a complete reset that makes it impossible to estimate his physiological age relative to his calendar age. I always kind of figured that when his rapid aging stopped, he was significantly older than he'd been at the time of his death, to handwave why movie-era Spock looked so much older than the 102-year-old Sarek did in "Journey to Babel" (though that doesn't explain his appearance in TMP & TWOK).

Really, strictly speaking, post-Genesis Spock is a different individual from the Spock who died in TWOK. He's a clone of the original who received a download of Spock's memories into his brain, sure, but you could say exactly the same about the Giant Spock Clone from "The Infinite Vulcan." So if Giant Spock is a different individual from the original, so is Genesis Spock. A clone, after all, is technically an offspring, so they're essentially both the sons of the original Spock, albeit with his memories.

If anything, Giant Spock clearly got more of O.G. Spock's memories than Genesis Spock, since he didn't need any of the retraining that Genesis Spock did. Indeed, Keniclius's giant-clone machine wiped O.G. Spock's mind entirely and Giant Spock had to meld the memories back into him. So Giant Spock is a first-generation copy of Spock's mind and memories, O.G. Spock post-"Infinite" is a second-generation copy of the mind in the original body, and Genesis Spock is fourth-generation, since his mind was copied twice with McCoy as the intermediate step.
 
Not to mention all the information that may have been corrupted by various meld-uploads and downloads, and any damage caused by the removal of his hard drive/brain, if we continue the Spock-as-computer metaphor.
 
Not to mention all the information that may have been corrupted by various meld-uploads and downloads, and any damage caused by the removal of his hard drive/brain, if we continue the Spock-as-computer metaphor.

I'm reluctant to, since realistically, memories and personality are physically encoded in the neurons' connections and structure, so it shouldn't be possible to wipe the brain like a computer drive, or to swap minds/personalities. But it's a longstanding conceit of Trek that it does work that way.
 
Spock is also half human, I'd imagine that would effect the upper age
While the possibility of Genesis overaging Spock allowed for wiggle room to fit Spock's aged appearance in the movies with TOS' assertion in the Deadly Years that a Spock in his 50s/60s should look like in his 30s, the Lost Era made if REALLY convenient to skip analyzing the ages of Vulcans whose lifespans traversed the TOS to TNG gap (namely Tuvok and Sarek and, if you count the Unification Roddenberry Archive film, Saavik) by having the actors age naturally while their characters aged 100 years.
 
Yeah, Genesis was a complete reset that makes it impossible to estimate his physiological age relative to his calendar age. I always kind of figured that when his rapid aging stopped, he was significantly older than he'd been at the time of his death, to handwave why movie-era Spock looked so much older than the 102-year-old Sarek did in "Journey to Babel" (though that doesn't explain his appearance in TMP & TWOK).

Really, strictly speaking, post-Genesis Spock is a different individual from the Spock who died in TWOK. He's a clone of the original who received a download of Spock's memories into his brain, sure, but you could say exactly the same about the Giant Spock Clone from "The Infinite Vulcan." So if Giant Spock is a different individual from the original, so is Genesis Spock. A clone, after all, is technically an offspring, so they're essentially both the sons of the original Spock, albeit with his memories.

If anything, Giant Spock clearly got more of O.G. Spock's memories than Genesis Spock, since he didn't need any of the retraining that Genesis Spock did. Indeed, Keniclius's giant-clone machine wiped O.G. Spock's mind entirely and Giant Spock had to meld the memories back into him. So Giant Spock is a first-generation copy of Spock's mind and memories, O.G. Spock post-"Infinite" is a second-generation copy of the mind in the original body, and Genesis Spock is fourth-generation, since his mind was copied twice with McCoy as the intermediate step.

Complicated implications for sure - and depends heavily on what the integration of the Katra really means, for all that (plus it basically being in two places at once, whilst Spock was going through radiation poisoning)

Kind of reminds me of Doctor Who's 'Heaven Sent' too, with all it's possible metaphysical implications (that could be handwaved as largely an illusion created 'inside' of the confession dial, one could potentially infer)

Don't know how much older Spock could have become - but yes, that makes sense. Actors mature faster than the intended being is often meant to (including Worf, who ages much faster than Kang or Kor seemed to)

This also puts me in mind of Zefram Cochrane - who, due to issues of possible time dilation and cryonic freezing, may have a much less clear age in 2063 and beyond, than we might think (plus affect his birthdate potentially too)
 
Complicated implications for sure - and depends heavily on what the integration of the Katra really means, for all that (plus it basically being in two places at once, whilst Spock was going through radiation poisoning)

Kind of reminds me of Doctor Who's 'Heaven Sent' too, with all it's possible metaphysical implications (that could be handwaved as largely an illusion created 'inside' of the confession dial, one could potentially infer)

Don't know how much older Spock could have become - but yes, that makes sense. Actors mature faster than the intended being is often meant to (including Worf, who ages much faster than Kang or Kor seemed to)

This also puts me in mind of Zefram Cochrane - who, due to issues of possible time dilation and cryonic freezing, may have a much less clear age in 2063 and beyond, than we might think (plus affect his birthdate potentially too)
Cochrane is canonically 31 in FC. The non-canon ST Encyclopedia handwaved radiation exposure from his work and the war and alcoholism for his aged appearance.

We now also have to take into account SNW's retcon of temporal wars shifting the Eugenics Wars by 40 years, and the possible effect this would have on Cochrane's age as well.
 
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