By 
Title: The Deadly Years
Airdate: 12/08/1967
Plot Summary
Kirk, Spock, Bones, Chekov, Scotty, and Lt. Galway beam down to a scientific expedition where they find people in their 20s looking like they are in their 80s. When the same disease starts affecting the landing party, Kirk begins to lose his ability to command and Commodore Stocker is forced to take command, even though he is woefully unprepared to command a starship.
Risk is our Business
Kirk meets an old flame Janet Wallace who is still a bit miffed Kirk never made a move after her husband passed away.
Kirk immediately begins having memory problems when the old age disease starts hitting him.
Logical
Spock ages slower being a Vulcan. But it shows when he unwittingly allows Commodore Stocker maneuver him into admitting Kirk is not fit for command through impeccable logic.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones gets crankier and more southern when he ages. He is able to find the cure with the help of Dr. Wallace.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu has to be a damning witness against Captain Kirk but is pretty uncomfortable about it.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov gets a shock at seeing a dead man, though we don’t get a proper Chekov scream. It saves his life and in turn the rest of the landing party. Well except for one.
He also spends time complaining about all the medical tests since he was the only one unaffected. Koenig would reprise his role in a fan series where the aging disease gets him during the 5 year mission later on, aging the young actor into Walter Koenig. It’s called “To Serve All My Days” and to be honest, I would pass on it. Even though it was written by D.C. Fontana.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura is in the background and doesn’t do much. She does have to also present uncomfortable testimony against Kirk. She makes an effort to defend him but it’s pretty weak.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty ages the quickest, though he doesn’t get a moustache or gain a ton of weight.
Canon Maker
Comets can create old age radiation. The first time a hearing is shown to decide whether a Captain is unfit for command. This would become a lot more expedient later when the first officer will just decide the captain is unfit for command and relieve him of duty.
We also establish that Kirk is 34 years old in the second year of the mission.
Canon Breaker
A commodore taking command of the ship and mucking it up good is now a running theme of the second season. In truth, there’s no reason he should’ve taken command. He even admits that he’s not the officer Kirk is. What happened to DeSalle? Sulu couldn’t have taken command? There had to be a ton of officers that could’ve taken command of the ship that have sat in the center chair when Kirk is asleep at nights. They do have shifts, right?
While a competency hearing is understandable, Kirk would do whatever he must to take care of his ship. Sure, he wasn’t completely in his right mind but later on in Generations, he has an opportunity to take command of the Enterprise B and refuses. I just don’t buy his selfish attitude.
Man It Feels Bad To Be a Red Shirt
Lt Galway is a blue skirt but she doesn’t make it. Commodore Stocker is a red shirt high ranking officer and given his decision making, it’s amazing he’s lived this long.
Technobabble
The “Corbomite Device” makes a re-appearance. So to speak. It will blow up everything within range. Apparently the Romulans are as gullible as Balock.
I know that guy:
Charles Drake plays Commodore Stocker continuing the trend first seen in The Doomsday Machine of the well-meaning but useless Commodore trying to command the Enterprise. He played supporting roles in a ton of movies in the 40s and 50s and had a part in an episode of Wagon Train, which probably got him this guest part here.
Sarah Marshall, no connection to the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, played Dr Janet Wallace. She was most known for winning a Tony award in Goodbye Charlie.
Beverly Washburn played poor Lt. Galway. She started as a child actor, having a role in Old Yeller as Lisbeth.
What it means to be human – Review
I get what they were going for here in this episode: the main crew gets hit with old age disease and how we treat those who start losing their faculties. But man does it fumble the ball in execution.
Weird thing is, the big plot points are perfectly fine. Kirk starts deteriorating, the crew starts to notice. It becomes too big to ignore and they have to relieve him of duty. Meanwhile a Commodore with no experience has to take over and makes a pig’s ear of the whole thing. Kirk gets cured just in time to save the day.
From that summary, it should be a pretty good episode. But it doesn’t work at all. First off, Kirk’s old age moments are hammered into the viewer harder than pile driver from Steve Austin. We get it, he’s forgetting things but they do it so obviously and ham fisted that you just roll your eyes.
Typically, they just relieve someone of duty with a hearing to come later but here they need the hearing to do the relieving. While it does make sense they would have a hearing, they have a damn disease that will kill them in days, perhaps hours. How about we save that until we get a damn cure? Or don’t even bother to put him through the indignity if he’s just going to die anyway.
Then you got a Commodore that’s unbearably incompetent. To his credit, he respects the hell out of Kirk and at least is not your typical arrogant flag ranked officer. He’s just trying to do the right thing. But as I said, don’t tell me you didn’t have an officer on that ship that couldn’t take over the chair long enough to get them to a Starbase without getting attacked.
And that’s the other thing, plotting through the neutral zone? Don’t tell me a Commodore wouldn’t be well aware of how dangerous and stupid it is to violate Romulan space. Sure, time was of the essence but the risk/reward wasn’t even close to doing something so damn stupid.
Kirk is a complete asshole in this too. Ok, this isn’t real old-age but radiation induced old age which perhaps affected his brain differently than it would when he ages naturally. But it’s not really presented that way. We’ve seen Kirk in his old age and he gets mellower and more thoughtful, not a paranoid asshole. Telling Spock that he’s disloyal and always wanted command even though we’ve already seen time and time again that Spock has no desire for command was particularly irksome.
Yes, I get it. It’s not real aging, it was a disease. Didn’t make it any easier to watch. The more we see Kirk in real old age really makes this episode worse in hindsight. That’s not the episode’s fault I suppose but I really can’t forget what I’ve already watched.
Kirk can’t even come up with a more clever bluff, just uses the old Corbomite trick again. Ok, I’ll give it a point for setting up that the Romulans broke code 2 and then using that to not only make you still wonder if he’s ok but also as a clever trick to fool the Romulans. But the rest of the episode is kinda ass.
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