of the aging male on technology and human
security darkly concluded that science in the hands
of the aging male may yield amazing discoveries
and solve deep mysteries but only at the cost of
risking disaster.
STAR TREK
Usually regarded as the most serious and socially
conscious science fiction series of the decade,the
universe presented in Star Trek, in fact, held little
promise for the aging male. Set in the 23rd century,
Star Trek concerned the voyages of the starship
Enterprise, whose mission was ‘to seek out new life
and boldly go where no man has gone before’.
Astonishingly, among the key officers and crew
members of the Enterprise, there were no aging
males. Indeed, nearly every male character was a
virile and eugenically perfect specimen of young
manhood. The topic of aging, however, was
addressed in several episodes. In ‘The Deadly
Years’4, the officers of the Enterprise acquire a
disease that drastically accelerates the aging pro-
cess. After a few days, they appear to be in their
80s and 90s.
This preview of the aging process on young
23rd century males gloomily posited that medical
science would still be powerless to forestall or
reduce the ravages of age. The aging process here
is equated with degeneration and enfeeblement.
As they age, the officers grow increasingly infirm,
senile, stupid, unreliable, deaf, feeble, crotchety
and forgetful. Indeed, the representation of the
aging male in the Star Trek universe was identical
to the bleakest and most stereotypical assessment
of the aging male in the 1960s. Even in the
23rd century, the aging male was presented as a
burden and a danger to both himself and to the
welfare of others. Likewise, it was inferred that
advances in science and technology would not
necessarily be accompanied by advances in aging
research or by the ability to prevent the
most debilitating effects of aging.
Another Star Trek episode, ‘Requiem for
Methuselah’, examined the concept of immortality
and explored the fate of a male who enjoys im-
mortality in the mature state5. Here, on a distant
planet, the Enterprise officers encounter Mr Flint,
a man who reveals himself to be an immortal
who wandered the Earth for centuries in various
personas, including Brahms and da Vinci. He came |
to this remote planet to retire in peace. For com-
panionship, he has constructed a female android
who he hopes will love him. While his artistic and
intellectual gifts had time to develop, Flint’s
emotional intelligence remains stunted and has
become twisted and dangerous, subsuming all
other abilities and interests. Hoping initially
that the android’s chance involvement with the
captain of the Enterprise, James T. Kirk (played
by William Shatner), would speed up her
emotional growth and induce her to transfer
her love for Kirk to him, Flint, has now become
insanely jealous. His obsession drives him to
imperil the lives of the Enterprise crew, refuse help
to another planet suffering from a deadly plague,
and, eventually, to cause the ‘death’ of the android.
At the conclusion of the episode, we learn that
Flint had unwittingly sacrificed and squandered the
gift of immortality by leaving Earth and depriving
himself of whatever element in the Earth’s
atmosphere that conferred upon him immortality.
The aging male obviously serves as the culture
bearer and holder of the reins of scientific power in
this allegory, but his misdirected and uncontrolled
emotions endanger society and place a curse on all
the artistic and technological gifts he bestows on
mankind. The episode points to the dangers of
inculcating a love of technology for its own sake,
represented by Flint’s love for his android. It was,
however, the aging Flint’s grotesque love that
destroyed the android. The love directed at her
by the young and virile Captain Kirk, however,
offered liberation and elevation of technology to
the realm of the sublime. Thus, the message is
that science and technology can only serve the
common good when in the hands of the younger
generation. In this futuristic scenario, the 1960s’
power struggle between the younger and older
generations ended happily in the vanquishing of
the mature male.
LOST IN SPACE
Of all the television science fiction series of the
1960s, only Lost in Space offered a positive view of
the aging male as well as an optimistic assessment
of the future of intergenerational politics. Tapping
into and enflaming the popular enthusiasm for the
NASA space programs of the 1960s, Lost in Space
also furnished Americans with an opportunity
to project themselves into a future where the |
