I'm surprised they didn't just have them very old. They would have been roughly 120 years old when the ship arrived. I would expect that with their modern science that would be very normal for people to live that long. They expect people of our generation to live that long,or close to it.
shareAgreed
shareIt’s possible they were still alive. We didn’t see for sure.
shareIt's possible but maybe not. Most modern science works on improving the quality of life which leads to longer lives. Not sure of many efforts to artificially increase the life span.
shareWho knows? 120 YO might be plausible if the person had "good genes" and lived a healthy life, with full access to high-end health care treatment. I tend to doubt access to the medical pod, as needed, would constitute enough support to live another 90 years.
shareMy point is, they are expecting kids today to live to be 120 years old,and their kids will likely be closer to 150. There is an exponentially increasing history to life expectancy. It would probably go down in the event of a major societal collapse,but this was a advanced society with major medical technology. Realistically, we will be living hundreds of years at that point. They'd still be young, relatively speaking.
shareOn one hand, with custom organ replacement and gene therapy, human lifespan could increase far more than it already has. But...everything starts breaking down over time, like small breaks in a dam. I'd speculate the living a full life (as opposed to stasis while in transport) to 120 years--routinely at least--seems far-fetched. But heck, it IS science fiction and nobody knows what the future holds.
shareIn "Star Trek The Motion Picture", I believe it was mentioned that Dr. McCoy was actually, I think, 130 years old. So there must have been major advances in medicine and longevity then. It was plausible there, so why not here?
In "Star Trek 4, The Voyage home", when they are back in the past to bring the whales forward in time to prevent the destruction of our planet by the invincible probe, there is a funny scene where the travellers, including Dr. McCoy, are in a hospital, and Dr. McCoy helps an old lady who is having dialysis treatment by giving her an advance science pill. Shortly after that, we hear her exclaim that she had grown another healthy kidney!
I thought the same thing, but that would only be if they lived a full lifespan with medical help. The autodoc might not have been terribly helpful, even with the override.
It's also possible they just got really, really sick at some point and died. If one of them was 85, got terminal cancer and the autodoc couldn't help, they're toast. A lot of long-term couples check out shortly after the other one, no real medical reason, they just go almost in tandem.
Yeah, but say they're 25 and 35 during the events of this film, which would make them 115 and 125 years old when the ship lands. Providing they live that long and are in good health for centenarians, they'll still be old and decrepit when they land on the new planet, definitely too old to start a new life in a new world.
Okay, people are living longer life spans these days, but the aging process hasn't really changed, not at the genetic level. If people are living longer it's because they're failing to die young, thanks to modern medical care. Humans aren't staying young, they're just having much longer old ages. And while aging may get easier over the next few centuries if we don't make a total hash of things, I still think that being over 100 years old means that you're frail and dependent, if you aren't dead.
I've read that the aging process can't be "defeated" except at a genetic level.
The body's cells just stop replicating properly after a certain point.
My CalTech friend had a roommate who was obsessed with defeating aging, and that was as far as he'd gotten along those lines, i.e., that DNA strands would have to be repaired, body-wide, to prevent aging.
I, for one, hope that humans will never learn how to repair the DNA strands body-wise and extend their life spans! We're too hard on the planet as it is, if we lived longer we'd just use more resources and produce more offspring to overpopulate our shrinking little overstressed world.
But one think I've observed in the real world is that although it's not possible to defy the aging process, it IS possible to speed it up! I work in the helping professions, and I've observed that people who live rough lives of poverty and ill health and/or bad habits can be old at forty, while people who live lives of good health and good luck age much more slowly. But that's probably always been true.
I was expecting to see their children - adult children.
share
At least one early draft of the screenplay ended with them saving the ship but losing all the other passengers
The ship arrives at its destination full of Jim and Aurora's (apparently non-incestuous) descendants
Thankfully they dumped that ending