Ageing is strange (and variable)

[lizbee]

Talking about Discovery, I've had it in the back of my mind to point out -- okay, complain -- that as much as I like Rebecca Romijn as Number One, she's significantly younger than Majel Barrett when she played the role.

Only ... I just checked. Barrett was 32 when "The Cage" was filmed. Romijn was 44/45 when season 2 of Disco filmed. (She's now 46.)

Likewise, I did complain about Mia Kirshner being too young to play Amanda, and in her early 40s, she is much too young to play the mother of Michael (29-30) and Spock (late 20s). But she is also just 13 years younger than Jane Wyatt was when "Journey to Babel" filmed, which isn't far off the "ten years before TOS" timeline.

(I figured they cast Amanda on the youthful side because her first appearance was in a flashback to Michael at about 22, and it's easier and cheaper to age a younger actor up than an older actor down. But Kirshner also looks a lot like Wyatt -- moreso than Winona Ryder, in my opinion -- and I kind of like that they aren't bothering to age her up or down. We mostly see her through her children's perspective, and to them, she's constant.)

Anyone who has watched Classic Doctor Who knows that -- for various reasons of lifestyle, experience, diet and access to skincare products -- people seemed to age faster in the sixties. And that's without getting into the relatively subtle plastic surgery options available now. But ALSO I am really, really bad at estimating people's ages, in any era.

(I've also realised it doesn't do to get too caught up in linking actor and character ages with Disco. Saru is about Michael's age; Doug Jones is in his late fifties. Tilly cannot be more than 23 at the absolute most; Mary Wiseman is in her thirties. Michelle Yeoh is two years older than Jason Isaacs, but Georgiou was at the Academy with Pike, and Anson Mount is ten years Yeoh's junior -- and it's easier to assume Yeoh is younger than Mount is older.)

(All this is only a problem if, say, you had headcanonned a timeline for who was at the Academy when, how they overlapped and how that impacted their relationships, and you're still coming to terms with having to throw it all away and start over.)

Meanwhile, separately, casting for the Picard series is still coming out, and people are going, "Oh my God, the majority of the cast are in their thirties, this is going to be a teen drama!" Turns out some fans really did think it was going to be TNG 2.0. 

Comments

[isis]

Heh, I'm bad at estimating ages as well in real life. I was thrown for a loop when one of the librarians who runs the 'adult games night' mentioned that it was her son's twenty-second birthday - I had thought she was in her mid-twenties!

[lizbee]

Yes! There's a woman I work with who I assumed was maaaaaybe ten years older than me, at the very most. Nope. More like twenty-five years older.

[ironed_orchid]

for various reasons of lifestyle, experience, diet and access to skincare products -- people seemed to age faster in the sixties

I think sun tanning without protection has a lot to answer for. But I also think a lot of the hair and make up choices made women look older.

[starlady]

I feel like we moisturize much more consistently now. And also wear better sun protection.

GOBSMACKED that Jane Wyatt was 53 when they filmed "Journey to Babel," from memory I would have said she was ten years older.