089: TOS: The Deadly Years

Welcome! Thanks for joining me today. We’ve all heard the phrase, play to people’s strengths before. But what does that look like and how can you leverage that help your team perform at its best? We’re going to find out as we watch the 11^th episode of the 2^nd season of Star Trek The Original Series, The Deadly Years.

<<Transporter>>

The crew beams down to a planet for an annual check-in on a scientific expedition. We’ve got Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov and some randos including Lt. Galway. When they finally find the scientists, they’re almost all dead! “Death by natural causes; old age.” 1:45 The thing is, they ain’t supposed to be old! They run into one of them, still alive, but looking very, very aged who says they’re 29 years old! “MUSIC STING” 2:42 Wow. Good thing they check on these groups every year!

They get back to the Enterprise and start researching what happened, but they’re finding nothing. Everything appears normal. The only things of note are a comet that recently traveled through the system and the close proximity to the Romulan Neutral Zone. They have a few people on board they are transporting to Starbase 10. Commodore Stocker, a bureaucrat, and Janet Wallace, a scientist specializing in endocrinology and cell structure. Oh, and she also happens to be an ex-girlfriend of Captain Kirk’s! “How long has it been? 6 years and change.” 6:36 In that time she married a scientist named Theodore and he past away. In meeting with them Kirk says his working theory is that this might be a new weapon of the Romulans.

On the bridge, Spock, again, confirms there is nothing out of the ordinary that he can detect. But then things start looking a little, well, off. “Maintain orbit. You already gave that order.” 8:21 Just as an aside and maybe a possible trigger warning – get ready for some heavy stereotypes about people getting older. And the hits keep coming. Lt. Galway, who was on the mission, reports that she’s having a hard time hearing. Kirk continues to repeat orders he gave earlier. McCoy starts graying at the temples. “Bones, I believe you’re getting gray.” 10:11 Scotty is fully gray and wrinkled. And, eventually, we find out Kirk is developing advanced arthritis. Through the episode, all the away team members visibly age. It’s early, Star Trek old makeup! The situation is dire. “Based on what McCoy gave me, we have less than a week to live.” 12:14 And their mental faculties will decline more quickly than that. Interestingly, Chekov isn’t affected. He’s doing great.

After much research, Spock discovers the comet left a residue in the orbit of the planet that is likely causing this. McCoy and Janet Wallace go to work trying to confirm this and see if they can reverse the process.

We get more and more examples of the crew aging. Kirk is forgetful and, at one point, almost endangers the ship if not for Uhura. “Due to the Romulans, use Code 2. The Romulans broke Code 2.” 20:48 It’s a good thing she felt empowered to challenge him! Even with that, though, Kirk is starting to become belligerent. He won’t believe he’s forgetting things and overcompensates with bravado. Eventually, Commodore Stocker feels he has no other choice than to relieve Kirk of Duty and Spock, as first officer, refuses to assume command since he’s in bad shape as well, so he has Spock convene a competency hearing. The crew begrudgingly give testimony about him forgetting or giving the wrong orders. And, as expected, it does not go well. Commodore Stocker says, “I am forced by regulations to assume command.” 36:02 Now remember, dude is bureaucrat and has never commanded a starship before.

In the meantime, they do some problem solving and figure out why Chekov wasn’t affected. He was the first to see the dead scientists. When that happened, he freaked out and screamed. That pumped his adrenaline up and they think that’s the secret. They go to work concocting a treatment from that. They test it out on Kirk and “The aging process has stopped.” 45:00 it works!

Commodore Stocker sets a course direct to Starbase 10 which will force them to cross through the Neutral Zone. Almost immediately, things go south. “Explosion – I think we just made contact.” 42:07 He’s way out of his depth here and freezes but they’re firing on the Enterprise and it’s not going well. When, all of the sudden, Kirk and Spock bust onto the bridge! He takes charge right away. We have a moment of pause, “Open up a channel to Starfleet. Code 2.” 46:07 If you remember, that’s the code the Romulans busted. He sticks to it, though and then sends a message saying he’s going to self-destruct. Ah! He was being strategic! The Romulans hear the message and head for the hills. The Enterprise takes off at high speed for Starbase 10. He and the Commodore acknowledge the work they each did. We get a quick quip, and we’re on our way. “An experience we’re remember far into our old age.” 49:01

<<Red Alert>>

It’s a story we’ve seen in so many sci fi shows and movies. Unexpectedly getting old and the mystery of how to reverse it. Does Trek do it better than the other instances out there? Well, no. But it certainly doesn’t do any worse. There are a few things about this episode I really like, though they may not have been what was intended. We get some awesome insight into Kirk in this one and some of that, I believe, proves my point that Kirk is not the person most people think he is.

Quarks – Ads

According to pop culture, Captain Kirk is a bloviating, self-aggrandizing guy that tries to hook up with most any woman within a 2-light-year radius. And, if we’re being honest, paying attention to the actual portrayal of him, this just not true. I mean, there’s stuff out there like this. But that’s the parody, not the actual character. This isn’t unheard of. Remember 2008? I know, that feels like it was 15 years ago! …wait. Ouch.

Well, way back in 2008, Sarah Palin was John McCain’s running mate in the presidential election. It’s a good reminder, because I feel our political landscape is such a different place then it was back then. Either way, one of the best parts of Saturday Night Live has always been its impressions of high-profile politicians. Dana Carvey’s George Bush was incredible. Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton was great. But maybe the most iconic, or at least the one that left the biggest mark on American culture, was Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. She was so dead on that Fox News used pictures of her instead of Palin in news stories! We all even believed lines from SNL were actually spoken by the former governor of Alaska. The famous, “I can see Russia from my house,” was Tina Fey! But the media and pop culture ran with it, and to this day, according to a survey conducted by me, 18 minutes ago, 2 out of 2 people still think Palin said that.

So what does Sarah Palin have to do with a character portrayed in the late 1960’s? The same thing has happened to Kirk! When people that aren’t actively watching Original Series episodes thinks of Captain Kirk, they usually think of the version we see from Jim Carrey, Jason Alexander, and Seth MacFarlane. And those, my friends, are just not how he is in the show.

Case in point, as I bring this back around to the episode, is Kirk and Janet Wallace. Janet joins a surprisingly long line of old flames that lasted a long time. There’s her, Areel Shaw, and Carol Marcus. Now, yes throughout the series we see him kissing about 20 different women, but a lot of those came onto him and with some, it provided the distraction necessary to escape some sort of capture. But, so far, this doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary. Especially for a leading man in a 1960’s TV show. But, if he’s the uncontrollable bundle of predatory hormones pop culture has made him out to be, I imagine he’d jump through any possible open door for, what we’ll call, intimate contact. Right? Are we seeing this the same? Well, in this episode, Janet Wallace all but throws herself at Kirk. “When I married I thought I was over you…What are you offering…” 16:19 And he not only refuses, but gets upset at the possibility that she’s doing this out of pity. The Kirk that all these impressions would have you believe is real would not have cared. So, thank you, The Deadly Years, for breaking down this stereotyped version of Captain Kirk.

Two little things I have to call out. The Remaster on this looks great! The footage of the Romulan attack, recycled from Balance of Terror, is gorgeous. Great ship design, fun angles and perfect coloring. Also, seems the legendary guitar player Robert Johnson started working for Starfleet! “I’m Robert Johnson” 2:19

The thing this episode does, though, and, to be fair, pretty much every tv show or movie that shows people getting older does this too, is make getting old look like you’re all but guaranteed to lose yourself and your humanity. Depictions like this devalue older people; makes it easier to treat them without dignity. This is especially poignant to me because I have done a lot of work in the long-term care industry to try and improve the quality of life of the most experienced people that are still alive. An alarming study from back around 2011 showed that less that 46% of people in nursing facilities ever receive a visitor. That’s half! Half of the people that are older and receiving long-term care are basically dumped off at a facility and just left there. It’s heartbreaking. Imagine yourself, maybe 78 years old, and your only human contact during the day is the shift nurse that you see for maybe an hour through the day. That sounds like a living hell to me. And the way aging is shown in this episode is part of what makes us think it’s ok to treat people like that.

Do our bodies break down as we get older? Yes. Does our short-term memory diminish? For some, yes. Do we get kind of stuck in our ways? Sometimes. But this episode makes it look like we physically and mentally fall apart while becoming angry, aggressive and arrogant.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Maybe I’m looking for more to offended about than I should. I just really wish this episode would have shown us how vibrant older people can be. How full of life so many people are. Instead, after watching this, the last thing I ever want to do, if it happens in real life like it does on the Enterprise or Gamma Hydra 2…I mean, 4…I want absolutely nothing to do with it.

<<Command Codes>>

Play to your strengths. We’ve all heard the phrase before and there’s a reason why. Knowing your strengths, and the strengths of the people on your team is critical to your success. When you know them you can not only take on and delegate the tasks people can handle, you will also know just how much you can push them to help them develop. But it all starts with awareness. I’m going to talk through what both Captain Kirk and Commodore Stocker did in this episode and how that demonstrates this point. I’m also going to break down old-Kirk’s behavior and how important humility is in effective leadership.

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I have one, really quick thing I want to bring up. Commodore Stocker. This was such a cool dynamic that we see again in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The idea of being a bureaucrat, a paper-pusher, instead of being out on the front lines. When I was managing movie theatres, the corporate office came out quarterly to do an audit and then they came at various times of the year just to see operations or whatever. Oh, I’d get so frustrated with them! They’d cite chapter and verse, or reference a page in the handbook when doing walkthroughs and watching the facility in action. And while I’m saying things like, “thank you for that,” and “that’s an excellent point, I’ll reinforce it,” what I’m thinking is: you have no idea what reality is like! You spend an opening day of a huge blockbuster here and see how well your little handbook holds up! Blech. Corporate.

Fast forward to now. I work with administrative programs, support programs. Because of my positions I get to go into the field frequently for feedback and to see things in action and I’ll never forget a moment back a few years ago. I’m standing at the desk of one of the front line workers; the people doing the real work of our company, and I ask some dumb question about some procedure. They pause and then give me the rote, by the book answer. It was that pause that punched me in the gut, though. I had become the thing I railed against. I was corporate! So I always try to keep that front of mind in everything we do as a support program.

I love that they introduced this concept with Commodore Stocker. Dude has been corporate his whole career and now finds himself in the field, with the people doing the real work of Starfleet. And it is a stark wake up call for him. For the crew of the Enterprise, the stuff going on is dangerous and scary, but it’s also just kind of what they do. For Stocker, this is wild! And then it keeps getting worse! We get to the point of the episode where he ends up taking command of the ship, and, we’re going to talk about a lot of that later on, but here, I want to highlight the cool things he did leading to him taking command. He acknowledges the importance and value of Kirk and the others affected by the aging, and he takes responsibility for what he did. “I have had to resort to this to save valuable officers…” 26:38 It would have been really easy for him to pawn this off on regulation or some unseen “corporate” out there. Instead, he owns it. This shows tremendous professionalism and humility on his part. And keep that idea tucked in the back of your head. We’re going to talk about humility in a little bit.

Part of what made this episode compelling was there wasn’t a clear solution to the problem so no one person or team was able to dive into it. This took a lot of people that are highly competent and took them out of their comfort zones, took them beyond their skill sets. Of course, we add in the whole thing with everyone getting old and we’ve got a sci fi episode!

There were some key things that made everything work in this situation. First, everyone was aware of everyone else’s skills. Their strengths and their weaknesses, or opportunities for growth or improvement if you’re comfortable with saying weakness. Early on in the episode there was this incredible scene. At this point all we knew was the scientists on the planet had aged quickly and died; the symptoms hadn’t started in the crew yet. So, to them, this was just another week on board the Enterprise. Weird anomaly, do science, figure it out, and on to the next adventure. But in this scene, Kirk has pulled his team together and their going through the problem. I love this. Kirk’s asking questions, engaging everyone in the discussion and trying to determine actions they can take to help figure out what’s going on.

This is just great leadership. He’s not telling people what to do. In fact, other people are doing most of the talking. And, as a side note, that’s a great gauge of the value of your interactions with your team. Who is doing most of the talking? Almost all the time it should be the person you are supporting. As the leader, you listen, validate, and provide guidance on next steps. The harsh reality; the bitter pill we all need to get used to swallowing, is that almost no one wants us to solve their problem. No. They already know how to solve it! The just need to be listened to. Heard. Through your listening and asking questions because you’re curious, you help them figure out what they already know.

I know I just said this was gonna be a side note, but now I’m going. At the time I’m recording this, in December 2023, Microsoft has been tweaking Teams. A lot. And, in my opinion, it’s not going smoothly. That said, a lot of the new features are amazing! One of them, a feature that has actually been available in jitsi meet for quite some time, is tracking speaker time. The percentage of the meeting each person spent talking. I love this! I’ve been gathering this data since it rolled out and I’m going to set it as a performance target for the managers I work with. For most meetings, one-on-ones specifically, they should be talking less than like a third of the time or something like that. So, to get back on track, we’re not here to solve people’s problems. We’re here to listen and help them solve their own problems.

As Kirk brings everyone together, this is what he’s doing. Asking questions and letting his team, the experts, do what they do. As the facilitator here, the leader, the other part of his job is to see the bigger picture. Take what he’s heard and, basically, connect the dots. “Dr Wallace, as an expert I’d appreciate you working with Dr. McCoy.” 5:08 That’s what he’s doing here. He’s gathered the pieces from the meeting, added in the strengths and skillsets of the people at the table, and paired Janet and McCoy off. Their skills are complementary and, based on their discussion, medical science seems to be the way to go while Spock dives into all the other stuff.

This is the art of leadership. This is a place where you want to be just like Captain Kirk. Listen. Ask questions that help the people on the team get their ideas out. Pay attention to all the pieces of the puzzle: the ideas shared, the strength and expertise of the people, and then put it all together. It so simple!

This idea of knowing strengths isn’t just about our teams. It’s also for us. Self-awareness is such an important skill for people; leaders specifically. Know what your strengths and weaknesses are. This helps you see what you need to work on and develop. It also shows you what you should, and shouldn’t be doing in high profile, high tension and crisis situations.

Earlier I praised Commodore Stocker for taking personal responsibility for taking command of the ship. That was great. Moments after taking command, though, he is in way over his head! He disregards the Romulan Neutral Zone and the Enterprise is getting overwhelmed in an attack because of that. To his credit, he’s very open about being in over his head. “What am I going to do?” 45:35 But he freezes and fails to ask for help.

We are all going to find ourselves in this situation. It is understandable to step into something that you think you should be able to do even though you really don’t. Heck, I mean, it’s dramatically lower stakes than this, but that was me when I started this podcast! I had no idea what I was doing and was in way over my head! The difference between Stocker and me, though, is I saw when I needed to ask for help. He just froze. The takeaway from this one is pretty simple, but not easy to do. Know what you can and cannot do, and ask for help when you’re out of your depth. Easy, right?

What does it take to do that? More than self-awareness. Stocker had awareness, for sure, but didn’t do anything about it in the moment. What would he also need to have in order to ask for help? To, maybe, ask Sulu to take the chair. You know, the dude that takes command just about every time Kirk, Spock and Scotty are on an away mission. Like, for real. The answer is literally sitting directly in front of him. Ok, that aside, the thing he would need is humility. The awareness to see you’re in the deep end, and the humility to do something about it.

This episode gave us an interesting look into humility through Captain Kirk. As great as he was in that briefing, listening to everyone and bringing them together, this part, later in the episode, was not a great look for him. The first look we got at him aging was when he got frustrated when Sulu called him out on repeating an order. And that escalated through the episode. As his memory slipped more and more, he became more and more defensive and belligerent. To him, it wasn’t that he was making mistakes, it was that other people were being disrespectful to him and losing faith. He made it about them instead of about him.

This continues through the episode and culminates in his competency hearing. He insists everyone else has the problem and refuses to see the reality of the situation. “Go ahead, ask me questions…” 34:21 Yikes. That’s a dude that is not willing to hear anything that goes against the story he tells himself. With that, I think we should look at what it means to have humility as a leader. To be humble. Like, we hear and likely say that a lot – humility – but what does it mean? I believe humility is a lot of skills coming together. Specifically, self-awareness, like we’ve talked about. An openness to feedback. The ability to admit your mistakes. Being approachable. Giving credit and taking blame. And having empathy. I’m sure there are others, but I despise long lists and these are the skills that come to mind right away.

So I want to rewrite this a little bit and sprinkle in some humility. Kirk is in the hearing and they ask him if he wants to make a statement. First, he uses his self-awareness to see that he isn’t capable of commanding the starship anymore. Part of how he came to that conclusion would be his openness to feedback. He would have listened and heard it when Sulu, Uhura, Spock and others called him out for making mistakes. They called him out because he would have been open and approachable. He would have taken that feedback to heart and, in his statement, admitted that he had made mistakes instead of arguing with everyone. He would have gone on to praise the crew for calling him out, and, because he had the empathy needed to be humble, he would have thanked them for the feedback.

What a difference that would have made! Instead of building everything up to a win-or-lose conflict, he could have been a part of the solution. To my earlier point, when stepping down, and hearing that Spock also couldn’t take command…like, yeah. Spock totally did this! When he told Stocker he couldn’t take command he showed all these traits; he had real humility. If Kirk had done that, he could have told Stocker that Sulu was a capable commander. They would have totally avoided the battle with the Romulans and the day still would have been saved.

Knowing your team’s strengths, as well as your own, along with the humility to accept and act on those will go a long way in building up your team and making you a highly effective leader.

<<Hailing Frequencies>>

Thank you to everyone that shared the podcast with their friends and colleagues last week. I could see the spike in listeners and I appreciate it so very much! Star Trek paints a picture of a better future. It’s one of the reasons I love the series so much. It gives hope that, even through our conflicts, we can and will be ok and even better. The thing is, though, to get there, we are going to need different leadership than what we have now. The leadership of yesterday will never take us into the future, and that’s what we’ve been trying for far too long. I started this podcast to move that needle. To start developing leaders that lead differently. That lead in a way that will take us to a better future. To a Star Trek future. By listening to this you are already helping make that happen. To help even more, share the show! Share it with other leaders you work with. Share it with your boss! If they listen to this I imagine it’ll only make your life that much smoother.

You can share by clicking the share button in your podcast app, or sharing my social media. I’m on Twitter and Mastodon: @ SFLA podcast and Instagram and Threads, @jefftakin Jeff, t as in Theodore Wallace, a k i n.

Computer, what are we going to watch next time….

The 9^th episode of the 4^th season of The Next Generation, The Final Mission. I remember this one as the time Picard and Wesley Crusher have to tread through a desert. This episode is about real survival. Lives on the line and next to no resources. We’ll have a lot to dive into in this one and I can’t wait to watch it with you.

Until then, Ex Astris Scientia!