"The Deadly Years" interweaves a frightening race against time and death with a poignant exam into unexpected senescence. After exposure to strange radiation on an away mission the landing party, including senior officers aboard Enterprise, suffers symptoms that resemble accelerated decrepitude (about thirty years per day). As they start to fall apart so does the smooth running of NCC-1701, until finally a heart-breaking hearing for a deteriorating Captain Kirk transfers command to an incompetent officer leading to a needless encounter with the Romulans. (The appearance of this "silent enemy" means the slow warbirds must have been in the Neutral Zone already. At least Enterprise survives their repeated plasma attacks somehow, blasts that miraculously change into Klingon-style hullstrikes!)

Fortunately a Dr. Janet Wallace is on board, an old flame of Kirk's with sufficient medical experience to assist with a cure. Ironically for an expert in adrenal endocrinology Sarah Marshall is unexciting as a convenient character dropped in to save the day and then never referenced again. She does manage to humanize the story a bit with quips like "The heart is not a logical organ," and of course at the climax it is she that administers the treatment revitalizing the fluids of dear James (with appropriate close-up of relevant anatomy).

Charles Drakes convincingly channels Commodore Stocker as a charmless and unimaginative bureaucrat presaging the slew of inept Starfleet officers yet to come. He nearly kills them all (perhaps) regarding a "win" in the Kobayashi Maru scenario as something easy even for a chair bound paper pusher. For all his proclamations of admiration Stocker misses the point that joins Kirk and Enterprise, though to his credit he brilliantly outlogics Spock (as the Vulcan painfully realizes), for if an afflicted Vulcan physique cannot provide competent command than how can a frail human?

Thankfully the entire cast does a great job especially those with the challenge of adding decades to their performance. Props to Uhura and Sulu for sticking up for their Captain and to comic relief Chekov as he is excrutiatingly "over-sampled." McCoy grows progressively crankier as does Kirk, each accustomed to ruling their roost without succumbing readily. Spock seems resigned to his fate, logical to the end. And without saying a word Jimmy Doohan delivers one of TOS's best surprises with the sudden shock of a drastically aged Scott appearing in the door at sickbay. As fancy ship models doth not a science fiction success make, so does quality acting make up for aged makeup that can't quite withstand high definition scrutiny.