Half a Life

TNG Season 4 Episode 22
Air Date: May 6th, 1991

Lwaxana Troi is visiting while the Enterprise is on a mission to help save the planet Kaelon II from it's dying sun. Dr. Timicin has discovered a way to restart the fusion reaction in a sun. When they try it on another star in a similar state of death as Kaelon, it works at first but eventually the star gets too hot.

Lwaxana falls in love with Dr. Timicin which he reciprocates. But he resists because he is about to turn 60 and the Kaelons have a philosophy of people committing assisted suicide when they turn 60. Lwaxana gets very angry at this and tries to convince Dr. Timicin to not go through with it. She was able to convince him by saying his knowledge could save his planet and him dying could be the cause of his planets death.

But the Kaelons protest and even send warships to get Dr. Timicin back. Finally Dr. Timicin agrees to go back to die. Lwaxana transports with him to be at his side when he dies.

Quotes

"It is Worf, madam, not Woof!" - Lt. Worf

"Fifteen to twenty centuries ago, we had no Resolution. We had no such concern for our elders. As people aged, they... their health failed. They became invalids. And those whose families could no longer care for them were put away, into deathwatch facilities, where they waited in loneliness for the end to come, sometimes for years. They had meant something; and they were forced to live beyond that, into a time of meaning nothing. Of knowing that they could now only be the beneficiaries of younger people's patience. We are no longer that cruel, Lwaxana." - Dr. Timicin
"No, no, you're not cruel to them, you just kill them." - Lwaxana Troi

"Your planet has what, thirty, forty years left? What if your scientists can't find the answer without you? What then? What chance do you think your grandson has of reaching the age of sixty?" - Lwaxana Troi