#kirk analysis

I think what Gene Roddenberry and the rest of the tos crew underestimated is how powerful knowledge of a character can be when they thought Kirk would be popular over Spock. As season 1 progresses while you do get information about both Kirk and Spock peppered through out, how much and how it’s conveyed is important.

Spock is Stoic yes, but surprisingly he talks about his past and what it means to be Vulcan a lot. And other characters comment on Vulcans too like McCoy describing where a Vulcan heart is. Even moving onto season 2, when Spock truly, desperately, does not want to explain what Pon Farr is or that Sarek is his father, he admits these things under pressure. And all of this information is what’s gives the audience an idea of what informs his actions.

Jim Kirk however, despite being very outgoing and charismatic, very rarely talks about himself. With few exceptions, every time you do learn something about his past it’s because someone else explains it or points it out. You’ve got where no man has gone before where Gary talked about their academy days, The naked time while Spock talked about his regrets, Kirk vents that he wants a personal connection and then is literally the only person who is able to will the virus to stop effecting him (on his own I mean) just long enough for McCoy to give him the cure.

The Android copy of Kirk tells us about Kirk’s brother Sam, in Conscience of the king literally everyone except Kirk explains his tragic tarsus iv backstory, we never find out who the Ruth girl is in shore leave, and it’s Bones that brings up Sam lives on Deneva. Even in season 2 in the worst episode ever, the deadly years, when Kirk is in a room alone with his ex fiancé, she explains their history. Not Kirk.

This man is allergic to talking about himself I love it.

Edit: Whenever Jim does even sorta talk about his past, it’s always in the context of what the other people he’s talking to know about it. Take Tarsus IV. Spock tells Jim that he checked the same library records. So when Jim finally opens up at the end of the conversation, it’s information Spock and Bones already know. “I saw him [Kodos] once, 20 years ago.” Then about 10 minutes later when he’s talking with Kodos and trying to get proof, he gives Kodos a copy of the speech Jim heard him read 20 years ago. Saying that he memorized the words. Again, these are things only the two of them would know about. It’s not something Jim exclusively went through.

Then later in Obsession when Jim is talking about his prior experience with the fog, everything he references was in the report he made after the Farragut disaster that he knows Spock and Bones read. There is no new information he reveals about what happened to him or even how he felt about it. Bones has to be the one to say Jim was wrecked with guilt because at the end of the day, Jim will never willingly talk about his past without knowing or thinking the other person he’s talking to has the same information. He will not reveal anything new 95% of the time.

Anyway back to the old blog.

While I’d argue conscience of the king does most of the work you would ever need to explain why Kirk is the way he is, the fact is we don’t learn much about his past through him. Instead it’s Kirk’s actions that inform our understanding of him. Which on some level I like a lot. It’s rare that a tv series doesn’t lean heavily into some tragic backstory explaining why a character acts the way they do. But it isn’t just he doesn’t have multiple tragic backstories. It’s what we know nothing about his past in general. Ffs we didn’t learn he grew up in Iowa until Star Trek IV. It might not even be Riverside! That town just claimed it for themselves and everyone rolled with it.

Edit: SNW did confirm after almost 40 years that riverside is Kirk’s birthplace.

This is basically something that came to mind while watching Star Trek. I sent it to a friend, and now I'm sharing it here because I can not stop thinking about this. 😆

Captain Kirk is so lonely. Admiral Kirk even more so.

I really truly believe that why Kirk is so sad in Star Trek 2 is the same reason he's often sad in TOS and to some extent AOS.

Basically, it's a lack of community.

Two times Kirk is at his saddest is in TOS season 1 when he only allows McCoy and Spock to get close to him because the enterprise takes everything else from him. She's a lady who he keeps giving his all too, and she just takes more. Because he's in command he can't really be friends with people. It might lead to an abuse of power. He can't have relationships because of his job. Whenever he flirts with someone he has them transferred right after. When season 2 comes along and he knows that the other people on the bridge are willing to stand up to him. Then he slowly starts to consider them his friends and becomes closer.

Then we see him in Star Trek II and everything he had to keep him grounded, to combat his loneliness, is gone.

He doesn't have people who trust him or any willing to stand up to him and challenge him. He's no longer on a ship where he can step out of his room and see other humans right there in the halls. He doesn't have the easy access to the rec room to engage with others in downtime (in season 1 I believe it was either McCoy or a woman who asks Kirk why he always leaves the rec room quickly). Everything he had slowly allowed himself to have because it didn't interfere with his duties and didn't lead to abuses of power over his subordinates has been taken away.

The people around him who he could call friends, gone. Once again.

TOS Kirk only called people who knew him before he was captain + Spock friends until halfway through season 2. Then Scotty also gets the privilege. Well, when he becomes admiral he falls back into that self-isolating quality. Only people who knew him before Admiralty can be friends because he's less scared about accidentally abusing his power over them. He trusts them to fight back if he goes too far. Not only is he once again in a position of power where he has to be careful not to abuse it, but now he doesn't even get to explore space or solve problems. He doesn't even feel useful anymore.

He's completely unchallenged, isolated, and locked away by power because he has enough self-restraint to not abuse his privileges.

And maybe even too much.

TOS Kirk hates nepotism. AOS Kirk is the result of it (thank you Captain Pike), and I think that's why AOS Kirk doesn't feel as lonely as TOS Kirk.

Or at least that's my theory behind it all.

TOS Kirk saw again and again what happens when a leader isn't humble. (The genocide he faced as a teenager, his first mission disaster, the loss of his first ship's captain, etc.) He doesn't want to be that kind of leader.

Meanwhile AOS doesn't have any of those experiences and we can kind of assume he faced abuse as a child. He grew up lonely and blurs the lines between professionalism and friendship so easily because like TOS Kirk, AOS craves community but he doesn't have the self-restraint to not seek it out.

But I have to disagree.

For one, we have no confirmation that Tausus IV didn't happen. It still could have happened.

Second, I don't think AoS says that what happened with his dad was more traumatic. It's just a different kind of trauma.

Tarsus IV was something horrible. Something that can be blocked from the memory. Something that happened to a boy from a stable family who got help. It was traumatic. It was terrible. But it was a piece of his life, not his whole life.

Now losing his dad was horrible in a different way. It was not an event. It was not a horrific thing that he saw or experienced over months. This was his life. From the moment he was born he was dealing with it. There was no stable family to recover with. There was an absent mom and abusive step dad. There was no getting help and moving on. This was a constant and daily trauma.

It's PTSD versus C-PTSD.

TOS!Kirk could compartmentalize. He could shove that horrific event back and get back to life. He still had nightmares. He still had flashbacks. He still remembered. He still had survivors guilt. But it happened and he knows he needs to focus on what's next not what happened.

AOS!Kirk didn't have any compartments available. He couldn't shove it away it was his every waking moment. When he did get out of the house it was all he'd ever known. There was no "pre traumatic event" to fall back on and adjust to. Not until Starfleet when he does have something new to focus on do things fall into place. But this is new when we see him. This is him finding a stable life for the first time after a straight twenty years of trauma. So even by ST:Beyond he's better but still not completely healed (in comparison to Kirk having two full decades to heal from the trauma of Tarsus IV as of s1 of TOS).