Skip to main content

James T. Kirk: A Character Study



There once was a starship captain named James Kirk. I am talking about the James Kirk whose exploits were recorded in the historical documents that aired on television between 1966 and 1968.  Not only was he the “captain” of the USS Enterprise (anyone of any rank who commands a ship is called by the honorary title “captain”) but his rank was actually Captain. That is to say, one notch below Admiral (two notches if you count the rank of Commodore which was only used in one or two episodes and was not well defined). In any event, he was a high ranking officer and in command of a formidable starship. And there was no question who was in command of the ship. His crew was loyal and followed his orders without question (well except when he was acting loopy, then they might actually give a questioning look).

This captain and his crew were assigned a five year mission to explore new worlds. One might wonder why a military vessel with all those weapons was given the duty of peaceful exploration, but hey, I guess it was a dangerous galaxy. But also,  if they were really exploring new worlds out there, why were they constantly being called back for more mundane tasks in the known Federation territory, things like ferrying supplies to a colony in need, answering distress calls, finding out why the Federation had lost contact with an colony. If the Enterprise were really out there exploring the fringes of the galaxy, wouldn’t there be other ships closer to do these things? But I digress. I guess we will just chalk it up to how amazingly efficient that warp drive was.

So what kind of fellow was this James Kirk? By all accounts, he was an extremely intelligent man. In a tight situation, he usually knew the right thing to say and do. It was almost as if he had a team of writers crafting his words for him. He could out-think (or at least hold his own) against beings or artificial intelligences that were supposedly far superior to humans. Said beings usually turned out to have some fatal flaw that he or his team could find and exploit.

He was a passionate man, sometimes letting his emotions getting the best of him. He was passionate in his friendships, passionate in his anger, and passionate in his love life. In some ways I liken him to James Bond in that he had many lovers (but perhaps only one love, which may have scarred him against commitment). He was a man who seemed to have a girl in every port. He is the stereotypical sailor in this regard. Yet we don’t see this kind of behavior from the other characters on the show. While it is entertaining seeing Kirk woo all females of any species throughout the galaxy, it does point out a flaw in his character that could be and would be exploited. There is also a rather sexist line that Kirk says to Spock in one episode,

“Mr. Spock the women on your planet are logical. That’s the only planet in this galaxy that can make that claim.”

For all the high ideals and racial equality to be found in the Federation. The one place where the 23rd century seems to have fallen short was in gender equality. Yes Uhura was supposedly 4th in line of command on the Enterprise. But we never saw any high ranking Star Fleet command officers who were women. As we learned from the final episode of Star Trek, and Kirk’s former lover Janice Lester, women were not allowed to be ship’s captains. Huh? Well perhaps having Uhura was as far as Gene Roddenberry could push it. The show was after all a product of its time.

Despite all this, Kirk inspired fierce loyalty in his crew. A number of years ago a study was done on airline pilots and one of the conclusions of the study was summed up by saying “we need more pilots like Captain Picard, not like Captain Kirk, meaning they wanted captains who worked well with others, who consulted with and worked with their crew. Not someone who issued an order and said ‘my way or the highway’. And in fact, that may be the kind of captain needed on an airliner, but for my money, if I am every about to go into battle against vastly superior aliens, give me Captain Kirk.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon, or the other usual online sources)

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Trip Home

  My wife and I recently returned from a trip to New York to visit my son and his wife. What follows is an excerpt of my notes from that trip. Departure day. So we and the kids (adult kids) leave by 5:30 AM. These “kids” are night owls. They rarely wake before 10:00 if they don’t have to, so we appreciate the sacrifice. Daughter-in-Law (DIL) drove us the 30 minutes to the train station. Hugs and good-byes for her (we love DIL. DIL is an irresistible force). Son navigates us a route to the platform with fewer stairs than the way we came. We get a ticket and get on the train headed for the big city and Grand Central Station. I soon realize that this train is not an express train like the one we took coming out. Instead of taking a little over an hour like we did before, this one would take a little over an hour and a half. We stop at places with names like Cold Springs and Peekskill (on this trip we saw a lot of place names that ended in “kill” including Kaatskill, i.e. Catskill, and
2 comments
Read more

That 70's Decade

  Can a decade become a caricature? My teen years were in the 1970’s and none of us who lived through the 70’s thought our decade was going to be a figure of fun. When you are a part of it, you don’t realize what people are going to make fun of later. I think there are two reasons why people snicker when the 70’s are mentioned: clothing styles and Disco. Both things could be called extensions of trends that started in the 60’s. When the hippy styles of the 60’s became more formalized for the dance floor, the result was (in hindsight) rather bizarre. They did not seem bizarre at the time. People following present fashion trends never understand that they are wearing something that will be laughed at in ten years. Yes, I did have a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans (are they making a comeback?) The mere mention of the 1970’s conjures up someone in a ridiculous pose wearing a disco suit. We who lived through the 70’s just went about our normal life. There were quite a lot of things that ha
Post a Comment
Read more

Tyranny of the Masses

  I was listening to Benjamin Netanyahu on the radio. He was justifying his change in the law that removed power from the Israeli Supreme Court, saying that it was the will of the people. Majority rules. This made me think of “Tyranny of the masses,” a concept that notes: just because a majority of people are for something, that doesn’t make it right. I am sure you can think of historical examples where the people of a country supported a policy that was demonstrably wrong. When everything is completely governed by majority rule, the rights of the minority can be subverted by the majority. The framers of our American Constitution knew this, and tried to put in some checks and balances into our system of government. This was to guard against all forms of tyranny whether from a dictator, or from tyranny of the masses. One of those checks is that we have a representative government. The people themselves don’t pass laws, but instead elect representatives at the federal and local level t
Post a Comment
Read more