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recorded in the historical documents that aired on television between 1966 and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)
Comments
Post a Comment