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 I am talking about the James Kirk whose exploits were recorded in the historical documents that aired on television between 1966 and 1968.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 23^rd century seems to have fallen short was in gender equality. Yes Uhura was supposedly 4^th 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