The original article:
Sorry about the wallotext, but I haven't properly edited it yet.
A BRIEF LOOK AT
KIRK'S CAREER
by Leslie Thompson
Who is James T. Kirk anyway? We know him as one of our best friends, of
course, but we really know very little about him. In this
article, Leslie
Thompson uses her “speculative faction” to fill us in on some of the details
and background of Jim Kirk. As usual with
Leslie’s articles, this one
stirred up a storm of controversy when first published. Why? Well, read
on. . . .
The facts are known.
Name:
James Tiberius Kirk. Service Record: Serial Number SC937-
0176-CEC. Rank: Captain, Starship Command, USS Enterprise NCC-
1701.
Commendations: Palm Leaf of . . .
As we said, the facts are known. But what of James T. Kirk’s early
life? What factors shaped him into
the man he is today, the starship
captain, the explorer, the romantic, the passionate spokesman for all that
is good in man?
We have
never been given any hard information about Kirk’s past, only
inference and innuendo. In several episodes, we hear of people and
places
in Kirk’s life—some important, some trivial. But a definitive per-
sonal history of Kirk has not been granted to us. Therefore, we
must take
the few given facts, and extrapolate one of our own.
Kirk was born in Greater Peoria, Illinois, thirty-four years before the
first recorded voyage of the Enterprise. Shortly after this adventure (“Where
No Man Has Gone Before”), Kirk celebrated his thirty-
fifth birthday,
which was marred by the loss of his closest friend, Commander Gary
Mitchell.
When Kirk was still very young, his parents
pulled up stakes and
moved to Iowa. Rather, his mother did, as Kirk’s father was serving in
Starfleet as the captain of a destroyer
(the William Jennings Bryan).
Young Kirk thrived in this new “country” environment, but he was still
able to have the best of both
rural and city life, as almost instantaneous
civilian travel by transporter had become commonplace by this time.
In fact, the majority
of Earth’s population chose to live in the country,
as getting to a job or school was as simple as walking into the next room;
and over
any distance on Earth . . . and even to the Moon!
So while little Jimmy Kirk lived and played in the rolling wheat fields
of Iowa
farmlands, he attended school every day in the Des Moines
Complex, as did children from all around the state.
As his father was
necessarily away most of the time, Kirk’s major
influences were his mother and his paternal grandfather, Peter Kirk. An
older brother,
George Samuel, was also quite important to the shaping of
Kirk’s early years, as he adored the older boy. It was a family joke that
little Jimmy would follow “Sam” everywhere he went, often to the chagrin
of George, who was developing an interest in girls just about
the same
time that Jimmy wanted to learn the finer points of zero-grav baseball.
From his mother, Kirk learned a great love of his
fellow man and of all
living things. She was a quiet and gentle woman who suffered her hus-
band’s long absences with a philosophical
attitude. In Kirk, she instilled
an admiration and love for the father he hardly knew by telling the boy of
great deeds done and
wonderful places his father had seen, and how he
was sacrificing his home life to help keep Earth and the quickly expanding
Federation
safe from its enemies. So to Jimmy Kirk, his father was not an
unknown cipher, but instead, a giant, heroic figure. And the vision of
space
that his mother described would stay with Kirk for the rest of his life.
Old Pete Kirk would take Jimmy on his knee and tell him
of the
glorious history of the Kirk family. Even when quite young, Kirk found it
hard to believe his grandfather’s tales. The hardest
to believe were his
favorites: the ancestor who was raised by apelike subhumans in darkest
Africa, the long—ago masked man who fought
for justice in the old West,
and the great bronzed figure who was the leading surgeon and scientist of
his day. But until the day he
died, old Pete Kirk swore the stories were
true. James Kirk made a vow to himself to go to the census computers
someday and check the
stories out, but events swept him up, and the old
man’s tales soon faded into fond memories.
From them, however, Kirk gleaned an
important message: A Kirk was
expected to be brave, resourceful, and intelligent. A leader of men and a
protector of the weak. Far
above other men and better than the best.
This oblique message was probably the primary reason for Kirk’s
starting to drive himself at an early age. He had the native
intelligence,
reasoning, and intuition necessary for achieving just a little bit more than
his fellow students, but he was no
bookworrn. Kirk excelled at both
sandlot and school-sanctioned sports, and he was outgoing and popular
with his classmates. Kirk was
one of those rare youngsters who truly
enjoyed school in all its phases, and he learned there to balance hard
work and hard play.
When
Kirk was fifteen, his father came to visit for a final time. Kirk
was now old enough to realize that his father was not in actuality
the
giant hero of his mother’s tales, but he was still somewhat awed by the
huge and smiling man who strode back into his family’s life
every six
months or so.
This was the longest visit in several years, and Richard Kirk was able to
spend time with both of his sons, both
together and separately. Sam Kirk
was entering his third year in college at the time, and announced that he
intended to become a
biologist. Richard Kirk took this news stoically, as
he realized that his elder son was no man of action, and his talents for
organization and intuitive research would take him far in the scientific
world. Seeing that his father approved, Sam also confessed
that he was
planning to marry a lovely young woman named Aurelan, and he wanted
his father to be the best man.
Richard Kirk was
immensely pleased, and when he turned to Jim and
asked if he had considered what he wanted to do with his life, Jim spoke
up: “I want
to go into Starfleet. I want to be a starship captain!"
Once again, Richard Kirk was pleased. But he knew that his wife
would be
opposed; she already had enough to worry about. Too, it was a
hard row to hoe. The boy had grit and brains, but it took much more
than
that to make it in Starfleet. Richard Kirk considered himself an intelligent
and able man, yet he had never even come near the apex
of his profes-
sion: commanding a starship. That was not for mere mortals. Starship
captains were a breed apart.
So Richard Kirk gave
his son a gentle smile and said, “There’s time
yet. You just might change your mind.”
“I won’t,” answered Jim. Richard Kirk nodded
slowly at his youngest
son and then led both of his children back into their house.
Two days later he had left. Three weeks after that,
he was dead.
Richard Kirk died a hero’s death when he directed his ship to inten-
tionally crash into a prototype Orion raider ship.
Not only did this action
prevent the destruction of a Federation outpost, it made the Orions think
twice about challenging the
Federation for supremacy in space and forced
them into a policy of small-ship piracy and smuggling, ridding the Federa-
tion of a
potentially dangerous enemy.
Kirk’s mother never recovered from the news. Her years-long wall of
reserve had been broken by Richard’s death, and she became
listless and
uncaring. When she finally died of a broken heart a year later, Kirk
considered it a blessing and comforted his grief with
the knowledge that
she was finally at peace.
To his surprise, Kirk discovered that his father’s heroic death had
qualified him to attend
Starfleet Academy with the recommendation of
his father’s commander, Admiral Komack.
Although he would rather have earned the
scholarship on his own, he
was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and upon graduation
from high school he entered Starfleet
Academy.
It was hard, very much so. Not only did Kirk have to contend with the
plethora of new and exciting knowledge presented almost
every day, but
in a curriculum designed to “wash out” cadets he was the butt of constant
teasing and hazing because of the unorthodox
way he had entered the
Academy. Some of this grew to the point of brutality, and Kirk was
ridden hard in particular by an upperclassman
named Finnegan.
But it only made Kirk more determined to make it. He took the insults
and jokes with grace, but being James T. Kirk, he
remembered them all.
Throughout the course of his academy days, he managed to repay them
all in like fashion—all except Finnegan, who
was always careful not to let
the grim-faced Cadet Kirk catch him out of uniform.
During this difficult period, Kirk had an intense
need for a hero,
someone to emulate. He already had his father, but the memories were
too painful, especially that of his mother,
pining away. This is perhaps
where Kirk subconsciously developed his determination never to have a
serious relationship with a woman.
But instead of one hero, Kirk found two. In Abraham Lincoln, Kirk
saw a parallel with himself—a young man who started with very
little
managing to overcome adversity and rise to a high position. Too, Lincoln
had to suffer the jeers of others, but still did not
lose his humility and
love for his fellow man. Kirk voraciously read everything he could get
on Lincoln (particularly the Sandburg
books) and vowed to himself that
he would be at least half the man Abraham Lincoln was.
In Garth of Izar, Kirk found another hero, one
who represented all
that Kirk hoped to achieve as a Starfleet officer—a brilliant tactician,
commander of a starship, fair and
impartial in his dealings with both his
crew and aliens. Kirk almost wore out his copy of Garth’s textbook of
starship battle tactics,
and it was the greatest day in his life when Garth
addressed the assembled cadets. If he wanted to be half the man Lincoln
was, Kirk
wanted to be twice the leader Garth was.
Eventually Kirk was graduated from Starfleet Academy—not at the top
of his class; his marks in
diplomacy and administration were a bit too low,
A Brief Look at Kirk's Career 31
as he considered these not necessary for a starship
commander to know.
Kirk didn’t intend to be a desk jockey, he wanted to command a starship.
And so he gave his greatest efforts to the
disciplines he would need most
to do so: tactics, math and electronics, space astronomy and exploration,
and the physical needs—
marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and
helmsmanship.
However, Kirk still had to enter Command School, and before doing
so, he had to
serve time on a ship in deep space. He was consequently
assigned to the scout ship Jim Bridger. However, midway through the
voyage,
Kirk contracted Vegan choriomeningitis and was remanded to a
hospital on a nearby starbase.
Despondent over this setback, as the fast-
moving world of Starfleet had
no time for raw ensigns to rec0ver from illnesses, Kirk utilized his
recovery time to further his
knowledge of starship operations and to
make up some of the self-imposed deficiencies of his Academy education
by constantly meeting
and talking to the ever-changing parade of aliens
and Federation envoys that visited the starbase. To his surprise, Kirk
found that he
had a natural ability to perceive and understand the
problems and views of the aliens. This was not enough of a revelation to
drive him
into the diplomatic corps, but it did instill in him a respect for
the myriad duties of a starship captain. It took more than an
understand-
ing of how a starship works and how best to blast an enemy out of
existence to be another Garth. It was a lesson Kirk was
not to forget.
Several days before Kirk was to return to the Academy for the long
wait for reassignment to a ship, the starbase was the
victim of a surprise
attack by a Klingon battle cruiser. As Kirk was still on the inactive list
and therefore had no specific battle
station, he was able to place himself
in a position where he could best see how the Klingons attacked the
starbase. The outcome was a
foregone conclusion, as the big guns of the
starbase had the Klingon ship far outclassed, and Kirk assumed that
the Klingon commander
had gone berserk in the fashion that Klingons
sometimes do.
Berserk or not, the Klingon was still a master tactician, and he man-
aged
to keep from being destroyed long enough to score a devastating hit
on the life-support systems of the starbase. As the Klingon ship
exploded,
Kirk turned away only to hear the strident tones of a depressurization
alarm. Without conscious thought, Kirk grabbed as many
pressure suits
as he could carry from a nearby storage locker and hurried down to the
life-support bays.
Finding them sealed off by the
automatic alarm systems, Kirk had a
sudden inspiration. He hurried into the nearest transporter alcove, quickly
estimated the range,
and beamed the pressure suits in to the trapped
crewmen. Several of them had already died from lack of oxygen and
exposure, but Kirk’s
quick action managed to save the majority of the
technicians.
Although Kirk couldn’t see that he had done all that much, the starbase
commander thought differently and recommended Kirk for his first award,
the Prantares Ribbon of Commendation, Second Class. But more
impor-
tant to Kirk, his quick thinking allowed him to secure an immediate berth
on a starship, the Farragut, commanded by the man who
was soon to
become his mentor, Captain Charles Garrovick.
Garrovick developed a soft spot for the young ensign when he discov-
ered Kirk
gazing longingly out of the starbase drydock at the majestic
Farragut. He took Kirk under his wing, becoming almost a second father
to
him, and helped him to learn the essentials for starship service.
When the crew of the Farragut met with the cloud creature and
Captain
Garrovick died, Kirk blamed himself for not having fired sooner. His
distress was especially hard when he learned that one of
the last things
Garrovick had done before being killed was to recommend that Kirk
stand for command, and Kirk became more determined
than ever to
become a starship captain. He now had the added incentive of feeling
that he must replace Garrovick, who was an especially
fine commander,
and therefore highly valuable to the Federation. He also vowed to some-
day destroy the cloud creature, a promise which
he eventually kept with
the help of Garrovick’s son.
Back at the Academy for command training, Kirk became involved
with Janice Lester,
a fiery young cadet whose mercurial personality both
attracted and repelled Kirk. Their affair continued throughout Kirk’s
training,
but came to a bad end when Janice failed to meet the exacting
Academy standards. Already high—strung, this unbalanced her even more,
and she took the unrealistic view that she had been rejected because of
her sex. She demanded that Kirk resign his commission in
protest, and
when he refused, she accused him of being “in on” the imagined conspir-
acy against her. Kirk wisely chose to stop seeing
Janice, and after a while
she drifted out of his life. He heard that she was training in astro-
archaeology, but did not see her again
until she used the ancient device of
the Camusians to exchange minds with him in a vain attempt to usurp the
powers of a starship
captain.
Having graduated from Command School, Kirk was then assigned to
the Starship Exeter as a helmsman. It was during this mission
that he acted
as orderly to his captain in the Axanar Peace Mission and was awarded
another commendation for his services. Just before
his tour of duty
aboard the Exeter was over, Kirk was forced to report his old friend Ben
Finney derelict in duty, causing a rift in
their friendship.
Having compiled an excellent record, Kirk was then transferred to the
destroyer Chesty Puller as first officer. It
was during this voyage that Kirk
A Brief Look at Kirk's Career 33
was forced to take over the ship when his captain was injured and
battle a
Klingon cruiser. Choosing the better part of valor, Kirk ordered a retreat,
but found his way blocked by yet another Klingon
ship. This was a
smaller but no less dangerous ship, and Kirk was forced to fight, as the
large ship was jamming his communications.
Utilizing his ship’s greater speed, he maneuvered the small Klingon
ship into his sights, but held back on the order to fire. Thinking
that the
Federation ship was helpless, both Klingons moved in, and then Kirk
ordered his men to fire while at the same time reversing
engines at full
warp.
This dangerous move had the effect that Kirk wanted. The smaller
Klingon ship was hit by the phaser blast, while
the battle cruiser’s phasers
hit only empty space. By the time that it could reverse course, Kirk’s ship
had gained just enough of a
lead to call for help, and the Klingon, not
wanting to face a starship in exchange for having eliminated a small
destroyer, pulled
away.
In reward for this action, Kirk was presented with the Medal of Honor,
and the Karagite Order of Heroism. He also got something
which was
even more desirable to him: command of his own ship.
However, not right away. First he was to serve as one of the represen—
tatives to an exchange program that had been arranged with the Klingons.
Luckily, Kirk did not have to travel to a Klingonese planet;
he was assigned
instead to serve as host and guide to a young Klingon officer, Kumara.
During the time that Kirk and Kumara were
roommates at a Starfleet
training facility (one carefully selected to reveal to the Klingons a mini-
mum of Federation technology), they
became good, if cautious, friends.
They parted with a great amount of respect for each other, and each had
the feeling that the other
would one day be a foe to reckon with.
After completing this unusual assignment to his superiors’ complete
satisfaction, Kirk received
his promised command: a brand-new ship, an
experimental-model Starstalker, which was also its name. The object of
the small, sleek ship
was to act as a quick-moving and virtually untrace-
, able weapon, much like the submarines of Earth’s past. Starstalker was
one of
three models being tested by the Federation for this type of work.
Although conditions were rather primitive, the ship being strictly
a
Shakedown model (with little provision made for comfort in any case),
Kirk could not have been happier. He knew that it was an'
exceptional
mark of confidence that he had been assigned the ship, and he was
determined not to fail.
The early part of the cruise went
well. The ship was virtually a flying
phaser, with speed and firepower comparable to a full—sized starship, and
Kirk forced his crew to
the limit with every conceivable test the Federa-
tion could think of and a few that he invented on the spot. In this, he was
ably
assisted by a no-nonsense, hardheaded chief engineer named Mont-
gomery Scott, who had helped to design Starstalker. Kirk also had
his
best friend from his Academy days, Gary Mitchell, as first officer. Kirk
had requested that Mitchell be assigned to Starstalker,
using his preroga-
tive as the first captain of a newly commissioned ship.
They ran into some trouble on Dimosous, where a group of
hostile
rodentlike natives attacked the crew, who had landed to check out a
report that dilythium crystals had been discovered on the
planet. Kirk
was engaged in moving his men into a retreat when one of the natives
aimed a poisoned dart at him. Mitchell threw himself
in the way and took
the dart that was intended for Kirk. When the crew reached the ship
safely, Kirk ordered that the nearest route to
a starbase hospital be
taken, a route which brought the ship dangerously close to the Romulan
Neutral Zone. The passage was uneventful,
but Kirk received a severe
reprimand for his action. His superiors were secretly pleased, however, as
they themselves had taken similar
risks for friends in the past. It was a
mark against Kirk’s service record, a mark for him in the eyes of his
fellow officers.
After two
years of experimentation, the Starstalker experiment was
shelved and Kirk was assigned another ship. It was the usual procedure
for one
of his rank (which was at this time commander) to be assigned as
second officer aboard a starship, or as captain of a scout. However,
Kirk
was immediately assigned as captain of a destroyer, which to his immense
delight he discovered was the Hua Citing, the first
command of his hero,
Captain Garth. Again, Kirk took Mitchell with him, along with another
officer whom Kirk considered one of his
planned “permanent staf ,”
Engineer Scott. Aboard the Hua C’hing, he was to acquire another, who
was at this time a new ensign: Walter
Sulu.
Kirk and company saw much action aboard the Hua C’hing. They
participated in the opening of the Rigellian System (which had been
pioneered a few years previously by Captain Christopher Pike aboard the
Enterprise) and in several furious battles against the Kzinti,
and in one
exceptional raid they captured a Klingon warlord who had been in the
Arualian System trying to undermine the Federation’s
influence. For
their bravery in this raid, almost all of the crew received Awards of
Valor, and Kirk was singled out for a Silver Palm
with Cluster to go with
his Medal of Honor.
Kirk served aboard the Hua C'hing for four years with similar success,
and when Captain Pike
was promoted to fleet captain, he chose James
Kirk as his successor to captain the Enterprise. Starfleet Command read—
ily concurred, and
less than ten years after he had graduated from
Command School, Jim Kirk had realized his ambition: command of a
starship.
A Brief Look
at Kirk's Career 35
Again taking along Mitchell, Scott, and Sulu, Kirk spent the previous
few days he had before assuming command in
gathering. together the
finest bridge crew he could find. Among these was Lieutenant Uhura,
whom Kirk had run across at a starbase,
chafing against the duties that
kept her from joining a regular crew. It seemed she had done her job too
well, and had been assigned as
a communications instructor, a job she did
competently but nevertheless despised.
Kirk also requested another fine officer, one highly
recommended by
his old friend Matt Decker: Lee Kelso, to be second navigator behind
Mitchell. As backup helmsman, Kirk chose Lieutenant
Kevin Riley, a
fiesty Irishman who had been Sulu’s roommate at the Academy.
Two of the men Kirk wanted had crossed his path in the
past, and he
had ambivalent feelings about both. However, he wanted his crew to be
the very best possible, and so personal feelings had
to be put aside. He
requested them both: Lieutenant Commander Finnegan as security offi-
cer, and Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney as
records officer. He got
only Finney, as Finnegan was up for a captaincy, and learning this, Kirk
didn’t want to spoil his chances. But
the lack of a top-notch security
officer would nag Kirk for several years, and at times he dearly wished he
had gotten the cocky but
competent Finnegan.
The post of science officer was already filled, as Pike‘s man had
requested to be reassigned to the Enterprise.
Kirk was leery about work-
ing with the Vulcan Spock, but was more than happy to have him. Spock
was generally acknowledged to be the
finest scientific mind Starfleet had,
and Kirk knew that he would prove invaluable in the months ahead. Just
how valuable even Kirk never
suspected.
After a short Shakedown cruise to check the modifications and repairs
to the Enterprise (Pike had been so active that the
ship hadn’t had a
thorough going-over in some time), Kirk and crew proceeded on several
important, if unexciting, missions. Then, one
fateful day, word came
from Starfleet that the Enterprise had been selected for an unusual
mission: to go where no man had gone before,
through the barrier on the
edge of our galaxy.
This was the mission that resulted in the deaths of Mitchell and Kelso,
and aided in the
decision of Dr. Piper to retire from space. But it was also
the baptism of fire for the new Captain of the Enterprise and his hand-
picked crew, and forged them together into a superbly efficient team.
With the promotion of Spock to first officer (in addition to his
science-
officer duties) and the assignment of Leonard McCoy as ship’s surgeon,
the complement of the Enterprise was complete.
James T.
Kirk had achieved his youthful desire: He commanded a
starship with the finest crew in the Federation. And the legend began to
grow.
Sorry about the wallotext, but I haven't properly edited it yet.
A BRIEF LOOK AT
KIRK'S CAREER
by Leslie Thompson
Who is James T. Kirk anyway? We know him as one of our best friends, of
course, but we really know very little about him. In this
article, Leslie
Thompson uses her “speculative faction” to fill us in on some of the details
and background of Jim Kirk. As usual with
Leslie’s articles, this one
stirred up a storm of controversy when first published. Why? Well, read
on. . . .
The facts are known.
Name:
James Tiberius Kirk. Service Record: Serial Number SC937-
0176-CEC. Rank: Captain, Starship Command, USS Enterprise NCC-
1701.
Commendations: Palm Leaf of . . .
As we said, the facts are known. But what of James T. Kirk’s early
life? What factors shaped him into
the man he is today, the starship
captain, the explorer, the romantic, the passionate spokesman for all that
is good in man?
We have
never been given any hard information about Kirk’s past, only
inference and innuendo. In several episodes, we hear of people and
places
in Kirk’s life—some important, some trivial. But a definitive per-
sonal history of Kirk has not been granted to us. Therefore, we
must take
the few given facts, and extrapolate one of our own.
Kirk was born in Greater Peoria, Illinois, thirty-four years before the
first recorded voyage of the Enterprise. Shortly after this adventure (“Where
No Man Has Gone Before”), Kirk celebrated his thirty-
fifth birthday,
which was marred by the loss of his closest friend, Commander Gary
Mitchell.
When Kirk was still very young, his parents
pulled up stakes and
moved to Iowa. Rather, his mother did, as Kirk’s father was serving in
Starfleet as the captain of a destroyer
(the William Jennings Bryan).
Young Kirk thrived in this new “country” environment, but he was still
able to have the best of both
rural and city life, as almost instantaneous
civilian travel by transporter had become commonplace by this time.
In fact, the majority
of Earth’s population chose to live in the country,
as getting to a job or school was as simple as walking into the next room;
and over
any distance on Earth . . . and even to the Moon!
So while little Jimmy Kirk lived and played in the rolling wheat fields
of Iowa
farmlands, he attended school every day in the Des Moines
Complex, as did children from all around the state.
As his father was
necessarily away most of the time, Kirk’s major
influences were his mother and his paternal grandfather, Peter Kirk. An
older brother,
George Samuel, was also quite important to the shaping of
Kirk’s early years, as he adored the older boy. It was a family joke that
little Jimmy would follow “Sam” everywhere he went, often to the chagrin
of George, who was developing an interest in girls just about
the same
time that Jimmy wanted to learn the finer points of zero-grav baseball.
From his mother, Kirk learned a great love of his
fellow man and of all
living things. She was a quiet and gentle woman who suffered her hus-
band’s long absences with a philosophical
attitude. In Kirk, she instilled
an admiration and love for the father he hardly knew by telling the boy of
great deeds done and
wonderful places his father had seen, and how he
was sacrificing his home life to help keep Earth and the quickly expanding
Federation
safe from its enemies. So to Jimmy Kirk, his father was not an
unknown cipher, but instead, a giant, heroic figure. And the vision of
space
that his mother described would stay with Kirk for the rest of his life.
Old Pete Kirk would take Jimmy on his knee and tell him
of the
glorious history of the Kirk family. Even when quite young, Kirk found it
hard to believe his grandfather’s tales. The hardest
to believe were his
favorites: the ancestor who was raised by apelike subhumans in darkest
Africa, the long—ago masked man who fought
for justice in the old West,
and the great bronzed figure who was the leading surgeon and scientist of
his day. But until the day he
died, old Pete Kirk swore the stories were
true. James Kirk made a vow to himself to go to the census computers
someday and check the
stories out, but events swept him up, and the old
man’s tales soon faded into fond memories.
From them, however, Kirk gleaned an
important message: A Kirk was
expected to be brave, resourceful, and intelligent. A leader of men and a
protector of the weak. Far
above other men and better than the best.
This oblique message was probably the primary reason for Kirk’s
starting to drive himself at an early age. He had the native
intelligence,
reasoning, and intuition necessary for achieving just a little bit more than
his fellow students, but he was no
bookworrn. Kirk excelled at both
sandlot and school-sanctioned sports, and he was outgoing and popular
with his classmates. Kirk was
one of those rare youngsters who truly
enjoyed school in all its phases, and he learned there to balance hard
work and hard play.
When
Kirk was fifteen, his father came to visit for a final time. Kirk
was now old enough to realize that his father was not in actuality
the
giant hero of his mother’s tales, but he was still somewhat awed by the
huge and smiling man who strode back into his family’s life
every six
months or so.
This was the longest visit in several years, and Richard Kirk was able to
spend time with both of his sons, both
together and separately. Sam Kirk
was entering his third year in college at the time, and announced that he
intended to become a
biologist. Richard Kirk took this news stoically, as
he realized that his elder son was no man of action, and his talents for
organization and intuitive research would take him far in the scientific
world. Seeing that his father approved, Sam also confessed
that he was
planning to marry a lovely young woman named Aurelan, and he wanted
his father to be the best man.
Richard Kirk was
immensely pleased, and when he turned to Jim and
asked if he had considered what he wanted to do with his life, Jim spoke
up: “I want
to go into Starfleet. I want to be a starship captain!"
Once again, Richard Kirk was pleased. But he knew that his wife
would be
opposed; she already had enough to worry about. Too, it was a
hard row to hoe. The boy had grit and brains, but it took much more
than
that to make it in Starfleet. Richard Kirk considered himself an intelligent
and able man, yet he had never even come near the apex
of his profes-
sion: commanding a starship. That was not for mere mortals. Starship
captains were a breed apart.
So Richard Kirk gave
his son a gentle smile and said, “There’s time
yet. You just might change your mind.”
“I won’t,” answered Jim. Richard Kirk nodded
slowly at his youngest
son and then led both of his children back into their house.
Two days later he had left. Three weeks after that,
he was dead.
Richard Kirk died a hero’s death when he directed his ship to inten-
tionally crash into a prototype Orion raider ship.
Not only did this action
prevent the destruction of a Federation outpost, it made the Orions think
twice about challenging the
Federation for supremacy in space and forced
them into a policy of small-ship piracy and smuggling, ridding the Federa-
tion of a
potentially dangerous enemy.
Kirk’s mother never recovered from the news. Her years-long wall of
reserve had been broken by Richard’s death, and she became
listless and
uncaring. When she finally died of a broken heart a year later, Kirk
considered it a blessing and comforted his grief with
the knowledge that
she was finally at peace.
To his surprise, Kirk discovered that his father’s heroic death had
qualified him to attend
Starfleet Academy with the recommendation of
his father’s commander, Admiral Komack.
Although he would rather have earned the
scholarship on his own, he
was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and upon graduation
from high school he entered Starfleet
Academy.
It was hard, very much so. Not only did Kirk have to contend with the
plethora of new and exciting knowledge presented almost
every day, but
in a curriculum designed to “wash out” cadets he was the butt of constant
teasing and hazing because of the unorthodox
way he had entered the
Academy. Some of this grew to the point of brutality, and Kirk was
ridden hard in particular by an upperclassman
named Finnegan.
But it only made Kirk more determined to make it. He took the insults
and jokes with grace, but being James T. Kirk, he
remembered them all.
Throughout the course of his academy days, he managed to repay them
all in like fashion—all except Finnegan, who
was always careful not to let
the grim-faced Cadet Kirk catch him out of uniform.
During this difficult period, Kirk had an intense
need for a hero,
someone to emulate. He already had his father, but the memories were
too painful, especially that of his mother,
pining away. This is perhaps
where Kirk subconsciously developed his determination never to have a
serious relationship with a woman.
But instead of one hero, Kirk found two. In Abraham Lincoln, Kirk
saw a parallel with himself—a young man who started with very
little
managing to overcome adversity and rise to a high position. Too, Lincoln
had to suffer the jeers of others, but still did not
lose his humility and
love for his fellow man. Kirk voraciously read everything he could get
on Lincoln (particularly the Sandburg
books) and vowed to himself that
he would be at least half the man Abraham Lincoln was.
In Garth of Izar, Kirk found another hero, one
who represented all
that Kirk hoped to achieve as a Starfleet officer—a brilliant tactician,
commander of a starship, fair and
impartial in his dealings with both his
crew and aliens. Kirk almost wore out his copy of Garth’s textbook of
starship battle tactics,
and it was the greatest day in his life when Garth
addressed the assembled cadets. If he wanted to be half the man Lincoln
was, Kirk
wanted to be twice the leader Garth was.
Eventually Kirk was graduated from Starfleet Academy—not at the top
of his class; his marks in
diplomacy and administration were a bit too low,
A Brief Look at Kirk's Career 31
as he considered these not necessary for a starship
commander to know.
Kirk didn’t intend to be a desk jockey, he wanted to command a starship.
And so he gave his greatest efforts to the
disciplines he would need most
to do so: tactics, math and electronics, space astronomy and exploration,
and the physical needs—
marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and
helmsmanship.
However, Kirk still had to enter Command School, and before doing
so, he had to
serve time on a ship in deep space. He was consequently
assigned to the scout ship Jim Bridger. However, midway through the
voyage,
Kirk contracted Vegan choriomeningitis and was remanded to a
hospital on a nearby starbase.
Despondent over this setback, as the fast-
moving world of Starfleet had
no time for raw ensigns to rec0ver from illnesses, Kirk utilized his
recovery time to further his
knowledge of starship operations and to
make up some of the self-imposed deficiencies of his Academy education
by constantly meeting
and talking to the ever-changing parade of aliens
and Federation envoys that visited the starbase. To his surprise, Kirk
found that he
had a natural ability to perceive and understand the
problems and views of the aliens. This was not enough of a revelation to
drive him
into the diplomatic corps, but it did instill in him a respect for
the myriad duties of a starship captain. It took more than an
understand-
ing of how a starship works and how best to blast an enemy out of
existence to be another Garth. It was a lesson Kirk was
not to forget.
Several days before Kirk was to return to the Academy for the long
wait for reassignment to a ship, the starbase was the
victim of a surprise
attack by a Klingon battle cruiser. As Kirk was still on the inactive list
and therefore had no specific battle
station, he was able to place himself
in a position where he could best see how the Klingons attacked the
starbase. The outcome was a
foregone conclusion, as the big guns of the
starbase had the Klingon ship far outclassed, and Kirk assumed that
the Klingon commander
had gone berserk in the fashion that Klingons
sometimes do.
Berserk or not, the Klingon was still a master tactician, and he man-
aged
to keep from being destroyed long enough to score a devastating hit
on the life-support systems of the starbase. As the Klingon ship
exploded,
Kirk turned away only to hear the strident tones of a depressurization
alarm. Without conscious thought, Kirk grabbed as many
pressure suits
as he could carry from a nearby storage locker and hurried down to the
life-support bays.
Finding them sealed off by the
automatic alarm systems, Kirk had a
sudden inspiration. He hurried into the nearest transporter alcove, quickly
estimated the range,
and beamed the pressure suits in to the trapped
crewmen. Several of them had already died from lack of oxygen and
exposure, but Kirk’s
quick action managed to save the majority of the
technicians.
Although Kirk couldn’t see that he had done all that much, the starbase
commander thought differently and recommended Kirk for his first award,
the Prantares Ribbon of Commendation, Second Class. But more
impor-
tant to Kirk, his quick thinking allowed him to secure an immediate berth
on a starship, the Farragut, commanded by the man who
was soon to
become his mentor, Captain Charles Garrovick.
Garrovick developed a soft spot for the young ensign when he discov-
ered Kirk
gazing longingly out of the starbase drydock at the majestic
Farragut. He took Kirk under his wing, becoming almost a second father
to
him, and helped him to learn the essentials for starship service.
When the crew of the Farragut met with the cloud creature and
Captain
Garrovick died, Kirk blamed himself for not having fired sooner. His
distress was especially hard when he learned that one of
the last things
Garrovick had done before being killed was to recommend that Kirk
stand for command, and Kirk became more determined
than ever to
become a starship captain. He now had the added incentive of feeling
that he must replace Garrovick, who was an especially
fine commander,
and therefore highly valuable to the Federation. He also vowed to some-
day destroy the cloud creature, a promise which
he eventually kept with
the help of Garrovick’s son.
Back at the Academy for command training, Kirk became involved
with Janice Lester,
a fiery young cadet whose mercurial personality both
attracted and repelled Kirk. Their affair continued throughout Kirk’s
training,
but came to a bad end when Janice failed to meet the exacting
Academy standards. Already high—strung, this unbalanced her even more,
and she took the unrealistic view that she had been rejected because of
her sex. She demanded that Kirk resign his commission in
protest, and
when he refused, she accused him of being “in on” the imagined conspir-
acy against her. Kirk wisely chose to stop seeing
Janice, and after a while
she drifted out of his life. He heard that she was training in astro-
archaeology, but did not see her again
until she used the ancient device of
the Camusians to exchange minds with him in a vain attempt to usurp the
powers of a starship
captain.
Having graduated from Command School, Kirk was then assigned to
the Starship Exeter as a helmsman. It was during this mission
that he acted
as orderly to his captain in the Axanar Peace Mission and was awarded
another commendation for his services. Just before
his tour of duty
aboard the Exeter was over, Kirk was forced to report his old friend Ben
Finney derelict in duty, causing a rift in
their friendship.
Having compiled an excellent record, Kirk was then transferred to the
destroyer Chesty Puller as first officer. It
was during this voyage that Kirk
A Brief Look at Kirk's Career 33
was forced to take over the ship when his captain was injured and
battle a
Klingon cruiser. Choosing the better part of valor, Kirk ordered a retreat,
but found his way blocked by yet another Klingon
ship. This was a
smaller but no less dangerous ship, and Kirk was forced to fight, as the
large ship was jamming his communications.
Utilizing his ship’s greater speed, he maneuvered the small Klingon
ship into his sights, but held back on the order to fire. Thinking
that the
Federation ship was helpless, both Klingons moved in, and then Kirk
ordered his men to fire while at the same time reversing
engines at full
warp.
This dangerous move had the effect that Kirk wanted. The smaller
Klingon ship was hit by the phaser blast, while
the battle cruiser’s phasers
hit only empty space. By the time that it could reverse course, Kirk’s ship
had gained just enough of a
lead to call for help, and the Klingon, not
wanting to face a starship in exchange for having eliminated a small
destroyer, pulled
away.
In reward for this action, Kirk was presented with the Medal of Honor,
and the Karagite Order of Heroism. He also got something
which was
even more desirable to him: command of his own ship.
However, not right away. First he was to serve as one of the represen—
tatives to an exchange program that had been arranged with the Klingons.
Luckily, Kirk did not have to travel to a Klingonese planet;
he was assigned
instead to serve as host and guide to a young Klingon officer, Kumara.
During the time that Kirk and Kumara were
roommates at a Starfleet
training facility (one carefully selected to reveal to the Klingons a mini-
mum of Federation technology), they
became good, if cautious, friends.
They parted with a great amount of respect for each other, and each had
the feeling that the other
would one day be a foe to reckon with.
After completing this unusual assignment to his superiors’ complete
satisfaction, Kirk received
his promised command: a brand-new ship, an
experimental-model Starstalker, which was also its name. The object of
the small, sleek ship
was to act as a quick-moving and virtually untrace-
, able weapon, much like the submarines of Earth’s past. Starstalker was
one of
three models being tested by the Federation for this type of work.
Although conditions were rather primitive, the ship being strictly
a
Shakedown model (with little provision made for comfort in any case),
Kirk could not have been happier. He knew that it was an'
exceptional
mark of confidence that he had been assigned the ship, and he was
determined not to fail.
The early part of the cruise went
well. The ship was virtually a flying
phaser, with speed and firepower comparable to a full—sized starship, and
Kirk forced his crew to
the limit with every conceivable test the Federa-
tion could think of and a few that he invented on the spot. In this, he was
ably
assisted by a no-nonsense, hardheaded chief engineer named Mont-
gomery Scott, who had helped to design Starstalker. Kirk also had
his
best friend from his Academy days, Gary Mitchell, as first officer. Kirk
had requested that Mitchell be assigned to Starstalker,
using his preroga-
tive as the first captain of a newly commissioned ship.
They ran into some trouble on Dimosous, where a group of
hostile
rodentlike natives attacked the crew, who had landed to check out a
report that dilythium crystals had been discovered on the
planet. Kirk
was engaged in moving his men into a retreat when one of the natives
aimed a poisoned dart at him. Mitchell threw himself
in the way and took
the dart that was intended for Kirk. When the crew reached the ship
safely, Kirk ordered that the nearest route to
a starbase hospital be
taken, a route which brought the ship dangerously close to the Romulan
Neutral Zone. The passage was uneventful,
but Kirk received a severe
reprimand for his action. His superiors were secretly pleased, however, as
they themselves had taken similar
risks for friends in the past. It was a
mark against Kirk’s service record, a mark for him in the eyes of his
fellow officers.
After two
years of experimentation, the Starstalker experiment was
shelved and Kirk was assigned another ship. It was the usual procedure
for one
of his rank (which was at this time commander) to be assigned as
second officer aboard a starship, or as captain of a scout. However,
Kirk
was immediately assigned as captain of a destroyer, which to his immense
delight he discovered was the Hua Citing, the first
command of his hero,
Captain Garth. Again, Kirk took Mitchell with him, along with another
officer whom Kirk considered one of his
planned “permanent staf ,”
Engineer Scott. Aboard the Hua C’hing, he was to acquire another, who
was at this time a new ensign: Walter
Sulu.
Kirk and company saw much action aboard the Hua C’hing. They
participated in the opening of the Rigellian System (which had been
pioneered a few years previously by Captain Christopher Pike aboard the
Enterprise) and in several furious battles against the Kzinti,
and in one
exceptional raid they captured a Klingon warlord who had been in the
Arualian System trying to undermine the Federation’s
influence. For
their bravery in this raid, almost all of the crew received Awards of
Valor, and Kirk was singled out for a Silver Palm
with Cluster to go with
his Medal of Honor.
Kirk served aboard the Hua C'hing for four years with similar success,
and when Captain Pike
was promoted to fleet captain, he chose James
Kirk as his successor to captain the Enterprise. Starfleet Command read—
ily concurred, and
less than ten years after he had graduated from
Command School, Jim Kirk had realized his ambition: command of a
starship.
A Brief Look
at Kirk's Career 35
Again taking along Mitchell, Scott, and Sulu, Kirk spent the previous
few days he had before assuming command in
gathering. together the
finest bridge crew he could find. Among these was Lieutenant Uhura,
whom Kirk had run across at a starbase,
chafing against the duties that
kept her from joining a regular crew. It seemed she had done her job too
well, and had been assigned as
a communications instructor, a job she did
competently but nevertheless despised.
Kirk also requested another fine officer, one highly
recommended by
his old friend Matt Decker: Lee Kelso, to be second navigator behind
Mitchell. As backup helmsman, Kirk chose Lieutenant
Kevin Riley, a
fiesty Irishman who had been Sulu’s roommate at the Academy.
Two of the men Kirk wanted had crossed his path in the
past, and he
had ambivalent feelings about both. However, he wanted his crew to be
the very best possible, and so personal feelings had
to be put aside. He
requested them both: Lieutenant Commander Finnegan as security offi-
cer, and Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney as
records officer. He got
only Finney, as Finnegan was up for a captaincy, and learning this, Kirk
didn’t want to spoil his chances. But
the lack of a top-notch security
officer would nag Kirk for several years, and at times he dearly wished he
had gotten the cocky but
competent Finnegan.
The post of science officer was already filled, as Pike‘s man had
requested to be reassigned to the Enterprise.
Kirk was leery about work-
ing with the Vulcan Spock, but was more than happy to have him. Spock
was generally acknowledged to be the
finest scientific mind Starfleet had,
and Kirk knew that he would prove invaluable in the months ahead. Just
how valuable even Kirk never
suspected.
After a short Shakedown cruise to check the modifications and repairs
to the Enterprise (Pike had been so active that the
ship hadn’t had a
thorough going-over in some time), Kirk and crew proceeded on several
important, if unexciting, missions. Then, one
fateful day, word came
from Starfleet that the Enterprise had been selected for an unusual
mission: to go where no man had gone before,
through the barrier on the
edge of our galaxy.
This was the mission that resulted in the deaths of Mitchell and Kelso,
and aided in the
decision of Dr. Piper to retire from space. But it was also
the baptism of fire for the new Captain of the Enterprise and his hand-
picked crew, and forged them together into a superbly efficient team.
With the promotion of Spock to first officer (in addition to his
science-
officer duties) and the assignment of Leonard McCoy as ship’s surgeon,
the complement of the Enterprise was complete.
James T.
Kirk had achieved his youthful desire: He commanded a
starship with the finest crew in the Federation. And the legend began to
grow.
