To keep all these important questions in perspective, it helps to read many of the posts in this thread in the voice of Hank Azaria’s “Comic Book Guy” from
The Simpsons.
To get the complete picture, Kargh does
not appear in the following episodes:
"Come What May"
"Center Seat" (vignette)
"World Enough and Time"
"Blood and Fire, Part 1"
"Enemy: Starfleet!"
"The Child"
"The Protracted Man"
"Change of Command" (vignette)
“Bread and Savagery”
Kargh
does appear in the following episodes:
"In Harm's Way"
"To Serve All My Days"
"No Win Scenario" (vignette)
"Blood and Fire, Part 2"
"Kitumba"
"Mind-Sifter"
Kirk's image appears to Kargh on a grainy viewscreen while his "ship" is under (simulated) attack in the Test of Victors; Kargh sees this unnamed starship captain for a total of about thirty seconds and hears him utter twenty-four words. If, years later, this same guy shows up in disguise wearing a hood in the dark of night over a campfire, I don't think it's that big of a surprise that Kargh doesn't recognize him or his voice.
Regarding having Kirk commanding the
Enterprise in a simulation that (probably) took place years ago, I’ll put on my Co-Executive Producer’s hat. It’s not really an “easy fix” to re-dress the bridge into a Pike-era bridge and shoot footage of Captain Pike doing all this rigmarole. In fact, it wasn’t easy to get James Cawley as Kirk to do this scene. In fact, we couldn’t. So the viewscreen footage is simply footage shot for (and lifted from) “Blood and Fire.” (If we wanted to have Pike in this onscreen footage, we’d still be waiting for the release of this vignette.)
Or maybe Kargh actually took his Test of Victors not all that long ago. Perhaps he’s a “Boy Wonder, promoted to Captain right out of the Academy” kind-of-guy, like J.J. Abrams’ Alternate Universe Kirk is. Also, we actually don’t know how well-known Kargh is in the universe in relation to Kang, Kor and Koloth. We only know how well-known Kargh
thinks he is going to become.