Good to see dads getting a good name for a change...

Kirks grows up without his dad in his life so ends up becomming a delinquant instead of a respected starfleet officer.

Nice to see fathers getting some credit/praise for a change. Normally dads are either the bad guy or just outright dopey.

 

Surely it's evil stepmothers that get all the bad rep

I've only really noticed the daddy issues lately in Lost. So many flawed fathers are in that show.

 

If you read the screenplay excerpts in this thread, you'll see that it seemed as though Kirk was on the straight and narrow despite losing his dad until he more or less snapped from his uncle/stepfather's provocations. It's true that fathers were pretty heroic in the film. Kirk's father gives his life. Spock's father comes across as sympathetic from the outset. I think in general fathers have been handled fairly in Star Trek. Worf and Alexander come to mind. There was the occasional deadbeat dad--Gul Dukat or Enabran Tain--but I feel as though that's the exception in Star Trek.

 

Hey, Chancellor Gorkon jump-starts the road to peace and the plot of an entire movie... and he's a dad

 

Dukat, for all his evil, didn't seem like a deadbeat dad. He obviously loved Ziyal (and his other children) very much. That was probably his only redeeming quality.

 

Sisko also seemed like a very devoted parent, as did his own dad.

 

Good point. When Ziyal died, Dukat went from evil to evil and crazy, too. That's probably what marked the beginning of his downfall.

 

I'm sorry to say that, to me, it always seemed like Picard had sort of a deadbeat dad from the way he acted toward him when we saw him on the show.

 

Hikaru and Demura Sulu!

 

Maurice Picard

 

I think he pretty much became a deadbeat dad when he told her to stay on DS9 and be damned in "By Inferno's Light."

 

He was angry with Ziyal in that scene, but that doesn't mean he was a bad father. Quite the opposite, really. If he was, he wouldn't have ever cared what she did.

 

Just to throw out a couple more genre examples: Batman's father has often been portrayed in a very positive light. There are various incarnations where Thomas Wayne is seen imparting important wisdom on young Bruce before his death.

Superman's fathers, both Jor-El and Pa Kent, are also typically seen as good, strong father figures, too.

 

I don't think that anger quite makes up for setting your daughter up to die in a system-wide armageddon. If he had really cared, he would have abducted her, called off the attack, or alerted the Federation.

 

Actually, in the deleted scene, Kirk's mom doesn't come off too well, either. She's apparently away from home a lot and leaving her kids with someone who doesn't treat them very well. Why does she have to be gone so much? Is she paying attention to her kids at all when she's home? They feel they can't tell her what's happening when she's gone?

Even with the uncle scene cut, we can still infer from the Vette scene that she travels, Jim is a handful to raise, and he obviously gets worse, not better. So, what kind of mom was she?

Come to think about it, she wasn't even there when Jim was promoted to captain. Given the circumstances that led to it, you'd especially think she'd have wanted to be there. Her boy gets justice on the man who killed her husband and saves the Earth at the same time. And she can't fit being there for her son's reward into her schedule?

Just sayin'.

 

That could be said about several military parents I've known. Just because they wear the uniform and have a job to do that takes them away from their family doesn't make them bad parents.

As for her being there when he was promoted - the bulk of the fleet were in a place far far away leaving them unable to mobilise in time rescue Earth or Vulcan... if you can't make that occasion, visiting your son is out of the question

 

Absolutely. He always struck me as nothing less than a supremely badass parent.

 

Oh yeah. The Siskos are the most functional family in Star Trek, bar none.

And how do we know that Kirk's mom wasn't at the award ceremony? That was a crowded auditorium. Just because she didn't get a close-up doesn't mean she wasn't there. Story-wise, it was simply more important to show that Old Spock was there.