Thanks so much!
Spoilers The Autobiography of James T. Kirk - announcement and reviews
- Thread starter Kertrats47
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Thanks so much!
It's definitely different then the movies, and I bring in a tos character in what I think is organic to what we know about kirk's years at the academy.
Thanks I'll check it out. Does the ratings information cushman gathered get refuted? That was what I found so revelatory. I'd be sad to find out that wasn't true.
Yes it does; Cushman was misinterpreting the ratings information extremely heavily in that case, cherry-picked data from the week almost immediately following an admittedly-strong premiere, and didn't actually seem to understand how the various ratings measurements in the 60s worked in general. In fact, Star Trek Fact Check has an article specifically on that.
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Worth a mention that Star Trek Fact Check is written by TrekBBS member Harvey.
This is an excellent read. I've just past the TMP segment and into the second 5YM. I think the thing I've enjoyed the most Kirk's emotional response to some of the major events that he's carried guilt over; Gary's death, Sam's, and of course, the impact of Edith on his life. I also like the way that Admiral Nogura has been fleshed out to become a very believable character.
I think I've managed to figure out what 'the bundle' is. Can't wait to see if I'm right.
I think I've managed to figure out what 'the bundle' is. Can't wait to see if I'm right.
Glad you're liking it!
An overall very enjoyable read but I am uncertain if I enjoyed the reinterpretation of the Edith Keeler romance. The author portrays Kirk's time trapped in the 1930s with Keeler as the only time he felt content, free of Starfleet obligations and truly happy. Having watched The City on the Edge of Forever many times, I never got this feeling from Kirk at all.
In fact, this description seems to fit Kirk during the episode The Paradise Syndrome.
Which brings up a very glaring omission from Kirk's autobiography, there is absolutely no mention of Miramanee or of Kirk's marriage to her or the fact she was pregnant with his child. I found this to very odd and detracted from the believability of the memoir. Anyone know why this particular significant moment from Kirk's life was omitted?
In fact, this description seems to fit Kirk during the episode The Paradise Syndrome.
Which brings up a very glaring omission from Kirk's autobiography, there is absolutely no mention of Miramanee or of Kirk's marriage to her or the fact she was pregnant with his child. I found this to very odd and detracted from the believability of the memoir. Anyone know why this particular significant moment from Kirk's life was omitted?
I think I know why.
I think my interpretation of the City on the Edge of Forever is that the reason Kirk was able to let himself fall in love was because he was away from his duties. That episode never specifically says how long he and Spock are trapped in the past, but given what happens to Spock's machine the first time he uses it, the implication was they were there a while, and I thought it would be natural that Kirk might be changed by the experience and allow himself to fall in love - some of this was influenced by Harlan Ellison's first draft teleplay, which had scenes of domesticity between Kirk and Edith. Because I thought this was a very important relationship for Kirk, and because I also had to address the importance of his relationship to Carol Marcus, I felt it would diminish these two relationships to add the events of the Paradise Syndrome. I rationalized it by saying that Kirk fell in love with Miramanee when he had amnesia, he didn't know who he was, and once he got his memory back, this relationship may not have been as important to him as the others. But I definitely struggled with it, and I certainly think your criticism is valid, its just as an author the choice I made I thought worked better for the overall arc of Kirk's character in the book.
I think you made the right call, David. "The Paradise Syndrome" is more memorable for its goofiness than its emotional content. If I were trying to remember all of Kirk's love interests, Miramanee would be pretty far down on the list.
Whereas Miramanee has always been one of my favorite of Kirk's love interests. In retrospect, the story has problems with its portrayal and casting of Native Americans, but Sabrina Scharf was quite charming and had good chemistry with Shatner. And, as with "City on the Edge," its story gives Kirk the time to develop a real, believable relationship, as opposed to the usual whirlwind courtships and flirtations. The episode also has one of the show's best, most moving musical scores.
I can understand David's reasoning with regard to the overall narrative in the book. It can be tricky to recast an episodic series into a more unified arc, and there are bound to be redundancies and inconsistencies. Still, I'm not sure I'd agree that the relationship wouldn't matter to Kirk once he regained his memory. It wasn't that his amnesia changed who he was. The episode established from the beginning that he already yearned for a simpler life and the chance to be happy; indeed, that had been a recurring theme for Kirk ever since "The Naked Time" two years earlier. His relationship with Miramanee was his a-beach-to-walk-on fantasy made real, a simple life without duty to get in the way of love. Plus there's the fact that she conceived and lost his child. There's no way he'd dismiss something like that as unimportant.
I can understand David's reasoning with regard to the overall narrative in the book. It can be tricky to recast an episodic series into a more unified arc, and there are bound to be redundancies and inconsistencies. Still, I'm not sure I'd agree that the relationship wouldn't matter to Kirk once he regained his memory. It wasn't that his amnesia changed who he was. The episode established from the beginning that he already yearned for a simpler life and the chance to be happy; indeed, that had been a recurring theme for Kirk ever since "The Naked Time" two years earlier. His relationship with Miramanee was his a-beach-to-walk-on fantasy made real, a simple life without duty to get in the way of love. Plus there's the fact that she conceived and lost his child. There's no way he'd dismiss something like that as unimportant.
This is my feeling also. Whether the episodes itself is considered goofy or not, the event that occurred is a very key moment in Kirk's life.
With the David Marcus arc being a key driving force of the novel (and I think is fantastically well executed!) and Kirk's regret over not being a proper father, I think the loss of an unborn child would have an even greater impact on him and how he views his relationship with his son.
This also connect sto the only other element of the novel I had some misgivings about; the writing off of THE FINAL FRONTIER as a joke that never happened. This really startled me. I know the movie has many issues, but at its core, it always felt like the most Roddenberry in subject matter of all the original cast films and to simply dismiss it felt very wrong to me. Also, as part of the joke, it is suggested Kirk may have fathered another son! But this too is quickly forgotten by the next page. After so much drama built around David Marcus, it felt completely out of character for Kirk just laugh this off so to speak.
So I am curious why the creative choice to dismiss the Final Frontier storyline? It may be slightly ridiculous, but no more so than the Apollo adventure that was retained for memoir.
Hope you do not think I am book bashing. I really did enjoy the majority of the novel and believe you did an incredible job connecting all the dots and adding some much needed depth of character.
I don't think you're book bashing at all! I wrote the book with expecting this kind of interaction.
I guess I slightly disagree with Chris - the ending of Paradise Syndrome we have Kirk saying goodbye to Miramanee - she's dying, he seems sad, but doesn't seem distraught. That may have just been an acting choice, but he's having a completely different reaction to her death than he had to Edith's. So to me, that reinforces the idea that part of the relationship was based partly on the fact that Kirk didn't know who he was. Even when he tells McCoy to take care of Miramanee, he isn't the distraught husband, he's captain of the enterprise. so it always looked to me watching that episode that the relationship wasn't as important once he was himself again.
As far as Final Frontier, there was just too much in that movie that I couldn't accept for me to accept it as canon - Spock's half brother whose mother is a "vulcan princess" - I don't remember anywhere else anybody talking about vulcan royalty, the fact that there's a barrier around the interior of the galaxy, just like there's one on the exterior (which I'm also not a fan of, but I accept), the fact that it takes only six hours to get to the center of the galaxy, the fact that the center of the galaxy is not a black hole (which is the prevailing scientific theory, and was I believe even at the time of the making of the movie), the fact that the Enterprise fires photon torpedoes and they explode only A FEW FEET AWAY from kirk, Spock and McCoy. Now, there are a bunch of things I like about the movie - the idea of the failure of Nimbus 3 (which I included in my first book), Kirk saying "Excuse me" to god, McCoy's backstory about his father, and I disagree that I "dismissed" it" - I just found a way to include it that made much more sense to me, and I thought was an interesting return to the Roman planet. But I take your point that I dismiss the fact that Kirk may have had another son, that it might have been glib on my part (I guess I could've have added that it wasn't his son, it was the Procounsel's, but Drusilla decided to lie to him about who his father was.
) But I liked McCoy giving him a hard time about it, and it was the only time in the book that I reference the potential consequences of the original series portrayal of "Kirk the space lothario".
Or maybe it was different when Edith died because he made the choice to let her die and had that guilt to deal with on top of his grief. A lot of people faced with the imminent death of a loved one will be numb, subdued -- they need time to work through it. Often the crying doesn't start until later. It takes a while before it really hits you.
I have a lot of the same problems, but I've come up with ways to rationalize them. As for the "center of the galaxy" thing, there are only three near-consecutive lines in the movie that even mention it. If you skip over, like, 20 or 30 seconds' worth of the film, just ignore that brief exchange, then the problem goes away. (Or maybe "the center of the galaxy" is some species' poetic nickname for some closer astronomical feature.) As for the photon torpedoes, I had the thought that maybe they penetrated deep underground before they exploded and the blast we saw was just the very small part of it that reached the surface.
The "Vulcan princess" thing is odd, but a lot of things we've seen about Vulcans are hard to reconcile with the overall image we have of them, like "Yesteryear" establishing that they had family shrines to their gods, or, really, the whole koon-ut-kal-if-fee thing and the "property of the victor" business. I remember my father seeing The Search for Spock on TV and asking how it was possible to reconcile all that elaborate ritual and mysticism in the closing scenes on Vulcan with a logic-based culture. The fact is, civilizations are inconsistent and contradictory things, because they have a lot of history and a lot of conflicting ideas and traditions going into them. So I can't rule out that there might actually be such a thing as a "Vulcan princess."
There'd be a certain sense to Sha Ka Ree being in close proximity to Nimbus III too when you take "The Way to Eden" into account. Both were in and around the RNZ, after all. Maybe Sevrin's calculations and research were close but not quite there.
Your rationales are no bigger than ones I make for other Trek, it's just that as a whole for me I feel there's too much to rationalize in FF to make it fit easily into canon, although it is canon just because it's filmed, which is why I included it in my book. I think the Vulcan princess thing to me is different than Vulcan mysticism, since the Vulcans have established telepathy and mind-melding. Vulcan princess implies royalty, which is NEVER mentioned anywhere else. I think it was a lazy line by a writer trying to add color where none was necessary.
My interpretation of the Vulcan princess is she is one of the highest rsnked Kolinahru. She may have not been so when she bonded with Sarek, that could have come later.
Yeah, "princess" might just be a translation issue, meaning Sarek's first wife was just a high-ranking noble. There's no doubt that Vulcan has nobility. Perhaps Spock and Sarek both qualify as Vulcan princes.
Or maybe it's like "Jewish princess"?
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