David Marcus - What did Kirk know and when did he know it?

[SpyOne]

I suppose I should start by saying that my original take on it was that Kirk learned he had a son when he met David.
He knew his old girlfriend had had a son in the years since he had last seen her, but did not realize his age.
It seemed like they had a erious relationship, but kind if an on-again/off-again one. But the strain was getting to her, and she finally decided to break it off.
That, in my opinion, is when Carol asked him to "stay away", because she still loved him and tended to fall back into being his girlfriend when he was around.
Later, she learned she was pregnant. And decided not to tell him, mostly for selfish reasons.

If you come at it from that view, it says something about Kirk that his reaction to finding out he has a son is not anger at not having been told, but questioning why his child wasn't told.

As for David needing a father figure, the deleted dialogue shows that he thought he knew who his father was. Whether this man had a relationship with Carol or not is an open question, but it seems Carol got someone to agree to be David's father for her.

------------
Pages ago someone mentioned Kirk in the Nexus, and disappointment that the girl there wasn't Carol, or Edith Keeler, or ....
To me the whole point there was that what Kirk had in the Nexus wasn't really his "ideal life".
Sure, Kirk talked about plans for his retirement with people, because that's what you do. You don't tell others, maybe even don't admit to yourself, that the only women you're considered spending your life with were named Starfleet and Enterprise and they have told you clearly that they don't want you around anymore.
I'm not sure the girl in the Nexus even had a face, because she wasn't real even in Kirk's mind.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Perhaps that sort of thing doesn't happen in your 'fancy' neck of the woods but it happens in mine.

That was pretty unnecessary.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I'm willing to go out on a limb and venture a guess that anyone hurting David physically or emotionally would have pissed Carol off.

Well, I meant when she thought that Kirk was taking Genesis away from her, but I guess the David thing works, too.

I suppose I should start by saying that my original take on it was that Kirk learned he had a son when he met David.
He knew his old girlfriend had had a son in the years since he had last seen her, but did not realize his age.
It seemed like they had a erious relationship, but kind if an on-again/off-again one. But the strain was getting to her, and she finally decided to break it off.
That, in my opinion, is when Carol asked him to "stay away", because she still loved him and tended to fall back into being his girlfriend when he was around.
Later, she learned she was pregnant. And decided not to tell him, mostly for selfish reasons.

If you come at it from that view, it says something about Kirk that his reaction to finding out he has a son is not anger at not having been told, but questioning why his child wasn't told.

I like it! It works well with what we know, and lets both Kirk and Carol be sympathetic.

To me the whole point there was that what Kirk had in the Nexus wasn't really his "ideal life".

In my headcanon Antonia and Kirk's life at the cabin were no more real that Picard's Dickensian Christmas was. She was a "What If?" of Kirk's life that he fantasized about. Antonia was Kirk's Girl With The White Parasol from Citizen Kane.

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

it says something about Kirk that his reaction to finding out he has a son is not anger at not having been told, but questioning why his child wasn't told.

Excellent point.

 

[SpyOne]

I have a fictional example of a man who "nobly stayed away":
On WKRP In Cincinnati, there was an episode where Les Nesman learns that the late Lester Nesman Sr was not his biological father. His biological father is a barber, and Les goes to his shop intending to confront him, but winds up instead getting a haircut and a conversation.
Les asks the barber if he has any kids, and the barber says he has a son he hasn't seen in decades, since he left shortly after the boy was born.
Les asks if he has ever thought about contacting his son, and the barber says several times he has, "but that's just me being selfish". He explains that "she found a good man", and so the boy has a father.
It is never suggested that he thinks he would be a bad influence or anything like that, just that he would be a disruption, and that the mom and he didn't get along.

Les thanks him for the conversation, leaves a generous tip (I believe he said he didn't have anything smaller than a $20, "so just keep it"), and leaves.
He started out mad at his mom for not telling him and mad at his dad for leaving, and ends up understanding that they both did what they thought was best.

 

[Brennyren]

Well, the thread exists because I was curious how most people interpreted that scene & I wanted to find out what they thought about exactly when Kirk found out about David. I was never expecting the huge debate about parental rights & all of that.

I can certainly believe that. But that's the problem with threads: once you launch them, you never know what they're going to get up to! At least you can take credit for launching a pretty interesting discussion.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Oh, true.

 

[1001001]

Oh, true.

One could say you're the father of this thread.

 

[DonIago]

He's been very active though, so clearly not a deadbeat.

Let's hope the mother doesn't sue him for custody.

"You had your thread and I had mine, and I wanted the posters in mine."

 

[Brennyren]

He's been very active though, so clearly not a deadbeat.

Let's hope the mother doesn't sue him for custody.

"You had your thread and I had mine, and I wanted the posters in mine."

 

[Nyotarules]

(As an aside, this is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of the Vanguard novels' use of Carol. Given her objections to Kirk, it would seem more than a little hypocritical of her to then haul her young son off to a dangerous deep-space Starbase where he would be surrounded by scads of Starfleet officers with decidedly military priorities, no more admirable than Kirk and often much less so. It would've made much more sense for her to raise him in some peaceful, research-oriented civilian setting.)

Then she would not be the first parent to be a hypocrite when it comes to their career choices. In STWOK she defended Starfleet when David was being critical

Could we please leave nuTrek out of this? Admiral Marcus isn't a TOS character and David isn't a nuTrek character.

You can leave out whatever you want, I choose not to. Unless both Carol Marcus were clones they had a father and his existence predates 2233

Or maybe Flint couldn't have children.

An Immortal body does not require offspring

One could say you're the father of this thread.

But he did not nobly stay away.....

 

[Timewalker]

You can leave out whatever you want, I choose not to. Unless both Carol Marcus were clones they had a father and his existence predates 2233

Yes, they both had fathers. But nuCarol did not have an adult son (it would have been biologically impossible, given how young she and nuKirk were).

I don't get why it's so impossible to understand why nuTrek is irrelevant to this conversation. They are separate timelines, and the main characters aren't even the same ages. You might as well bring in the Mirror Universe characters and claim that Mirror-Kirk should have stepped in to insist on his parental rights.

An Immortal body does require offspring

Whut?

 

[SpyOne]

Unless the Paramount/Viacom reunification goes through, the rights to the J.J.Abrams version of Trek are separate from the rights to the TV Shows.
I am pretty sure that if Discovery tried to feature Admiral Marcus they would get sued.

For that reason, I don't think discussion of "nuTrek" characters really belongs in a discussion of TOS or the pre-Abrams movies.

 

[Nyotarules]

Yes, they both had fathers. But nuCarol did not have an adult son (it would have been biologically impossible, given how young she and nuKirk were).

I don't get why it's so impossible to understand why nuTrek is irrelevant to this conversation. They are separate timelines, and the main characters aren't even the same ages. You might as well bring in the Mirror Universe characters and claim that Mirror-Kirk should have stepped in to insist on his parental rights.


Whut?

1. It is relevant to me
2. Typo

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't get why it's so impossible to understand why nuTrek is irrelevant to this conversation. They are separate timelines

After the divergence, yes, they are. Before it, they are ONE timeline.

(I'm deliberately choosing to ignore Simon Pegg's "change the past" theory, because I see no sense in it. And like I said, it's only a theory...not proven, or even canon. )

In the end, Admiral Marcus is only irrelevant because we have no idea what his prime counterpart was like. We don't know what happened post-2233 to turn him into the lunatic we saw in STID, or whether Marcus-prime even lived long enough to meet his grandson. It's a blank slate, really. So in THAT sense, yes, Marcus is irrelevant, because for all we know, he died in the prime timeline before even knowing about David.

@SpyOne: As I understand it, the Trek novels are now free to mention characters and events that were first depicted in a Kelvin film. So possibly we CAN one day read about prime versions of characters like Alex Marcus or Richard Robau (side note: I asked Faran Tahir on Twitter if he'd play Robau-prime in DSC, and he said he'd love to do it). I can only assume that DSC itself is also free to do this. There's no longer anything that I'm aware of which would prevent it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If Prime Admiral Marcus was anything like his Kelvin version I have a theory that Dr Marcus projected her daddy issues onto her child.

That's really not at all unreasonable.

And to turn it around, now that you've mentioned it, I have to wonder whether (nu)Marcus was written with that in mind, to be someone who in the Prime Universe would have a) fueled Carol's desire to keep David out of "Kirk's world" and b) fueled David's distrust of Starfleet (aka "the military").

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

When Carol and her father actually encounter each other on the Vengeance, she seems surprised at what's happened to him. I got the distinct impression that something happened after the divergence to make him into the nutbar that we saw. I'm suspecting - hoping, really - that he was a good man up until that point. So if Marcus-prime lived long enough, he could have continued to be that way.

Neither version of Carol appeared to have a problem with Starfleet in general. (Carol-prime defended Starfleet to her Regula I colleagues, and nuCarol was IN Starfleet.) And David's attitude is understandable - he says "scientists have always been pawns of the military". He has no idea what Starfleet is actually like because he's never been around it. He's prejudiced because he doesn't know anything ABOUT Starfleet.

Carol's problem was more along the lines of, since Kirk was the best and the brightest of all Starfleet captains, he's going to be in dangerous situations 24/7. If Kirk had been, say, a starbase commander, or just someone who wasn't always going to be in danger, then she might have let him in to David's life.

 

[Kor]

I agree with the idea of just considering TOS/TOS movies to be their own continuity, and not retconning in any later spinoffs such as ENT and NuTrek into the discussion.

Kor

 

[XCV330]

I agree with the idea of just considering TOS/TOS movies to be their own continuity, and not retconning in any later spinoffs such as ENT and NuTrek into the discussion.

Kor

Generations makes that problematic. TNG directly links to every show but Discovery.

 

[Commishsleer]

I have a fictional example of a man who "nobly stayed away":
On WKRP In Cincinnati, there was an episode where Les Nesman learns that the late Lester Nesman Sr was not his biological father. His biological father is a barber, and Les goes to his shop intending to confront him, but winds up instead getting a haircut and a conversation.
Les asks the barber if he has any kids, and the barber says he has a son he hasn't seen in decades, since he left shortly after the boy was born.
Les asks if he has ever thought about contacting his son, and the barber says several times he has, "but that's just me being selfish". He explains that "she found a good man", and so the boy has a father.
It is never suggested that he thinks he would be a bad influence or anything like that, just that he would be a disruption, and that the mom and he didn't get along.

Les thanks him for the conversation, leaves a generous tip (I believe he said he didn't have anything smaller than a $20, "so just keep it"), and leaves.
He started out mad at his mom for not telling him and mad at his dad for leaving, and ends up understanding that they both did what they thought was best.

Unfortunately that scenario does not match my personal real-life observations but you know Kirk and David are fictional characters so their interaction probably match fictional scenarios better.
And David didn't seem angry at Kirk at all except when he thought that Kirk was one of Khans goons. And it all worked our well in the end except for the David dying part - which most probably had nothing to do with Kirk's absence in his life and more to do with a controversial project he and his mother were working on.