A new mystery to solve! Who was that woman?
Is Scotty's accent actually bad?
- Thread starter Dr Helen Noel
- Start date
Identified here as Sally Yarnall:
Unnamed USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) command personnel | Memory Alpha | Fandom
Kirk tells Shahna that he was born on Earth in "The Gamesters of Triskelion." Kirk tells the mess hall in "Charlie X" that he wants them to make their meatloaf taste like turkey in commemoration of Thanksgiving, implying that he's American. (Yes, there's a Canadian Thanksgiving as well, but TOS was an American TV series, and Occam's razor applies here.)
And there's never a point in "The Conscience of the King" where it's said that Kirk was in his teens on Tarsus IV. Kevin Riley says that he was a child, but Kirk never says that he was. I think the original assumption when they wrote the episode was that a young Kirk was stationed there. It's since been retconned to Kirk being a teenager who went there with his parents, as it was established in "The Deadly Years" that Kirk was 34 years old (in other words, a few years younger than William Shatner).
So TOS Kirk was in all likelihood intended to be an American, despite him being played by a Canadian actor who occasionally used non-American pronunciations.
Last edited:
Ah, good to know. I haven't gotten there yet.
Those are fair points, although the suggestion is that Thanksgiving is a shipboard holiday, not a Kirk-specific one.
KIRK: History files. Subject, former Governor Kodos of Tarsus Four, also known as Kodos the Executioner. After that, background on actor Anton Karidian.
COMPUTER: Working. Kodos the Executioner, summary. Governor of Tarsus Four twenty Earth years ago.
Emphasis added. So Kirk was 13 when Kodos was Governor (unless we want to go into the long and ultimately fruitless rigamarole as to how old Kirk really is based on "Deadly Years"--I think we can safely say he was in his early to mid teens).
Or a big America buff.
I was not debating that the Kodos thing happened 20 years before. They say it several times in the episode. I was debating that it was intended by the writers of "The Conscience of the King" that Kirk was only 13 years old twenty years before. William Shatner was born on March 22, 1931, so he was 35 years old when they were shooting the episode. At that point in the series timeline, they hadn't yet established a definitive age for Captain Kirk, and it's very possible that Shatner was playing Captain Kirk as his age or slightly older. So the intention may have been that Kirk was stationed on Tarsus IV as a 16 to 18 year old cadet. Later developments on the show made that impossible, of course.
Well then, it's impossible, isn't it?
Either we're taking Season 1 in isolation (in which case, all we have is turkeys) or we're taking TOS as a whole, in which case he was on Tarsus IV at 13.
He could be on Tarsus IV at age 13 for a brief visit, that happened to coincide with the colony's worst events. This in no way keeps him from being an American.
He could be on Tarsus IV at age 13 for a brief visit, that happened to coincide with the colony's worst events. This in no way keeps him from being an American.
This is true. It also in no way keeps him from being Israeli.
How so?
TAS:
TOS crew plus a Caitian, Edosion and South American
TNG:
Picard: France
Riker: USA
Troi: Betazed
Data: a colony
Worf: Qo'Nos
Geordie: African Confederation
Dr Crusher: the moon
Wesley Crusher: I have no idea
Dr Pulaski: Poland
Tasha Yar: a colony
Barclay: USA
Ogawa: Canada
Guinan: El Aurea
DS9:
Sisko: USA
Jake: I have no idea
Kira: Bajor
Odo: Founder Homeworld
Jadzia/Dax: Trill
Ezri: a colony
Bashir: UK
O'Brien: Ireland
Keiko: Japan
Molly: Enterprise D
Kirayoshi: DS9
Garak: Cardassia
Zial: Bajor or the transport ship or the labor camp (I forget exactly when she was born)
Quark: Ferenginar
Nog: Ferenginar
Rom: Ferenginar
Lita: Bajor
Voyager:
Janeway: USA
Chackotay: a colony
7: a colony
EMH: Jupiter Station
Tuvok: lunar colony on the moon of Vulcan's sister planet
Tores: a colony
Paris: USA
Kim: USA
Neelix: a moon of Telex
Kes: Ocampan underground city
Icheb: a world in the delta quadrant
Naomi: quantum double of Voyager
Naomi's mom: I have no idea
Enterprise:
Archer: USA
T'Paul: Vulcan
Trip: USA
Hoshi: Japan
Reed: UK
Mayweather: a cargo ship
Phlox: Denobula
Porthos: I have no idea
I'll give you Voyager with 3 Americans, but Enterprise has 2, TNG 2 if you go down to Barclay and DS9 only 1 confirmed American as far as I know.
As a Canadian I feel pretty confident saying that Shatner's pronunciation of "sabotage" is all his.
Last edited:
Now you're getting closer to what I was saying, which was that the assumptions that "The Conscience of the King" was written under did not necessarily hold true for the entire series. But I think it's illuminating to think about what the creators had in mind at the time they produced the episodes, not what other people concluded about the episodes decades after they were produced.
Last edited:
It'd be particularly illuminating to know if his age was stated in the first writer's guide. I suppose if Blish ever mentioned his age in Star Trek, that'd be insightful, too, but I don't think he does...
Based on? I don't recall any reference to Pulaski's country of origin.
The first season guide is not readily available online, but both the original March 1964 series pitch and the April 1967 third revision, state that the captain's age is "about thirty-four".
When is Bashir ever stated to be British? Obviously Sid is, and Richard Bashir sounded like a Londoner, but the Picard example means they could be French, or from anywhere. Dialogue in Dr Bashir, I Presume suggests they moved around a lot.
Is it because he cosplays as James Bond and a Spitfire pilot? O’Brien does those things too, but he’s definitely not British. Neither of them are Texan, but they play the Battle of the Alamo.
Is it because he cosplays as James Bond and a Spitfire pilot? O’Brien does those things too, but he’s definitely not British. Neither of them are Texan, but they play the Battle of the Alamo.
Which I'm sure was the source of the "I'm 34 years old" line from "The Deadly Years."
It's also worth noting that they wouldn't update Kirk's age with each new iteration of the Writers' Guide.
Jeffty Is Five. Jeffty is always Five.
My memory of the last time I was perusing Memory Alpha and Beta. They're blocked on my work computer, which is generally what I'm on when posting here, so the whole list was from memory.
Per memory alpha…
According to the video game Star Trek: Starship Creator, Pulaski was born in Krakow, Poland
Apocrypha section
Similar threads
