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Kirk drift—misremembering a character…

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Anson Mount's Pike (aka Space Dad) is probably my favorite thing about SNW. That's why I was so disappointed he was barely in episodes 1 and 3 this season.
 
Laura Cynthia Chambers said:
And maternal mortality, not to mention young mortality in general, was more common in those days.

Were any other Trek characters similarly mis-characterized (not necessarily as lovers) in people's collective memory?
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Late reply, but Scotty. He was a pretty serious guy in TOS, regularly in command. He Went Through Some Things in there, and it wasn't until S3 where he started being more and more comic relief. His accent wasn't nearly as heavy as people remember it to be. He was only actually drunk once onscreen and drank relatively rarely.

I mean, I think the whole cast got distilled into more and more stereotype as the movies went on, but TOS Scotty was pretty much a rock. Sharp and smart in an engine room or in the command chair.
 
Warped9 said:
To be accurate the expression “Kirk drift” isn’t solely just about Kirk specifically. It describes a broader idea. In that sense any fictional character, particularly in Trek, can be subject to “Kirk drift.”

So the discussion of how any of the TOS characters have been “drifted” from their original portrayals in TOS is fair game.

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lol. Kirk drift specifically applies to Kirk and Kirk alone.
If we want to talk about Pike drift, I'm glad he drifted away from the boring stick in the mud that the 60s gave us. But that's an entirely different character and different drift.
 
Tallguy said:
Oh! We're on topic! I wasn't expecting that.

I would argue (convincingly or otherwise) that the more serious, "dour", dare I say lonely Captain Kirk was more in line with Roddenberry's original intent. Based on his first season (certainly early first season) portrayal and GR's notion of basing Kirk on Horatio Hornblower. Hornblower is a man riddled with self-consciousness, doubt, anxiety who... manages to be nearly perfect at most things he tries and manages to have an affair even while a prisoner of war. Not really sure what way I'm arguing there, to be honest. I suppose it's a question of balance.
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What struck me about Hornblower was that he very shy with the opposite sex. The woman had to make the first move, or even the first several moves. His landlady's daughter when he was ashore for an extended period during a truce and the navy was downsized. The woman who befriended him when he was an escaped POW in France. The fictitious daughter of the real Wellesley family, enormously his superior in social rank. Hornblower could take large calculated risks in battle or planning a raid, but if it was all up to him he would have been single all his life.
 
Henoch said:
My imagination (Kirk's rank progression and when was Lester was never covered on-screen, so, it's fair game to make up). SNW has Kirk as a Lt. in ~2259. He shouldn't achieve Captain rank in only a few years. He should progress to Lt. Cmd, then Commander. This gives six years to make Captain at age 31 in 2265 so he can be age 34 in 2268.

I never said he destroyed his ship, only wrecked it. My Kirk drift is he is wrecks his ships. Evidence of this Kirk drift starts in TOS:WNMHGB (wrecked it), then drifted in TWOK (wrecked it), TSFS (destroyed it), TVH (wrecked/sank it), TUC (wrecked it), ST:2009 (wrecked it), ST:ID (wrecked it), ST:Beyond (destroyed it). Am I missing any?

<edit. SNW alt timeline, Destroyed it.>
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In Where No Man Has Gone Before, "wrecked" is an overstatement. It was damaged and temporarily lost warp drive, but was repairable within a relatively short time with the Enterprise's own crew.

I think the real lesson is that Star Trek movies are dangerous.
 
kkt said:
What struck me about Hornblower was that he very shy with the opposite sex. The woman had to make the first move, or even the first several moves.
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This is the Kirk of "Mudd's Women." He is visibly nervous and stammering around Eve when she's in his quarters. Compare that to McCoy who is more composed when Ruth is in Sickbay.
 
tonk'peh said:
You seem to have very little understanding of what toxic masculinity actually means.

Again, I haven’t watched SNW yet so I can’t comment on Pike’s portrayal there, but in ‘The Cage’ doesn’t he make a comment about being uncomfortable with having a woman on the bridge? I assume that’s what they meant, since as you said, Pike’s character is barely developed in TOS.

Would you argue that this is not a toxic attitude? Does it not indicate that Pike somehow feels that having a woman on the bridge is a threat to his masculinity? Is changing that aspect of his character part of some sinister feminist agenda to destroy manly men? Lol.
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No where is it indicated TOS Pike feels his masculinity is threatened by having a woman on the bridge. Hell, Number One is already there. Within context of 1960’s television Pike expressing his unease with having a woman on the bridge suggests he is suspicious of her possible lack of professionalism. Obviously, as his states, this isn’t a problem with Number One. It’s also apparent Pike has no problem with another women we see later on the bridge.

The problem in that scene is that line about “a woman on the bridge” was an awkward callout to the audience (of the era) through “the fourth wall.” The scene would have been better served if the line had been dropped altogether. And note it doesn’t appear in “The Menagerie.” If Pike had to say anything it could have been along the lines of grumbling about having to break in a new junior crew member as his yeoman, regardless of gender.

Most of Pike’s interactions with Colt smack of light comedy that feels out of place in the story. Later in TOS we see Janice Rand is much more serious and adult minded in her interactions with Kirk.

In universe one could rationalize Colt as a truly raw and green crew member who finds herself assigned to Pike much to her (and his) surprise. For some reason left unexplained there was no one else more experienced available to replace Pike’s previous yeoman referenced as having been killed on Rigel 7.

tonk'peh said:
You seem to have very little understanding of what toxic masculinity actually means.
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:guffaw:
 
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I think Pike's line is to tell us that up until recently starships had all-male crews. Only recently have women been attending and graduating from Starfleet Academy and getting starship assignments, and only very recently have they started getting bridge assignments. I never took Pike's line to mean that he had any problem with women on his bridge (and, hence, I don't consider it any kind of toxic masculinity), it's just that having a woman on the bridge is so new, he literally isn't used to it, Number One excepted.
 
Mostly to clarify for the audience that the women were real officers, and this wasn't a cruise ship or something. Remember the first women weren't even admitted to West Point and Annapolis until 1976, so they wouldn't have been eligible to work on the bridges of ships until the early 1980s...
 
Poltargyst said:
I think Pike's line is to tell us that up until recently starships had all-male crews.
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Yes. It was exposition to point out, hey we have women on military ships now!

In universe, my best cover story is that Pike himself was new to the Enterprise, and his previous ships had no women, especially on the bridge.
 
Poltargyst said:
I think Pike's line is to tell us that up until recently starships had all-male crews. Only recently have women been attending and graduating from Starfleet Academy and getting starship assignments, and only very recently have they started getting bridge assignments.
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It can't have been too recent, seeing as Number One had enough experience to be qualified to take command of a starship.
 
Pike's previous yeoman was a man who died on Rigel VII. A recent episode of SNW revisited these events. I think his comment is taken out of context. He's used to having his own male yeoman where he expects him to be, not a woman popping up where he doesn't expect her to be.

The back story of the yeoman character is consistent. She is new in post and clashes awkwardly with her captain before unrequited feelings start to develop. There's this line, Kirk getting Smith's name wrong, and clashing with Rand over his diet.

Particularly in the early episodes, the captain character's sense of loneliness, of feeling the weight of command, was a palpable character trait. A bit like Babylon 5, certain interesting character arcs get diluted by cast changes. I think in modern storytelling, they might have kept the ball bouncing until Yeoman Colt/Smith/Rand got squished by the Kevlans.
 
ZapBrannigan said:
Yes. It was exposition to point out, hey we have women on military ships now!

In universe, my best cover story is that Pike himself was new to the Enterprise, and his previous ships had no women, especially on the bridge.
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That's possible, but why couldn't it be that Pike had been on Enterprise a while and only recently were women getting bridge assignments?
 
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