shades of KIRK/Shatner

Instead of addressing all the nasty things in this post point by point, I'll limit my response to one example: the captain/lieutenant matter. Look, you either deliberately misinterpretted the point I was obviously making or you are a moron. Which is it? You've been moving the goalposts all through this "debate": in one post, Kirk is so much a nebbish a needs his best friend to set him up with a girl, in another you never suggest any such thing. Anyway, I'm done with you.

EDIT: I had forgotten the "beat your next capatin at chess" line. So you make one good point in all that typing. Nicely done, old bean.

 

Look, it isn't my problem if neither reading comprehension nor logic are your forte, and trying to redefine my position for me won't change anything.

The fact that Kirk's best friend helped set him up is just that... a fact of the character. This fact is one boundary of Kirk's character. In the first season of TOS this boundary of Kirk's romantic life exist with other boundaries such as The City on the Edge of Forever and The Conscience of the King. These events (and all other romantic encounters within season 1) create an envelope within which the Kirk character's romantic properties exist.

Now, with each season following the first (and later in the movies), one would hope that a much better defined area would emerge (you know, rounding out the character, which is where this term comes from). My feeling is that starting with the third season the Kirk character jumped out of the envelope that had taken shape in the first two seasons. Not only that, but that the jump actually started redefining the character from who it was originally.

Sorry, no goal posts here... and I won't let you try to arbitrarily bind me to any one boundary event. And maybe that is why you thought my list was bad and why you are unable to give us an example of a good list... my list included episodes which I felt defined Kirk's romantic boundaries, while you were trying to argue one specific boundary event (which wasn't up for debate I would point out).

The same method of analysis is true when looking at Kirk's intelligence. The character of the first season is very intelligent, and I think it continues through the second season but drops off (uncharacteristically) in the third.

Still, it is most likely best that you exit at this time. Your inability to follow either what is going on or link me to a position that matches what you are up to debating has made you increasingly hostile. That type of frustration means that even if you had the chance to understand what is being said, you have long past the stage of being able to willingly listen. The logic of this is lost on you (specially as you can't follow arguments larger than a sound bite) and name calling seems to be your fall back position.

 

Guys, could you dial back the rhetoric just a bit? I know that sometimes the discussion can get heated but there's no reason to make it personal.

 

Well stated.

 

Just a quick comment that I was surprised to see not addressed already (okay, so I only browsed the thread...). The first time we saw Kirk feeling insecure about his age was in The Deadly Years, which was in the second season. This establishes pretty clearly that Kirk (the character) has some pretty deep-seated issues about getting old, long before Shatner turned fifty.