Hello all. I used to post on the old Trek BBS and I thought I'd come back before the new movie comes out. Wasn't sure if this should go here or in the general forum; I'll try here because it's more about Kirk.
Been watching old TOS eps and I recently saw "Return of the Archons," in which we once again saw Kirk assert his superiority over an artificial intelligence. We saw this quite a bit during the original three-year run, actually, which made me wonder how would Kirk react to seeing someone like Data, an AI who aspires to be human.
I suspect his attitude - at first, anyway - might not be too different from Dr. Pulaski: willing to entertain the notion but extremely dubious. (One would hope he wouldn't be quite as patronizing as Pulaski was, however.) I think he'd take into account the fact that Starfleet accepted Data into its ranks and that Data has excelled within it to the point of serving on the flagship. Kirk might extend his occasional light teasing of Spock over to Data the more he got to know him - his way of testing Data to see if it were indeed possible for him to have a soul.
In the end, though, I suspect he would never fully buy into the notion of Data as a sentient lifeform. He may eventually accept him as a fellow officer, work with him, even trust him with his life if necessary, but given the kind of life he has led and the experiences he has had, I think accepting Data as a sentient being might undermine his faith in himself a little. Remember in "The Ultimate Computer" when he thought at first he might be resentful of M5 possibly doing his job better than he can?
I think a part of him would always need to be one-up on Data because throughout his Starfleet career, he's always held firm to his belief in the power of the human spirit. For an AI to make that leap forward into a level of human consciousness and awareness - like V'ger in TMP - would, in Kirk's mind, make humanity obsolete. That's my theory, anyway.
Been watching old TOS eps and I recently saw "Return of the Archons," in which we once again saw Kirk assert his superiority over an artificial intelligence. We saw this quite a bit during the original three-year run, actually, which made me wonder how would Kirk react to seeing someone like Data, an AI who aspires to be human.
I suspect his attitude - at first, anyway - might not be too different from Dr. Pulaski: willing to entertain the notion but extremely dubious. (One would hope he wouldn't be quite as patronizing as Pulaski was, however.) I think he'd take into account the fact that Starfleet accepted Data into its ranks and that Data has excelled within it to the point of serving on the flagship. Kirk might extend his occasional light teasing of Spock over to Data the more he got to know him - his way of testing Data to see if it were indeed possible for him to have a soul.
In the end, though, I suspect he would never fully buy into the notion of Data as a sentient lifeform. He may eventually accept him as a fellow officer, work with him, even trust him with his life if necessary, but given the kind of life he has led and the experiences he has had, I think accepting Data as a sentient being might undermine his faith in himself a little. Remember in "The Ultimate Computer" when he thought at first he might be resentful of M5 possibly doing his job better than he can?
I think a part of him would always need to be one-up on Data because throughout his Starfleet career, he's always held firm to his belief in the power of the human spirit. For an AI to make that leap forward into a level of human consciousness and awareness - like V'ger in TMP - would, in Kirk's mind, make humanity obsolete. That's my theory, anyway.
