Here ya go; the BIG fix:
I'm feeling rather smug- I think I killed a couple birds with one stone, there. Now we know why everyone else on the bridge was a rank amateur as well. The only thing I might think of to change in the above is bringing in McCoy to 'rescue' Kirk from the security guard and escort him to Pike. Then it preserves some of the original interaction without the silly 'faking an illness' subplot.
Written this way, you can still keep the 'troubled youth' scenes. The 'longing look' at the Connie being built can still precede Kirk's original entry into Starfleet, along with his meeting McCoy. It would have to be altered slightly but its still doable. Then, like Spock's flash-forward, it is implied that several years would have elapsed between then and the post-command school bar scene portrayed above. It also gets the relative ages back in line as well, and implies Kirk's prior fleet experience aboard Republic and Farragut.
Location: A San Francisco area bar
What’ll it be?” the bartender asked.
“Three Budweiser Classics, an Andorian sunrise, and a shot of Jack,” replied the newly minted Ensign Nyota Uhura, rattling off her list in a matter-of-fact manner. She failed to notice the handsome man who had bellied up to the bar on the far side of the long snouted alien experimenting with a Terran mai-tai.
“Make that two shots of Jack!” the man quickly called to the bartender. “Hers is on me!”
“Hers is on her,” Uhura corrected him firmly. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
The man rolled his eyes in exasperation, but it didn’t erase the easygoing grin from his features. He looked a little inebriated. “C’mon! Don’t you want to know my name before you completely reject me?”
“I’ll make do without it,” Uhura replied, flashing him a sweet but sarcastic smile.
“I’m Jim. Jim Kirk.”
Uhura paused, and did a quick double take with a slight frown creasing her features. “Wait a minute, did you say Jim Kirk?”
The man’s grin split even wider, and he took her sudden interest as a cue to slide around the alien and present himself to her at closer range. “That’s right,” he replied. “I see my reputation precedes me.” He looked her over, noting that she wore an officer’s uniform but without any sleeve striping. She was an ensign, then. It all made sense to him when he remembered what day it was: graduation day for Starfleet Academy. She was here celebrating her matriculation with some of her classmates. “Congratulations,” he added amiably. “What’s your specialty?”
“Linguistics,” she replied. “Are you…?”
“The Jim Kirk?” he replied, his smile slipping a bit. “Yes I am.”
“The only command school candidate to ever cheat the no win scenario?”
“You mean BEAT the no-win scenario?” he asked pointedly.
Her voice grew chilly. “Communications is my specialty. You heard me right the first time.”
A large man suddenly appeared behind the two of them. “Hey, is this townie bothering you?” he asked.
“In a major way, but it’s nothing I can’t handle,” Uhura replied.
“You can handle me all you want!” Kirk interjected, raising his eyebrows at Uhura appreciatively.
“Hey!” the man said, grabbing Kirk’s shoulder roughly and spinning him around. “You’d better watch your mouth! In case you didn’t notice, there are four of us and one of you!”
“In that case, why don’t you go find a few more guys, cupcake?” Kirk replied, slapping the man lightly alongside the cheek. “That way it’ll be a fair fight.” If he hadn’t been in his cups he would have known better than to turn his back on the man, or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing. Either way, the end result earned him a rough suckerpunch that split his lip and sent him sprawling over the bar.
Uhura’s shout of protest was drowned out as Jim Kirk rebounded with a quickness that belied how much alcohol he had put away already. His assailent was swinging on him again, perhaps a little carelessly given that he had no way of knowing that Kirk had been through all the unarmed combat training he had, plus some more out in the fleet. What followed was a blurry combination of thrown and blocked punches, low kicks, and strikes, and the end result was a surprised Starfleet ensign flying back and crashing backwards over a table, smarting from the wet, whiskey-flavored bootprint in his solar plexus. Three others stepped in to back him up, and they also suffered mightily in the next few moments before numbers and teamwork shifted the fight in their favor. One went down with a beer bottle broken alongside his head, but then the third managed to lock him in a grappling hold long enough for number four to knock the wind clean out of him with three consecutive shots to the gut and solar plexus. Jim Kirk went to his knees, out of breath, and was knocked flat by a knee to the head. His eyes rolled back as one of the bloodied officers straddled him and began raining hard blows on his face in retaliation for his troubles.
“That’s enough!” Uhura was shouting.
“Holy shit!” someone screamed from near the doorway. “ATTENTION ON DECK!” At the same moment, a piercing whistle split through the San Francisco bar, and all activity came to a sudden halt. All eyes, civilian and Starfleet both, turned to the commanding figure who stood framed in the doorway. He was still wearing the dark dress uniform in which he had delivered the commencement address earlier that day, and his sleeves bore the solid-broken-solid gold braid of a full Starfleet captain.
“Everyone OUT! Now!” he ordered in a voice that was commanding without having to shout. None of the newly commissioned officers said a word: they just headed for the exit in a rush, heads down as though to escape notice. Captain Christopher Pike threw a nod and grim smile to the bartender; it wasn’t the first time a group of new graduates had sewn some wild oats in here on graduation day. Pike stepped over to where Kirk was draped over a table, splayed out flat on his back, wheezing for breath and spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Are you alright?” he asked, not recognizing him at first.
“Did you know you can whistle really loud?” Kirk remarked dazedly.
Pike snorted and shook his head. “James Kirk,” he said flatly, as though not believing his eyes. “I’ll be a son of a bitch.” He reached down and held out a hand to the bleeding man. Kirk’s gaze locked on the hand as though it was a rattlesnake, but only for a moment. His gaze softened, and he reached out and took it firmly, allowing Pike to pull him to his feet.
“Thanks,” Kirk replied. He glanced around, picked a chair up off the floor and set it down at the table before dropping himself into it. He swept one arm casually across the table, sweeping it clean of broken glass and spilled alcohol before waving at the bartender. “I’ll have another one here,” he called. He sat with his head tilted back, pinching his bleeding nose until his drink was delivered. When it was, he expertly tore up the bar napkin and shoved two plugs up his nostrils to help stop the bleeding. Pike watched all of this without comment, and then pulled up a chair and sat down across from him.
“So is this all you’ve been doing with yourself, lieutenant?” Pike asked.
Kirk’s gaze locked onto him like weapons. “It’s not lieutenant anymore. It’s just Jim.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“None of your damn business!”
Pike nodded. “That’s what I thought. I see you’re still leaping before you look, though. Y’know, that’s a trait your father had as well. It’s something Starfleet has lost, in my opinion.”
Kirk chuckled mirthlessly. “Well that turned out real well for him, didn’t it?”
“It depends on how you measure success, I guess. I was assigned the Kelvin incident as my command school dissertation. We need more officers like your father, and you are a lot like he was. It was a mistake for you to leave Starfleet, Jim. Especially over something like Nogura’s comments at the hearing. I have to admit, I figured you to be more thick-skinned than that. Before you lost your temper and turned it into a disciplinary hearing, I heard that they were thinking of giving you a commendation for original thinking. Everyone understood your point, and your multiple retakes of the test and your final solution ultimately answered the question the test is asking: what sort of person is candidate Kirk? It’s a hard, controversial, humiliating test. I think a lot of folks were vicariously pleased that someone finally thumbed their nose at it- I was. What Nogura said about your father afterward was unfortunate.”
Kirk pulled the bloody plugs from his nose and disdainfully tossed them on the floor before chugging his drink and waving the glass back at the bar, calling for another. He turned back to Pike. “We done yet?” he asked sharply.
Pike stood up, but didn’t leave yet. “Jim, your aptitude scores were off the charts and your rise through the ranks was meteoric. You could have been the youngest man ever to command a starship. Yeah, your dad died and you can stay here on Earth, smarting about it and living an ordinary life, or you can be something more. If you change your mind I’ll sponsor you back into the fleet- God knows we could use you; you can finish command school and you’ll have your own ship inside of four years.”
“Be careful out there,” Kirk said by way of dismissal. But he met Pike’s gaze as he said it, and the captain knew he was seeing the wheels turning in the young man’s head.
“Jim, your father commanded a starship for twelve minutes and he saved over two hundred lives- I dare you to do better. I’ll be at Starfleet operations tomorrow morning before I return to the Enterprise.” Pike rapped the table twice with his knuckles for emphasis before turning his back and walking out of the bar.
Insert flashback scene here of Kirk taking the Kobayashi Maru test for the third time, followed by the hearing in which he gets into a shouting match with Commandant Nogura, is censured, and resigns his commission in disgust.
When James Kirk strolled into Starfleet operations the next morning, dressed in civilian clothes and sporting a visitor’s badge, he found the command center in an uproar. People were sprinting about with a definite air of almost-panic, and every single station was manned. He was intercepted almost immediately by a red-shirted security officer.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve got an emergency on our hands. I’m going to have to ask you to leave and return later.”
“I’m James Kirk. I’m here on official-“
The man took him firmly by the arm. “I’m sorry, sir! You have to leave now!”
“I’m here at Captain Pike’s request,” Kirk added firmly. “What’s the emergency?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say. I’ll escort you out-“
“No you won’t,” Kirk replied firmly, turning a hard gaze on the man and firmly peeling the hand off his elbow. “You’ll escort me to Captain Pike immediately or you’re going to find yourself in a lot of trouble, mister!” Kirk might have left Starfleet, but the Starfleet attitude hadn’t left Kirk. The security officer saw the look in his eye and maybe something else as well. His first impulse was to bluster, and then he abruptly deflated.
“This way,” he said. “Better hurry- all personnel assigned to starships are being recalled. He may already be gone.”
“Let’s hurry then,” Kirk added. As it happened, it didn’t take long to find him. He caught sight of two command gold tunics near the center of the opcenter, both of which were sporting large amounts of gold braid. Kirk charged up in time to hear the last part of what Admiral Benton was telling Captain Pike.
“-with most of the fleet dealing with the Tholian Crisis out in the Taurus Reach we don’t have much to send. You’re a designated fleet captain; Enterprise will take point on this mission with you in command of the entire task force. You’ve got seven ships, but two are coming out of refit and are short-handed.”
Pike smiled grimly. “We just graduated a whole academy class yesterday.”
Benton snapped his fingers. “You’re right! I’ll round them up and get them headed for orbit. I can’t just fill those ships with raw ensigns, though…”
“I’ll send some of my senior officers over to augment them,” he replied, “but I’m keeping Spock on board. It is Vulcan we’re talking about, after all, and I may need his expertise.” He glanced behind him and spotted Kirk standing there, still in the company of a slightly red-faced security guard. Admiral Benton noticed him as well- noticed him and recognized him.
“What are you doing here?” Benton asked shortly.
Pike interjected before Kirk could answer. “I invited him yesterday, admiral, before all of this broke- maybe my timing was a little better than I thought. Did you think about what I asked, Mister Kirk?”
Kirk knew that this was no time for long winded dissembling- something was up, and the people in the opcenter looked positively grave. He knew a crisis when he stumbled into the middle of one. “What’s happening?” he asked.
“Something’s going on at Vulcan; we’ve lost all contact with the planet and there are reports that there might be some sort of cataclysmic natural disaster. We’re putting together an ad-hoc rescue mission and as it turns out we’re desperately short handed of senior officers.” Pike let out a wry smile. “Still willing to leap before you look, mister?”
No hesitation: “I’m in.”
“Admiral Benton, if you have no objections?”
“None, so long as he’s under your direct command until we can make it duly official.”
“Very well. Mister Kirk, consider your Starfleet commission reactivated effective immediately, with the brevet rank of lieutenant commander. You can draw a uniform when we beam up to the Enterprise and you’ll be serving as second officer behind Commander Spock. I have to transfer most of my senior staff to fill the positions on shorthanded ships, and we’re going to have a bridge full of raw ensigns and one or two junior lieutenants. I’m going to be relying on you.”
A twinkle that had been long absent seemed to ignite in the eye of James T. Kirk. “I won’t let you down, sir.”
I'm feeling rather smug- I think I killed a couple birds with one stone, there. Now we know why everyone else on the bridge was a rank amateur as well. The only thing I might think of to change in the above is bringing in McCoy to 'rescue' Kirk from the security guard and escort him to Pike. Then it preserves some of the original interaction without the silly 'faking an illness' subplot.
Written this way, you can still keep the 'troubled youth' scenes. The 'longing look' at the Connie being built can still precede Kirk's original entry into Starfleet, along with his meeting McCoy. It would have to be altered slightly but its still doable. Then, like Spock's flash-forward, it is implied that several years would have elapsed between then and the post-command school bar scene portrayed above. It also gets the relative ages back in line as well, and implies Kirk's prior fleet experience aboard Republic and Farragut.
