Wasn't Kirk also involved with Janice Lester at Starfleet Academy?
Trek authors - Kirk and Spock's first meetings(s)
- Thread starter EJA
- Start date
Or perhaps sometime thereafter. He could've been involved with her for a while.
The problem here is that Samuel Peeples may have had different intentions when he wrote that line than later authors did. Gary referred to "Lieutenant Kirk" teaching a class, suggesting that Kirk was a graduate teaching classes to undergraduates (similar to Spock's position in the 2009 movie). But later episodes established that he went right to starship service after the Academy, and though it might be possible to reconcile that with the idea that he returned to teach later on and met Gary then, most portrayals of Kirk's past paint him and Gary as contemporaries at the Academy and don't have Kirk returning to teach.
The Academy was never specified. Janice only refers to "[t]he year we were together at Starfleet."
With a little bit of juggling and hair-splitting, it can all be made to fit. F'r instance, Kirk could've known Mitchell before either had joined Starfleet (which could also explain why Gary felt cocky enough to launch that little blonde lab tech at his instructor). Factor in "Obession" and figure that his stint at the Academy took place after the encounter with the vampire cloud, either as something for him to do while the Farragut was remanned and repaired or as part of his personal recovery from the incident, take your pick, spice it up Kirk maybe thinking about settling down with the aforementioned lab tech (Carol Marcus?) and leaving deep space duty behind to raise little David, and it all not only fits, but starts to make more than a little sense.
Is it expressly stated that Kirk was an instructor at the Academy? I always thought it was possible to interpret "Watch out for Lieutenant Kirk--in his class you either think or sink" as meaning that he was one of those straight-A-students whose academic prowess made the class difficult for everyone, fellow students and instructors alike. Granted, that's a bit of a reach....
Well, "Lieutenant" strongly indicates someone who's already graduated. The idea that you can earn lieutenant's rank while still in the Academy is something that didn't come along until TWOK -- and even there, it was possible that Saavik was meant to be something like a graduate student, someone who'd graduated with officer's rank and then gone back to command school. So maybe you could retcon it the way you suggest, but I'm talking about what Samuel Peeples probably intended, and I doubt that's it.
Possibly, Kirk was a few years older than Gary (four or more most likely) and was teaching at the Academy when they met and became friends. Kirk probably served as a mentor for Gary. The only kink in this is that Mitchell and Kirk have known each other for fifteen years. This means Kirk was around 36 at the time of WNMHGB. Which doesn't match with Kirk being 34 in the Deadly Years. Using the age given in the Deadly Years, Kirk would have met Mitchell when he was 17 and Mitchell was around 13. So, they may have met before joining Starfleet and then got reacquainted at the Academy.
We have no idea how old Gary was; remember, making Captain (O-6) by age thirty is pretty damn young (not impossible by any means, but you gotta be one shit hot officer to do it, which Kirk clearly was). Lieutenant commander (O-4) by age thirty is more typical, so it's entirely possible that Mitchell is a lot closer to Kirk's age than four years.
Do they give us Mitchell's rank in the episode? Was it on the record sheet Kirk and Spock were looking at? It's been awhile.
With Gary being an underclassman and Kirk being an instructor with the rank of Lieutenant I think a four year difference sounds logical. Three at the least. From what we know of Kirk's "service record" he was a lieutenant in from 2255 to at least 2257 when he served with Captain Garrovick on the Farragut. So his time as an instructor had to happen slightly before or after that time frame.
Pfft. I'll just go with whatever My Brother's Keeper said about Kirk and Mitchell.
Whatever it was - I don't recall a damn thing about that trilogy
.
Whatever it was - I don't recall a damn thing about that trilogy
.
...Why in the world would you give someone who wanted to make Captain as soon as possible the nickname of "Lieutenant"? Even as an ironic nickname, it doesn't work.
He was an avid fan of an old Gene Roddenberry TV series that featured an actor called Gary Lockwood as Second Lieutenant William Tiberius Rice.
He was an avid fan of an old Gene Roddenberry TV series that featured an actor called Gary Lockwood as Second Lieutenant William Tiberius Rice.
NOW you're talking sense!!
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I thought that the Shatnerverse reasoning for young Kirk's dislike of Starfleet/space travel, the Tarsus IV incident, to be very believable.
Hmmm...using the established backstory to explore the personality of the main character instead of just chucking the whole works and going with the hip, bad boy image that's soooo trendy these days with no real explanation whatsoever.
What a concept...
What a concept...
He also stole the Enterprise from spacedock after only a few months in Starfleet Academy.
Love the book, hate the book, fine. Just don't try to justify it as more "believable" than anything in STXI.
Love the book, hate the book, fine. Just don't try to justify it as more "believable" than anything in STXI.
It's like as soon as they approach a Kirk origin story, the writer's sanity jumps out of the window. Why can't they just treat that guy as a realistic character and not a comic book character?
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