Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof should not Return.

He's from Iowa... say no more!

 

TOS Kirk (assuming your view is correct--something I concede only to make this point) is OLDER and MORE MATURE than Abrams' Kirk. The latter is working his way to the other's level of experience and maturity--why this seems to escape so many people is astonishing to me. Anyone who thinks Pine/Kirk should be the same as TOS Kirk is wrong in thinking that way. It's really not a matter of opinion. They can disagree with the way the writers have written Pine/Kirk, but there are NO grounds to expect a carbon copy of TOS Kirk in terms of behaviour. None.

 

This Jim Kirk is also nearly a decade younger than the Jim Kirk we get to know starting with Where No Man Has Gone Before. Just because he was a tight-ass at the Academy doesn't mean he didn't have his wild days where he partied and fooled around with women. Like most twenty-somethings.

 

Yes TOS Kirk is duty driven, and crew driven, and ship driven.

None of that precludes being in bed with two beautiful women while on shore leave. It does mean though that if Spock hails him about some minor problem right before he jumps into bed he's likely to say, "Sorry ladies.." and rush back to the ship.

 

Oh, I completely agree. Moreover, TOS Kirk grew up with a completely different background than Abrams' Kirk; if the original is implied to have been a duty-driven Starfleet brat for most of his life, that by no means indicates the Abramstrek version should be likewise. I'm just pointing out that there is in fact a difference between the characters.

(Of the two of them, frankly, I'd rather go drinking with nuTrek Kirk any day of the week. Not so sure he's the one I'd rather serve under on a Starship... but the Pine character isn't necessarily Wrong.)

 

Nu-Kirk is definitely drawn from the novel and comic versions of how Prime-Kirk's early life was and how his reputation is seen among others in the fleet: Smart mouth, genius, with a bad attitude that needs a kick in the ass and made to straighten up.

 

Could well be, I can't really speak to novels and comics, just to what's in the shows and movies.

 

I don't understand why this Kirk is such a shock to Trek fans? We've been reading the young Kirk as a dick for thirty years in the novels, including Starfleet Academy: Collision Course by William Shatner.

 

Of course he was a hothead. You can see it in TOS Kirk, it's just we also see a mature, experienced, seasoned man. Who is wildly intelligent as well.

LOL just look at the movies, stealing the Enterprise and running off to do what he likes! And he's well into middle age!

 

Just possible that "we" have not been reading him as anything, Bill. On account of not all fans are actually all that into many (or in some cases any) of the Trek novels.

Kinda why the Trek movie franchise started to suck at that point for me, I'll be honest. (That and the creatively cowardly, albeit lucrative, decision to literally resurrect Spock.)

 

I think I've said this to you before (?) Best Destiny and Killing Time, couple decades old but damn near the blueprint for Nu-Kirk. Check out some of the older DC comics stuff as well. Kirk is pretty much: Most of the other officers loath his style, the cadets idol worship him for it.

 

There are many great Kirk stories in those early novels and the DC Comics TOS first run.

 

Wasn't me, but sure, I'll check them out when I have a chance, thanks.

Might let the comics be, though. I think I'd like to leave my TOS-formed sense of Kirk as a mensch-among-mensches to his fellow Captains (and occasional Commodores) unsullied.

 

DC loved having Kirk's past choices coming back to bite his ass. Though "Homecoming" is really underrated: Kirk using the Federation version of CNN to save his ass and cause Starfleet such a big PR nightmare they end up giving him the Excelsior to command.

 

Captain Kirk is a HERO. A larger than life fictional hero.

He's the one Trek character that fills that role with all its hyperbole and flying-in-the-face of everything and refusal to be as realistic as some people want.

He's a larger than life personality and I'm glad Trek just ran with that.

 

If you check out the comics, start with "The Mirror Universe Saga" (epilogue to STIII and a sequel to Mirror Mirror), Idol Threats, Paradise Lost.

 

Meh, I wouldn't say that TOS Kirk's strengths came from a "refusal to be realistic," more that he was Roddenberry's (and Shatner's) conception of an idealized larger-than-life (Space) Navy man of his era.

But I'm a uniter, not a divider. If we must agree to disagree on that (as I'm guessing we must, and notwithstanding my clarifications that nuTrek Kirk's character work isn't one of the things I dislike about nuTrek), surely we can agree that your Kate Mulgrew-and-the-Obamas avatar is pure unadulterated awesomeness.

 

I mean the character is not realistic, if by realistic we mean how a real starfleet officer would behave. You seem to be saying that the movies went downhill in part because of this kind of storyline with Kirk, stealing the Enterprise etc.. I'm saying that while most of the good guys, dutiful starfleet officers, that Trek is full of behave in ways that are sensible within the context of their roles as officers. Kirk is a different kind of character, one in the hero role which steps outside of that. Trek doesn't fill itself with these kinds of characters because it tries to tell realistic stories about humanity in space but it does have one Hero who gets to pretty much do what he wants and come out on top, brilliantly. I'm saying that Captain Kirk is treated differently and is a unique individual as far as Trek goes.

And yes Kate is very happily married to Barack and has two lovely daughters neither of whom unfortunately is named Phoebe.

 

I think Ruth, Janice Wallace and Carol Marcus could attest to that.

 

Thanks for the links! They're appreciated.