Agreed For that matter, I'd like a prequel series to ST09 with stories on Robau's U.S.S. Kelvin and Greenwood's Captain Pike !
And of course as the Kirk Brothers were growing up, George Samuel "Geordie" Kirk the Elder would end up as Chief of Security for Starbase 2, before he and his friend Francis Drake Reed get drafted by Robert April for the Constitution Class project.
I disagree - he was probably a junior officer, if not just fresh out of the Academy. .. and the plot of the classic Final Frontier novel..
Pike based his dissertation on the Kelvin incident and George Kirk's actions during it, so it's unlikely that he'd already graduated from Starfleet Academy by 2233.
Maybe he graduated from the academy as an officer but went back for a higher degree. Or maybe he went back for some sort of science degree. Not that I want to defend ST09. Of course this doesn't bother me as much as making a cadet a captain. The prime universe Kirk was just as bad ass but he had to rise through the ranks. I just can't see a guy who hasn't graduated yet, or freshly graduated being given command. Give him a commendation, a metal, or make him a leautenant but giving him a ship? C'mon.
To be fair, there's no real-life parallel to what Kirk accomplished in ST09. It would be the equivalent of a fourth-year Naval Academy cadet personally saving the Washington Metropolitan Area from a rogue nuclear submarine. Personally, I like to fudge things a bit. We know that Captain Pike had access to Kirk's file when he spoke to him in 2255 when the bar in Riverside closed, and Kirk at that point was already 22 years old -- an age when many people people graduate from four-year colleges and universities. And academies. Maybe Pike had access to Kirk's file because he had already attended the Academy for at least a few years, but washed out? And maybe by 2258, Kirk was no longer attending standard Academy courses -- maybe he was actually already a commissioned officer, holding the rank of lieutenant or lieutenant j.g., and he was specifically training for starship command through a post-graduate command training program for officers? Also -- heck, who knows how long a period of time passed between defeating the Narada and receiving command of the Enterprise? Maybe another few years had gone by in the interim, between scenes. I'm definitely fudging things a bit--okay; interpreting the promotion scene as happening years after the Narada's defeat is fudging things a lot--with those speculations, but I do think they make a bit more sense. (Really, this is a flaw of the film's structure -- there's no real NEED for Kirk to still be a cadet when the Narada crisis erupts; they could have depicted him as a full, if junior, officer, without it impacting the important emotional beats of the story. He didn't NEED to be going to space school for the movie to still be about a young man who finds his way.)
There's also Spock Prime to consider. He appeared to be "out" by the end of the film, having picked the world for the new Vulcan colony. I imagine he'd have a lot to say to Starfleet about Kirk's potential. Although, yes, even as a die-hard fan of that movie I have to admit the super-promotion from Cadet/Lieutenant to Captain of the flagship is a bit much.
According to the transporter readout screen when they're trying to beam up Kirk and Sulu from the drill, Kirk is indeed a Lieutenant.
Thing is, Pike implies he got command of a starship early on himself. Or at least I assume his outlining a Starfleet career to Kirk "four years to become an officer, a command of your own another four years after that" was based on his own career.
Keep in mind that in TWOK, Saavik was a lieutenant but wore a cadet-red turtleneck. Evidently it's possible to gain actual rank while still in the Academy. And it fits with Gary Mitchell's line about taking Academy classes from "Lieutenant Kirk." The Okuda Chronology comes to the same conclusion.
Excellent! And the screen readout indicates that he's a full lieutenant rather than a j.g. Nice to know that bit of extra-canonical speculation is actually supported by some canonical evidence.
The lieutenant junior grade rank evidently wasn't used in the 23rd century. There was just one step in rank from ensign to lieutenant.