Captain Kirk's Name

[Herbert]

You do know where the word “fan” comes from, don’t you?

I've spent years on comic book message boards (far more than on this borad) and I haven't seen the level of ummm...."imagination" like I've seen here. It's off the charts. And if anyone thinks comic book fans are not fanatics then they're wrong

 

[Ssosmcin]

Seriously folks, Gary and Jim had a “safe word” which was “rhubarb.” This was human Gary’s message for Kirk to “stop.”

It usually didn’t mean “kill me” - actually it meant “stop choking me” - but it was a subtle message...

 

[Vger23]

This is excellent. Carry on

 

[CorporalCaptain]

James R. Kirk is a JRK.

 

[Hofner]

Well, as for ST fans being extreme, I'm also a Beatles fan, hence my user name.

You should see how some Beatles fans are.

For example, some Beatles fans utterly hate John Lennon and think Paul, George and Ringo would have been a hundred times more popular and successful without him.

Other Beatles fans utterly hate Paul and think John, George and Ringo would have been a hundred times more popular and successful without him.

Still other fans utterly hate George... And yet other Beatles fans utterly hate Ringo... I'm exaggerating a bit here but I think y'all get the picture, this is only a small part of Beatles fandom weirdness, don't even get me started on the Paul is dead crowd.

So yeah, some ST fans seem to go to quite an extreme but if they enjoy it, that's fine. At least MAGolding doesn't seem to utterly hate William Shatner and think Star Trek would have had a successful run of twenty or thirty seasons without him. Or utterly hate Leonard Nimoy and---

Robert

Robert

 

[fireproof78]

I always took it as a joke on Gary's part.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

I used to be ashamed of my middle name (Jo) because I thought it was "corny." So, I began using "Theresa" as my middle name for a while. I eventually went back to "Jo" because it was also my mom's middle name. Maybe James Kirk was ashamed of "Tiberius" and briefly (but unofficially) changed it to something beginning with an "R."

 

[Therin of Andor]

While I concede that this explanation is not impossible, I still prefer the idea that "R" was some sort of inside joke between Mitchell and Kirk from their academy days.

It's a running gag between them in the "My Brother's Keeper" trilogy of novels, whereby each of them make the "R" mean something different, and appropriate to the situation with each usage. For example (paraphrasing), "Anything you say, James 'Randy' Kirk."