Conscience of the King and Trek XI

[FabiusMaximus]

Temis the Vorta said:
For all we know, little Jimmy Kirk could have been part of an intergalactic Boy Scout troop (or some sort of organization for kids likely to join Starfleet someday) that travelled to Tarsus - who's to say the rest of his family was anywhere near the place?

I've always been interested in this part of Kirk's backstory. It would be fun for it to be something unexpected but still canonical (which wouldn't be hard to achieve).

I'd like to see Kevin Riley integrated into the story, at least mentioned by name. We really don't know whether Kirk and Riley somehow joined forces to survive. Kirk would have been a resourceful adolescent while Riley couldn't have been much more than five or six. Anyway, this is something that can be explored in later movies, it's fun to just speculate now.

Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a boy scout.

 

[erastus25]

FabiusMaximus said:

Temis the Vorta said:
For all we know, little Jimmy Kirk could have been part of an intergalactic Boy Scout troop (or some sort of organization for kids likely to join Starfleet someday) that travelled to Tarsus - who's to say the rest of his family was anywhere near the place?

I've always been interested in this part of Kirk's backstory. It would be fun for it to be something unexpected but still canonical (which wouldn't be hard to achieve).

I'd like to see Kevin Riley integrated into the story, at least mentioned by name. We really don't know whether Kirk and Riley somehow joined forces to survive. Kirk would have been a resourceful adolescent while Riley couldn't have been much more than five or six. Anyway, this is something that can be explored in later movies, it's fun to just speculate now.

Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a boy scout.

Quote of the day!

And Kirk does have a pretty strong reaction to Kodos in Conscience of the King. Strong enough that he always fooled me into thinking most of his family was killed there.

 

[Timo]

...The way he plays it off cool and composed against Riley's emoting makes me think "I so totally agree with you, kid, but I'm the skipper, I can't show any of that".

And when Kirk's clamshell is finally forced open by Spock, we do get the bit about "I'm interested in justice"/"Are you sure it's not vengeance?"/"No, I'm not".

Where else does Kirk show such disregard of reason and duty, call in old debts, misuse Starfleet resources, put lives at risk, hide things from Spock? Well, "Obsession", where his self-esteem is at stake, where his guilt is over the deaths of two hundred people. "Conscience" seems to revolve around something worse.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[beneldon]

" Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a boy scout. "


Didn't Carol Marcus say that?

 

[erastus25]

beneldon said:
" Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a boy scout. "


Didn't Carol Marcus say that?

Correct.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Kirk's parents may well turn out to have been in Starfleet.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

btw, that episode made a big deal about eyewitnesses that could identify Kodos. But Kirk was a terrible eyewitness. Unlike the other guys he didn't recognize Kodos,

That's more evidence that Jimmy was not a resident of Tarsus but just happened to be there via bad timing. Residents might have known what Kodos looked like, but why should a visitor? Being a kid who was stuck in a horrendous situation and had to use his wits to survive - or watch others killed, even if he was in no immediate danger - would be enough to explain his attitude.

 

[Red Ranger]

The only problem I have with the idea that Kirk's parents were on Tarsus IV and murdered by Kodos is there is no mention at all in the script. They do mention Riley's parents were killed, so I don't think the omission was accidental. It means to me that Kirk was either traveling alone or with family or family friends when he was on the colony. That explanation makes more sense.

As for who is the elder brother, if James Kirk's dad is indeed George, then George Samuel Kirk is probably the edler brother, named after the father, most likely.

BTW, aside from the novels, was it ever established on screen that Winona is Jim Kirk's mom's name? An interesting digression -- in Vonda McIntyre's "Enterprise: The First Adventure" novel, she writes that Kirk has some Native American ancestors. That would be great if they somehow included that.

Red Ranger

 

[Timo]

"Conscience" requires a lot of explaining no matter what. And it's such a classic episode, in good and bad, that it just might be worth all this explaining. If it were turned into a formative event for young Kirk, I'd cheer. (If not, I'd shrug).

Residents might have known what Kodos looked like, but why should a visitor?

Yet supposedly there were 4,000 survivors to the massacre. Were they all visitors? Why weren't they all eyewitnesses?

In the discussion between Kirk and Leighton, it is specifically said they are eyewitnesses because they were among the only eight or nine who "actually saw Kodos". Not the massacre, but Kodos himself. This makes me think it was actually Kodos who was the visitor: somebody who came out of the left field, declared himself Governor, took the nom de guerre "Lawman" and started slaughtering the colonists.

Kirk could have been a co-visitor, then. He'd be one of the few to be able to say "Yeah, this guy was on our ship when we went to Tarsus IV. Yes, I'm certain he is the one who killed the Governor and declared himself her replacement. No, I never learned his real name, so you can't track him through the records. But yes, I'd recognize him anywhere if I saw him again."

To dedicate the first TOS-revival movie to something as complex and obscure as this would be a silly mistake. But to use the "Conscience" backstory as outlined above, or in another logically working variant, as a background element in STXI without even explaining that it all comes from a TOS episode... That should work just fine.

Timo Saloniemi