Final mission of the original 5 year mission

[Timo]

A bit unlikely for her to have been the sole safe retrunee, considering there's a non-Enterprise from that era in the Starfleet Museum. Unless she's the Exeter, and there's a sign telling the visitors to don not just the blue shoe covers but the orange biohazard suits as well...

(Also, it probably stretches the definition of "safe return" for quite a few in Kirk's crew.)

Would you mind breaking that down?

Lightyearage on this may vary a lot, but I think Kirk saves the entire universe from annihilation in "The Alternative Factor" and the Milky Way from galactic war in "By Any Other Name" and "The Jihad", decides the immediate fate of the Federation in "City on the Edge of Forever", "Errand of Mercy" and ST6:TUC at least, and saves Earth's bacon in "The Changeling", ST:TMP, ST4, and arguably also "Whom Gods Destroy", "Space Seed" and ST2:TWoK with their villains obsessed with ruling Earth or the UFP. Then there are the non-immediate galactic threats like Space Amoebae and Dikironide Clouds, and the lesser wars.

Kirk + the Enterprise are iconic by the 24th century.

But that's just it - they are only iconic among the Enterprise crew, as far as we know. And only after a bit of prompting. The DS9 and VOY heroes are aware of him, and the former are even forced to have an adventure or two involving him. But it's not as if Kirk's exploits would even be required reading at the Academy (AFAWK), as opposed to Picard's.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[urbandefault]

McCoy walks into a room and sees his old crew there, minus one. "Where's Sulu?"

Simple.

 

[publiusr]

Lost years were post TOS pre TMP....
I think the God Thing like Armada had Kirk riding a desk, McCoy quitting.
I could see the TOS Ent heading for the dry-dock and Decker emerging.

I might call that the last story--that or whatever the last TOS novel is that shows the drydock on the TOS Ent screen.

 

[Phoenix219]

I always considered the Lost Years to be post TMP, pre TWK....

 

[Nerys Myk]

There are a lot of lost years.