Has George Samuel Kirk been Chucked?
- Thread starter Brutal Strudel
- Start date
He shoulda said "Sam." That is, if we're being true to TOS. (I know, altered time-line, different knickname, whatever.)
No, I meant if they flashed back to show them as kids. And I don't think that many fans who picked up on it would be wondering, whereas leaving it intact would have been a nice Easter egg. If they decided to go against it later, they could've just pretended it was a different kid.
You beat me to it. If Sam is running away from home and leaving young Jim behind, he's an equally selfish prick. Which kinda works for me, actually, given that they apparently grew up under similar circumstances.
That's probably what he did say in the original footage. Note that when he says the name "Johnny," the actor is off-camera. That's because the earlier scene with Sam in it was cut, so the kid along the road was transformed with a bit of overdubbed dialogue from Sam Kirk into some random kid named Johnny.
In fact, a lot of the dialogue in this film is spoken off-camera, which means it could've been dubbed in during editing. Remember that much of the film was shot during the writers' strike, preventing Abrams from revising the script during shooting. He probably did a lot of dialogue changes in editing. In fact, I read that there's a scene where Leonard Nimoy's on-camera dialogue was changed and his mouth movements were digitally altered to match.
I just realized: The fact that all references to Sam have scrubbed from the film, including re-dubbing a name that would have meant nothing to 75-90% of the audience, could be taken to mean that Sam has been deleiberately Chucked* by film-makers intent on keeping the Campbell-by-way-of-Lucas arc of this new James Kirk more mythic. Why muddy the waters with something so mundane as an older brother?
*Remember, Chuck wasn't officially Chucked until the Happy Days finale though he had been effectively deleted from the story long, long before.
*Remember, Chuck wasn't officially Chucked until the Happy Days finale though he had been effectively deleted from the story long, long before.
I was expecting to see George Jr. in the movie, so when little Jimmy shouted to the hitchhiker, my ears heard "Georgie".
It was never said in TOS at what point in their young lives the nickname was coined.
Well, he didn't say "Georgie" so it's moot.
Presumably, in the original timeline, George Jr may have been gone by Sam so as to avoid confusion with his father. In this altered timeline, with George, Sr., gone, there's no need to call him Sam.
And I don't think George, Jr., was chucked.
First time poster here, bear with me.
In the original timeline, George Jr. was known as George Jr., as from the dialog in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Kirk says to the android "Tell me about Sam." and the android Kirk replies "George Samuel Kirk junior. Older brother. Physicist. Only you call him Sam."(italics mine) The screenwriter for "Operation Annihilate" screwed up when he had Dr. McCoy call him Sam to Captain Kirk in the teaser for that episode. Fans ever since have only paid attention to McCoy's line in OA, ignoring the much more telling line in WALGMO.
I've seen this mistake here and in other forums enough that when I saw Pavonis' post I just had to join and chime in.
In the original timeline, George Jr. was known as George Jr., as from the dialog in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Kirk says to the android "Tell me about Sam." and the android Kirk replies "George Samuel Kirk junior. Older brother. Physicist. Only you call him Sam."(italics mine) The screenwriter for "Operation Annihilate" screwed up when he had Dr. McCoy call him Sam to Captain Kirk in the teaser for that episode. Fans ever since have only paid attention to McCoy's line in OA, ignoring the much more telling line in WALGMO.
I've seen this mistake here and in other forums enough that when I saw Pavonis' post I just had to join and chime in.
Indeed. I was going to point out that the fact that only Jim called him Sam kinda ruled out the idea that he was given that nickname to avoid confusion with George, Sr.
God, I hope that's not why, because this would have been a good way to KEEP Jim from being like *shudder* Anakin.
That kid on the highway is Sam Kirk. Alan Dean Foster's novelisation confirms this.
Almost, but not quite. In "Little Girls," Kirk's brother was only identified as "George Samuel Kirk," no "Junior." The idea that the Kirks' father was also named George -- so that Sam was a Junior -- was first coined by author Vonda McIntyre in the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure in 1986. Subsequent novels adopted McIntyre's speculation, including the novel Best Destiny by Diane Carey, which was one of the books cited as an influence by the new film's screenwriters. So it's only now, as of this film, that Kirk's father gains the canonical first name of George (although it's still not canonical what his middle name is).
So now three full names coined by Vonda McIntyre in her Trek novels have become onscreen canon in the movies: Hikaru Sulu, George Kirk (Sr.), and Winona Kirk.
And since Sam is the older brother, and the divergence happens at Jim's birth, then logically Sam cannot be retconned out of existence here.
Nope. "Star Trek II Biographies" by William Rotsler (who rang Nichelle Nichols to get her approval), and then popularized by Janet Kagan in "Uhura's Song.
But that's my whole point: if Sam disappears, he passes into the same inexplicable void that claimed Chuck Cunningham.
But he didn't "disappear." True, he wasn't mentioned, but it was never stated or implied that he didn't exist. The thing about Chuck Cunningham isn't just that he stopped appearing and being mentioned -- it was that there were lines of dialogue in later episodes that were predicated on the assumption of his nonexistence (such as Howard stating that his entire family was together in a scene that included everyone but Chuck). If at any point in the movie, it had been stated that Jim Kirk was an only child, that would've been a "Chuck" situation. But no such statement was made. We didn't see Sam Kirk, but there is not a single reason to suspect that he doesn't exist in this timeline. He could exist off-camera without being mentioned, just as he was never mentioned before "Operation: Annihilate!"
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