Is nuKirk closer to his crew than the original Kirk?

[ED-209]

The reason I say it is original Kirk was surprised Sulu had a daughter, this was when she was in her early 20s.

nuKirk looks absolutely over the fucking moon when he sees Sulu reunite with his < 10 year old daughter at Yorktown.

So does nuKirk care more about his crew? Or atleast take more of an interest in their personal lifes?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Kelvin Kirk met his crew as fellow cadets and friends first (and adversaries in the case of Spock, and fellow outcasts in the case of Scotty), they became his crew afterwards. Prime Kirk met his crew as his subordinate officers and became friends with them by the time of the movies (Spock and McCoy aside). It feels to me as if the Kelvin crew start off with the level of friendship and camaraderie that the classic crew achieves by the time of Star Trek III (as as seen in GENS, he still never knew Sulu had a family)

 

[Timo]

Umm, he did very well know that Sulu had a family - he had met Demora twelve years prior, which would translate to a couple of years before ST:TWoK. And nothing precluded him having met the mother and the in-laws and their pet dragon on several occasions before that, too, perhaps all the way back in the sixties.

It's just that he didn't really care.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ED-209]

@Timo - you’re right, it’s been a while since I watched it.

but if he just didn’t care that strengthens my point really.

 

[fireproof78]

Umm, he did very well know that Sulu had a family - he had met Demora twelve years prior, which would translate to a couple of years before ST:TWoK. And nothing precluded him having met the mother and the in-laws and their pet dragon on several occasions before that, too, perhaps all the way back in the sixties.

It's just that he didn't really care.

Timo Saloniemi

It's interesting to me because Kirk comments to Scotty regarding Sulu having time for a family and Chekov having to remind him, like an assistant to a CEO reminding him of the familial connections of his employees.

Yeah, I'd say that Kirk is not quite as focused on his crew's personal lives, aside from maybe Spock, as nuKirk. Largely because nuKirk gets to know them less in a superior officer role, and far more on an equal footing role.

 

[Nyotarules]

Old Kirk is so close to his crew he encouraged their stagnant careers for decades, his senior officers (Bones, Chekov, Scotty, Uhura) should have been admirals or captains by TUC, only Sulu got away.

 

[fireproof78]

Old Kirk is so close to his crew he encouraged their stagnant careers for decades, his senior officers (Bones, Chekov, Scotty, Uhura) should have been admirals or captains by TUC, only Sulu got away.

Technically Scotty was "Captain of Engineering" and carried that rank, I believe.

 

[Nyotarules]

Technically Scotty was "Captain of Engineering" and carried that rank, I believe.

Scotty should be heading the SCE as Admiral Scott or captain of his own engineering ship. People jeer at TATV cos the crew had never changed careers in ten years, well none of the TOS crew changed careers permanently in how many decades (excluding Kirk, Bones, Sulu and Spock). Chekov was XO on the Reliant in TWOK but then took a demotion to navigate the ship in the movies or be its Head of Security. Uhura should be Head of operations or a bigwig in Starfleet intelligence.

 

[fireproof78]

Scotty should be heading the SCE as Admiral Scott or captain of his own engineering ship. People jeer at TATV cos the crew had never changed careers in ten years, well none of the TOS crew changed careers permanently in how many decades (excluding Kirk, Bones, Sulu and Spock). Chekov was XO on the Reliant in TWOK but then took a demotion to navigate the ship in the movies or be its Head of Security. Uhura should be Head of operations or a bigwig in Starfleet intelligence.

Of course.

 

[Timo]

Why should Kirk's crew be destined to high positions? The claim to fame for most of them is "I sailed with Kirk". We don't learn that Scotty would have been a phenomenally good engineer, or Uhura a phenomenally good communications officer, or Chekov a phenomenally good whatever.

This is not precluded, of course, and in the alternate timeline the heroes get far more explicit superpowers, with Chekov a supersmart Wunderkind, Uhura a truly cunning linguist, etc. Also, Scotty gets credited with the transporter that can beam into and out of warp and across great distances - the future alternate Scotty, that is, the "original" one from TOS. But even Scotty could have been a nobody until making this breakthrough of his, a potential one-off he came up with on the way to Norpin. Assuming he did make it, and Spock Prime wasn't lying in order to bolster the self-confidence of nuScotty.

We don't have to think that mutineering alongside Kirk killed the careers of these also-rans. It might instead be that they had perfectly normal careers for Starfleet officers, and only McCoy ever made it to flag rank, the others either retiring/perishing at lower rank or switching jobs altogether.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Technically Scotty was "Captain of Engineering" and carried that rank, I believe.

Only on the Excelsior.

 

[Timo]

...Scotty's movie rank is indeed a saga unto itself, as we well know.

The promotion to Captain of Engineering (which may be a position distinct from Chief Engineer, or then merely a rank with a definer to tell it apart from "Commanding Officer" or "Master of Vessel") comes with the appropriate rank pin on a nonstandard, rather decorative uniform variant. Scotty then helps Kirk steal the Enterprise, still clothed in that uniform, complete with the Captain rank pin. He retains the uniform (or at least the pretty jacket) on Vulcan, the only one apart from Uhura to do so. But the jacket now bears a Commander pin for some reason. Scotty removes the pin for the adventure on past Earth, and then loses the jacket to the bottom of San Francisco bay. Yet when facing the President, he again wears a (regular) uniform with a Commander pin.

Was Scotty a stickler to rules and regulations even in mutiny and exile? Perhaps the promotion to Captain rank was tied to service on the Excelsior, and since Scotty terminated that arrangement, he might have felt no longer entitled to the higher rank, but (by his perverse personal sense of justice) still to his older one. The judgement of the President bears that out, as all the other heroes retain the ranks they held before the mutiny, but Scotty and Kirk get bumped down, Scotty to said Commander, Kirk two notches down to Captain, despite all charges supposedly being dropped.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

Why should Kirk's crew be destined to high positions? The claim to fame for most of them is "I sailed with Kirk". We don't learn that Scotty would have been a phenomenally good engineer, or Uhura a phenomenally good communications officer, or Chekov a phenomenally good whatever.

True, however not sure that Captain Kirk had any special claim to fame in TOS or even the movies, were Kirk and the Enterprise the only ship that 'saved the universe' on their missions? Even if the others are considered mediocre officers, what good is it for morale and those in the lower ranks to be hogging a post for 30 years?

 

[fireproof78]

True, however not sure that Captain Kirk had any special claim to fame in TOS or even the movies, were Kirk and the Enterprise the only ship that 'saved the universe' on their missions? Even if the others are considered mediocre officers, what good is it for morale and those in the lower ranks to be hogging a post for 30 years?

Unfortunately, that's the Star Trek way.

 

[Timo]

It's not quite that bad - we get no sense of folks staying put between the first two movies, say. By TWoK, Chekov had explicitly moved on, but clearly Sulu and the Enterprise were very distant friends as well. Essentially, TWoK is a second reunion, a rebooting of the Trek movies and thus duplicating the original reunion from TMP. And for the next two movies, it's not "posts" or "careers", it's a tightly packed series of events for a bunch of fugitives.

If there's any stagnation, it comes in the aftermath of TVH. And we can argue that the heroes were sentenced to remain at their posts and ranks there, for perhaps nine years at worst, with no possiblity for parole. But we can also argue they had perfectly normal rank progression (i.e. none in the nine years allotted), and merely did the initial TFF stint together before again spreading out to diverse careers, only to reconverge one final time at Spock's summons. Certainly the heroes aren't serving together as TUC opens, as they aren't even aware of each others' whereabouts.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

nuKirk just wears his feelings on his sleeve. Prime Kirk is slightly more stoic.

Kor

 

[Tim Thomason]

Commander, which pretty much all of the TOS crew achieved, is a pretty high accolade to achieve before retirement. Starfleet possibly has a bottleneck on who can achieve an admiralty or captaincy, and Commander could be the highest step progression without a much sought after vacancy.

And Star Trek II is a training exercise, III and IV are the aftermath, V is a shakedown cruise, and VI is a special diplomatic assignment. We don't *really* see where these Commanders are serving full-time in the '80s.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, every time we "join" them (at the starts of specific adventure runs, thus TMP, TWoK, TFF and TUC), we are left wondering which of them were there already, and which just joined the preexisting team.

In TMP, there is an emergency, and we see most of the usual suspects on the bridge - but only after the emergency is declared, so perhaps they were summoned to turn a refit crew into an operational one. In TWoK, there's this birthday cruise, preceded by the Kobayashi Maru test where it already appears that something unusual is going on, else why would all these Commanders be attending it - so probably the old folks are gathering around Kirk rather than around the Enterprise. TFF more or less immediately follows the public trial where the heroes were told to go fly the Enterprise again (and not get into public trouble again), so they probably wouldn't say no quite yet. And TUC is set up by Spock, presumably because he is well aware he can't trust most of the top officers and needs the Old Team around him.

Now, which of the folks are married to the ship on each occasion? Scotty very well might, on all of them. And perhaps that makes sense, if ships are individuals and it takes an expert to tend to each. Apart from that, though...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nyotarules]

However Kirk and Sulu definitly lost touch over the years, one of the first questions one asks a colleague if you know they have children is either 'how are the kids or how is the family' and one of the answers is bound to be what stage in life the kids are. Kirk was completely ignorant, he was definitely no 'Uncle Jim' to Demora. But IRL how many serving officers in the armed forces are good friends with their captains? I bet none, it only happens on T.V shows like Stargate and Star Trek

 

[Malaika]

I might be biased because I never was a huge fan of tos Kirk but yeah, I think kelvin Kirk is closer to his crew, they are the family he never had. I think the crew itself is a bit more like a family than they were in tos, in spite of kelvin trek still not giving us many ensemble moments.
The fact they met younger, where this was the big five years mission for everyone, quite possibly makes a difference. Notice both Kirk and Spock have someone they also knew from the academy and is still important to them on the ship (for Kirk it's Mccoy, for Spock it's Uhura. Both relationships were established before the five years mission). It's easy to imagine Uhura and the others also knew each other from the academy, to some degree.

Context matters too because tos Kirk was developed as the star of the show, the kind of protagonist or main guy that people liked at the time, everything had to be, kind of, about him only and the others hardly had a life outside of him that he would care about.