Kirk is a science officer!

[Red Ranger]

An interesting idea, but given how Abrams seems to be closely following the template of the characters, unlikely. As others have pointed out, Kirk's career has been focused on the command track.

Sure, Kirk probably did a stint in engineering, like Riley did, as explained in Conscience of the King. We also saw he has some engineering knowledge from The Doomsday Machine, as noted above. Maybe Kirk even did a short stint as a science officer, as part of his command training, in order to become familiar with all the workings of a starship.

Certainly, all the pics of Kirk in just a black shirt without knowing if he wears a gold command tunic invites all kinds of speculation. I think Abrams has been so true to the original series that he will be a command officer.

I just had a thought, though. Maybe Kirk wears black because he's some kind of special operations officer, one who's studied a blend of disciplines, and is a parallel track to the command path.

It would be a nice homage if Kirk wore a green tunic over his black uniform shirt -- and it might be cool if Pike did, too.

Red Ranger

 

[Timo]

If we take the story of Kirk's beating the Kobayashi Maru to mean that he reprogrammed the computer (and not just charmed the analyst's panties off) then he had to have some operational knowledge.

We have to remember that Kirk in "Court Martial" was listed among the only three people who could have tampered with the ship's computer - the other two being Spock and the Records Officer. Is that a matter of authority, or a matter of skill?

Since Spock states that the third person capable of the deed would be "the Records Officer" generally, and not "Records Officer Finney" specifically, though, I'd argue that it's a matter of authority and access and has little to do with skill. But it could be a combination, in which case it would be helpful of Kirk to have some experience in computer sciences.

(Agreed, though, that I don't see Kirk wearing a blue spacesuit in that picture. In fact, it seems to me that he is wearing blue coveralls, of the type the working stiffs always wore in TOS... With a black polo underneath. The "shoulder pads" could be part of the harness that holds the folks to their seats.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[M'Sharak]

(Agreed, though, that I don't see Kirk wearing a blue spacesuit in that picture. In fact, it seems to me that he is wearing blue coveralls, of the type the working stiffs always wore in TOS... With a black polo underneath. The "shoulder pads" could be part of the harness that holds the folks to their seats.)

Except that similar "shoulder pads" seen on Sulu's suit in the background are also seen in the pic found in this post of Sulu standing at the "drilling apparatus" (or whatever) with neither seats nor shuttle in sight.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Another possibility is that if the EVA suits are color-coded, the ones for sciences might be a lighter shade of blue than the one Kirk is wearing.

Then again, he might just be borrowing someone else's EVA suit for this particular mission...

 

[Franklin]

I think it's definitely a blue suit, at least the shoulder apparatus is, and not just the straps or lighting.

Still, as someone said above, sometimes an EV suit is just an EV suit. Wouldn't it be confusing though, if the suits were in departmental colors, but it didn't matter what color suit you wore? Why have them in those colors, then?

Frankly, in the spy photos of Sulu in the suit, I didn't see it as gold, green, or even avocado. More creamish. In those photos, the shoulder apparatus does have a greenish-gold look. That shoulder thingy is also the only thing that looks "command colorish" to me on Sulu's EV in the picture being talked about here.

 

[ROBE]

They could be following the practice of just giving EV different colours so you can tell who is who. In the movie 2001 the Odyssey space suits came in four colours red, yellow, green and blue. Somebody working in space can look over a see clearly who is who.

 

[Praetor]

Based on what TOS gave us originally, I've always imagined Kirk was always a goldshirt and probably started at one of the helm stations, which explains both how he would supervise Finney (being an administrative officer) and why he would be working the phaser controls (as Sulu/Chekov did). I thought he was simply a bookworm who transformed and grew into a more outgoing person as he aged, or as he was given an opportunity for leadership.

In the XI scenario, I think it is entirely possible that Kirk's Kobayashi Maru stunt may initially get him blacklisted (pun intended) when he is trying to transfer to a command path from sciences division. I don't think he's necessarily McCoy's assistant or anything like that, but it's more likely that his friendship with McCoy and McCoy's amount of pull with Starfleet got him on board. Color-coded spacesuits do make sense, whether or not they are.

We shall see.