Kirk's Daily Schedule

I noticed something in The Undiscovered Country that I've never seen before. When Kirk is in his quarters, you can see part of his schedule on the monitor above his desk. It includes notes about when his bridge shift ends and when he's scheduled to eat meals or having mission briefings. I wish we could see the entire schedule to get a more realistic idea of what a captain's day is like when the ship isn't blowing up around him. Later shots of his quarters don't get close enough to show the rest of his day.

--Sran

 

There's probably a whole afternoon block where all he does is review department reports.

 

Well, I can sort of make out that part of his bridge shift is devoted to helping Scotty supervise some sort of test for the ship's number-two impulse reactor. But you're probably right. Much of his time is probably spent doing paperwork or coordinating with department heads (Spock, Scott, McCoy, etc.). What I'd be interested to know is if he and Spock spend much time on the bridge together. It would seem the best use of ship's personnel to have the captain and first officer work different shifts unless there's some sort of emergency or other reason both need to be on the bridge.

Both spend a lot of time away from the bridge simultaneously in TUC, and Chekov commands the watch in their absence. He's seen sitting in the command chair when Kirk and Spock enter the bridge as Gorkon's battle cruiser approaches.

--Sran

 

Another thing I never gave any thought to is that picture of David. I could be wrong, but it seems weird to have a black-and-white photograph of him. Also, are those the only clothes David owned? If one were, say, a sales associate at Best Buy, would it be likely they'd pose for a formal picture in their Best Buy outfit? What we see here is the equivalent of a formal picture of a chef while wearing his white poofy hat.

 

David Marcus didn't seem to have much of a personal life, like a lot of Star Trek characters.

 

It is interesting to get this kind of glimpse into what starship life is like when the cameras aren't turned on. The practicalities of starship duty are fascinating to us, but sadly I doubt they could drive a plot, which is why when we see the crew(s) they are often in emergency situations where we don't get to see a lot of this kind of minutia.

 

Aren't he and the rest of the Genesis Project wearing civilian clothes rather than uniforms? The picture could have been one recently taken by Carol.

 

I don't know, Nerys, it's a good point. But I go back to what Melakon said about these characters having no personal lives. David and Carol, in this case, are presented as 'science, science, science' all the time...which from the point of view of the story works just fine. But it makes it difficult to envision a scene with Carol with a camera, saying to David "Say cheeeeese!".

But didn't David wear the same darned outfit in movies II and III?

 

I wonder if Kirk took that picture. Given his fondness for antiques, maybe he owned an old-fashioned camera and decided to take a photograph of David.

That we know of. While he comes off somewhat socially awkward, we see only a few brief moments of his life, so it's impossible to know what he was really like on a day-to-day basis. I can well imagine Carol not letting him have much of a social life, but that doesn't mean he didn't have friends or interests beyond his work.

Which is kind of a shame. Minutia doesn't make for great story-telling, as you pointed out. But it would give us as fans the chance to learn about what happens on a ship when nothing else is going on. Not everything in Starfleet has to do with ships or planets blowing up, or with alien entities threatening Earth.

Hardly conclusive since Kirk and his friends did the same thing between III and IV.

--Sran

 

That's a very good explanation, Sran!

Very true, and it may point up a difference between living in their time and ours. If we wear the same clothes for days on end, our friends and co-workers are likely to say "Eww!" However in a time of advanced pattern replications and all that stuff, each days' wearing of the "same" outfit might be more like a brand new outfit each time.

Real life parallel: I once read an article in an early 20th century magazine (called Farmer's Wife, I believe) about grooming tips for young ladies. In it, they recommended that girls wash their hair once at least every two weeks!

 

I wonder if there's any time set aside on Kirk's schedule for booty calls.

 

being black and white could be due to kirk's fondness for antiques.

 

Could also be that Carol wanted absolutely nothing to do with Jim after the return to Earth, and had wanted absolutely nothing to do with him before the adventure - so the only way Jim could get a photo of David was to lift one from the visual logs, from the brief time David had been aboard the Enterprise. Hence the clothing, and perhaps the b&w is there to compensate for the poor original colors of the surveillance camera material?

Or then b&w is for mourning.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I looked at the screen capture again, and there's a pair of reading glasses on Kirk's desk. Those can't be the time-looped glasses that McCoy gave him because they were left in San Francisco in 1986--presumably so that pre-TWOK McCoy could find them and present them to Kirk as a birthday gift.

OTOH, maybe McCoy got the pair of glasses from another location, and the glasses Kirk left in San Francisco stayed there until Kirk could find them again post-2286. What a fascinating DTI novel that would make! Where (when?) the hell are Kirk's glasses?

--Sran

 

For some reason I never thought Kirk's glasses were actually time-looped, more that he was joking that they could be.

 

It's generally assumed that they are because of the joke, but no one knows what actually happened to them after Kirk sold them.

It's well within the realm of possibilities that because Kirk left the glasses in San Francisco in 1986, McCoy later purchased them in 2285 and gave them to Kirk as a birthday gift, thus initiating a causal loop completed by Kirk when he then traveled back in time with them and sold them. OTOH, it's possible that no loop was ever created, and the glasses ended up being lost to history after Kirk gave them up.

--Sran

 

I remember reading something some years ago, someone postulating that Kirk's glasses would eventually turn to dust having looped around and around through time. But my eyes always kind of glaze over reading stuff like that. I just can't follow it all.

 

He had a different wardrobe in III.

 

I don't know if that's the case, but it would be sort of ironic given that glass is made by heating sand. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, indeed.

--Sran

 

I'd always taken it to be Kirk telling a joke. I mean, just think of the odds of the glasses in 1986 wending their way through two hundred years to end up in the antique shop where McCoy could get them. (Heck, what are the odds of their even surviving two hundred years? Kirk managed to break 23rd-century prescription lenses on them in under a week.) This isn't a Somewhere In Time scenario where the time-looped object has a compelling provenance.