Kirk's Weaknesses?

^ Hubris. Our good Captain has got a hubris, which, yes, often pans out well for him. But is also a considerable blind spot, as (in its own way) it makes him inflexible in his thought. The ignoring procedure when the Reliant fails to answer hails thing mentioned earlier in the thread being a very good example of that. Sometimes he's thinks he can't be beaten, and that kind of confidence can be a negative character trait...

In The Motion Picture too, he believes he is the only person who can possibly take on the V'ger incursion. He cites five years out there dealing with things like this as his reasoning, but underneath all that is someone with so much confidence in himself that he basically pulls rank and says, y'know, I'm the only guy who can save the Earth, I've got this. He makes mistakes there too.

 

Obsession

He was obsessed, but it's more like the ship owns him. I don't see him treating it as his person fiefdom. In The Naked Time he says the ship won't permit him his own life.

He also became obsessed when that young officer failed to shoot the cloud creature.

This may be related to his second weakness: self-doubt. He has to be strong for his crew, but he always wonders "what if I'm wrong? What if I'm not able to save my ship and crew?"

His weaknesses are not character flaws because he's willing to face them and make corrections, often based on advice from Spock and McCoy.

 

He needs his pain.

 

Like his confidence and refusal to accept no-win situations, his love of the Enterprise is a strength and a weakness. It makes him vulnerable but also keeps him on track (as evidenced in "This Side of Paradise").

 

He wasn't born an Irishman.

 

When he's growing old, instead of realizing that there is something wrong with him and put Spock in charge, he makes a fuss and wastes everybody's time in a critical situation.

 

I am now 52, and have empathy for the bullheaded 82-year-old who still tries to do things he did when 34. You feel the same way inside, with a body that simply doesn't answer the bell. In Kirk's defense he truly felt an d believed he could still do fine.

 

I look in the mirror and say "What happened to me?"

 

If it were not the Enterprise in space dock and another Starship with an experienced captain then I don't think Kirk could/would have taken over command.
If say a "Commodore" Decker was there with his ship then I don't think that Kirk would have taken over the captaincy. At best he would have shadowed the existing experienced captain offering help.

It would have been ridiculous to send out an inexperienced captain to face such a critical danger to Earth when you had an experienced captain only two years away from the coal face at your disposal. The way Vger tore through the Klingon ships and Earth's other defenses showed Nogura that it wasn't going to be superior technology that saved them but the right decision maker.

 

The TV pilot / "Phase II" version of the script paints Kirk in a much more humble light. He offers up many alternative suggestions to Nogura for who to command the mission; it's Nogura himself who demands of Kirk, "Who is the *best qualified*?!?", knowing fully the answer to be Kirk, to which Kirk hesitates before answering, "Me".

The rewrite for TMP instead suggests Kirk does the opposite, convincing Nogura to give him back the Enterprise, perhaps using V'ger as the excuse.

Both approaches 'feel' like things Jim Kirk would do, neither is out of character. But the latter one does ring true of the confidence of the guy maybe a little more. It's almost like the two different Kirk's from "The Enemy Within".

 

I'm stronger now than I've ever been!
JB

 

Age is an illusion.

 

DeForest Kelley said (probably in a Starlog interview) that he and Shatner had a scene in the TMP script where they were supposed to have it out, and McCoy has harsh words for Kirk. Kelley kept wanting to rehearse it and Shatner kept putting it off. And then Shatner got the Kirk-humbling scene cut from the script.

You can say it was all ego, but Shatner was right, and I wish he had done more. He knew what we wanted Kirk to be. TMP got it wrong for Kirk and Spock, while I'm at it. Shatner and Nimoy did a good job of protecting their characters during the TV series, but when TMP came along, they got bulldozed.

 

McCoy did see a wee bit Curmudgeonly when he first saw Kirk! But I put that down to his age and the fact he didn't like being forced to return to the Enterprise!
JB

 

Or use the transporter, which must have pissed him off.

 

He was not keen to say the least on having his molecules spread out across the universe was he!
JB

 

Bones does have a scene in the SLV where he confronts Kirk about his obsession with getting Enterprise back, just after the office scene with Kirk and Decker, but it isn't in either the theatrical version or the director's cut.

Ironic given the next movie sees Bones telling Kirk to get back in the center chair