Shatner's 'Trial Run'
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I was speaking more in the physical sense. No broken bones or missing appendages.
I was speaking more in the physical sense. No broken bones or missing appendages.
JJ Abrams' Kirk got messed up fairly often, and carried those marks into other scenes.
In all of the canonical ST tapestry, we've had very few broken bones - easily fixed with a magical bone resetter - and only one missing appendage (Nog's leg?).
I don't accept that it's "natural." How do you know it wasn't learned? You can't say you're disregarding nature vs. nurture in one sentence and then presuppose the predominance of nature two sentences later.
I've always been intrigued by a passage in David Gerrold's Bantam ST novel The Galactic Whirlpool in which Kirk is described as someone who had to learn to be compassionate, and it was that conscious effort to keep compassion for others in mind, when his natural tendency might be otherwise, that made him such a good person. Which is the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. And I think it fits with how Gene Coon wrote Kirk in "Arena" and "Devil in the Dark" -- as a soldier whose first impulse is to fight but who then reconsiders and chooses to give diplomacy a chance.
I don't think that's fair to him. Maybe it was true of him up through the Kobayashi Maru, but from the moment he recognized the threat of the "lightning storm in space," what drove him was trying to save lives. He didn't push his way onto the bridge to feed his ego, he did it to save the Starfleet task force from an attack. He didn't pick a fight with Spock because he wanted to win, he did it because it was the only way to stop Spock from making a bad decision that would let Nero destroy Earth. His style didn't change, but his motives became deeper. If anything, I feel the film's Kirk, unlike David Gerrold's interpretation, was motivated by an innate compassion that he'd never really had to draw on before, but which came out when he faced a real danger.
I wasn't saying I know it wasn't learned. I was suggesting that perhaps it may have been learned and subsequently became the person's natural tendency. I guess that might be a looser definition of "natural," but as much as I enjoy acuity of language, insofar as I'm not always able to find exactly the right word, I see no need to get hung up on semantics. The point is that that there's one person who's gonna do the right thing more often than not (all things being equal), and another who wouldn't. The person who would do the right thing more has the "natural tendency," as I meant it.
But I think that a first impulse and a natural tendency aren't necessarily the same thing. If someone hits me, my first impulse may be to reply in kind, but since my natural tendency is to not hurt people, my nature will overcome my impulse. Does that make sense? The impulse is based on the surface emotions, while the ultimate overriding decision is based on a deeper level of who a person fundamentally is.
I'm sorry, I just didn't see any evidence of innate compassion. I understand what you're saying, and I consider it a valid interpretation, but let me ask you this: Do you agree that even attempting to save billions of lives can be motivated by egotism or a need for self-aggrandizement?
Phrased in such general terms, I'd have to say yes, but I don't agree that's the case here. Watching Kirk's reactions and behavior from the moment he hears about the "lightning storm" onward, I don't see an egomaniac calculating how he can advance his prestige. I see a man spontaneously, desperately trying to prevent a horrible tragedy and not caring how much harm he does to his career by barging onto the bridge to make his case. I see a man unthinkingly placing the good of others first. And his argument with Spock after Vulcan is destroyed is the same thing -- Kirk isn't angry because Spock disagrees with him, he's filled with righteous fury at the loss of six billion Vulcan lives and determined to go after the bastard who killed them and stop him before he does the same to Earth. I absolutely do not see a man who's thinking only of himself. I see James Tiberius Kirk -- rougher-edged, wilder, but still with the same ferocious dedication to the greater good.
I saw Kirk's reaction to the "lightning storm in space" report as a reaction to a childhood trauma that he was too young to remember in the first place, so the whole thing was a clunker from the get-go.
Fuck a duck.
Yeah, it's not like Kirk would ever have had any curiosity about what happened to his father or the circumstances of his birth and read the logs and other reports, or talked to anyone who was there, once he was old enough to make sense of it all. That would just be silly and unrealistic.
Sure, that's understandable, but it this point, the question of whether it's the case here is entirely subjective, right? I think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree. (Much as I'd love to continue the argument, I just don't think it has anywhere else to go.) Our perceptions here are simply different.
CRA - you're just not really thinking this through, are you? You honestly don't think Kirk would have learned anything and everything he possibly could about the incident where his father died? Are you, perhaps, forgetting the reference in the same scene, where he flat out states he read Pike's dissertation on the Kelvin incident?
Here's a thought that ties in to both discussions; STXI and Collision Course. They both feature young Kirk as a wild, rebellious, wayward type, who is shown to be gradually straightened out to where he can eventually become the more restrained (but still delightfully non-conventional) hero we know and love.
This was also seen in Diane Carey's "Best Destiny," and the script for the proposed Starfleet Academy movie taking place in Kirk's academy years. So, it was certainly nothing new when the writers of either CC or STXI picked it up.
But I was recently reminded of a quote from Shore Leave:
And that's not a value judgment either way. I'm not positing this as some type of evidence to indicate that either story is bad. But it does seem a curious sort of drifting from what may have been the original mindset of the writers. (Naturally, though, that's what can reasonably be expected to happen when so much of a character's past is left undeveloped.)
This was also seen in Diane Carey's "Best Destiny," and the script for the proposed Starfleet Academy movie taking place in Kirk's academy years. So, it was certainly nothing new when the writers of either CC or STXI picked it up.
But I was recently reminded of a quote from Shore Leave:
...This brought to mind another line, from WNMHGB:
Now, this doesn't necessarily represent a canonical inconsistency, per se, because the interpretation could be made that these lines referenced points after Kirk got to the Academy where he stopped being wayward and over-compensated to become very stiff. But am I the only one who reads those lines and infers that perhaps the original intention was that Kirk had, as a youth, been very rigid and disciplined, and that he actually developed his more radical approaches to things at a later age?
And that's not a value judgment either way. I'm not positing this as some type of evidence to indicate that either story is bad. But it does seem a curious sort of drifting from what may have been the original mindset of the writers. (Naturally, though, that's what can reasonably be expected to happen when so much of a character's past is left undeveloped.)
Definitely the original intent was for Kirk to be a more serious character. The perception of him as a rogue and a hothead is a product of the movie era. Originally, Kirk was basically just a renamed, recast Pike -- a serious, driven military man, utterly devoted to his duty, often solemn and racked with self-doubt. In "Mudd's Women," for instance, he was the only crewman other than Spock to be unaffected by the women's overpowering allure -- he was that serious and disciplined. It was only later that he became more of a ladies' man, since that was pretty much obligatory for '60s action heroes, and that he loosened up more as a character, probably under Shatner's influence (since characters usually become more like their actors over time).
Well, even as early as The Corbomite Maneuver, he was pulling some pretty unconventional stunts. My Trek knowledge isn't encyclopedic enough to state when he first bent the Prime Directive, but I feel as if it was pretty early. So, my impression is that they were maybe portraying him as a character that had been very by-the-book but had loosened up by the time of the show.
Of course, applying the Hornblower model, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower was already pulling some crazy stunts (although, those books were written out of order, so that could as easily be thought of as a sort of retcon).
I don't know; no major point here, just a sort of tangential musing.
Of course, applying the Hornblower model, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower was already pulling some crazy stunts (although, those books were written out of order, so that could as easily be thought of as a sort of retcon).
I don't know; no major point here, just a sort of tangential musing.
Well, there's a difference between being able to devise imaginative tactics as a commander and being wild and rebellious in personality.
The way Kirk was written during TOS was a by-the-book commander, until the book didn't apply, which is when he started thinking outside the box and pulled corbomite rabbits out of a hat.
As for the Prime Directive, the first invocation of that rule was "The Return of the Archons", which also constitutes the first time it was technically violated (the out being that General Order One applies to living, developing cultures, which Beta III clearly wasn't, with the added qualifier that this planet had already claimed one starship and almost took down another, making it a hazard to interstellar navigation. This explanation also works for Gamma Trianguli VI; besides, Kirk was ordered to contact the natives).
The way Shatner and the Reeve-Stevens portrayed him in CC seems more spot-on, an eager kid who suffered a major trauma on Tarsus IV and was going through a rebellious period for a few years before events forced him to grow out of the rebellion and reconnect with his earlier enthusiasm, and then focus his energy on building himself a Starfleet career.
With JJ's Kirk, it's not a rebellious phase. After ten years, probably more, it's now a way of life. At the end, he's not reconnecting with an earlier, more hopeful self, because this jerk has been this way since he was a kid driving cars off of cliffs for no good reason and mouthing off to cops. And what happens at the end? He not only doesn't learn a damn thing, he's rewarded for his behavior with command of the newest ship of the line. Like someone else said elsewhere, they give out medals for pulling off heroic stunts, they don't give out command assignments!
Now, while the way JJ & Co. set up the character might lead to an interesting guy to follow, nobody can seriously offer him up as fundamentally the same guy that Shatner played all those years, because he's not the same guy at the core and his life experience has taken a totally different tack.
I think maybe this was the point I was trying to get to. Perhaps Carey and the others (notwithstanding the fact that they may well have simply been influenced by the Carey version) decided that a commander with such an atypical, bending-the-rules type of command style must have been a wild and rebellious kid. Now, of course, I don't have any evidence that anyone thought that; it's just supposition, but if they did, I think they would be quite mistaken.
No. Carey explained in the foreword to Best Destiny that she based her version of Kirk's youth on the life story of Ulysses S. Grant. He was largely a failure in everything he tried prior to the Civil War, and Carey wondered if he would've been as driven to succeed if he'd had success early on.
And Kurtzman & Orci probably were inspired in turn by Best Destiny, seeing as how they cited it as one of their favorites.
So that just leaves the question of where Shatner got the idea. But his approach to Kirk is largely autobiographical. So the question is, what were Shatner's formative years like?
