The only place I know they have these figures for certain is The Numbers, and they are usually many months behind. Currently they are listing a month behind Beyond's bluray release at October 2nd.
Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND
- Thread starter Khan 2.0
- Start date
Are you sure? I'm remembering the look on his face to the half-assed salute to Captain Klaa came off as "thinly veiled hatred."
For all this talk about how calm and measured Kirk was in the previous films, remember he was equally calm and measured throughout TUC, even when face to face with Gorkon and Chang. He even beamed aboard and tried to save Gorkon's life with Doctor McCoy. He does all this because he knows his duty and because, like most mature adults, he has enough self control to not act on impulse and completely cock things up.
His INNER feelings are another matter entirely. He tells Spock "let them die!" and "they're animals!" He says these things because he believes them. We don't know why he believes them (though we can guess) or when he started believing them (we can also guess) but what he thinks in private and what he does in public and on duty are two COMPLETELY different things.
This is the thing, I'm seeing, that 21st century Americans don't seem to get for some reason. So many people think that accusing someone of being a racist implies that they would literally murder someone in the street for being the wrong color. But that's not what racism is, and it's not what it has been in the past. Racism is what happens when you become comfortable with the idea that what ethnic group a person belongs to is as important -- if not more so -- than who that person is individually. It's the belief that the race of a person is more important than their behavior, their beliefs, their status in life, and how they contribute to your community. It's being comfortable with the belief that Klingons IN GENERAL aren't worth saving unless they absolutely prove themselves to be worthy and exceptional on an individual level; it's the belief that they cannot be trusted, that compassion would be wasted on them, because all Klingons are the same until they prove that they're not.
You don't get to claim that Kirk isn't a racist just because he doesn't impulsively shout racial slurs whenever he sees a Klingon. Racism isn't a form of turret's syndrome. It's the belief that an entire group of people have less value than you do because of what group they belong to. Kirk holds that belief; for how long is hard to say, but it's unlikely to be a new thing.
Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have posted it.
Pretty much this.
All of Kirk's encounters with klingons in ST4&5 are ON-DUTY encounters, by his public persona! His outburst in ST6 was a personal moment with Spock. He lost temper, for a very short period. But remember how calm he was right by the next sentence, where he tries to make a logical case to Spock. He has no problems professionally dealing with klingons. But he sure as hell doesn't like them, or especially wants to HELP them.
I would disagree with the notion that Kirk is racist though. His hatred towards them is based on personal encounters (he always ever met klinon military, never civilians) and personal experience (the murder of his son). His hatred towards them is comparable to that of a French father that lost a son in one of the World Wars against Germans. It's problematic for sure, But it's not based on racial ideology, or the feeling of superiority. Only by traumatizing experience, and thereby easily curable by personal interaction with other klingons (which is precisely what happens in the movie).
(On a side note: The fact we can still debate about simple character nuances in those movies makes me incredibly happy that Nicholas Meyer is involved with the new Discovery!
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So you're telling me that you've never made an outrageous statement, without thinking, that you instantly wanted to take back because you knew it was outrageous? Kirk is supposed to be totally immune to these foibles of the human condition? When someone has that backfire of hate that we know Kirk has against the Klingons, coupled with the fact that he was Shanghaied into having to shepherd their Chancellor into Federation space, it seems reasonable from a writing standpoint that Kirk would have an outburst like that in private with Spock. Saying that the film rewrote the characters is a cop-out answer that merely aims to end the conversation without even considering the issue.
I have never advocated genocide like that, no. A Starfleet officer, Captain, to a Vulcan, when a race was as vunerable and about to face extinction as that, is just as low as his character even went. It was painfully bad to watch.
Kirk never, NEVER advocated genocide. Choosing not to help does NOT equal mass murder. And please try not to use grave terms such as genocide so lightly.
Spock was the one who opened a dialogue with Kronos, and through him all Federation aid to the Klingon Empire was to be persued. He told the man reaching out to save the Empire to let them die, telling his friend of 20 years, the man he lost his son for and risked his life and career for, to turn his back on an entire race and allow them to become extinct over a personal vendetta he never openly exhibited before.
And when does that hatred suddenly appear? when he has a chance to reach out to Spock and try to convince him to stop the peace process.
That's...one hell of a step down for Kirk. That's petty on a truely disgusting level.
And when does that hatred suddenly appear? when he has a chance to reach out to Spock and try to convince him to stop the peace process.
That's...one hell of a step down for Kirk. That's petty on a truely disgusting level.
lol WHAT? His general hatred towards ALL KLINGONS doesn't make him a racist? "I've never trusted Klingons and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."
Seriously... WHAT?
You're right there on the edge, though. It's simple: James T. Kirk's racism...
So there are REASONS why he is racist against Klingons. Doesn't change what he is or what he believes.
No, it's a feeling of hatred and antipathy towards an entire race of people he (thinks) he knows enough about to make a universal judgement call. That doesn't require him to adopt a human supremacist theological position or anything, he just happens to genuinely believe that the galaxy would be better off if Klingons weren't in it. That's a racist belief, and even Kirk seems to realize this in Rura Penthe when he says "I was so used to hating Klingons." He's realizing that his beliefs and attitudes towards Klingons were based on prejudice and emotion and not based on any meaningful experience with them AS PEOPLE and that his judgements were ultimately flawed.
True as it is that Kirk's experiences lead him out of his hateful bigoted mindset, the WORD for the mindset he eventually abandons is called "racism."
Kirk has. He not only advocated it, he arguably ACHIEVED it on two separate occasions when he killed the dichironium cloud creature and the salt vampire. And blinded by rage, he was all for pursuing the Gorn ship and dishing out a bit of frontier justice for the attack on Cestus III.
Kirk is a good man, but he's no saint. He has a ruthless streak in him that is checked by a strong sense of duty and impeccable professionalism. If the Metrons hadn't intervened, he would have blown that Gorn ship to smitherines; if the cloud creature had managed to reproduce, you better believe he would have hunted its offspring down one by one and annihilated them. Hell, he had a whole episode devoted to doing EXACTLY this to the neural parasites that killed his brother. Then consider what happened to his own son and give him a few years to seethe over it; if that had been someone less stable (Ronald Tracey or Matt Decker, let's say) he probably would have pulled a Marco Rameus and dropped a General Order 24 on Kronos.
Yes. It IS a step down for Kirk. THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT.
At the end of the day even KIRK realizes that that sort of attitude is (or should be) beneath him. He ends up risking his life to prevent a war that he knows the Klingons would probably lose.
Like, internal conflict and shit. Character building, man!
lol WHAT? His general hatred towards ALL KLINGONS doesn't make him a racist? "I've never trusted Klingons and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."
Seriously... WHAT?
You're right there on the edge, though. It's simple: James T. Kirk's racism...
So there are REASONS why he is racist against Klingons. Doesn't change what he is or what he believes.
No, it's a feeling of hatred and antipathy towards an entire race of people he (thinks) he knows enough about to make a universal judgement call. That doesn't require him to adopt a human supremacist theological position or anything, he just happens to genuinely believe that the galaxy would be better off if Klingons weren't in it. That's a racist belief, and even Kirk seems to realize this in Rura Penthe when he says "I was so used to hating Klingons." He's realizing that his beliefs and attitudes towards Klingons were based on prejudice and emotion and not based on any meaningful experience with them AS PEOPLE and that his judgements were ultimately flawed.
True as it is that Kirk's experiences lead him out of his hateful bigoted mindset, the WORD for the mindset he eventually abandons is called "racism."
Jesus. There is so much wrong with those posts it makes it actually impossible to correct everything, from the fact that killing a single member of a species is not genocide, even if it is the last of them, the fact that not-intervening, even not helping somebody can never be the same as actually killing somebody (ever heard of the prime directive?), all paired with an audacious lack of understanding what racism actually is, and a remarkably indifferent approach to throwing words like genocide and racism and the accusation thereof around just to feel 'edgy'.
If enforcing the Prime Directive, and by so doing allowing a species to perish, is genocide, then boy howdy is Starfleet in trouble!
All kidding aside, I agree. The last few posts have used some pretty bold terms which describe very specific actions and beliefs that don't square with what's actually being described.
Well what about "Pen Pals?" Isn't that basically what Picard was about to do in that episode?
I think Kirk's attitude to the Klingons evolved into one of fear from the David slaying. He's essentially frightened of them. It's the kind of fear that he masks by anger and summed up by his "let them die" retort, which is a retort to what Spock was saying. If Starfleet isn't vigilant, they'll run amok. Which is not exactly an unfounded fear given how much stress the Klingons place on war. Whether these attitudes are racist is very arguable but they are fears that are partially justified, partially wrongheaded if understandable and even partially contemptible. Alot of VI is about Kirk journeying through this pathology and redeeming himself.
He's not genocidal, not even close.
He's not genocidal, not even close.
I wouldn't say he's afraid, so much as fucking angry at them. They killed his son! And now they fucked up so badly they are gonna' kill themselves. He doesn't want to kill them. But he sure as hell doesn't want to help them.
Imagine you had a schoolyard bully that made your life a living hell. And then, one day, he recklessly races and crashes his car in a tree and is life-threatingly wounded - and everyone expects you to take a mortgage on your house to pay for his hospital bills, because "you've always been so close". "Let him die" is both ethically and morally wrong, but a perfectly reasonable gut reaction for the moment.
Amen to that!
It's more than mere anger. The Klingons truly violated him like no other adversary has done and certainly from observing most of the Klingons he has encountered in the field in his latter era, every Klingon is a little Kruge. In the conference room, he rasps at Spock in an almost unKirk like fashion to an almost shaken Spock. The Klingons rattled Kirk like no other adversary has. It's not unlike witnessing one's own attacker on the street, one feels a sense of revulsion there. Vulnerability masked as anger. And whilst he obviously states his disagreement with the specific policy of rapprochement, Kirk's priority is to retire and wash his hands out of it. After that Starfleet can go and do what they want with their diplomacy, just as long as he isn't involved. He's not in some space were he wants to conspire against them and he ultimately relents to undertake the mission, reluctantly certainly but not in bad faith.
Not once in three seasons of TOS did we ever see Kirk's interpretation of the Prime Directive lead him to INACTION to help others. He's remarkably consistent on that score: he bends that rule forwards and backwards and fifty ways from sunday if it'll help those people. But then he goes the other way on a life form he believes to be a threat to himself, to his crew or to the Federation. Faced with THAT prospect, he'll destroy that life form and everything associated with it if it removes the threat.
What's interesting is, Kirk can switch from "Operation Annihilate!" to "I'm not going to kill today" in ten seconds flat. All he needs is to be presented with a passable reason to hold back. If the Neural Parasites on Deneva had actually managed to communicate and strike a bargain, he probably would have let them go free. But they didn't, and so he exterminated every last one of them.
This is exactly what happens with the Klingons in TUC. He's filled with bitterness and rage that he conceals remarkably well, but then in a moment of crisis he has Gorkon whisper his dying words in his ear and what does he hear? A dying man's gasping wish for peace. It's the first time Kirk even considers that Gorkon might actually have WANTED peace and that this wasn't just a ruse to prepare for war. And from that point on, Kirk is as committed to peace as Gorkon is.
Are you one of those people who has never experienced racism in your day to day life but feels comfortable lecturing everyone else on what it is and how we should all deal with it because you read about it in humanities class?
Racism isn't an "edgy" concept. It's something that alot of people deal with in their daily lives, and it's something that causes tension in communities, universities, workplaces, families, governments, law enforcement, even in finances. The extent to which racism -- personal, systemic or reflexive -- impact these things from one situation to the next is a complex question, but it doesn't change what racism IS, and it doesn't change that Kirk's racism in TUC is on full display when he talks to Spock in private.
Whether he's experienced racism personally or not, @Rahul 's criticism was of the content of your post, not of you personally. I expect you to extend the same courtesy to him (or to any poster) and in particular I expect you to refrain from responding to such a critique with a personal attack upon the poster making it.
But you know this already.
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