Spoilers The Autobiography of James T. Kirk - announcement and reviews

No, I loved it all. However, the Stephen Whitfield book The Making of Star Trek says that Kirk's father is deceased, so I was puzzled by your having George Kirk live for so long.

 

Just finished it - it was a fun, light read, and I have to say that the way Goodman deals with Star Trek V is wickedly appropriate.

 

It couldn't have been classified. An energy cloud the size of a planetary orbit barrels through space toward Earth at high warp, discharges a ship the size of Maui over Earth, then erupts into a spectacular light show of cosmic transcendence? That's not the sort of thing that can go unobserved. You can't hide large-scale events in space, because people can see them. There are countless amateur and professional astronomers constantly watching what goes on in space, and there'd be even more of them in the Federation, not to mention all the sensors on the various civilian ships and stations and settlements throughout space.

If anything, as I suggested in Ex Machina, the V'Ger incident would've raised compelling questions and ideas in the minds of countless people across the Federation and even triggered new spiritual movements as people strove to understand its meaning. It should have been a transformative event for a whole generation -- the paranoia of having your homeland almost destroyed by an unstoppable invader combined with the wonder and inspiration of the birth of a new level of consciousness in a burst of gorgeousness that filled the sky. Imagine the cultural ferment that would've resulted! Maybe it wouldn't have affected Starfleet so much, because they see cataclysmic and transcendent events more often, but to the population of Earth and the Solar system, it should've been the most important event of their lifetimes.

Honestly, I'm not sure people would've remembered Kirk's name because of that, though. Spock and Decker were the more important players in that event, Ilia was the one who sacrificed her life, and the general public would probably have a stronger memory of V'Ger itself than of the humanoid players involved. Though I suppose Kirk's role in the later probe-nearly-destroys-Earth incident, along with the juicy scandal of his theft of the Enterprise, would've solidified his fame.

TMoST has been contradicted before. The extended cut of The Wrath of Khan establishes Cadet Peter Preston as the son of Scotty's sister, but TMoST's Scotty bio says he's an only child.

Anyway, the 2009 movie has Spock Prime establish that the Prime-timeline George Kirk lived long enough to see his son become captain of the Enterprise.

 

I read this in one sitting at my local barnes and noble It was a good read. It was heartbreaking to see that Kirk had regrets about not being there for David and Carol.

 

He could have died shortly after his son became captain. [The Whitfield book only covers the first 2 seasons of TOS.] Anyway, as you say, The Making of Star Trek has been contradicted before.

 

It was a tough decision, I didn't want to contradict Whitfield. The problem I had was that, if I accepted that his father was alive when he graduated the academy (Spock primes line in Abrams movie - if Nimoy as Spock says a line anywhere, it's canon), I then had to have him die after that, and Kirk's life is so filled with the death of people that were important to him - Gary, Edith Keeler, Sam Kirk, Spock - that to add another death that would be important to him felt gratuitous when his father could serve to be a great presence throughout his life, and provide perspective for him at the end of the book.

 

I just double-checked the script, and Spock says, "He proudly lived to see you become captain of the Enterprise," so that delays George Kirk's possible death until at least the 2260s.

David, I just got the book in the mail yesterday as a surprise late birthday gift. I polished off the first 150 pages last night and just finished it tonight, and I enjoyed it a lot. It really exceeded my expectations!

I've read a few of these fictional character biographies (Philip Jose Farmer's Tarzan & Doc Savage biographies, Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, and John Pearson's James Bond bio), and they strike me as very tricky projects. You have to stick to the facts as we know them, extrapolate from any hints that are dropped throughout their stories, knowing all the while that half the assumptions you make will be rejected out of hand by your readers when they don't conform to their personal fan theories (I found the idea of Bond having a younger brother a big stumbling block in Pearson's book - Bond seems like a quintessential only child to me).

But I really liked what you did. I couldn't spot any big contradictions to the ST canon as we know it (except for the STV stuff, of course), and I thought you did a very nice job filling in some logical holes here & there. I was very thankful to see that you decided to put the Ben Finney Republic incident after Kirk's Academy years (jibing with Kirk's "some years later" statement in Court-Martial), instead of the Okudas' inexplicable decision to put it in his Academy years. And I liked that we were in agreement that Kirk followed Captain Garrovick from the Republic to the Farragut (which seems the simplest way to reconcile Kirk's ensign and lieutenant ranks with "He was my commanding officer from the day I left the Academy"). It was neat to see that you went with Gary Mitchell being first officer of the Enterprise. And I was very surprised at how Bones got his nickname.

Some of the latter sections got a bit monotonous, as they unavoidably had several summaries of episodes and movies we'd already seen, but I liked that you made an effort to give us new insights into Kirk's thoughts in these situations.

And I was happy to read in the acknowledgements that Tichenor was in fact Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company! I'm a huge fan of those guys (I directed a production of Compleat Works 4 years ago), so that's who I was picturing during his scenes.

Well done, sir!

 

Thanks so much! I love those fictional biographies too! I worked hard not to contradict canon - my ideas that contradict the Okudas were an attempt at streamlining (and they said they all made sense). the Okudas have a much more difficult job - they are truly the "keepers of the canon", so when facts contradict all they can do is try to explain why.

Making Mitchell first officer was a tough decision - although there's no line of dialogue that says Spock is XO in "WNMHGB", its clear that's what Roddenberry intended. But if you watch the episode, Gary carries himself like he's second in command in a couple of scenes, and it seemed to fit with Dehner's line about Kirk asking for him on his first command. Also, one of the things I didn't like about the JJ movie was how Bones got his nickname - it ignored the source material, since Roddenberry was making an old west reference to surgeons being referred to as "sawbones". I wanted to correct that.

Glad you're a fan of Austin! He's a talented guy and a great friend.

 

I'm open to multiple interpretations of the material. But I tend to love how Bones got his nickname in the Abrams films because it went against the obvious and really suits the character.

Have only gotten a chance to read a couple chapters so far, but it is pretty good.

 

I don't know if I'd say the '09 movie "ignored" the "sawbones" origin, since there was never any evidence that it was the reason in-universe. They were making a movie targeted at new audiences, they wanted to provide an explanation for the nickname in the brief time they had available to devote to the character, and it was easier to combine it with the line establishing him as divorced than it was to concoct some convoluted sidebar involving a variant on an Old West nickname. The rule in movie scripting is economy -- the more you can streamline something, the better.

Besides, why couldn't it have been both? Maybe McCoy's quip about his wife leaving nothing but his bones stood out to Kirk because it reminded him of the "sawbones" nickname for doctors. After all, there had to be some reason that Kirk based his nickname for McCoy on that particular line rather than something else McCoy said to him.

 

I always figured it had a more personal meaning for Kirk and McCoy beyond the origins of Sawbones. Simply because Kirk is the only one to call McCoy "Bones", outside of Spock once using the term in "The Tholian Web" where he tells McCoy what Kirk would've said.

 

I think it's also worth keeping in mind that TOS came out during a time when Westerns were really popular, so it was easier to throw in a reference like that and assume most of the audience will get. Now there probably aren't a ton of people under the age of 40 who are into Westerns enough to get the reference, so it makes sense to change to something that would be a lot easier for people in their teens and twenties to pick up.

 

I think Greg Cox wrote a post (in some long forgotten thread) about how he side-steps the archaic stuff from TOS in his stories to make them feel less dated. He cited Kirk dipping girl's pigtails in inkwells as an example.

The "sawbones" nickname is one of those archaic bits of business and the '09 moviemakers were wise to change it into an inside joke between Kirk and McCoy.

 

Thanks! Yeah, there was definitely a lightheartedness to the way Abrams movie gave the nickname. it didn't detract from the movie for me, it was just slightly unsatisfying.

 

Yeah, I've worked in tv and movies for a while so I understand economy, and the Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman solution was definitely fun, just as an original series fan I missed the old west reference. But you raise a good point, it could've been both.

 

Yes, I agree, very valid for the movie going audience. For my book, I thought it was fun to fill it in and relate it to Kirk's passion for the old west, which was well established in the original series.

 

Yeah, I always hated that "pigtails in inkwells" stuff, since that really reflects the writers of the original series, who were probably children in the 1920's-30's. The Finnegan practical joke stuff Kirk talks about in Shore Leave is also really archaic, though I had to figure a way to include it.

 

Well, the "buckets of water over doors" thing made a bit more sense once TNG's "The First Duty" established that Starfleet Academy doesn't have sliding doors for some reason.

One thing the book unavoidably brought to my attention was the sheer contrivance of Kirk running into so many old acquaintances during the 5YM. The guy's light years out from Earth for five full years, and yet he encounters his brother, the governor of a colony he used to live on, his old history instructor, and THREE old girlfriends! TOS probably went to that well a few too many times just for the sake of drama.

 

yeah, it was an easy writing trick to give him some emotional involvement in the story. (Although Leighton tricked him into coming to Planet Q, so that one doesn't count!)

 

Well, not all of those were random. In "Operation -- Annihilate," it's unclear what brought the E to Deneva. It had something to do with Spock tracking the wave of mass insanity, but maybe Kirk got the ship assigned to deal with it once he learned it was targeting Deneva, because he knew his family was there. And in "The Conscience of the King," Leighton specifically diverted Kirk to Planet Q to alert him to Karidian/Kodos. In "Patterns of Force," they were actively searching for John Gill, so again, maybe Kirk requested that assignment because of the past acquaintanceship. As for the old girlfriends, Janet Wallace may have specifically requested the E, and Janice Lester deliberately lured Kirk to Camus II.