Fighting Skills!
Slamming your butt into an enemy's face has got to take the cake.
Why is Kirk so revered???
- Thread starter Dar70
- Start date
Slamming your butt into an enemy's face has got to take the cake.
I think it was more a (well deserved) stab at kelvin-Kirk, not at burnham.
still counts as atemi!
Looking at the TOS episode list, it seems to me that Kirk probably originally became famous when the Enterprise became the first ship to breach the Galactic Barrier in "Where No Man Has Gone Before." Making peaceful contact with the First Federation in "The Corbomite Maneuver" probably reinforced that fame, and then his profile probably continued to rise throughout 2266-2267 as a result of him managing to prevent no less two major wars in one year: with the Romulans in "Balance of Terror" and with the Gorn in "Arena." Public opinion might also conflate Kirk with preventing another war with the Klingons during "Errand of Mercy" even though real credit goes to the Organians.
But the thing that probably solidifies Kirk's status as a hero to the people of the Federation is probably the events of "The Doomsday Machine." Spock indicates that the Machine was on course to enter "the most densely-populated section of our galaxy," and then Sulu specifically cites the Rigel system as its next target. Given that there seem to be multiple planets in the Rigel system from other episodes, I would interpret that to mean that the Rigel system is the most highly-populated system in the Federation -- if Earth is the Federation's Washington DC or Ottawa, then Rigel is the Federation's New York City or Toronto. So when Kirk and his crew -- and Commodore Decker! -- saved Rigel, I figure at that point Kirk became a hero and a celebrity. From there, the sheer variety of extraordinary missions he and his crew carried out probably got public attention. Add to this the fact that he saved Deneva? Add to this him exposing worker abuses on a Federation Member in "The Cloud Minders?" This guy's making waves and people know him.
And then he saves Earth from V'Ger in The Motion Picture. And then, he saves Earth again from the Probe in The Voyage Home. And then, his career culminates in him saving the President of the United Federation of Planets, exposing the assassins of the Chancellor of the High Council of the Klingon Empire, and preventing a new Federation-Klingon War and enabling the final end to the UFP/Klingon Cold War.
I mean, if the captain of, say, the captain of the HMCS Halifax were to almost single-handedly save Toronto from a rogue ship, and then were to follow that up by saving Ottawa twice and then saving the Prime Minister from assassins by jumping in front of the bullet himself -- that captain would end up pretty damn famous and revered, wouldn't they?
So with Kirk.
But the thing that probably solidifies Kirk's status as a hero to the people of the Federation is probably the events of "The Doomsday Machine." Spock indicates that the Machine was on course to enter "the most densely-populated section of our galaxy," and then Sulu specifically cites the Rigel system as its next target. Given that there seem to be multiple planets in the Rigel system from other episodes, I would interpret that to mean that the Rigel system is the most highly-populated system in the Federation -- if Earth is the Federation's Washington DC or Ottawa, then Rigel is the Federation's New York City or Toronto. So when Kirk and his crew -- and Commodore Decker! -- saved Rigel, I figure at that point Kirk became a hero and a celebrity. From there, the sheer variety of extraordinary missions he and his crew carried out probably got public attention. Add to this the fact that he saved Deneva? Add to this him exposing worker abuses on a Federation Member in "The Cloud Minders?" This guy's making waves and people know him.
And then he saves Earth from V'Ger in The Motion Picture. And then, he saves Earth again from the Probe in The Voyage Home. And then, his career culminates in him saving the President of the United Federation of Planets, exposing the assassins of the Chancellor of the High Council of the Klingon Empire, and preventing a new Federation-Klingon War and enabling the final end to the UFP/Klingon Cold War.
I mean, if the captain of, say, the captain of the HMCS Halifax were to almost single-handedly save Toronto from a rogue ship, and then were to follow that up by saving Ottawa twice and then saving the Prime Minister from assassins by jumping in front of the bullet himself -- that captain would end up pretty damn famous and revered, wouldn't they?
So with Kirk.
Look at all the other Captains shown in TOS and during the first seven movies. It was easy for Kirk to stand out, because most of the rest of them were crap. And what @Sci said.
Why did Lincoln stand out? Same reason. Not only did he do great things during the Civil War, but it was also helped by the fact that most 19th Century US Presidents were crap.
When you stand out, and no one else can challenge that, and it stays that way for a long period of time, your legacy will deepen and become entrenched.
Archer --> Late in the fourth season, they established that some asshole was taking credit for Starfleet's early success and short-changing Archer. Nathan Samuels from "Demons" (ENT). Yes I had to look that up on Memory Alpha.
Pike --> Overshadowed by Kirk the same way The Dark Knight overshadowed Batman Begins.
Burnham --> The first two seasons of DSC were classified. She's now in the 32nd Century, ahead of everything else.
Picard --> Seems pretty well-known and regarded on DS9, VOY, and now DSC in its new setting. He's still well-regarded in PIC for his younger days, even though he's fallen out of favor with Starfleet by 2399.
Sisko --> No idea.
Janeway --> No idea.
Why did Lincoln stand out? Same reason. Not only did he do great things during the Civil War, but it was also helped by the fact that most 19th Century US Presidents were crap.
When you stand out, and no one else can challenge that, and it stays that way for a long period of time, your legacy will deepen and become entrenched.
Archer --> Late in the fourth season, they established that some asshole was taking credit for Starfleet's early success and short-changing Archer. Nathan Samuels from "Demons" (ENT). Yes I had to look that up on Memory Alpha.
Pike --> Overshadowed by Kirk the same way The Dark Knight overshadowed Batman Begins.
Burnham --> The first two seasons of DSC were classified. She's now in the 32nd Century, ahead of everything else.
Picard --> Seems pretty well-known and regarded on DS9, VOY, and now DSC in its new setting. He's still well-regarded in PIC for his younger days, even though he's fallen out of favor with Starfleet by 2399.
Sisko --> No idea.
Janeway --> No idea.
I think that what people tend to overlook is that the Constitution-class ships were meant (before Discovery retcons) to be the Federation's biggest, most important capital ships, only a dozen out of the entire fleet. Despite the Kelvin films' illogical approach, nobody would be assigned the captaincy of one of those ships unless they'd already proven themselves to be among Starfleet's very finest commanders. The Making of Star Trek established that Kirk had distinguished himself as the youngest person ever to command a starship in his first command of a "destroyer-equivalent" vessel, and that it was his achievements in those early years of captaincy that had earned him the Enterprise.
So really, none of the Connies' captains would have been just ordinary, run-of-the-mill officers. They would have gotten to command those ships specifically because they'd already accumulated their own lists of great achievements. So they should all have been acclaimed as accomplished explorers or warriors. Otherwise they wouldn't have been in command of those ships to begin with. Getting a Constitution-class command would be the payoff for an officer's success and prominence, not the sole cause of it.
So yes, Kirk accomplished all those things, but it doesn't make sense to assume he's the only captain who accomplished comparably great things. After all, Kirk himself admired other captains like Garth. And it's a big galaxy. If the Enterprise encountered so many threats in just a few years, it stands to reason that its eleven sister ships would also be running into similarly massive threats on a similarly frequent basis -- and the fact that we didn't hear about the devastation inflicted by those threats implies that they were just as successful at averting them, except on those occasions where their luck ran out like in "The Doomsday Machine" or "The Omega Glory." So it just doesn't follow that Kirk would be the only captain earning that kind of acclaim.
That's just fictional selection bias. In those cases where the other captains were able to solve the problems themselves, Kirk's crew wouldn't have had to do it and thus we wouldn't have seen those instances as TOS episodes. We only saw those cases where the other captains couldn't do it themselves. I mean, there were times when the shoe was on the other foot -- in "Obsession," Kirk must've looked pretty incompetent to the crew of the Yorktown. "Seriously? He blows off an urgent delivery of medical supplies to chase after some personal vendetta? Who does that young upstart think he is?"
Also, she was never a captain in the 23rd century!!! Why is she even included in this list?
Much like what I said about Kirk above, people often overlook that the reason Picard was given command of Starfleet's big new "flagship," the E-D, was because he was already a legendary captain due to his famous 22-year career aboard the Stargazer.
Oh, I completely agree! I was not trying to argue otherwise, and I don't think my speculation above contradicts that assertion in any way.
But, I was looking for an explanation for why this particular 23rd Century captain seems so much more revered than the majority of other Starfleet captains, to the point where he's the main source of attention aboard the launch of the Enterprise-B in 2293 for at least half a dozen reporters for interstellar news networks and to the point where 24th Century schoolchildren seem to grow up knowing about his exploits. It's not necessarily a matter of his accomplishments being superior to other captains' accomplishments, but a matter of it being a particular kind of accomplishment that penetrates public consciousness more than others.
ETA: To make a modern comparison... being appointed commanding officer of a Nimitz or Gerald R. Ford-class is one of the most prestigious assignments an officer can achieve in the United States Navy, yet I don't think the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. have any idea who these officers are. These officers are enormously accomplished, but that's not the same thing as achieving public fame and reverence. End edit.
I certainly agree there's plenty of room in the Star Trek canon for other captains of comparable levels of accomplishment and fame in the 23rd Century, but I do think that the implication seems to be that Kirk achieved a level of public fame and reverence that most other captains did not.
Except maybe he isn't. Maybe other captains have the media following them around just as much -- we just don't see it because the stories we see aren't about them.
And yes, there have been instances of 24th-century characters geeking out over Kirk and Spock, especially on Lower Decks, but it's not exclusive to them. We've seen the LD characters geeking out over Picard, Riker, and Janeway as well (though I wish they'd throw in some captains we don't already know from the shows), and in Discovery's 32nd century, we've gotten name-drops for Voyager, Spock, Archer, Picard, and even Nog, but not yet for Kirk.
I'm not sure a modern comparison is a fitting analogy, because modern Naval officers aren't discovering new lands and expanding the boundaries of science. A better analogy would be for captains like Magellan and Cook, or astronauts like Gagarin and Armstrong. We don't remember commanders doing routine work, but we do remember explorers who break new ground.
There is, and I say it's a lazy assumption that the writers should try harder to break away from.
On the other hand, news media also suffers from selection bias. It shouldn't, but it does. It's like high school and a popularity contest. Kirk got the most buzz, and the media liked him, so he ended up the most remembered from his time. To quote Harriman, "I remember reading about your missions when I was in grade school!"
I know the Real World Reason for why Kirk is considered legendary in shows set after TOS is because he was the main character, but that can also be applied In-Universe as well if his missions were getting more coverage. Why would they get more coverage? I have no idea. I'm not the one who writes these things...
I'll go straight to the source material itself. It shows what Gene Roddenberry's intentions were:
"Enterprise log, Captain James Kirk commanding. We are leaving that vast cloud of stars and dust called our galaxy. Behind us: Earth, Mars, even our Sun are specs of dust. The question: What is out there in the black void beyond? Until now our mission has been that of Space Law Regulation. Contact with Earth colonies, an investigation of alien life. But now, a new task: A probe out into where no man has gone before."
This was cut from the beginning of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" but it establishes TOS's Mission Statement right from the beginning.
I think Kirk became famous first for the exploring he did during TOS and second for saving Earth twice in the Movies. Those are the kinds of things that would generate the Big Buzz I was talking about in the previous post.
"Enterprise log, Captain James Kirk commanding. We are leaving that vast cloud of stars and dust called our galaxy. Behind us: Earth, Mars, even our Sun are specs of dust. The question: What is out there in the black void beyond? Until now our mission has been that of Space Law Regulation. Contact with Earth colonies, an investigation of alien life. But now, a new task: A probe out into where no man has gone before."
This was cut from the beginning of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" but it establishes TOS's Mission Statement right from the beginning.
I think Kirk became famous first for the exploring he did during TOS and second for saving Earth twice in the Movies. Those are the kinds of things that would generate the Big Buzz I was talking about in the previous post.
Except he was one of many Starfleet captains engaged in exploration. It stands to reason that many of them would've also become famous for their discoveries. The question isn't why Kirk is famous; the question is whether other captains are also famous. Maybe Kirk gets the lion's share of the attention, like how Neil Armstrong and James Lovell are probably more remembered than Pete Conrad or Eugene Cernan, but that doesn't mean his accomplishments were unique among Starfleet captains.
Anyway, judging from how Discovery has portrayed things in the 32nd century, it sort of seems as if history remembers Spock more than Kirk. Maybe part of the reason Kirk is so famous is because he was Spock's captain, and Spock is the real legend. Sort of like how Leonard Nimoy was the breakout star of TOS and the only way to keep Kirk central (as Isaac Asimov reportedly recommended to Roddenberry) was to make him and Spock inseparable.
Which is an entirely fair argument to make. Just to be clear, though, my original post in this thread was about finding an interpretation of the text that accounts for the assumption the writers have made that Kirk was significantly more famous than most other captains, rather than trying to undermine that assumption.
Well Starfleet uses her as it's training hologram model in Prodigy so that's something.
Kirk who?
Everybody knows that the greatest captain of all time is [INSERT NAME OF CURRENT SERIES CAPTAIN HERE]
Everybody knows that the greatest captain of all time is [INSERT NAME OF CURRENT SERIES CAPTAIN HERE]
Saying "undermine that assumption" implies that an assumption is something that's solid enough to stand on its own and has to be deliberately sabotaged to make it fail. But that's placing far too much faith in assumptions. Assumptions are not solid constructs, they're flimsy and unfounded. Taking a closer, critical look at an idea, putting it to the test and finding out whether it really holds up, is not undermining it -- just the opposite, it's adding support to it if it's true. It's going beyond the emptiness of assumption and establishing a solid foundation for an idea, if there is a foundation to be had. And if the idea doesn't have a solid foundation, then exposing that doesn't undermine it, because there was nothing holding it up to begin with. Testing the solidity of the ground is not undermining it.
So I'm just trying to evaluate the idea critically, as any intelligent person should do with any and every question under discussion. If the premise is that Kirk is more famous than other captains, that premise should be tested and verified as the first step in discussing it, as with any other question. Yes, there's evidence that Kirk is famous, but do we really have enough evidence to support the assumption that other captains are not famous? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
She crippled the borg and made a show out of it by blowing up a sphere in earth's front yard for everyone to see. I'd say she's pretty well regarded because of that alone.
Kirk who?
Everybody knows that the greatest captain of all time is [INSERT NAME OF CURRENT PERSONAL FAVORITE CAPTAIN HERE]
I fixed it for you!
I think it's a manifestation of 'small universe syndrome' for later characters to always be name-dropping characters we are already very familiar with. But if they start naming other Starfleet captains from a hundred years before, who are supposedly famous but we in the audience have never heard of, we will scratch our heads and say, "Who? They should have mentioned Kirk!"
Kor
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