James T. Kirk
James Tiberius Kirk, often known as Captain Kirk, is a fictional character in the Star Trek media franchise. Originally played by Canadian actor William Shatner, Kirk is best known as the captain of the starship USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. Kirk leads his crew as they explore new worlds and "boldly go where no man has gone before". Often, the characters of Spock and Leonard "Bones" McCoy act as his logical and emotional sounding boards, respectively.
Kirk first appears in the Star Trek episode "The Man Trap", broadcast on September 8, 1966, although the first episode recorded featuring Shatner was "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Shatner continued in the role for the show's three seasons, and he later provided the voice of the animated version of Kirk in Star Trek: The Animated Series. Shatner returned to the role for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and six subsequent films. Kirk has also been portrayed in numerous films, books, comics, webisodes, and video games. The character has also been the subject of multiple spoofs and satires.
American actor Chris Pine portrays a young version of the character in the 2009 Star Trek film and its two sequels. Paul Wesley portrays Kirk on the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, set prior to Kirk's captaincy of the Enterprise.
Depiction
James Tiberius Kirk was born in Riverside, Iowa, on March 22, 2233, where he was raised by his parents, George and Winona Kirk. Although born on Earth, Kirk lived for a time on Tarsus IV, where he was one of nine surviving witnesses to the massacre of 4,000 colonists by Kodos the Executioner. James Kirk's brother, George Samuel Kirk, is first mentioned in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and introduced and killed in "Operation – Annihilate!", leaving behind three children.Kirk became the first and only student at Starfleet Academy to defeat the Kobayashi Maru test, garnering a commendation for original thinking after he reprogrammed the computer to make the "no-win scenario" winnable. Kirk was granted a field commission as an ensign and posted to advanced training aboard the USS Republic. He was then promoted to lieutenant junior grade and returned to Starfleet Academy as a student instructor. According to a friend, students could either "think or sink" in his class, and Kirk himself was "a stack of books with legs". Upon graduating in the top five percent, Kirk was promoted to lieutenant and served aboard the USS Farragut. While assigned to the Farragut, Kirk commanded his first planetary survey and survived a deadly attack by a bizarre cloud-like creature that killed a large portion of the Farraguts crew, including his commanding officer, Captain Garrovick. Kirk blamed himself for years for hesitating to fire his assigned weapons upon seeing the threat until a later encounter with the creature showed that firing immediately with conventional weapons would have been useless.
File:Leonard Nimoy William Shatner Star Trek 1968.JPG|left|thumb|Publicity photo of William Shatner as Kirk, alongside Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock
Kirk became Starfleet's youngest starship captain after receiving command of the for a five-year mission, three years of which are depicted in the original Star Trek series. Kirk's most significant relationships in the television series are with first officer Spock and chief medical officer Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. McCoy is someone to whom Kirk unburdens himself and is a foil to Spock. Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence's The Myth of the American Superhero describes Kirk as "a hard-driving leader who pushes himself and his crew beyond human limits". Terry J. Erdman and Paula M. Block, in their Star Trek 101 primer, note that while "cunning, courageous and confident", Kirk also has a "tendency to ignore Starfleet regulations when he feels the end justifies the means"; he is "the quintessential officer, a man among men and a hero for the ages". Although Kirk throughout the series becomes romantically involved with various women, when confronted with a choice between a woman and the Enterprise, "his ship always won".
Roddenberry wrote in a production memo that Kirk is not afraid of being fallible, but rather is afraid of the consequences to his ship and crew should he make an error in judgment. Roddenberry wrote:
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Admiral Kirk is Chief of Starfleet Operations, and he takes command of the Enterprise from Captain Willard Decker. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's novelization of The Motion Picture depicts Kirk married to a Starfleet officer killed during a transporter accident. At the beginning of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Kirk takes command of the Enterprise from Captain Spock to pursue his enemy from "Space Seed", Khan Noonien Singh. The movie introduces Kirk's former lover Carol and his son, David Marcus. Spock, who notes that "commanding a starship is first, best destiny", dies at the end of Star Trek II. In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Admiral Kirk leads his surviving officers in a successful mission to rescue Spock from a planet on which he is reborn. Although Kirk is demoted to Captain in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home for disobeying Starfleet orders, he also receives command of the new starship named Enterprise.
In Star Trek Generations, Kirk is lost and presumed killed when a new USS Enterprise is damaged by an energy ribbon. Instead, the ribbon is an entry to the timeless Nexus, where Captain Jean-Luc Picard finds Kirk alive. Picard persuades Kirk to return to Picard's present to help stop the villain Soran from destroying Veridian III's sun. Although Kirk initially refuses, he agrees after realizing the Nexus is not a place where he can make a difference. The two leave the Nexus and stop Soran. However, Kirk is mortally wounded; as he dies, Picard assures him that he helped to "make a difference". Picard buries Kirk on the planet. In Star Trek: Picard
Kirk appears in several episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as an officer assigned to the Farragut. Throughout his appearances, he is introduced to officers who will serve with him when he becomes captain of the Enterprise: Nyota Uhura, Montgomery Scott, and Spock. The series also depicts his relationship with his brother Sam and other members of the Enterprise crew under the command of Christopher Pike.
Kelvin Timeline
The alternate "Kelvin Timeline" reveal different origins for Kirk, the formation of his association with Spock, and how they came to serve together on the Enterprise. In this timeline, Kirk is born on a shuttle escaping the starship USS Kelvin as it is attacked by a Romulan ship from the future. His father is killed in the attack. George and Winona Kirk name their son James Tiberius after his maternal and paternal grandfathers, respectively.Although the film treats specific details from Star Trek as mutable, characterizations are meant to "remain the same." Kirk is initially portrayed as "a reckless, bar-fighting rebel" who eventually matures. According to Pine, the character is "a 25-year-old 15-year-old" and who is "angry at the world" until he enrolls in Starfleet Academy after being challenged to by Captain Christopher Pike. Kirk and Spock clash at Starfleet Academy, but, over the course of the first film, Kirk focuses his "passion and obstinance and the spectrum of emotions" and becomes captain of the Enterprise. He is also aided by a meeting with the time-displaced Spock of the original timeline, who inspires Kirk to live up to his full potential after learning about the parallel version of himself and his accomplishments as Captain in the elder Spock's timeline.
Development
Conception and television
played the commanding officer of the USS Enterprise, Captain Christopher Pike, in the rejected Star Trek television pilot "The Cage". In developing a new pilot episode, called "Where No Man Has Gone Before", series creator Gene Roddenberry changed the captain's name to "James Kirk" after rejecting other options like Hannibal, Timber, Flagg and Raintree. The episode title may have been inspired by Captain James Cook, whose journal entry "ambition leads me... farther than any other man has been before me" inspired the episode title, and became the series catch-phrase in the opening voice-over. The character is in part based on C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower hero, and NBC wanted the show to emphasize the captain's "rugged individualism". Roddenberry had previously used the middle name of Tiberius for the leading character in his earlier television series, The Lieutenant, which was to feature several actors who would later go on to be part of the production of Star Trek.Jack Lord was Desilu Productions' original choice to play Kirk, but his demand for fifty-percent ownership of the show led to him not being hired. The second pilot episode was successful, and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was broadcast as the third episode of Star Trek on September 22, 1966.
William Shatner tried to imbue the character with qualities of "awe and wonder" absent from "The Cage". He also drew upon his experiences as a Shakespearean actor to invigorate the character, whose dialogue at times is laden with jargon. Not only did Shatner take inspiration from Roddenberry's suggestion of Hornblower, but also from Alexander the Great – "the athlete and the intellectual of his time" – whom Shatner had played for an unsold television pilot two years earlier. In addition, the actor based Kirk partly on himself because "the fatigue factor is such that you try to be as honest about yourself as possible". A comedy veteran, Shatner suggested making the show's characters as comfortable working in space as they would be at sea, thus having Kirk be a humorous "good-pal-the-captain, who in time of need would snap to and become the warrior". Changing the character to be "a man with very human emotions" also allowed for the development of the Spock character. Shatner wrote: "Kirk was a man who marveled and greatly appreciated the endless surprises presented to him by the universe... He didn't take things for granted and, more than anything else, respected life in every one of its weird weekly adventure forms."