James T. Kirk (Columbia)

Myriad Universes: James T. Kirk

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James T. Kirk

James T. Kirk (ST01)

Columbia Timeline
(Chronicled in novels and comics, diverging with the Columbia NX-02 in 2156)

James Tiberius Kirk was born on Stardate 1277.1 aboard the Einstein class U.S.S. Kelvin NCC-0514, to Lieutenant Commander George Kirk and Lieutenant Winona Kirk, and named for both his maternal grandfather, James Davis, and his paternal grandfather, Tiberius Kirk. Kirk was raised with his brother in Iowa, though he also accompanied his parents to other planets, such as Tarsus IV, where he was one of only nine eyewitnesses to survive the massacre of half the colony's population by Governor Kodos in 2247, and he would never forget what he saw.

Academy Years

Kirk entered Starfleet Academy in 2250, at the age of 17, with the help of Commodore Robert April and Admiral Eugene Mallory. He was a brilliant and dedicated cadet, though some people, including an upperclassman named Finnegan, thought he was too serious and bookish. Kirk was particularly impressed by one of his instructors, a history professor named John Gill, whom he considered one of the kindest and gentlest men he had ever met. Kirk proved himself to be more than just an academic when he was the first cadet to beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario, a test designed to confront aspiring starship captains with a no-win situation. Refusing to accept that there was such a thing, Kirk broke into the Academy’s computer and reprogrammed the scenario so that he could achieve all his goals. Far from being criticized for his behavior, he was commended for original thinking.

Assigned to the U.S.S. Republic NCC-1371 for his cadet cruise in 2254, Kirk befriended one of his instructors, Lieutenant Ben Finney. The two were close enough that Finney named his daughter Jamie in his honor, but that friendship didn't prevent Kirk from doing his duty. One day, Kirk relieved Finney on watch and discovered that he had left a circuit to the ship’s atomic matter piles open, seriously endangering the ship and the lives of everyone aboard. Kirk closed the circuit and logged the incident. As a result, Finney was reprimanded and moved to the bottom of the promotions list. He failed to accept responsibility for the incident and blamed Kirk, resulting in more than a decade of enmity from the older man. While assigned to the Republic, Kirk was part of a mission to the planet Axanar, where one of his heroes, Captain Kelvar Garth, had won a famous victory. Kirk was awarded the Palm Leaf of Axanar for his part in the Republic's mission.

Gary Mitchell (TOS 01)

After his tour on the Republic ended, Kirk returned to the Academy, where he became a student tutor. The class he taught earned quite a reputation among other cadets, who knew that in Kirk’s class it was "think or sink." Kirk became friends with one of his students, Gary Mitchell, whom Kirk would later request on his first command. Kirk left a lasting impression on many of his other contemporaries, including R.M. Merrick, who was expelled after failing a psychosimulator test. Years later, Merrick still remembered Kirk as an example of all that was best about Starfleet officers. During his time at Starfleet Academy, Kirk had at least three serious relationships: one with a blonde lab technician, one with Janice Lester, which lasted a year, and one with a beautiful young woman named Ruth.

Junior Officer

Upon his graduation in 2254, Kirk was promoted to Lieutenant, and his first posting was the U.S.S. Farragut NCC-1647 under Captain Garrovick. The young Lieutenant Kirk first experienced command when he led a planetary survey party; during this mission he befriended the leader of the local hill people, a man called Tyree. Kirk was serving aboard the Farragut during the Klingon War, and his experiences would cause him to develop an intense dislike for the Klingons. He was horrified by the way the Klingons maintained "order" on occupied planets, by organizing them into vast labor camps, taking and killing hostages and confining the people's leaders. He became convinced that the Klingons were a brutal people who could not be trusted.

Creature (TOS DC DoH)

In 2257, Kirk was involved in a serious incident that left him deeply troubled for many years. Near Tycho IV, the Farragut encountered a mysterious and dangerous gaseous entity. Kirk hesitated for a brief moment before firing the ship’s phasers and, when the creature attacked, a third of the crew, including Captain Garrovick, were killed. Although Starfleet found nothing wrong with his actions, Kirk blamed himself for the disaster. Twenty-four hours later, on Stardate 3131.3, the ship, now under the command of First Officer Chenowyth, had been stabilized when it was attacked by a swarm of carnivorous, insectile creatures, which bored into the hull of the disabled ship. Kirk and a Vulcan passenger, T'Cel, ensured that the ship was able to safely complete an emergency saucer separation before initiating the self-destruct sequence on the engineering hull, eliminating the threat. Kirk and T'Cel evacuated in an escape pod before the ship was destroyed, and made their way to one of the newly-constructed Watchtower class outposts, Watchtower 13, along the nearby Romulan Neutral Zone. Kirk was wounded, and a Romulan vessel was approaching to investigate the explosion. T'Cel placed Kirk into a stasis tube to prevent his capture by the Romulans, whom she said she had fooled into believing that she was the only person aboard the outpost. When Kirk was recovered, it appeared that T'Cel had died in the escape pod, leading the Romulans away from the outpost.

Starship Command

Hermes class (SotL2016)

Kirk was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and first officer aboard the U.S.S. Eagle NCC-956 under Captain Botwin in 2258, and at this point was reunited with Carol Marcus, the "blonde lab technician" that Gary Mitchell had "pointed in [his] direction" during their time at the Academy. Their rekindled relationship ended a year later in 2259, and unbeknownst to Kirk at the time, Marcus was pregnant with their son, David Marcus. When Kirk did finally learn about his son, Marcus asked him not to become involved in their child's upbringing, and Kirk respected her wishes. Later that year, Kirk became involved with Janet Wallace, an endocrinologist, but their differing career goals pulled them apart. During this period, he was also involved with Areel Shaw, an impressive young lawyer with the Judge Advocate General's office. The two parted on good terms but didn't see one another for several years. In fact, it seems that Kirk’s dedication to his career made it almost impossible for him to form lasting relationships. Kirk served as the Eagle's first officer until his promotion to Captain in 2263 and his assignment as commanding officer of the Hermes class U.S.S. Sacagawea NCC-598. At his request, his old friend Gary Mitchell was assigned to the Sacagawea. During his tenure as captain of the Sacagawea, he encountered a Klingon captain named Koloth for the first time.

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 (SD 1329.1) (TOS 03)

In 2265, on Stardate 1278.4, Kirk assumed command of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 from Captain Christopher Pike, becoming the third commanding officer of that vessel, and began what would become an historic Five Year Mission. Kirk excelled as a captain, and his exploits became requred reading at the Academy. Kirk had a relaxed command style and enjoyed a close relationship with his crew. Although Kirk and Finney had never reconciled their differences, Kirk did not object when Finney was assigned to his ship as records officer.

Kirk was on very good personal terms with many of his officers, who respected and admired him. Occasionally, these relationships verged on romance—Kirk evidently became close with Doctor Helen Noel at a science lab Christmas party—but on the whole he felt it was inappropriate to become romantically involved with another member of his crew. Although Kirk didn’t establish any lasting romances, he did form some of the most important friendships of his life while he was aboard the Enterprise. His first officer, the half-Vulcan Spock, and the ship’s Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Leonard McCoy, became his lifelong friends.

Tactically, Kirk was one of the finest officers who ever served in Starfleet, and he consistently proved himself the equal of many adversaries. Kirk’s many exploits included the discovery of replicable means of time travel, several important conflicts with the Klingon and Romulan Empires (including a mission where he stole a Romulan cloaking device), the first successful journey across the galactic barrier, and an incident involving the Mirror Universe.

Ben Finney (TOS 14)

Kirk and his crew also repelled several attempts to invade Federation space. In 2268, the Enterprise encountered an automated weapon that had destroyed several planets and crippled the U.S.S. Constellation NCC-1017. Kirk finally managed to defeat the weapon by setting the Constellation to self-destruct and flying it inside the planet-destroying device. In the same year, Kirk and his crew defeated a massive spaceborne "amoeba" cosmozoan that had destroyed the U.S.S. Intrepid NCC-1631 and threatened Federation space. Kirk also convinced the Kelvans to stop their intergalactic invasion plans. Despite all his achievements, in 2266 Kirk stood trial in a court-martial when he was accused of the murder of Ben Finney. During the trial, it emerged that Finney, who was still obsessed with Kirk, had faked his own death, and Kirk was exonerated.

Kirk endured other hard times during his command. In 2265, he was forced to kill Gary Mitchell when his friend gained extremely potent psionic powers after passing through the Galactic Barrier, becoming a serious danger to the rest of the crew and the Federation at large. In 2267, the Enterprise visited Deneva, where Kirk’s older brother, George Samuel Kirk Jr., was working as a research biologist. When the planet was attacked by a race of neural parasites, Sam (as Kirk called him) and his wife Aurelan were killed, and their son Peter barely survived. Fortunately, Sam’s two other sons were not on the planet at the time.

Edith Keeler (1930) (TOS 28)

Kirk also had a difficult time romantically. In 2267, he traveled back in time to 1930 and fell in love with Edith Keeler, but was forced to let her die in order to preserve the flow of history. Several months later, on Stardate 4203.5, shortly after the incident with the Doomsday Machine, the Enterprise rescued a Romulan Bird of Prey from an attack by the same creatures that had attacked the Farragut a decade earlier. Kirk discovered that T'Cel, with whom he'd had a brief affair during the Farragut incident, was still alive, and was now the commander of the Bird of Prey, the Phoenix. T'Cel revealed that her mother was, in fact, Romulan, and while she had been raised on Vulcan, she was accepted as part of Romulan society when she fell into Romulan custody in 2257. In 2268, Kirk spent several months living among a Native American community when he was stranded on a planetoid with amnesia and went by the name "Kirok." During this time he married a woman named Miramanee, who became pregnant. Shortly after the Enterprise returned to rescue Kirk, she and her unborn child were stoned to death by an angry mob. Later that year, Kirk fell deeply in love with the android Rayna Kapec. He awakened similar feelings in her, but she was unable to cope when asked to choose between Kirk and her creator, the immortal Mr. Flint; her programming failed, and she died. Kirk was so distressed by her death that Spock took the unprecedented step of mind-melding with him to remove the painful memories.

If Kirk had a weakness, it was his obsessive devotion to duty. He was extremely hard on himself and felt personally responsible whenever one of the people under his command was killed. He rarely took shore leave, and Dr. McCoy was forced to order him to relax on more than one occasion. He was extremely devoted to his ship, which he looked on as "a lady" who needed his love. Kirk was just as dedicated to the members of his crew, and he disobeyed direct orders on several occasions in order to help officers under his command. For example, in 2266, he refused to obey Galactic High Commissioner Ferris' order to abandon the search for a shuttlecraft which had been lost while investigating the Murasaki 312 quasar-like phenomenon. The following year, Kirk disobeyed direct orders from Starfleet Command to attend the inaguration of the president of Altair VI. Instead, he ordered the Enterprise to Vulcan because his science officer, Spock, needed to return there in order to deal with his pon farr. Spock held his captain in such high regard that he asked him to be present at the koon-ut-kal-if-fee ceremony. As a result, Kirk and McCoy (who was also present) became part of a select group of Humans who have had first-hand experience of this aspect of Vulcan culture. In general, Kirk was intolerant of bureaucracy and often described himself as a soldier rather than a diplomat. However, he played an important part in resolving several conflicts, including the conflict between Vendikar and Eminiar VII. He also forced the inhabitants of Ardana to reconsider the divisive social system that forced one group of people to work in the zenite mines while others lived in luxury in the floating city of Stratos.

Fortunately for Kirk, he managed to lay some of his demons to rest during his time aboard the Enterprise. In 2266, his friend Thomas Leighton, another survivor from Tarsus IV, told him that he believed he had found Kodos, who had assumed the identity of Anton Karidian, a Shakespearean actor. Leighton was murdered shortly after he revealed his suspicions to his friend, but Kirk’s investigations proved that he had been right about Kodos. The fugitive governor died in an accident when his daughter, Lenore, attempted to kill Kirk. Kirk also again encountered the cloud creature that had attacked the Farragut years earlier. The events that followed proved that Kirk’s hesitation in firing on the creature during its attack on the Farragut had made no difference. Kirk eventually managed to destroy the creature with an antimatter bomb.

When the Enterprise's five-year mission ended in 2270, Kirk was promoted to admiral. He accepted the promotion against the advice of Dr. McCoy, who warned him that he would never be happy unless he was in command of a starship. Kirk recommended that the young Will Decker replace him as captain of the Enterprise, which had just begun a major refit shortly after its return to Earth.

Admiralty

As an admiral, Kirk became Chief of Starfleet Operations. McCoy's prediction about Kirk's happiness proved right; everyone could see that the admiral was frustrated and unhappy with his desk job. When the Federation was threatened by V'Ger in 2273, Kirk grabbed the opportunity to return to the field. In his obsession to regain command of a starship and save the Federation, Kirk was less than sensitive to the needs of the people around him: in order to resume command of the newly refitted Enterprise, Kirk demoted Decker and assumed personal control of the mission. He also forcibly reactivated Dr. McCoy's commission. Although Kirk's actions may suggest that he was insensitive and egotistical, he was proved right. Under his command, the crew of the Enterprise persuaded V'Ger to abandon its attack on Earth. Decker and the ship’s navigator, Ilia, were lost in the mission.

T'Cel (TOS DC DoH)

Immediately after V'Ger incident, Kirk and the Enterprise crew met T'Cel and the Phoenix once again. Together, they discovered a Klingon vessel with an experimental superweapon that had been destroyed by the same creatures that attacked the Farragut and the Phoenix. After the V'Ger threat had passed, Kirk remained in command of the Enterprise and began a new five-year mission of deep space exploration. This mission ended in 2278, and Kirk decided to retire from Starfleet five years later in 2282. During his retirement, Kirk fell in love with a woman named Antonia, whom he met at his uncle’s farm in Idaho. They lived together in a beautiful mountain cabin, but Kirk was clearly not satisfied. In 2284, he returned to Starfleet against her wishes and their relationship ended. On his return to active duty, Kirk took up a post as the Commandant of Starfleet Academy, moving into an apartment in San Francisco so that he could be near his work. By this time, his closest friend, Spock, who had been promoted to captain, was also working as an instructor at the Academy and as Captain of the Enterprise, which was now a cadet training vessel.

David Marcus (ST02)

By 2285, Kirk was beginning to feel his age. Even though he had chosen to return to Starfleet, he did not feel that he was young enough to return to the bridge of a starship and, despite Dr. McCoy's advice, he refused to request a command of his own, telling his friend that "galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young." Kirk took the Enterprise on a cadet training mission. At the same time, the genetically engineered Human Augment, Khan Noonien Singh, took control of the U.S.S. Reliant NCC-1864, determined to wreak revenge on Kirk, who had left him on Ceti Alpha V in 2267. The Reliant had been assigned to the Genesis Project, led by Dr. Carol Marcus and Dr. David Marcus, the son she had with Kirk. Khan learned about the project and used it to lure Kirk into a battle near Regula 1, where the Marcuses were based. Although Khan inflicted serious damage on the Enterprise, Kirk's greater experience triumphed and he outfought the Reliant in a tense battle in the Mutara Nebula. At the end of the battle, the Genesis Device was activated, creating a new planet. The mission had a great personal cost for Kirk: Spock was killed by radiation exposure when he repaired the Enterprise's warp engines. The Vulcan was given a burial in space, with Kirk providing the eulogy. Spock’s body came to rest on the newly-formed Genesis Planet.

When the Enterprise returned to Spacedock, Admiral Morrow informed Kirk that the decision had been made to retire the badly damaged ship. Still grieving for his friend, Kirk found it extremely difficult to accept that his ship and crew could be treated in such a way. The same day, Spock’s father, Ambassador Sarek, visited Kirk and asked him to recover Spock’s body from the Genesis Planet and return it to Vulcan. Although Kirk and Spock were extremely close, the Vulcan had not told his friend many details about life on Vulcan. Sarek explained that before they die, Vulcans mind meld with one of their most trusted companions and entrust them with their katra, or soul, which is then taken back to Vulcan with their body. Kirk learned that although Spock had been unable to mind meld with him, he did manage to place his katra in Dr. McCoy’s mind. Demonstrating typical loyalty to his crew, Kirk asked Morrow for permission to return to the Genesis Planet to retrieve Spock’s body, but the admiral refused. Genesis had become the focus of a diplomatic furor, and Starfleet Command had placed the planet off-limits to everyone except essential personnel. Effectively, this meant that the only people allowed to visit the planet were the crew of the U.S.S. Grissom NCC-623, which included David Marcus. This prompted Kirk to make a momentous decision: he disobeyed orders and, with the aid of the Enterprise's senior staff, stole his old ship and went to Genesis. When the Enterprise arrived, the crew discovered that the Grissom had been destroyed by a group of Klingons, and that only Lieutenant Saavik and Dr. Marcus had been left alive on the planet's surface. The damaged and undermanned Enterprise was no match for the Klingon ship, and Kirk was powerless when David was killed by the Klingons. Once again Kirk was faced with apparently insurmountable odds. In a desperate move, he tricked most of the Klingons into boarding the Enterprise, which he destroyed, killing them. Kirk and his staff narrowly escaped the destruction of the Genesis Planet after it became unstable; they managed to retrieve Spock’s body, which had been rejuvenated by the Genesis effect, and took control of the nearly-deserted Klingon Bird of Prey. They then took Spock to Vulcan, where his katra and body were reunited. The death of Kirk's son had a profound effect on him and further hardened his attitude toward the Klingons. He had never had much respect for the Klingon Empire, but he was now convinced that the Klingons, as a whole, were little better than animals.

Kirk returned to Earth to face the consequences of his actions. However, before he could arrive, Earth was "attacked" by a mysterious probe. Kirk saved Earth by traveling back in time and retrieving two humpback whales from the 20th century. When he returned, nearly all charges were dropped, and he was reduced in rank for disobeying orders. A captain once again, he was placed in command of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A. Kirk was delighted to be back on the bridge of a starship and gratefully accepted the position.

A New Enterprise

After a shakedown and refit, this new Enterprise entered service and was sent to deal with a disturbance on Nimbus III on 8454.1. When they arrived, Spock’s renegade half-brother Sybok took control of the ship and headed for the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy. The Enterprise was the first Federation vessel to pass through the barrier, and on the other side, the crew met a malevolent entity who claimed to be God. Sybok was killed, but Kirk defeated the entity and returned to normal space.

T'Kir (TOS DC DoH)

On Stardate 8719.3, Kirk met up clandestinely with Klingon Commander Kor and T'Cel, only to have a surprise appearance by the Enterprise as well, with Garrovick, Riley, Bailey, Styles, Palamas, Romaine, and Jamie Finney aboard. Using Kor's ship, the Revenge, as bait, the three captains lured the creatures in for a final confrontation. T'Cel sacrificed herself and her ship to seal the wormhole that the creatures used to enter this reality. Among T'Cel's crew was Subcommander T'Kir, who quickly bonded with Enterprise crewmember Lieutenant McMurphy and revealed to Kirk that he was her father. Kor offered to bring Finney aboard his vessel as an unofficial ambassador, as her prowess in battle impressed him.

In 2293, Kirk, now sixty years old, was nearing retirement once again when he and the Enterprise were assigned to escort the Klingon Chancellor, Gorkon, to vital peace talks with the Federation. Initially, Kirk, who blamed the Klingons for his son’s death, was unwilling to accept the assignment. The Klingon Empire was on the verge of collapse and he felt it would be better to let it die. However, Starfleet Command wanted to send someone who had been known as an enemy of the Klingons to show how serious they were about peace. Despite Kirk’s feelings, he and Dr. McCoy beamed over to Gorkon’s ship to offer assistance when it was attacked, seemingly by the Enterprise, but the chancellor was assassinated. They were arrested for Gorkon’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on Rura Penthe, but they escaped, and Kirk was instrumental in exposing a plot to disrupt peace negotiations with the Klingon Empire. Kirk was deeply impressed by Azetbur, Gorkon’s daughter and the newly-named chancellor, who insisted on pursuing peace negotiations with the Federation even after her father’s death. He realized that his attitude regarding the Klingons was not entirely fair, and recognized that he had been guilty of prejudice. After the Khitomer conference, the Enterprise went on a handful of missions before the ship was decommissioned and Kirk once again retired from Starfleet.

The following year, Kirk was an honored guest at the launch of the newly commissioned U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-B. When the ship responded to a distress call from two transports loaded with El-Aurian refugees he made essential modifications to the ship’s deflector, but was lost and presumed dead. Kirk was actually transported to an unusual region outside normal space-time known as the Nexus. While there, he lived an idyllic existence unaffected by the passage of time. The Nexus provided Kirk with an "ideal" reality. In it, he "returned" to the period in the 2280s when he left Starfleet. He was once again living in his mountain cabin and had the opportunity to stay with Antonia rather than return to Starfleet. Kirk left the Nexus when Captain Jean-Luc Picard from 2371 persuaded him to help fight Dr. Tolian Soran, who in one timeline had caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of lives in order to return to the Nexus himself. Kirk was more than willing to leave because he realized that, although the Nexus appeared idyllic, nothing in it mattered and his life there lacked the passion and the sense of adventure that had been so important to him throughout his life. Kirk was killed on Veridian III, foiling Soran’s scheme and altering the timeline so that hundreds of millions of lives on Veridian IV were saved. However, because of the unusual properties of the Nexus, it is not entirely clear whether or not Kirk is still there, outside the passage of normal time.

Service Record

2250-2254	Starfleet Academy
2254	Cadet Cruise, U.S.S. Republic NCC-1371 (Constitution class)
2254-2257	Lieutenant U.S.S. Farragut NCC-1647 (Constitution class)
2258-2263	Lieutenant Commander, Commander First Officer, U.S.S. Eagle NCC-956 (Constitution class)
2263-2265	Captain Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Sacagawea NCC-598 (Hermes class)
2265-2270	Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 (Constitution class)
2270-2273	Admiral Chief of Starfleet Operations
2273-2278	Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 (Constitution class)
2282-2284	Retired
2284-2285	Commandant, Starfleet Academy
2285	Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Excelsior NX-2000 (Excelsior class)
2286-2293	Captain Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A (Constitution class)
2293-2294	Retired; Presumed dead during commissioning ceremonies aboard U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-B (Excelsior class)
2371	Recovered from Nexus; Died at Veridian III)

Image Gallery

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  James T. Kirk (SD 1312.4) (TOS 01)

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  James T. Kirk (SD 1512.2) (TOS 02)

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  James T. Kirk (SD 1329.1) (TOS 03)

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  Transporter duplicate of James T. Kirk (SD 1672.1) (TOS 04)

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  James T. Kirk (SD 1531.1) (TOS 05)

Notes and References