doneinthree | ooc; character profile

Name: James T. Kirk. The "T" stands for Tiberius. Often goes by Jim.
Series: Star Trek XI (2009 Movie)
Role: Protagonist
Age: 25
Gender: Male
"Real Name": William Shatner

Please give us a detailed personal history of your character.
[This follows what's shown in the theatrical release of the film, except for a few things: (1) the whole section involving Kirk's older brother and why he trashes the Corvette as a kid, (2) his Starfleet Academy record, and (3) the explanation for how he passes the Kobayashi Maru test. These sources for these parts are: (1) the novelization of the film, (2) Kirk's bio on the official movie website, and (3) an extended/deleted scene on the DVD. This was actually written in July 2009 before the DVD came out, which is why things are all over the place. MY BAD.

Also, I'm going to be throwing around a few Star Trek terms most people probably already know, but JUST FOR REFERENCE: "Federation" is the United Federation of Planets, the interstellar federal government in this universe; "Starfleet" is the Federation's military and deep-space exploration service; "Klingons", "Vulcans" and "Romulans" are all alien races.]

James T. Kirk was born in Riverside, Iowa, in the year 2233; the second son of George Kirk, the First Officer aboard the Federation starship USS Kelvin. Or he would've been, if the Kelvin hadn't been diverted to investigate a mysterious "lightning storm in space" near the Federation-Klingon border. The lightning storm turned out to be a black hole, which disgorged a massive Romulan ship called the Narada. Its captain, Nero, launched an attack against the outmatched Kelvin, then forced the Kelvin's captain to transfer aboard the Narada for questioning, only to kill him. Having been promoted to captain in his stead, George Kirk decided to evacuate the ship and set the Kelvin on a collision course with the Narada. Because the auto-pilot function had been destroyed in the attack, George was forced to remain aboard to buy everyone the time to escape. "Everyone" included his very pregnant wife, Winona.

James T. Kirk was born aboard a medical shuttle evacuating from the USS Kelvin. In the moments before the Kelvin's destruction, his parents named him after his mother's father, James, and his father's father, Tiberius. He was raised in Riverside by his mother, and then also by his stepfather, Frank, when Winona eventually remarried. A Starfleet officer herself, Winona's work often took her away from home, and she had little idea that Frank's treatment of her sons became downright abusive when she wasn't around. Jim's brother, George Samuel Kirk, particularly chafed under their stepfather's dictatorial rule. But while Sam was angry, rebellious and a troublemaker, young Jim was studious, obedient and well-liked by teachers.

This changed on the day he'd been ordered to wash and wax the vintage Corvette convertible which had once belong to George Kirk, Sr., as Frank intended to sell it behind Winona's back while she was off-world. This so incensed Jim's brother that he decided to run away from home, which in turn spurred an upset Jim to commit the first act of rebellion in his life. He stole the Corvette, was chased by a police officer into a quarry, and drove the car over a cliff, bailing out at the last minute. Jim was not yet even a teenager at this time.

But after that, it was as if the torch of George Samuel Kirk had merely been passed on to his little brother. By the age of 22, despite "off-the-charts" scores on his aptitude tests, Jim's life was reduced to bar fighting every night in various dives across Iowa. His last night in the state involved one such fight, when several Starfleet trainees took issue with him hitting on a fellow cadet by the name of Uhura, who specialized in xenolinguistics and looking damn fine in the Starfleet-regulation minidress and go-go boots.

The four-versus-one fight was broken up by the arrival of Captain Christopher Pike, who ordered all cadets out of the bar. While Jim worked on not bleeding into unconsciousness, Pike looked up his file, his curiosity having been piqued when the bartender told him the young man's name. Pike had written his dissertation on the USS Kelvin, and took advantage of this opportunity to talk George Kirk's son into enlisting. "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's, and yours," he told Jim. "I dare you to do better."

Although Jim blew him off in the bar, Pike's words about feeling like he was meant for "something special" had struck a chord. He rode all night on his motorcycle, and found himself on the next morning looking at the Riverside Shipyard. It was there that he first set eyes on the half-built USS Enterprise, the new Federation model set to become the future flagship of the fleet. He made his decision. Jim gave his bike away to a construction worker, and boarded the shuttle to the Starfleet Academy in San Francisco.

Aboard the shuttle, he met Dr. Leonard McCoy, who'd enlisted after a nasty divorce with his wife. "All I got left are my bones," said the older doctor, a comment which would later become the root of Kirk's nickname for him. The two men shared a flask, and became best friends during their Academy careers. Over the next three years, Kirk maintained an excellent record, ranking top of his class in survival strategies and tactical analysis, and becoming an assistant instructor in advanced hand-to-hand combat. He was also the treasurer of the Xenolinguistics Club, which sadly did nothing to endear him to Cadet Uhura.

On the brink of graduation, Kirk was determined to pass the Kobayashi Maru, a virtual command chair test which he'd already failed twice. It was while trysting with Gaila, one of the test's technicians, that he overheard Gaila's roommate — Uhura — mention a Klingon transmission she'd intercepted which detailed how an entire armada had been destroyed by a single massive ship. The next day, Kirk left a "special" e-mail for Gaila, to opened while he was doing the test and she was monitoring him. Upon opening it, a "cheat-patch" was downloaded into the Kobayashi Maru program, allowing Kirk to defeat all his virtual enemies, rescue the stranded ship, and thereby become the first person to ever beat the supposedly "unwinnable" test.

The faculty board was less impressed. The entire graduating class was gathered to witness the disciplinary trial in which Commander Spock, a half-Vulcan instructor and the head programmer of the Kobayashi Maru scenario, accused Cadet Kirk of cheating. Kirk argued that the test was rigged, and therefore his "cheating" was a legitimate approach to solving the problem. Spock countered that the point of the simulation wasn't winning or losing, but to assess the captain's composure in the face of a no-win scenario. However, the final ruling between Kirk and Spock was interrupted by a Red Alert which sent all graduating cadets to the barracks.

Kirk went with Bones for their assignments, but while McCoy was put on the USS Enterprise for her maiden voyage, Kirk was skipped entirely due to being on academic suspension. Suddenly, it seemed as though all the effort he'd made these last three years had been wrecked by a single test. Bones took pity on his friend and decided to smuggle him aboard the Enterprise by injecting him with an alien virus and exploiting Starfleet medical protocol.

The Enterprise was the last ship to set out in response to the distress signal from the Vulcan High Council. The shipwide broadcast noted that this call had been preceded by the detection of "a lightning storm in space," a term Kirk immediately connected to what had happened with the Kelvin. After confirming with Uhura that the aggressors in the transmission she'd intercepted were Romulan, Kirk raced to the bridge to inform Captain Pike that they were sailing into a trap.

Backed up by Uhura's intel, Kirk convinced the bridge to ready themselves for an ambush. His hunch proved correct when the Enterprise warped into a war zone strewn with the wreckage of the starships which had come before them, all destroyed by the Narada. Although they'd missed the same fate, they were still no match for the Narada's firepower, and Pike was forced to acquiesce to Nero's demand to fly over alone in a shuttle. Pike hoped to win time for Kirk to destroy the drill which was boring into the planet Vulcan and disrupting the Enterprise's communications and warp functions. Before leaving, Pike promoted Spock to Acting Captain, and Kirk to First Officer in his place. (Of this decision, I will only say that Kirk seemed as shocked as anyone else.)

Kirk parachuted onto the drill platform along with the helmsman, Hikaru Sulu, and the chief engineer, Olson, but Olson died on the way due to his own recklessness. While Kirk and Sulu managed to disable the drill on their own, it was too late to stop Nero from ejecting a substance called "red matter" into the planet's core. Kirk and Sulu watched as the red matter caused a singularity to form inside Vulcan, until Sulu was shaken off the platform. Kirk dived after him without hesitation, and caught Sulu in time for Pavel Chekov, the Enterprise's tactical officer, to beam them back onto the ship.

They were home for barely a second before Spock came in and ordered Kirk and Sulu off the transporter deck, intending to go down by himself and rescue the Vulcan Elders before the planet broke apart. Among the Elders were Spock's parents, but as they were all being beamed up, the ground beneath his mother's feet fell away, and she was lost. Kirk was there to see them return, and having lost a parent himself, he somewhat understood Spock's feelings. But there were no words to be exchanged on the matter, especially when Spock returned to acting as cool and logical as ever. However, his next cool and logical decision was to regroup with the rest of the fleet in the Laurentian System, a course of action Kirk vehemently disagreed with, believing they would be better served by acting quickly and while the element of surprise was still on their side. They had to save Pike, who held the frequencies to Earth's defenses, required by Nero if he wanted to destroy their planet too. But Spock would not be deterred, and when Kirk resisted being detained for mutiny, Spock knocked him out cold with a Vulcan nerve-pinch.

Kirk woke up next in a one-person lifepod on the Class-M ice planet of Delta Vega, because Acting Captain Spock was a total jerk. Kirk donned his cold-weather gear and set out on his own, only to be hunted for food by horrible giant carnivores. He fled into a cave to escape, and was saved by an aged Vulcan resting there. Improbably, this Vulcan recognized the young man as James T. Kirk. Even more improbably, the Vulcan claimed to be Spock, and Kirk's friend.

This Spock — we'll call him Spock Prime — came from the alternate reality in which Jim Kirk was born on a farm in Iowa, and George Kirk lived to see his son become captain of the USS Enterprise. Spock Prime formed a Vulcan mind-meld with Kirk to explain: 129 years into the future, Spock Prime would take a ship containing red matter to try to stop a supernova from destroying the planet Romulus. He arrived moments too late to save the planet, but was able to use the red matter to destroy the supernova with a manufactured black hole. Unfortunately, Nero arrived and, enraged at Spock's failure to save his home, went after his tiny vessel. The chase led both to be sucked into the black hole, and sent into the past.

However, they did not arrive at the same time. The Narada's arrival had been marked by the lightning storm on the day of Kirk's birth, and the events of that day had set Kirk's destiny off-course. Spock Prime arrived more recently, in the lightning storm detected near Vulcan, but Nero had been waiting for him. He was captured, his ship and red matter stolen, and then marooned on Delta Vega so he could witness the destruction of his home planet. It was through the emotional transference of the mind-meld that Kirk understood the agony Spock felt over losing Vulcan.

Spock Prime was determined to set things to rights, first by returning Kirk to the Enterprise. They set out to the Federation outpost on Delta Vega, which contained only two sentients: an alien engineer, and a human Starfleet officer named Montgomery Scott, whom Spock recognized from his own timeline. In that future timeline, Scotty would discover the equation for transwarp beaming, an equation Spock Prime provided then to help them get to the Enterprise while it was in warp. Spock left Kirk with orders to take command of the ship by means of Starfleet Regulation 619: "Any command officer who is emotionally compromised by the mission at hand must resign said command." (He forbid Kirk from mentioning him to Spock, implying universe-ending time paradoxes as his reason, but that was a lie to force Kirk and the present Spock to learn how to work together. Kirk still doesn't know this.)

Kirk and Scott successfully beamed onto the Enterprise's engineering deck, although Scotty ended up inside a water conduit. Kirk's efforts to rescue Scotty attracted the attention of the bridge, and the two were arrested and brought up to see Spock. There, Kirk attempted to provoke the acting captain with a speech that culminated in saying Spock had never loved his mother, which had the desired effect: Spock attacked Kirk in a blind rage, and would've killed him if not for the intervention of Spock's father. Citing Starfleet Regulation 619, Spock resigned his post, and left.

Kirk took the command chair, backed up by Sulu, who'd been present when Pike had advanced him to first officer. Kirk ordered the Enterprise to prepare to stop Nero from destroying Earth, and from there his crew formed a plan: Chekov determined they could approach Nero undetected by warping to behind one of Saturn's moons. Once there, Scotty (now promoted to chief engineer) would be able to beam someone into the Narada, and they could retrieve the black hole device and rescue Captain Pike. For this mission, Spock returned to volunteer himself, having come to some sort of personal resolution in the interim.

Kirk decided to go with him, and they headed to the transporter deck (where Kirk discovered that all those years of rejection from Uhura had to do with her preferring pointy-eared nerds, go fig). Scotty deposited the two inside the Narada's cargo bay, which surprisingly was full of Romulans. But Kirk and Spock turned out to be a well-matched team, and had little trouble in getting past them and finding Spock Prime's ship, and the red matter on board.

While Spock took the futuristic little vessel to destroy the Narada's drill, Kirk went to retrieve Pike, who was weakened but still alive. And awesome. (Along the way, Kirk did meet and grapple with the man who'd killed his father, and by "grapple with" I mean Nero kicked the shit out of him, but Spock's attacks on the Narada were enough to distract Nero's attention away.) As Spock readied his ship for a suicide run at the Narada, the Enterprise showed up as the cavalry, and Scotty beamed Pike, Kirk and Spock back just in time.

The collision with Spock's ship ignited all the red matter, and the damaged Narada found itself being sucked into a singularity. From the bridge, Kirk hailed the Narada and offered them help ("Show them compassion, it may be our only way to win peace with Romulus. It's logic, I thought you'd like that, Spock."), which Nero vehemently rejected. Kirk ordered his crew to destroy the Narada once and for all.

The enemy was defeated and Earth saved, but the Enterprise now found itself caught in the black hole's gravity well. Scotty came up with a plan to eject the warp core and have it detonate against the black hole, in hopes that the blast would push the ship clear. "Do it!" ordered Kirk. The exploded core formed a titanic explosion which engulfed the struggling Enterprise, flooding all viewports with blindingly bright light.

When the light cleared, James Kirk found himself waking up in Landel's.

(The Enterprise does manage to ride out the shock wave and return home. An undetermined amount of time later, Kirk is awarded a commendation and officially given command of the USS Enterprise after Pike is promoted to admiral. Cue applause. The next scene shows the Enterprise presumably heading out on the five-year exploration mission of the original series, with Kirk in his captain's uniform and Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, Bones and Scotty as members of his crew. Spock shows up to submit his candidacy for first officer, which Kirk accepts. And it's beautiful.)

Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality.
Before he became the unlikely savior of Earth, most people took James T. Kirk to be an egotistical, abrasive, skirt-chasing moron. It wasn't a completely unfair assessment. At 22, he was described as "the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest." Although he'd smoothed out some of his rough spots during his three years at the Academy (more self-confidence, less insolence to authority figures... relatively), his handling of the Kobayashi Maru test pretty clearly showed a guy who loved attention and was full of his own cleverness. The way he wrangles McCoy into helping him for a third time without listening to McCoy's protests may just be long experience with his cranky friend, but I imagine that even with others, Kirk just did whatever he wanted and forced people to trail exasperatedly behind him. Kirk got away with it because, despite being pretty obnoxious at times, he was also rather charming. He has a very light-hearted, easygoing demeanour which some people may find off-putting for someone who's essentially a military man, but it makes him very easy to like as a person even if you might loathe him professionally.

Kirk developed his insouciant bad boy act as a self-defence mechanism for his various vulnerabilities. He was a highly intelligent kid growing up aimless in a small rural town. He had a whole range of hot-button family issues. All this and more were things which threatened to make people categorize him before they even knew him, something Kirk strongly resisted. That "young rebel" behaviour is the major personality difference between him and Kirk Prime (who's pretty upstanding and well-respected), likely prompted by the major history difference between them: their father figures. George Kirk is something of a legendary figure in both Riverside and Starfleet, and Kirk likely grew up his entire life being held up to George Kirk's reputation. Both in the bar with Pike and during the hearing with Spock, Kirk reacts sharply to mentions of his father with smartass comments, showing how much he wears his heart on sleeve (differently from Kirk Prime, who's a lot more in control of himself), and how much of a touchy issue George is, even though Jim's never met him. Yet it's also obvious that Kirk thinks a lot about his father (he specifically asks Future Spock whether he knew his dad in the prime universe), and Pike also successfully uses Kirk's father to push him to join Starfleet.

I believe Kirk joined not simply because Pike double-dog-dared him (although that helped), but because Kirk really did want to make something out of his life and really was interested in what Starfleet had to offer. The expression on his face when he boards the shuttle to the Academy is one of pure joy, and Kirk Prime had believed in and chose to dedicate his whole life to the Starfleet mission. This is a man who needs a grand purpose in order to feel fulfilled. The speech Pike makes to Kirk in the bar hit all of the longings he had: to be challenged, to encounter new and exciting things, to be "special", to surpass the reputation of his famous father and make a name for himself.

As immature as he might've behaved at times as a cadet, it mostly came out in his social interactions. When it called for it, Kirk was plenty capable of demonstrating eloquence, reasoned thought and competence. Plus, Kirk Prime was a pretty big nerd who read a lot and admired many of his instructors, and I imagine Kirk had it in him too to really enjoy his studies. In school, his level of "genius" was probably along the lines of being able to quickly grasp new concepts and find ways of applying them. Although the scene is played for laughs, the fact that Kirk is able to figure out the Narada's trap while suffering from various weird viral effects says a lot about how well he's able to evaluate a situation and find ways to deal with it, even if his approach tends to be headfirst, screw the rules, we'll figure it out when we get there.

Kirk is fearless, impulsive and reckless, three things which make him prone to choosing the most dangerous course of action. That said, if he were alone, unarmed and saw a vicious creature five times his size, he isn't so foolhardy that he wouldn't run like hell. The parachute jump onto the drill, with Olson being all "AWESOME, I can't wait" and Kirk reacting like "...uh sure", shows that Kirk isn't really an adrenaline junkie, at least not when lives besides his own are at stake. Even then, I don't think Kirk gets his kicks out of being reckless, he just happens to be reckless because of how acts on his gut instinct all the time. In this area, Kirk benefits a good deal from more patient influences (e.g. Spock, McCoy, almost anyone else). He might not necessarily listen to rational advice, but Kirk is quickly figuring out what it takes to be a leader.

Being a captain and being responsible for lives besides his own is something Kirk is going to have to get used to. He's demonstrated that in times of crisis, he's capable of stepping up to the task, but it still stands that he'd worked himself up from a disgraced cadet to captain in a matter of days, through a process involving a mixture of stupid luck, rash decisions and actual merit. It would be only human for Kirk to have doubts about whether or not he deserves to be called "captain," especially now that he's in a completely new setting and has no reason to believe he got his crew home safe or that Starfleet would officially grant him the title. But so long as Kirk feels a sense of camaraderie with someone, their safety becomes his major concern. He knew Olson and Sulu for barely ten minutes before they did the parachute jump, and he was yelling at Olson to not be a suicidal moron and jumped off the drill to catch Sulu. Now that he's captain, the desire to protect his crew will become one of his main motivating factors. (And of course, all of this stuff referring to "his crew" will most likely expand to include other patients in Landel's, even if Kirk doesn't use that word specifically. There are few situations more efficient in instilling solidarity than being fellow prisoners in a torture prison.)

Also, whether he got there legitimately or not, Kirk does make a good leader. Beyond the qualities already touched upon — the intelligence to assess a problem and figure out solutions, the bravery to make difficult choices and the determination to see them through to the end — he's also genuinely good with people. Kirk doesn't consider himself a one-man-show who's singlehandedly responsible for the safety of the Enterprise crew. He fully realizes that the men and women under his leadership are some of the best Starfleet has to offer, and he knows that most of them know way more than him in their areas of expertise. He listens to and respects his officers, and is likely very happy to develop personal friendships with them beyond the chain of command, as Kirk Prime did.

PROS
• fearless. doesn't shy away from dangerous tasks or unexplored ventures.
• determined. won't roll over and give up easily. enjoys challenges. optimistic. doesn't believe in no-win scenarios.
• charismatic. has good looks and a charming smile, knows how to use them. generally upbeat and easygoing nature, lack of military formality, easy to like.
• highly intelligent. open to learning. good at quickly assessing a situation and coming up with original solutions to problems.
• good leader. would never ask someone to do something he's not willing to do himself. trusts and appreciates the expertise of his subordinates.
• prioritizes the safety of his crew above all else. wouldn't hesitate to put his life at risk to save one of them.
• doesn't hold grudges for long. compassionate nature. capable of empathizing with someone even after having serious disagreements with them.

CONS
• impulsive. acts on gut instinct, which luckily for him tend to be good instincts, but still leads him to doing insanely dangerous things.
• reckless. lacks forethought sometimes. e.g. deciding to accompany Spock onto the Narada, which would've left the Enterprise with no one to lead had they both died.
• overconfident, even cocky. e.g. went with Spock to the Narada because he was certain of their success, when it was actually pretty damn lucky they just survived.
• has a problem with authority that's not his own. serious lack of reverence for rules and regulations. speaks his mind with superiors (and everyone else, at that).
• impatient and abrasive when he's not in charge or he's feeling cornered. not good at hiding his emotions, even when he'd really want to.
• young, relatively inexperienced. didn't really legitimately earn his spot as "captain." may be prone to doubting himself at times.
• easily distracted by attractive female humanoids.

Please give us a detailed physical description of your character: James Kirk looks like the archetypal Middle American golden boy: a little over six-feet tall, cropped blond hair, bright blue eyes, an athletic build and open, friendly good looks. Although capable of straight-backed military austerity, his carriage tends to be more relaxed, sometimes with a bit of swagger when he's feeling particularly satisfied. He moves with confidence and purpose, the sort of person who's used to commanding attention wherever he goes.

Two characters from the "prime" timeline recognize this Kirk as being the same as Kirk Prime, so within canon, a young Chris Pine does not look any different from a young William Shatner. (People who are outside of Star Trek canon but who recognize TOS Kirk can obviously interpret this Kirk however they want.) THAT SAID, there's still the issue that William Shatner has hazel eyes and Chris Pine has blue eyes. One of the scriptwriters joked that Kirk's eyes changed colour due to space radiation, and I'm going to go ahead and take that as canon. So... IF IT EVER COMES UP.

The Starfleet officer's uniform is a pair of black boots, black pants, and a black long-sleeved undershirt overlaid with a tunic bearing the Starfleet insignia, its colours denoting the officer's division and rank. From the point I'm taking him, Kirk is wearing everything except the tunic, and spends most of the movie that way. By the end, he's awarded a gold-coloured tunic (for the command division) with three silver bands on the sleeves (his rank as captain). If ever relevant, the clothing he's wearing at the end of the movie should be considered his "canon outfit."

What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's? Near the ending of the movie, when they eject the warp core into the singularity and it explodes, and the ship is briefly engulfed in ~~LENS FLARES~~ the blast.

What kinds of magical/special/crazy powers does your character have, if any? Superhuman ability to cling to ledges despite having no handholds or footholds. Obviously attributable to nipples of steel. On a more serious note, no, Kirk does not have any special powers. |D

If present, how do you plan to tweak those powers to make him/her appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's? N/A

Does your character have any other non-magical skills or abilities that we should know about? Kirk is a Starfleet officer (or at least almost, seeing how he hadn't quite graduated yet), and can be presumed to have received some sort of training for military operations and space exploration. The novel notes that as part of his Starfleet education, Kirk learned basic first aid, and how to comfort a grieving family member, so... things like that. (It should be noted that all of his training is tailored to the twenty-third century, so some things might require adaptation.) His movie canon specializations are survival strategies, tactical analysis and advanced hand-to-hand combat, so Kirk should be pretty well-suited to finding ways to manage himself in the Landel's environment. Sulu claimed training in "advanced hand-to-hand combat" and he can wield a katana, so I'm going to say that Kirk could handle himself decently with a melee weapon, but prefers fighting either unarmed or with a phaser. A phaser is the standard sidearm of Starfleet. It shoots "nadion particle beams" (which look like lasers) and can be adjusted to either stun, heat, cut, kill or disintegrate. (More information here, not that it's particularly relevant in Landel's.)