James T. Kirk
James Tiberius Kirk is a fictional starship captain, and in October 2021 the actor who first played him went to space himself. William Shatner, then aged 90, rode a Blue Origin sub-orbital capsule. He became the oldest person ever to make the trip, and one of the first 600 people to reach space at all. The character he made famous commands the starship USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek series, which ran from 1966 to 1969. Kirk has since been played by other actors, parodied by comedians and borrowed by songwriters. Where did this captain come from, and what kind of leader is he? Who stands beside him, and what happens when the story tries to end his career? And why do so many people keep wanting to play him?
Before Kirk, there was Captain Christopher Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter in "The Cage", a Star Trek pilot that was rejected. For the replacement pilot, creator Gene Roddenberry renamed the captain James Kirk. Hannibal, Timber, Flagg and Raintree had all been considered and set aside. The middle name Tiberius was one Roddenberry had already used for the lead of his earlier series, The Lieutenant.
The new pilot was titled "Where No Man Has Gone Before". That title may owe something to Captain James Cook, whose journal entry reads "ambition leads me... farther than any other man has been before me". The phrase grew into the series catch-phrase, and the opening voice-over promises to "boldly go where no man has gone before".
Fiction supplied another model. Kirk is partly based on Horatio Hornblower, the naval hero of C. S. Forester's novels, and NBC wanted the captain to show "rugged individualism". Desilu Productions first chose Jack Lord for the part. Lord demanded fifty-percent ownership of the show, and so he was not hired.
The second pilot was a success. The first episode recorded with Shatner was "Where No Man Has Gone Before", but viewers met Kirk in "The Man Trap", broadcast on the 8th of September 1966. The pilot followed on the 22nd of September 1966 as the third episode aired.
Shatner, a Canadian actor with Shakespearean experience, set out to give Kirk the "awe and wonder" that "The Cage" lacked. He also drew on Alexander the Great, whom he had played in an unsold television pilot two years earlier. Shatner described the conqueror as "the athlete and the intellectual of his time".
Shatner used himself too. After weeks of daily filming, he reasoned, fatigue makes you "try to be as honest about yourself as possible". A comedy veteran, he proposed that the crew should look as at home in space as sailors at sea. Kirk would be a "good-pal-the-captain, who in time of need would snap to and become the warrior". Making Kirk a man with very human emotions also left room to build the character of Spock.
Shatner wrote of the result: "Kirk was a man who marveled and greatly appreciated the endless surprises presented to him by the universe". He had little faith in the venture, though. When the show was cancelled in 1969, he assumed that his time with the franchise had ended.
Nine people survived as witnesses when Kodos the Executioner massacred 4,000 colonists on Tarsus IV, and young Kirk was among them. He was born in Riverside, Iowa, on the 22nd of March 2233, and raised by his parents George and Winona. He later lived for a time on that colony world. His brother, George Samuel Kirk, is first mentioned in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". The brother is then introduced and killed in "Operation - Annihilate!", leaving three children behind.
At Starfleet Academy, Kirk became the first and only student to beat the Kobayashi Maru test. He reprogrammed the computer so that the "no-win scenario" could be won, and he earned a commendation for original thinking. A field commission as ensign then sent him to advanced training aboard the USS Republic. Promoted to lieutenant junior grade, he returned to the Academy as a student instructor. A friend said that in his class students could either "think or sink", and called Kirk himself "a stack of books with legs".
He graduated in the top five percent and, as a lieutenant, joined the USS Farragut. There he commanded his first planetary survey. A bizarre cloud-like creature attacked and killed a large part of the crew, including his commanding officer, Captain Garrovick. For years Kirk blamed himself for hesitating to fire his assigned weapons. A later encounter with the creature showed that firing at once with conventional weapons would have been useless.
Kirk went on to become Starfleet's youngest starship captain, taking command of the Enterprise for a five-year mission. The original series depicts three of those years.
Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, in The Myth of the American Superhero, call him "a hard-driving leader who pushes himself and his crew beyond human limits". Terry J. Erdman and Paula M. Block, in their primer Star Trek 101, find him "cunning, courageous and confident". They also note a "tendency to ignore Starfleet regulations when he feels the end justifies the means". In their words he is "the quintessential officer, a man among men and a hero for the ages".
His closest bonds on screen are with first officer Spock and chief medical officer Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. Kirk unburdens himself to McCoy, who also serves as a foil to Spock. A production memo by Roddenberry said that Kirk does not fear being fallible so much as he fears the consequences to ship and crew if he errs. Roddenberry wrote that Kirk has "any normal man's insecurities and doubts". Kirk can show them only occasionally, in private with ship's surgeon McCoy, or in moments afterward with Mr. Spock.
Star Trek: The Animated Series, broadcast in 1973-1974, was the first sign that Kirk would outlive his cancelled show. Shatner voiced the animated captain. He then starred in the first seven Star Trek films and voiced the character in several games.
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979, Kirk is an admiral and Chief of Starfleet Operations. He takes command of the Enterprise from Captain Willard Decker. Roddenberry's novelization of that film gives Kirk a wife, a Starfleet officer killed in a transporter accident.
Nicholas Meyer, who wrote and directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982, had never seen an episode of the series before he was assigned to it. In the film, Kirk takes command of the Enterprise from Captain Spock to pursue Khan Noonien Singh, his enemy from "Space Seed". The film also introduces Kirk's former lover Carol and his son, David Marcus. Meyer conceived a "Hornblower in outer space" atmosphere, unaware that those books had influenced the show. He also drew a parallel to Sherlock Holmes. Both men waste away without stimulation: new cases for Holmes, starship adventures for Kirk.
Meyer's script puts Kirk's age at 49, and McCoy gives him a pair of glasses as a birthday present. Shatner was unsure about being specific, because he did not want to play a middle-aged version of himself. Producer Harve Bennett persuaded him that he could age gracefully, like Spencer Tracy.
Spock observes in the film that "commanding a starship is Kirk's first, best destiny". Spock then dies at the end. His sacrifice solves the no-win Kobayashi Maru scenario that Kirk had cheated his way through. That forces Kirk to confront death, and to grow. Earlier he remarks that he feels old and worn out. In the final scene he says he feels "young".
In Star Trek Generations, released in 1994, a new USS Enterprise is damaged by an energy ribbon, and Kirk is lost and presumed killed. The ribbon is actually an entry to the timeless Nexus, where Captain Jean-Luc Picard finds Kirk alive. Picard persuades him to return to Picard's present and help stop the villain Soran from destroying the sun of Veridian III. Kirk first refuses. He agrees after realizing that the Nexus is not a place where he can make a difference.
The two leave the Nexus and stop Soran, but Kirk is mortally wounded. As he dies, Picard assures him that he helped to "make a difference". Picard buries Kirk on the planet.
In the original ending, Kirk was fatally shot in the back. Both Shatner and test audiences were dissatisfied. An addendum inserted while Shatner's memoir Star Trek Movie Memories was being printed describes his enthusiasm at being called back to film a rewritten ending.
Even after the rewrite, co-writer Ronald D. Moore felt the death fell short. It was intended to "resonate throughout the Star Trek franchise", yet it failed to "pay off the themes of death and mortality in the way we wanted". Malcolm McDowell, whose character kills Kirk, disliked both versions. He believed Kirk should have been killed "in a big way". McDowell claims to have received death threats after the film was released.
The grave turned out not to be final. In the third season of Star Trek: Picard, in 2023, Kirk's body is revealed to be stored in stasis at the Daystrom Institute by Section 31.
Aboard a shuttle escaping the USS Kelvin, as a Romulan ship from the future attacks, a baby is born in the alternate Kelvin Timeline. This is Kirk, and his father is killed in the attack. His parents, George and Winona, name him James Tiberius after his maternal and paternal grandfathers, respectively.
The film Star Trek (2009) and its two sequels cast Chris Pine as this version. The filmmakers treated specific details of Star Trek as mutable, but said characterizations should "remain the same." This Kirk starts as "a reckless, bar-fighting rebel". Pine called him "a 25-year-old who acts like a 15-year-old", "angry at the world" until Captain Christopher Pike challenges him to enroll at Starfleet Academy. Kirk and Spock clash there. Over the first film, Kirk focuses his "passion and obstinance and the spectrum of emotions" and becomes captain of the Enterprise. A meeting with the time-displaced Spock of the original timeline inspires him to live up to his potential.
Screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci built the story around Kirk and Spock. Kurtzman said that casting the role was "tricky", but that the "spirit of Kirk is very much alive and well" in Pine's work. Pine recalled a difficult audition, because he felt he could not take himself seriously as a leader. Still, his charisma impressed director J. J. Abrams, and his chemistry with Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock, won him the part. Jimmy Bennett played Kirk as a child. The writers drew on the novel Best Destiny for ideas about his childhood.
Pine chose to embrace Kirk's key traits, "charming, funny, leader of men", rather than fit the "predigested image" of Shatner's portrayal. He skipped Shatner's cadence, believing that copying it would become "an impersonation". He wanted Kirk to resemble Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones or Han Solo, with their humor and "accidental hero" quality.
A misunderstanding arose over whether Shatner would appear in the film. Abrams said the team considered ways to resurrect Shatner's deceased Kirk, but could not find one that was not "lame". Abrams believed Shatner mistook talk of getting "him" into the movie as meaning the actor, not the character. Shatner released a YouTube video expressing disappointment at not being approached. He also predicted the movie would be "wonderful" and said he was "kidding" about Abrams not offering him a cameo.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which began in 2022, is set six years before the original series. Paul Wesley plays Kirk, who first appears in the final episode of Season 1 and returns as a recurring guest in Season 2. He is an officer assigned to the Farragut. He meets Nyota Uhura, Montgomery Scott and Spock, who will serve with him later. The Enterprise has another captain, Pike, and the series also shows Kirk's relationship with his brother Sam.
According to Shatner, early reviewers called his performance "wooden", while most of the praise and media interest went to Leonard Nimoy. His mannerisms as Kirk have since become "instantly recognizable", and in 1982 he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor for The Wrath of Khan. Director Nicholas Meyer said Shatner "gives the best performance of his life" in that film.
Slate's verdict on Shatner's Kirk was that he is an "expansive, randy, faintly ridiculous, and yet supremely capable leader of men". It added that he was "Falstaffian in his love of life and largeness of spirit".
The Guardian called Pine's performance an "unqualified success", and The Boston Globe called him "a fine, brash boy Kirk". Slate named Pine "a jewel" and said he channels Shatner without it becoming an impersonation.
The Myth of the American Superhero also calls Kirk a "superhuman redeemer". Like "a true superhero", he "regularly escapes after risking battle with monsters or enemy spaceships". Some episodes question his position as a hero, but the series "never left the viewer in doubt for long". Others find his exaggerated "strength, intelligence, charm, and adventurousness" unrealistic. They add that his leadership style is most "appropriate in a tight, geographically identical team with a culture of strong leadership."
Roddenberry thought of Kirk as being, in a very real sense, married to the Enterprise. When confronted with a choice between a woman and the ship, "his ship always won". Even so, Kirk has been noted for "his sexual exploits with gorgeous females of every size, shape and type", and labeled "promiscuous" and a "womanizer".
Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, believed he became a better teacher, colleague and husband from watching Kirk run the Enterprise. Pausch wrote that "for ambitious boys with a scientific bent, there could be no greater role model than James T. Kirk". David A. Goodman said that Kirk "has as much reality as possible for a fictional character."
Rankings have followed. In 2012, IGN placed Kirk first among Star Trek characters. In 2016, Wired ranked him the most important Starfleet character, out of 100. In 2018, CBR named him the best Starfleet character, including those of later television series. In July 2019, Screen Rant ranked him only the 8th smartest character of Star Trek.
John Belushi's impression of Kirk for Saturday Night Live, which he described as his favorite role, was "dead-on". Spoofs have aired in many countries, including The Carol Burnett Show and KI.KA's Bernd das Brot. Jim Carrey has been praised for his satire of Kirk in a 1992 episode of In Living Color. Comedian Kevin Pollak is well known for his impressions of Shatner as Kirk.
Kirk's scream of "Khan!" in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan became a pop culture icon in its own right. It has spawned internet memes and is widely parodied and paid tribute to.
A 1979 song, "Where's Captain Kirk?" by Spizzenergi, is an early example of Kirk in pop lyrics. The 1982 rap song "Tough" by Kurtis Blow and 1983's "99 Luftballons" by Nena, in both German and English versions, mention him too. In a 2003 remix of 1998's "That Don't Impress Me Much", Shania Twain names Captain Kirk as one of the unattainable ideals to whom her haughty suitor thinks himself equal.
Merchandise includes collectible busts, action figures, mugs, t-shirts and Christmas tree ornaments. A Kirk Halloween mask was altered and used as the mask worn by Michael Myers in the Halloween film franchise. In 2002, Kirk's captain's chair from the original series sold at auction for $304,000. In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Kirk tied with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as the No. 6 most popular space hero. A crater on Pluto's moon Charon is named after him.
Kirk has also appeared as a cat. In two episodes of the 1975 Filmation series The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, he is drawn as an anthropomorphic feline. That cartoon follows its title character's fantasies about being heroic felines based on popular culture icons. In 2017, scientific illustrator Jenny Parks depicted him as an orange tabby in the book Star Trek Cats.
Fans have kept him going as well. The fan production Star Trek: New Voyages, known from 2008 until 2015 as Star Trek: Phase II, follows the further voyages of the original crew. Its creators say Kirk, Spock and McCoy deserve to be treated as classic characters, like Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, or Hamlet, Othello and Romeo. They add that many actors can play such roles, each with a different interpretation.
James Cawley played Kirk in most of the ten-episode series, which began in 2004, before replacing himself with actor Brian Gross. Wired observed that Cawley's depiction lacks Shatner's vulnerability but has enough swagger "to be passable in the role". At a science fiction convention, a group of Star Trek: Enterprise writers shouted "Hey, Kirk!" to get Cawley's attention while Shatner sat nearby.
Star Trek Continues, first produced in 2013, ran for 11 episodes and set out to chronicle the "lost seasons" of the original series. Anime voice actor Vic Mignogna developed and produced it, and also plays Kirk. Todd Haberkorn plays Spock, and Chris Doohan, son of original Scotty actor James Doohan, plays Scotty. Grant Imahara of MythBusters played Sulu. The third episode, "Fairest of Them All", released in June 2014, won a Burbank International Film Festival award for "Best New Media - Drama". The series also won a Geekie Award for "Best Web Series".
One real place has claimed Kirk as its own. In 1985, Riverside, Iowa, petitioned Roddenberry and Paramount Pictures to adopt him as the town's "Future Son". Shatner and Roddenberry approved. Paramount wanted $40,000 for a license to reproduce a bust of Kirk. The city instead set a plaque and built a replica of the Enterprise, named the "USS Riverside". The Riverside Area Community Club now holds an annual "Trek Fest" in anticipation of Kirk's birthday.
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Common questions
Who played James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek series?
Canadian actor William Shatner played James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek series, which ran from 1966 to 1969. He later voiced the character in Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974) and starred in the first seven Star Trek films.
Where and when was James T. Kirk born?
James Tiberius Kirk was born in Riverside, Iowa, on the 22nd of March 2233, to parents George and Winona Kirk. In the alternate Kelvin Timeline, he is instead born on a shuttle escaping the USS Kelvin.
How did James T. Kirk die in Star Trek Generations?
Kirk is mortally wounded while helping Captain Jean-Luc Picard stop the villain Soran from destroying the sun of Veridian III. Picard assures him that he helped to "make a difference" and buries him on the planet. The original ending had Kirk shot in the back, but it was rewritten.
What is the Kobayashi Maru test and how did James T. Kirk beat it?
The Kobayashi Maru is a Starfleet Academy test known as the "no-win scenario". Kirk became the first and only student to defeat it by reprogramming the computer, and he received a commendation for original thinking.
Who else has played James T. Kirk besides William Shatner?
Chris Pine plays a young Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek film and its two sequels. Paul Wesley plays Kirk in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which began in 2022. Fan series have also cast James Cawley and Vic Mignogna in the role.
How did the name James T. Kirk come about?
Gene Roddenberry renamed the captain James Kirk for the second Star Trek pilot, after rejecting Hannibal, Timber, Flagg and Raintree. The middle name Tiberius came from the lead character of his earlier series, The Lieutenant.
All sources
99 references cited across the entry
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- 42Malcolm McDowell Killed Kirk... But Hated It, Part ICBS — June 1, 2011
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- 44Kicking Off 2009 with Writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci – Part One: Star TrekAlex Billington — FirstShowing.net — January 13, 2009
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- 49Exclusive: Trek Star Reveals Captain Kirk InspirationKaleem Aftab — March 10, 2008
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