TOS Kirk was a by the book fella.
Problem was, they were still writing the book.
So while it looks like he had some crazy adventures and disregarded Starfleet at every turn, that’s a lie.
Most of the time, he spent every other episode calling back, following the strictest of laws, going through proper motions and channels. Every other action was court-martialed and brought to trial. He was, for the most part, a dedicated captain following Starfleet’s rules.
Just because he is now the reason for about two dozen more rules, doesn’t make him the crazy madman adventurer we see him as. Of course he differed from his orders, at times. But those are the most excusable times, and even then, after disobeying, he laid himself up for proper discipline. He knew he’d done wrong in the eyes of his superiors, but his conscience wouldn’t have let him do any different.
Kirk was a rule follower and a rule maker. And only on special circumstances, a rule breaker.
This is as canonical as it gets: Kirk even says as much about himself when talking about his time as a cadet. Even with the Kobayashi Maru, supposedly his “defining” moment of “coolness” and rebellion, Kirk cheats because of how upset he is about the possibility of making a non-perfect grade. Like: he would only violate the rules to protect his GPA 😐
And rather than breaking into the grading system and changing his grade(which would be easier), or trying to finagle extra work/easier grading to make up for it(which would also be easier since everyone, canonically, thinks he’s a hotty), he changes the test so a perfect conclusion is no longer impossible, then achieves that still very difficult, but possible, solution. That’s a very lawful way to “cheat”(and, coincidentally, one that makes it obvious that he cheated since the instructors know the test was designed to be unbeatable. That he wasn’t drummed out for it shows how much Starfleet admires quick-thinking and pluck, so long as it doesn’t go too far).
I think people miss this because:
- Movie Kirk is an almost totally different character from TV Kirk, and anyone born after the original run but before the prevalence of torrent sites(which is most fans these days) met Movie Kirk first. and
- They don’t get how deeply Picard is a foil for Kirk.
I mean, they understand in a surface sense, in that Kirk is popularly seen as a “cowboy” and Picard is seen as a managerial diplomat, but it’s far deeper and more literary than that.
Kirk’s childhood is marred by horror. When he was 13 he was already off-world and lived through a planetary famine… and the eugenicist massacre the colony’s governor implemented to “save” it. These experiences had a huge impact on him and his morality, and shaped the grim, serious, humorless, friendless and by-the-books student he was in the academy.
His career after the academy, and particularly his time as Captain, taught him how to be himself; how to come out of the shell of duty he protected himself from others with, and the dark impulses he realized were within all humans, after Tarsus IV. And it also taught him the importance of his own morality; that while you honor the code of conduct and follow it as much as you can, sometimes adherence to its values and the “humanity” it is meant to instill and promote, require crossing those rules, even as it also requires you face the consequences of that violation.
Picard is the reverse. The shows and movies don’t go much into his early life, but we know he grew up in a loving and supportive, multi-generational family, who didn’t approve of his ambition to join starfleet. So Picard’s career began in an act of rebellion, and that quality of his character -his arrogance and willingness to spit in the face of tradition and convention; his propensity for running mad risks(because he didn’t really know what consequences were)- stayed with him through to graduation. Until his fight with the Nausicaans. A lesson quickly followed up with the Stargazer incident.
Picard’s life was safe until Starfleet, and his life in Starfleet taught him -at the edge of a knife; through his repeated near-death, and the deaths of his friends and mentors at the hands of unknown, unsuspected, almost unseen assailants- why rules existed and why caution, information-gathering, and diplomacy are so important. His early experiences in Starfleet taught Picard to temper his ambition and passion -his tendency to put himself and his assessments before everything else- with restraint, respect for others, and dutifulness to the ethics of his profession.
Picard had to learn to settle down, respect the fragility of life, and trust the rules; Kirk had to learn to be assertive, that hard situations require risk and sacrifice, and to trust himself. Both learned through Starfleet how to balance who they were and the things they believed in with the ethics and heavy responsibilities of their profession. This is a story about two people arriving at the same place(the most respected and trusted officer in the Fleet, entrusted with its flagship) from very different beginnings, and the sort of values and people Starfleet rewards.
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Though I’d have liked if they weren’t both farmboys. ST sure loves its agricultural origin stories :TOnto the main cuz my maintuals all should know this.
Tag: star trek meta
A Vulcan Hello
Is nobody going to talk about how the Vulcans adopted a policy of “shoot first” against the Klingons and that that was what helped keep them at a respectful distance for such a long time because I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
It was only logical. The culture of war cherished by Klingons had helped them to win their place under the suns of the overcrowded Galaxy. As in a pack of wolves, the strongest is the lead. Vulcans had no choice but to prove they’re the force one cannot ignore. Also take into consideration the time when Klingon-Vulcan interraction took place. It’s the time of Earth pre-Warp-5, before Archer’s Vulcans – intolerable, arrogant, half-aggressive. The Kir’Shara was a myth most of Vulcans didn’t even believe to be true but a fairy tale (or a nightmare for Vulcan High Command). So, nothing surprising here.
I still haven’t watched ENT so I can’t say a lot about that time. It just baffles me.
A species that adopts complete non-violence shoots first. Like damn.
It reminds me of the debate of how to be peaceful and keep your peaceful culture when you’re being invaded? Aren’t you allowed to defend yourself? Where does the line of self-defense end?
It seems kinda like the fascism discourse around here right now (that a democratic society is uniquely vulnerable to democratically-structured bids for it to destroy itself)–Vulcan society couldn’t have withstood anything less than shooting first against the Klingons. The losses they’d have incurred attempting to argue logic with a wholly uninterested attacking empire would have just been too severe, and they probably couldn’t have figured out how to leave an impression on them anyway.
Georgiou’s thesis (and Starfleet’s) seems to be that they’re stronger than that–Starfleet personnel can die trying, can die in support of Federation ideals, because their society and the codes of behavior backing them are strong enough to withstand the Klingon threat WITHOUT compromise.
The Vulcans chose to compromise their principles locally in order to maintain them globally, because they decided (and I think) that they weren’t up to handling it any other way. They had to meet the Klingons halfway–Starfleet doesn’t.
I think Vulcans are more deeply resistant to violence than dedicated to non-violence no matter what. Spock doesn’t like to use violence, is even more resistant to killing, and is deeply disdainful of humanity’s “logical” justifications for violence, but is willing to both be violent and to kill if out of options. The Galileo Seven(where he concedes they might have to use violence but insists on exhausting the alternatives first) and The Devil in the Dark(where the creature’s hostility forces him to kill it) come to mind. Also there’s obvsl a range of opinions on violence within “orthodox” Vulcan society given the much greater ease Tuvok has with violent options compared to Spock, and how he doesn’t insist on exhausting other avenues first. Given Spock’s class position(his family seems to be Vulcan nobility from Amok Time, is involved not only in the Science Academy and setting Vulcan’s diplomatic policy but also with preserving and adjudicating Vulcan culture[or at least, I’m assuming that bit from the reboot movie was based on something in-canon; I never read the books or anything]), and the anxiety caused by his hybrid nature, I think it’d make sense for him to be a bit more “puritanical” about philo-cultural issues like pacifism than other, or even most, Vulcans.
So A Vulcan Hello didn’t strike me as far outside the realm of Vulcan behavior; I think they’d just be very careful about the justification for it and that there’d be disagreement and debate around the policy(this could have easily been one of the many things Spock and Sarek fought over, for instance). There are two threads within larger Vulcan logical axioms that I can think of right now that might have been used to justify such a policy.
- “The Needs of the Many outweigh the Needs of the Few”: Mostly just a rehash of mbl up there. The idea behind this is basically that context matters: in RoK terms that, while it is illogical to throw away one’s life, it is logical when doing so is required to preserve a greater number of lives. Generalized, this idea could be restated as “It is better to allow for a minor, limited, specific abrogation of a generally correct principle that preserves the greater good, than to adhere to that principle without compromise, even when doing so both causes greater harm than violating it would, and contradicts the core concept of the principle itself”. Vulcans are pacifists because killing is illogical(that which is alive definitionally ought to be alive. There are other reasons obvsl but this is the relevant one). Approaching the Klingons non-violently consistently led to destructions of life which threatened to create a modus vivendi inimical to life’s preservation(a state of unlimited aggression between Vulcans and Klingons). Therefore, modifying their approach to allow for a limited amount of violence scaled to their understanding of the importance violence holds culturally for Klingons, only to the point and time when Klingons will engage in dialogue, preserves life, both Vulcan and Klingon, by both preventing immediate deaths, and eventually allowing peaceful coexistence and mutual autonomy to be established.
- “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination”: Vulcans recognize that their culture is not other people’s culture. Recognizing that, they would recognize that other cultures don’t conceive of violence in the same way. Recognizing that, they would logically display a willingness to be violent, if conditions dictated its necessity for establishing dialogue, or the response of their interlocutor required it to prevent loss of life. So, once they understood the central place of violence in Klingon culture, it wouldn’t be surprising if some Vulcans would argue that displaying violence themselves only to the point where dialogue could be established is a logical choice. But again I think they’d be very cautious with this reasoning given how easily it can get away from you.
Proportionality is the main issue here. I don’t think Vulcans would be cruising around, just opening fire on every Klingon ship and colony they find; it makes more sense to me to think of them as raising shields and returning fire until Klingon ships either leave, open dialogue, or are disabled, only destroying them when given no other choice.
to your point about differing views on violence outside “orthodox” vulcans, in the TOS episode “the savage curtain”, spock is in the position to fight alongside surak, the seminal figure of vulcan. and while spock, as always, is resistant to violence but willing to use it when necessary, surak is completely personally devoted to nonviolence, refusing to fight at all.
Thanks for the addition! I totally forgot about this ep, but luckily in a big fandom there’s always other folks to remember what you can’t ^u^
just moving along like everyone else 