User Profile

Background: The descendant of pioneer Americans, James Tiberius Kirk was born in Iowa, North America, the planet Earth, on March 22, 2233 (Stardate 1277.1), the younger of two sons. By the time he was thirteen, however, he had left Earth and was living on Tarsus IV. Unluckily, he lived there during a time when the eight thousand people in the colony were starving. The governor of the colony, Kodos, ordered four thousand people whom he considered least healthy or least likely to survive killed so that there would be enough food for the other four thousand. Young Kirk was one of only nine people who witnessed the massacre who also saw Kodos's face and who could therefore recognize him. Seven of these people were murdered twenty years later by Kodos's daughter, Lenore Karidian.

By the time he was seventeen, Kirk had returned to Earth. There he was accepted into Starfleet Academy. In his first year, he went to the planet Anaxar, where he was a member of a successful peace mission. During his years at the Academy, he became friends with one of his teachers, Ben Finney, and with a fellow cadet, Gary Mitchell. Later, he was to serve with both men, though the end results would be tragic in both cases.

In the early 2250s, Kirk was commissioned as an ensign on the U.S.S. Republic. Finney was likewise assigned to the ship as a lieutenant. However, one day when Kirk relieved Finney on his watch, he noticed that Finney had left a circuit open in the engineering section--which, if Kirk hadn't closed it, would have resulted in the ship exploding a few minutes later. Kirk logged and reported the mistake--which effectively ended his friendship with Finney, as well as Finney's career.

Kirk's first deep-space assignment after graduation was as navigator aboard the U.S.S. Farragut. In 2257, while the Farragut crew was exploring Tycho IV, they were attacked by a vampire cloud creature which ate by draining humans of red blood corpuscles. Two hundred members of the crew were killed, including the captain.. Kirk was convinced for eleven years that if he had only fired his phaser faster, no one would have died; however, he ran across the same cloud creature again, this time during the Enterprise's exploration of Argus X, and found out then that phaser fire had little to no effect on the thing. (It was ultimately killed by one ounce of antimatter, with hemoplasm--as well as Kirk himself and the son of Captain Garrovick--used as bait.)

Kirk's rise through the ranks of Starfleet was meteoric. By 2264, he was promoted to captain, becoming, at that time, the youngest captain in the fleet and one of only twelve starship captains.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

High points of Kirk's actions during that five-year mission included:

2265: Takes the USS Enterprise to the galactic barrier, the first Earth ship to do so in 200 years. During the mission, is forced to kill close friend Gary Mitchell, whose innate psychic abilities combined with exposure to the energy barrier, mutating him into a godlike being with vast powers and no compassion. Kirk put it on record that Mitchell died in the performance of his duty.[1]

2266: Achieves first contact with the First Federation. [2] Later that year, repels Romulan incursion and destroys a Romulan Bird-of-Prey. [3]

2267: Becomes the first Starfleet Captain ever to stand court martial, charged with negligent homicide in the death of Ben Finney; charges dismissed. [4]

2268: Responsible for stealing a Romulan cloaking device during a covert Starfleet intelligence mission. [5] Experiences amnesia and lives among the American Indians on an unnamed planet where he weds Miramanee. [6]

2269: Diverts the asteroid-ship Yonada from destroying Daran V. [7] Nearly killed by Dr. Janice Lester with whom he'd had a year long relationship years before. [8]**

**Information in the Key Dates section copied word for word from Memory Alpha's article on Kirk. Details added by me re: Mitchell's mutation and death. Footnotes mentioning the episodes also added by me.
[1] Where No Man Has Gone Before.
[2] The Corbomite Maneuver.
[3] Balance of Terror.
[4] Court Martial.
[5] The Enterprise Incident.
[6] The Paradise Syndrome.
[7] For the World is Hollow And I Have Touched the Sky.
[8] Turnabout Intruder -- last episode of the original series. (754 words)

Personality: Kirk is a natural leader--not so much an administrator as he is an explorer. He revels in discovering new things, despite the risk. Some might call him reckless, but Kirk wouldn't agree. To him, risk is what a starship--and its crew--are all about.

Kirk also doesn't accept defeat easily. After taking the Kobiyashi Maru test twice--a no-win scenario at Star Fleet Academy in which, no matter what decision a cadet makes, he and his crew die--he reprogrammed the computer in a way that allowed him to find a solution to the "no-win" situation. This is typical of Kirk; he does not accept that any scenario is hopeless, even if all the available evidence and all his experience is telling him that it is. This determination has saved his life, his crew and his ship more times than he can count. (145 words)

Friendships: The deepest friendship Kirk has is with his first officer, Spock. It is the strongest and longest-lasting relationship Jim Kirk has had in his entire life. The details of this friendship could fill volumes of books. They have risked their lives for each other, saved each other, gotten to know each other through the Vulcan mind touch and the deeper and more powerful Vulcan mind meld. When Spock asked Edith Keeler where she felt he belonged, her response was, "You? By his side. As if you've always been there and always will be." The captain has described their relationship as "being brothers." Spock's response to this was: "The captain speaks somewhat figuratively, and with undue emotion, but what he says is logical and I do agree with it."

Kirk is also close to Leonard McCoy, the Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise. McCoy is a good, stubborn, outspoken man who is not at all inclined to back down when he feels he's right. He's also a superb doctor, and his common sense and medical skill, like Spock's logic and gift with science, have saved the captain and the ship numerous times. (191 words)

Women: He is very fond of women. Of his serious relationships, three occurred at the Academy. One was with a blonde lab tech whose name is unknown, but who Kirk was so serious about that he almost married her. The second was a woman named Ruth. Kirk later met a duplicate of her on an artificial "Shore Leave Planet." The third was Janice Lester. Kirk said later that he loved her, but that "her hatred of her own womanhood made life with her impossible." He met her again in the fifth year of his mission on the Enterprise; Janice, feeling that she had been deprived of command because she was a woman, used an ancient device on Camus II to switch bodies with him.

Kirk also had a relationship with molecular biologist Doctor Carol Marcus before taking command of the Enterprise. She bore a son, David Marcus, in 2261. Both were more devoted to their careers than to each other, and when David was still quite small, Carol decided that having a father who was off in space most of the time would not be good for the boy. Feeling that David would be better off if he was unaffected by an absent father, she asked Kirk to cease seeing her and their son. Kirk did so, and (as of his timeline in the village--post-series but pre-movies) he has not seen David or Carol since.

Though Kirk was involved with a number of women during his years on the Enterprise, special mention must be made of two: Edith Keeler and Miramanee.

Kirk met Edith Keeler in New York City in 1930, while he and Spock were in the process of trying to mend their timeline, which had been radically and inadvertantly altered by McCoy, who had leaped through a time portal called the Guardian of Forever while in the throes of a cordrazine overdose. She was a beautiful woman, kind and compassionate. She foresaw a much more peaceful world in which mankind reached for the stars. Kirk fell deeply in love with her.

Unfortunately, as Spock said, "she was right--but at the wrong time." Spock discovered that she had two possible futures. In one, she died when hit by a car; in the other, she started a powerful pacifist movement which delayed America's entry into World War II, giving Germany the chance to develop the first atomic bomb...and take over the world. To preserve his world's history and future and save millions of lives, Kirk held McCoy back and let the woman he loved die before his eyes.

A year after this (2268), a landing party beamed down to a planet in an asteroid belt which was populated by the descendants of several of the more peaceful American Indian tribes. Unluckily, the asteroid deflector on the planet (which had been built and placed there by a far more technologically advanced society) was malfunctioning, and an asteroid the size of Earth's moon was speeding toward the planet.

Kirk became separated from the landing party and suffered a blow to the head that gave him amnesia. While he was in this amnesiac state, he was renamed "Kirok" by the Indians and proclaimed medicine chief--not to mention being mistaken for a god. During this period, he met a young woman named Miramanee, the high priestess of her people. Like Edith Keeler, she was dark of hair, dark of eye and strong-minded despite her pacifist nature. It was traditional for the medicine chief and the high priestess to wed, but the marriage of Kirk and Miramanee was a very happy one.

But it was also very brief. By the time the asteroid drew near the planet--the Enterprise chasing it all the way--terrible storms had broken out on the planet, and the people of Miramanee's tribe became convinced that "Kirok" was a false god who brought disaster. They began to stone Kirk and Miramanee, injuring Kirk, Miramanee and their unborn child. Spock was able to enter the machine designed to deflect such things, fix it, and deflect the asteroid speeding toward the planet. But neither he nor McCoy could save Miramanee or the child. (693 words)

Physical Description: Kirk is almost 5'10" (using old measurements) and muscular, though he has a tendency to put on a few pounds around the middle. He's a handsome man in his early thirties with dark brown hair, hazel eyes and a quirky smile.

Physically, he's quite healthy. A doctor would note that his left lung had been punctured (this during a fight with an Orion spy), that he had suffered from a rare form of radiation sickness (which was cured with shots of adrenaline), and that his blood bears micro-organisms that cause Vegan choriomeningitis, which very nearly killed him.

He is an accomplished horseman and favors an idiosyncratic but undeniably useful form of martial arts. He likes the outdoors, mountains and climbing. He likes animals; in about twenty years, he'll own a Great Dane. He's excellent at chess and at poker. (139 words)

Disclaimer: I am not a member or an agent of Paramount Pictures Corporation. I do not own the rights to Star Trek, nor do I own or control the character of Captain James T. Kirk. Likewise, I am not William Shatner, who owns himself. I am not making any profit from the character or the franchise. This journal is solely for roleplaying purposes.

Friends (310):

Mutual Friends (107):

Also Friend of (44):