James Kirk's History
James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk was a 23rd century Human Starfleet officer. As a Starfleet cadet, he was instrumental in the defeat and death of Nero, a Romulan bent on the obliteration of the entire United Federation of Planets. As a result, he was commissioned directly to the rank of captain and appointed as commanding officer of the service's flagship, the USS Enterprise.
The second son of Starfleet officer George Kirk – first officer of the USS Kelvin – and his wife Winona Kirk, he was born on January 4th, 2233 aboard the Kelvin's medical shuttle no. 37, in the midst of an unprovoked attack on the Kelvin by the Narada, a 24th century Romulan mining vessel commanded by Nero. Winona had been evacuated from the severely crippled Kelvin, along with the rest of the crew, and gave birth to James while George Kirk died piloting the Kelvin into the Narada in a kamikaze attack. The young Kirk was named James Tiberius after Winona's father and George's father, respectively.
Jim was raised in Iowa, in Midwestern North America, on Earth. His mother remarried. As a young boy, Jim had a somewhat rebellious streak in him as he once, for example, stole his stepfather's 1965 Chevy Corvette convertible, drove it recklessly, got into a high speed chase with local police, then nearly died when he barely managed to jump out, as he drove the car into a quarry. As he grew up, he had little sense of purpose and by 2255, he was an aimless rebel who had found himself on the wrong side of the law on more than one occasion.
While visiting a bar near the Riverside Shipyard in 2255, an inebriated Jim met and began flirting with a Starfleet cadet named Nyota Uhura. Although annoyed by Jim's advances, Uhura was surprised that Jim knew what was involved in the study of xenolinguistics. Moments later, the twenty-two year-old Jim Kirk engaged in a bar fight with three male cadets, including Hendorff, who were irritated at his cocky attitude and the attention he was giving Uhura. He was ultimately overwhelmed by the cadets until Captain Christopher Pike broke up the fight. Pike, who had written his dissertation on the USS Kelvin and was familiar with Jim's story, pushed the young man to challenge himself and reach the greater potential he was capable of achieving, calling him "the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest".
Pike tried to persuade him to join Starfleet, firmly believing he could do more with himself than get into bar fights and break all the laws in the state of Iowa. Kirk laughed at the idea of joining Starfleet, but Pike reassured him that, with his "off-the-chart" aptitude, he could make captain and have his own ship in only eight years. He reminded him that his father had saved eight hundred lives, including Jim's and his mother's, and dared young Kirk to do better. Soon after their conversation, and to the surprise of Pike, Jim decided to enlist with the intent of completing the Academy training in three years. He rode onto the shipyard, gave his bike to a construction worker, and boarded a shuttle for new recruits heading to Starfleet Academy. It was on his trip to the Academy where he first met and befriended Doctor Leonard McCoy.
Kirk and McCoy became close friends at the Academy, though Kirk frequently exasperated McCoy with his maverick nature. Kirk had an eye for attractive female cadets and he once ended up in the dormitory of an Orion female cadet named Gaila. He was caught and hid under the bed when her roommate, Cadet Uhura, arrived unexpectedly. On discovering him, she angrily threw him out.
It was at the Academy that Kirk also met Commander Spock. Kirk had failed the Kobayashi Maru examination twice but decided to take it a third time, being sure that he would succeed. He eventually managed to cheat the test and won. Spock, who programmed the "no-win scenario", later investigated the matter. While discussing his cheating ways with head of the Starfleet Academy Board Admiral Richard Barnett, Kirk argued that the test itself was a cheat, and stated that he didn't believe in the no-win scenario. Kirk asked to face his accuser, and Spock stepped up. This was the first time the two met, and they clashed over their differences. Kirk and Spock continued to engage in a heated argument (the accused becoming particularly agitated when Spock suggested that, "of all people", George Kirk's son should recognize the no-win scenario), until the hearing was suddenly interrupted after Starfleet received a distress call from Vulcan.
Many of the cadets were called into action after the news but Kirk – who had been suspended because of his recent academic dishonesty charges – was not allowed to join. McCoy, however, was able to get him aboard the Enterprise by injecting him with a vaccine that temporarily rendered him sick so he could be transferred to the ship on medical grounds. Kirk tried telling Captain Pike and Spock about Nero's attack and his trap, and with the help of McCoy and Uhura, he was able to convince Pike about the trap. Pike raised the Enterprise's shields as they entered the Vulcan system, only to find a massive debris field of destroyed Federation starships having been attacked by Nero. As Pike was en route to a shuttlecraft to negotiate with Nero, he appointed Kirk as acting first officer under acting captain Spock and volunteered Kirk to disable the Narada's drill platform.
Along with Chief Engineer Olson and Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, Kirk skydived onto the platform. Olson was vaporized by the drill, leaving only Kirk and Sulu to disable it. Facing off against two of Nero's crew, Kirk and Sulu eventually killed both of their adversaries before destroying the platform, but not in time to prevent Nero from successfully completing his plan to destroy the planet Vulcan.
Before returning to the Enterprise, Sulu fell off the drill platform and began plummeting toward the surface of Vulcan. Kirk jumped off the platform to save him. After intercepting Sulu, Kirk had the helmsman pull his parachute, but it was knocked off, leaving them both in freefall. However, Ensign Pavel Chekov managed to compensate for Vulcan's gravitational pull and beamed both of them on board.
Kirk attempted to dissuade Commander Spock from a rendezvous with the rest of Starfleet at the Laurentian system. He urged him to go after the Narada as the ship left for Earth, rather than waste time trying to gather additional forces in the opposite direction, but Spock was relentless. When Kirk became more and more heated in his objections, Spock finally ordered Kirk's removal from the bridge, knocked him out and threw him off the ship in an escape pod.
Kirk landed on Delta Vega, some fourteen kilometers away from a Starfleet outpost. Despite an inhospitable environment, he left his escape pod and soon was chased by an indigenous animal which was dispatched by an even larger predatory creature. When Kirk fled into a nearby cave, the creature was scared away by an elderly Vulcan man, who revealed himself to be Spock from a future timeline.
Though Kirk initially dismissed this as "bullshit", he changed his mind when the old man demonstrated his knowledge of Nero. The elderly Spock revealed to Kirk through a mind meld Nero's intentions, also telling him that in his timeline, Kirk was the captain of the USS Enterprise. Understanding that their only hope was to have the Enterprise pursue the Narada instead of returning to the fleet, they realized that they had to get the other Spock to step down from command.
Fortunately, while the Enterprise had long since left the system, Spock was aware that one of the officers at the nearby outpost was Montgomery Scott, who, in his universe, had devised a way to beam onto a ship at warp speeds. After Spock gave Scott his own equations a century ahead of schedule, Kirk was advised by Spock, before Kirk and Scott were beamed onto the Enterprise, that he needed to elicit an emotional reaction from the young Spock so that everyone could see that he was emotionally compromised and unfit for command; according to the elderly Spock, the only way to defeat Nero was for Jim to take command of the ship himself.
Following the advice of Ambassador Spock, Kirk goaded Spock with assertions that Spock cared nothing for what had happened to Vulcan or the death of his mother, whom he accused Spock of never having loved. The last remark did the job and Spock violently attacked Kirk, nearly to the point of killing him, before Sarek stepped in and stopped him. Following Spock immediately relinquishing command. Kirk, as acting first officer, took command and ordered pursuit course of the Narada to Earth.
Kirk later beamed onto the Narada with Spock, who deferred to Kirk as captain. After an intense firefight in which they killed several Romulans, they made it to the elder Spock's ship. Upon being identified as its pilot, Spock quickly realized exactly who Kirk's unknown benefactor had been. Leaving Spock to secure the ship, Kirk went to retrieve Captain Pike.
In searching for the captain, he encountered Nero and his first officer, Ayel. Kirk was quickly overpowered by the pair of Romulans, but when Nero, after boasting that he would kill Kirk just like he had with his father, discovered that Spock had destroyed the drill, he furiously returned to the bridge.
Initially, Kirk was no match for Ayel either, but the Romulan was overconfident and was too busy mocking his "weak" victim to notice the theft of his disruptor. Offered the chance to speak, Kirk's "last words" were "I got your gun!" and Kirk shot the Romulan Ayel point-blank in the chest. Kirk then retrieved Pike, who repaid his savior by grabbing the stolen disruptor and gunning down two Romulans walking in on the escape.
Against Spock's advice once again, Kirk decided to give Nero and his remaining crew a chance to beam to the Enterprise and surrender. After Nero strongly declined, Kirk decided to fire all weapons, and the Narada was finally destroyed in a massive black hole created by red matter it was carrying. The Enterprise was nearly destroyed as well, but Kirk had Scott eject the ship's multiple warp cores and detonate them, creating a blast wave strong enough to push the Enterprise out of danger.
Upon his return to Earth, Kirk was commissioned as an officer in the United Federation of Planets Starfleet with the serial number SC937-0176CEC. (Star Trek Beyond) He was commended and officially appointed as captain of the Enterprise by Admiral Barnett for his actions, which demonstrated his ability as an extremely able commanding officer fully capable of leading a Federation starship crew in the most dire of situations. Dressed in his new captain's uniform, Kirk took command of the Enterprise. Commander Spock arrived and requested the permanent post as Kirk's first officer, which Kirk was honored to accept. He sat down in his chair and, officially as captain of the Enterprise, led his crew and ship to another adventure.
A year later, Kirk violated the Prime Directive on Nibiru, saving Spock's life from a cold fusion device detonation inside a volcano. During the rescue, the Enterprise was exposed to the primitive Nibirans, who began worshiping the ship as a god. Returning to Earth, Pike informed Kirk the Admiralty headed by Alexander Marcus would be sending him back to the Academy, and that perhaps he had been promoted too soon. That night, Kirk drowned his sorrows in a bar, when Pike appeared to reveal he had convinced Marcus to let him appoint Kirk his first officer because he still had faith in the young man. As a result, however, Kirk was demoted to the rank of commander rather than captain.
The two then attended a summit, in the Daystrom Conference Room at Starfleet Headquarters, regarding the bombing of the Kelvin Memorial Archive in London. Marcus ordered a manhunt for the perpetrator, a rogue commander named John Harrison. Kirk analyzed surveillance of Harrison at the debris site, and questioned why Harrison bombed an archive for the information he needed. Kirk then realized Harrison would be aware protocol dictated such an attack would precipitate meetings like these: Harrison then showed up in a jumpship and opened fire.
Kirk wrapped a fire hose around a rifle and threw it into the jumpship's engine, causing it to crash. Before it did, Kirk saw Harrison glaring at him and then beaming himself away. Kirk returned to the conference room to find Spock with Pike, who had died of a chest wound and mourned his friend's death.
The next morning, Kirk was notified by Scott that Harrison had used a portable transwarp-beaming device to escape to Qo'noS, the homeworld of the Klingon Empire. Kirk informed Marcus, who explained the Archive had actually been a Section 31 facility, which Harrison had needed to steal the beaming device from. Marcus reinstated Kirk's command and rank as captain, giving him permission to hunt down and execute Harrison, and allowed him to reinstate Spock as his first officer.
To execute Harrison, Marcus gave the Enterprise seventy-two advanced long-range torpedoes to bombard Harrison's location from orbit, and assigned weapons expert Carol Wallace to the Enterprise. At a hangar, McCoy expressed his belief that Harrison was out of Kirk's league, while Spock protested executing Harrison without trial was immoral. Aboard the Enterprise, Scott protested about not being allowed to examine the torpedoes, and not having time to examine the ship's warp core, which was new but faulty. Kirk accepted Scott and Keenser's resignation, and appointed Chekov to replace Scott. Dejected, Kirk decided to listen to Spock and Scott's advice, and announced they would find Harrison and bring him back for a tribunal.
Before reaching Qo'noS, the Enterprise's warp core broke down, so Kirk took an away team with Spock, Uhura, and Hendorff, disguised as K'normian arms dealers, to find Harrison in a K'normian trading ship.
Shortly after acting captain Sulu sent a targeted comm burst from the Enterprise to Harrison's location, Kirk's ship was attacked by a Klingon patrol, and despite maneuvering it through a narrowing gate, the away team found themselves surrounded. Kirk allowed Uhura to exit the ship and negotiate with the Klingons in their native language, but they refused to listen and tried to kill her. Before Kirk and Spock could come out firing phasers, Harrison appeared and single-handedly killed all the Klingons. Kirk accepted Harrison's surrender, but spitefully punched him, only to find his continuous blows had no effect on him.
In the ship's brig, Kirk and Spock interrogated Harrison while Bones took a blood sample, which he studied by injecting into a dead tribble. Harrison only responded by giving Kirk a set of coordinates, and advised the captain to open one of the torpedoes. Spock informed Kirk that Wallace could examine the torpedoes, and also told the captain that he had learned she was actually Admiral Marcus' daughter, a fact Spock had chosen to reveal at that precise point because he felt the information had just become relevant. Kirk also called Scott via a communicator and asked him to investigate the coordinates.
McCoy and Carol Marcus took a shuttle to a meteor to examine a torpedo, but McCoy accidentally activated the countdown and trapped his hand in the device. Kirk ordered to beam them up, but was warned by Spock that beaming up McCoy would also beam up an exploding torpedo. Fortunately, Kirk avoided losing his friend when Carol deactivated the device with less than three seconds to spare. The torpedo finally opened up, and the two officers found it contained a man in cryogenic stasis.
Kirk interrogated Harrison again, who explained he had placed people in torpedoes to smuggle them before he was caught. He revealed he was actually the infamous Khan Noonien Singh, recruited by Admiral Marcus under a new identity to design weaponry and ships for war against the Klingons, and that the frozen people were his fellow Augments, whom the admiral had held hostage. Marcus suddenly showed up in a Dreadnought-class ship, the USS Vengeance, demanding Kirk hand over Harrison. Kirk revealed he knew the truth, and defied the admiral by having Sulu warp the Enterprise back to Earth, where Khan would stand trial and expose the conspiracy. However, the Vengeance was capable of catching up with the Enterprise in subspace and fired on the ship, halting it as it arrived near Earth and the planet's moon.
After Carol tried to bargain with her father but was simply beamed by him over to his ship, Kirk tried to hand himself over to protect his own crew, but Marcus explained he had no intention of letting anyone in on the plot survive. Before the Vengeance could finish off the Enterprise, its weaponry suddenly deactivated. Scott called Kirk, explaining he had stowed away aboard the Vengeance at the coordinates given by Khan, buying them some time. Kirk, realizing Khan had designed the ship, allied himself with him, and the two donned thruster suits to fly over and commandeer the vessel. Khan's formidable strength was an asset in dispatching any guards they encountered, but Kirk was suspicious of Khan's motives and ordered Scott to shoot him unconscious later.
When they reached the bridge, Kirk confronted Marcus over his betrayal of Starfleet's ideals. However, Scott's attempt to stun Khan did not affect him, and the Augment tackled Scott and Kirk before proceeding to kill Marcus and take the command chair. Khan ordered Spock to hand over the torpedoes, which he complied with, and in return he beamed Kirk, Scott, and Carol into the Enterprise brig.
Khan then turned on Spock, bombarding the Enterprise once more. Spock, who had the cryopods removed from the torpedoes, ordered them to be detonated, severely crippling the Vengeance; the shockwave caused both ships to be pulled by Earth's gravity. Kirk and Scott ran to the warp core, trying to avoid falling to their deaths due to the Enterprise's failing artificial gravity.
Once they reached the Enterprise's warp core, Scott warned entering it would flood the chamber with radiation, but as there was no time to put on a containment suit, Kirk knocked out Scott and secured him with a seat belt before entering the warp core. Kirk knocked the central component back in place, restoring power to the engines and preventing the Enterprise from crashing.
Meanwhile, Khan crashed the Vengeance into Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco. Scott woke up and called Spock to come to the area outside the warp core chamber, where Spock saw Jim dying from radiation poisoning. Jim bid goodbye to his friend, displaying the Vulcan salute with his hand on a glass door, then died. He heard the voices of his father, mother and Pike as he neared death.
Following decontamination, Kirk was taken to the Enterprise's medbay, where McCoy and others silently mourned the loss of their captain. McCoy noticed the tribble he had injected with Khan's blood had come back to life, and realizing how to save Kirk's life, ordered his body be placed in a cryotube to preserve his brain functions. Spock and Uhura beamed down and apprehended Khan, enabling McCoy to create a serum from Khan's blood, which resurrected Kirk. However, the effects of the serum left Kirk unconscious for two weeks, after which he awoke in Starfleet Medical and was greeted by McCoy and Spock.
Nearly a year after his death and resurrection, Kirk presided over the rechristening ceremony of the Enterprise and a memorial service to those who lost their lives in terrorist acts committed by Khan, before setting off on Starfleet's first five-year mission.
Three years later, Kirk was helping to negotiate peace between the Teenaxi Delegation and the Fibonan Republic, working as a neutral representative by presenting the Teenaxi with a dismantled weapon as a token of peace. Suspicious of the Fibonans, the Teenaxi attacked Kirk – though due to their diminutive stature, Kirk was mostly unharmed and was quickly beamed back to the Enterprise by Scotty.
In his captain's log following the mission, Kirk expressed his frustrations with life aboard the Enterprise this far into its mission, stating he felt as though life had become "episodic." Near his thirtieth birthday, Kirk confided in McCoy over a drink, divulging that he now questioned his own motives for having joined Starfleet, as he had done so on Pike's dare, rather than because of a strong belief in the organization on his own behalf. Kirk was further upset by the fact that he would be turning one year older than George had been at the time of his death. Due to these frustrations, Kirk applied for a promotion, seeking the position of vice admiral at Starbase Yorktown, when the Enterprise docked there for resupply.
After Kalara arrived at Yorktown and claimed her ship had crashed on planet Altamid in the Necro Cloud, Kirk volunteered the Enterprise for a mission to rescue the survivors. Once the craft traversed the unstable nebula, a massive cluster of unidentified ships was detected, approaching the Enterprise. Kirk quickly realized something was amiss and raised the shields before the oncoming Swarm ships began to dismantle the Enterprise, causing multiple hull breaches and severing the nacelles.
Kirk discovered the enemy was seeking the weapon he had tried to present to the Teenaxi, so he gave the artifact to Ensign Syl before the leader of the Swarm, Krall, could steal it. Realizing the ship's destruction was imminent, Kirk ordered the Enterprise crew to abandon ship. Kirk then attempted to execute a saucer separation, so the saucer section could safely land on the surface of Altamid. Kirk, however, ran into Krall and the two fought, but Uhura finally managed to sever the saucer section, sending Kirk to the surface of the nearby planet.
On the planet's surface, Kirk landed near where Chekov and Kalara also landed. Furious, Kirk confronted Kalara, realizing she had known the Enterprise would be attacked. She revealed Krall had kidnapped her crew and threatened to kill those personnel, unless she helped. Realizing they needed to locate the rest of the survivors from the Enterprise, the three went to the site where the vessel's saucer section had crashed, and they scanned for crewmembers there.
Kirk went to where he claimed to have left the weapon but was attacked by Kalara, who revealed she had been working for Krall all along and proceeded to contact him to let him know she had the weapon. Kirk, however, deceived her, having Chekov trace her communication to Krall. They were both attacked by his troops but escaped by activating the Enterprise thrusters, causing an explosion which in turn killed Kalara and thrust Kirk and Chekov through the air as they made their getaway.
The next morning, Kirk and Chekov walked into one of multiple traps prepared by Jaylah, a scavenger who was living on the planet, but they were freed after Scotty told her they were friends of his. Jaylah revealed she had made the wreckage of a 22nd century Federation starship – the USS Franklin – her home and, using the scanners, Kirk was able to locate Spock and McCoy, and beam them to the ship before Krall's drones were able to kill them.
Kirk helped treat an injured Spock, while he revealed that the weapon had come from Altamid. Using the trace from Kalara's communication and pinpointing it with a Vulcan amulet Spock had given Uhura, Kirk's team was able to learn the exact location of their former shipmates and formulate a plan to not only rescue them but also stop Krall before he attacked Yorktown.
Using a motorcycle from the Franklin and holographic technology from Jaylah, Kirk managed to distract Krall so that Spock and Jaylah were able to escape with the rest of the surviving Starfleet officers. Once they were all aboard the Franklin, Kirk, at the last second, managed to rescue Jaylah and get her back to the ship. While Krall left for Yorktown, Kirk and the crew followed on the Franklin.
When they arrived at Yorktown, Krall had nearly penetrated the base's defenses. Spock and Scotty realized they had to disrupt the communications between the drones in order to prevent the attack. As a result, Kirk ordered McCoy and Spock to transport onto one of the ships, in order to hack into the Swarm's frequency using a music player from the Franklin. They sent out a classical song over the frequency, rendering the drones unable to cooperate with each other and causing the destruction of all but three of the ships, one of which was being flown by Krall.
The Franklin pursued his ship into the base and was able to block Krall's attack, causing him to crash into the Franklin, presumably killing him. Kirk searched the ship with Uhura, for confirmation, but during the search, Uhura discovered a recording of the original Franklin crew and deduced from the footage that the captain of the ship, Balthazar Edison, was Krall. By looking at his file, they discovered he had been a soldier who fought during the Xindi and the Romulan Wars, after which he had been given command of the Franklin. He had slowly started to despise the Federation's views and had slowly gone insane in the century after the ship went missing.
Scotty and Jaylah realized that Edison was going to release the weapon in the base's ventilation system, killing the base's inhabitants. Confronting the now-disfigured Edison in the ventilation hub, Kirk revealed to him that he knew who he was. Kirk also tried to persuade Edison that he was underestimating humanity and that the Federation was a cause of good.
While the hub lost gravity, Kirk fought Edison, seized the bioweapon from him, and attempted to eject it into space by opening an airlock. Kirk was attempting to open it when Edison regained his strength; he continued to fight Kirk but was ultimately ejected into space with the weapon, which then killed him. Kirk was nearly sucked out as well but was spared by the timely rescue of Spock and McCoy. Kirk and Commodore Paris then closed files on the Franklin's late crew.
Having gained a new insight into himself and his motives in the confrontation with Krall, Kirk declined the promotion to vice admiral and decided to remain the commanding officer of the Enterprise. Some time later, while the crew was on shore leave at Yorktown, the crew surprised Kirk with a birthday celebration at which he and his crew looked out onto the construction of the brand new USS Enterprise-A. After its completion, Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise-A resumed their five-year mission.
