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9151967 · 4 months ago

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I know they dropped it owing to adaptation difficulties if not a changed opinion (it is possibly too melodramatic, if not a callback to The Tholian Web), but the thing I appreciate about the initial plan for The Search for Spock was how the crew would be able to see Spock's ghost and talk to it, to be haunted by it. For Kirk, that would have been the ultimate manifestation of his guilt at losing Spock. It would've connected that much harder to Saavik's words and David's echo that he has never faced death in The Wrath of Khan.

Using a read more for the screencaps and a rambling 2k or so wordcount. (This took me 3 days to write and edit, good night.)

Unless this is developed further in the novelization, it is worth noting that Saavik's impression of Kirk would come from Spock and David's impression is skewed at best owing to his distrust and hatred of Starfleet, on top of growing up with an absent father who he knows is a part of Starfleet. Kirk and Carol may have had good intentions with staying separated and keeping David ignorant, but it's clearly backfired now that the two must meet. In other words, one character sees an idealized version of Kirk whereas the other might as well be looking at the Kirk Drift. Neither character really knows Kirk, so neither can really understand the impact of this phrase. In both cases, Saavik and David are making an observation. It may seem harsh of them, but neither say it lightly given Saavik is still upset over her own test performance and David is trying to apologize to his father after they just held a funeral service for Spock. (His decision to use it as a lead-in is certainly a choice! But in David's defense, Kirk was about to hightail it out of there (just like he did in Amok Time when McCoy tried telling him about Spock) so David says the one thing to get him to pause and sit down.)

The Wrath of Khan repeats the words "you have never faced death" to Kirk in order to highlight how resilient and downright lucky Kirk is. A captain can hardly afford to become emotional or fall apart when the inevitable death occurs, and Kirk had resilience forged into him early with his childhood on Tarsus IV. Likewise, despite difficult and dangerous missions, Kirk still manages to keep the majority of his crew alive and the ship intact (the TMP novelization makes this clearer in that Kirk's mission was the only mission that did not result in major deaths or loss of a ship). Perhaps luck is not the best word to describe how successful Kirk was as a captain, but there is a degree of it in how he is able to keep beating the odds and survive, and it's that exceptional reputation he earned in his youth that he is struggling against now that he is older and risen to the rank of admiral. Is he still this same Kirk who could seemingly pull off the impossible or has he changed too much and for the worse? (Is it a lazy rehash of his plot line from TMP? Maybe, but TWK pushes the stakes on it beyond what TMP did by killing Spock. There's no undoing this, no going back.)

With the exception of his past on the USS Farragut, Kirk is not shown to fall to pieces over what their five year mission asks of them, the possibility of death. He's regretted decisions that led to unnecessary crew deaths and has come close to tears over losing someone like Edith Keeler or Miramanee to be sure, but we don't ever see Kirk being stopped or questioning himself because of those deaths. (The Apple aside; he absolutely questions his actions in that episode but he's not questioning his entire perspective, not like he does after Spock dies, and crucially it takes both McCoy and Spock to talk Kirk out of where he's going with his guilt. David, for all of his earlier callousness to Kirk, is trying to help him walk through this painful experience in the same way in TWK. Talk about growth and a change of heart.) He keeps moving forward despite the pain, even when it is the deaths of his own brother and sister-in-law.

(As an aside, Rayna is an interesting outlier in my mind, despite how he is shown to be deeply affected by her death, to the point of Spock choosing to wipe his memory of her. He acts out of character in Requiem for Methuselah and more like the Kirk Drift with how impulsive and emotional he is, to the point where I wonder if he was drugged or just plain drunk after drinking the alcohol. Kirk does want love but he never chooses it over his career. Carol is living proof of that with how they chose to stay apart for their work. Well, for the most part it holds true—Amok Time, "I can't let Spock die, can I, Bones? And he will if we go to Altair. I owe him my life a dozen times over. Isn't that worth a career? He's my friend." Insane way to show Kirk cares about Spock in an episode where the writers were concerned Kirk looked callous compared to McCoy, lol. That choice didn't lead to anything big in the fandom, nope.)

Pair all of this with the revelation that Kirk is the only cadet to ever beat the no-win scenario of the Kobayashi Maru test and a pattern emerges of someone who has seen and experienced death, but has yet to be fully stopped or altered by it. This is why he is told twice that "you have never faced death" and why he only agrees with that sentiment after losing Spock, responding that he has cheated death and tricked his way out of it. To face death would be to accept it fully as its own natural outcome rather than changing conditions to create a new outcome like he had done with the Kobayashi Maru.* Spock's death is not something he could have changed or prevented, no matter how creative he is. It goes against those past successes and eleventh hour miracles from his youth.

*Kirk's solution to the Kobayashi Maru is probably its own post subject. It's not cheating to my mind both because David is clearly biased when he says it and because Kirk's choice to take it multiple times until he found the solution he wanted shows a strong sense of will. He failed twice but was undeterred and would not accept a simulation guaranteed to result in someone's death. That's still a quality Starfleet would want in its officers, to say nothing of his creativity in the face of pressure. Starfleet would be foolish to pass over that. It's a test of character on multiple fronts—it tests the cadet as a person, what they stand for, and it tests the strength of their loyalty and oath given the test specifically uses the political hot potato of The Neutral Zone and all that entering it entails for The Federation. Given what Kirk's solution does, why wouldn't Starfleet want to keep a cadet like that?

A lot of what Kirk says here is a rebuke of his past success with the Kobayashi Maru rather than past events he has experienced as a captain, although if one really wants to make this painful, it still holds that Kirk is reassessing everything in this moment given the "no, not like this" comment.

Kirk uses the word "cheated" to now describe his actions whereas before he rejected the word. Kirk is now using it in the same way David had originally scoffed at his solution to the test, "He cheated."

Spock calls his own sacrifice his solution to the Kobayashi Maru, so when Kirk now says "patted myself on the back for my ingenuity," it's recalling his earlier "commendation for original thinking" comment and finding it hollow now that Spock is dead.

And when Kirk says he knows nothing, what he means is that Spock's death is different from everything he has experienced before.

It hits far closer to home for Kirk to lose his first officer, his lead science officer, and his friend after all the time they have worked together and survived dangerous missions. Had it been McCoy that sacrificed his life to save the ship, Kirk would still be saying the above because McCoy is his only other friend on the Enterprise. It's one part the closeness of their relationships and one part a matter of their shared backgrounds as members of Starfleet who have agreed to the risks of their work. After all, both Spock and McCoy have found their lives endangered over the course of the five year mission, but each and every time they stay alive, be it parasites, rare diseases, Vulcan biology, freak accidents, and so on. The same goes for the rest of the core crew of Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, and Chapel.

It is with the death of Spock that Kirk has to finally face death as it is. There was no miracle cure, no quick thinking to prevent it, nothing he or McCoy could've done. Either Spock gave his life to save the ship or everyone on the USS Enterprise died. (Hell of a Kobayashi Maru test, one part the acceptance of death, one part a test of commitment and loyalty. Loyalty to who (one's captain or one's self?) or what (Starfleet or The Federation or one's beliefs?) is left to the individual's choice, hence it being a test of character.)

Crucially, this is all coming from a Kirk who has gone into the admiralty after completing his five year mission as captain of the Enterprise and has stayed in the position since the events of TMP (why he stayed... I don't get it, unless the message is supposed to be that he realizes he is too old for it all, but that makes the open ending of TMP a wasted opportunity in order to repeat the same issue again for TWK. But I haven't read the novelization for TWK so if they explain it, I wouldn't know). It's the terrible confirmation of his fears of being too old for his chosen work, that he is right to stay out of the captaincy. Spock is dead now that Kirk is older and years removed from his experiences as a captain, but such an event had never happened when Kirk was younger. They always found a way to avoid death in his younger days. Spock himself has escaped death before, even when he chose to risk his own life (The Galileo Seven, Operation: Annihilate, and The Immunity Syndrome come to mind). Until this one time, Spock has always lived but Kirk couldn't get to him fast enough, not that doing so could have changed anything, and that is what cuts Kirk to his core: His record-breaking, commendation for creativity, and all the other praise means nothing now because he couldn't save Spock. "Not like this ... I know nothing."

For Kirk to then see Spock's image and hear his voice in SFS would follow from this new-found failure and guilt ("I don't like to lose" as he tells Saavik), and it would act as the literal fulfillment of his facing death by having to confront Spock's ghost.

("Noblest part of myself" "our dearest blood" and what if I just start wailing? Especially when Spock holds the very qualities we value in humans and ascribe to humanity—compassion and empathy—and how Spock managed to bring Kirk and McCoy back to their selves in TMP. It's fine, this choice of words.)

It is still chilling to see Spock's voice and mannerisms come from McCoy and what that means for them—that McCoy is not fully himself, that Kirk stands to lose his two closest friends in one go if Spock's katra cannot be returned. (I'm just guessing here as I still need to finish the film. Yes, I stopped watching to write this. Kirkinsanity is a hell of my own making. I don't know if McCoy could physically and mentally withstand that long term, you know? Would it be exhausting carrying another person's consciousness within you, regardless of your prior relationship with them? Or would it be easy, like putting on a glove and taking it back off? Or would it be a third thing and their two consciousnesses merge together into something new, someone new, the longer the two are joined?)

(I know Kirk says that as in "Are you losing your grip on reality?" but it also fits with how McCoy holds Spock's very essence. Yeah, McCoy could be losing his mind to Spock, Kirk.)

#jim kirk #spock #leonard mccoy #david marcus #saavik #star trek tos #star trek the wrath of khan #star trek the search for spock #trek meta #this got out of hand thanks to what i'm calling kirkinsanity as in i start thinking about him and go insane. is there a cure?#recent google search: how to perform kolinahr as a human being?

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