Having recently rewatched ST:TOS with my daughter, Kirk is certainly a bundle of paradoxes (not helped by writing styles and irregularity during the course of that late '60s series). He's the hero — because he's presented at the hero. But I don't think he would be someone I would chum around with.
Reshared post from +Curt Thompson
Wow.
This is a hell of an article that doesn't quite reach the final message the author was going for.
Why should we root for Kirk? Well … actually, we shouldn't. He's just the protagonist we have, rather than the one we'd like. And I never made the connection before but I'll never be able to see Kirk again without thinking of him as one of those sad middleaged ex-frat guys who never gets past the dudebro stage.
Ouch.
How to Root For Captain Kirk | Tor.com
He’s pushy, a bad manager, and our hero. How to root For Captain Kirk
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The article nails why I find myself rooting for Kirk despite his obvious awfulness. To extend the point: He's an Odysseus — consistently winning out against odds and even logic. Morally flexible but with a core of decency. Willing to use trickery, subterfuge, and even outright dishonesty to win. He would make an excellent anti-hero with a few tweaks.
I think this is why I find Kirk to be the most entertaining of the captains, even though I know I wouldn't personally like him at all. Picard, for instance, is far more caring, managerial, thoughtful and conservative. In reality, this would make him a superior leader. In a TV show about Adventures in Space, it makes Kirk far more entertaining (to me).
Kirk is certainly more entertaining, no question. I do like the idea that we like him for his core goodness, even if his outward behavior is sometimes obnoxious.
Maybe there's a lesson there, even today.
There was something that I had read within the past decade that posited the theory that while Kirk was a protagonist, in reality the protagonist for ST:TOS was Kirk/Spock/McCoy. The theory went that Kirk/Spock/McCoy was a spit of a fully functioning single Protagonist, and that as a unit they were.
Kirk represented emotion and unrestricted possibilty and ego, and the belief that anything was possible.
Spock was logic and reason.
McCoy represented the anchor of what was reality and a focus of “humanity”
You put them altogether and you get the basis of IDIC.
That who concept changed with the TNG ‘verse, at that point the Captains very much became the “Heroes” of the shows, and it became a lot less like ST:TOS.
The trio-as-one idea has been around for a looooong, time — usually with Jim in the middle, Spock as the voice of reason, McCoy as the voice of passion. Or a breakdown of McCoy/Spock/Kirk as Id/SuperEgo/Ego.
It makes good general sense, but there was never that great of an overarching vision for TOS (except maybe in the 2nd season), the way there was for the later shows, and you can find several dozen exceptions to that whole idea.