(William Shatner)
James Kirk was born in 2233 in Iowa on Earth. His father, Samuel Kirk, was a security officer in starfleet. At age 13 he was one of nine surviving eyewitnesses to a massacre on Tarsus IV. Out of a colony of 8,000 colonists, 4,000 were killed by the infamous Governor Kodos, A.K.A. Kodos the Executioner. During his tenure on the Enterprise, Kirk lost his older brother George Samuel Kirk, whom he called Sam. In the same incident he lost his sister-in-law, Aurelan Kirk. This incident occured on the planet Deneva and was dur to a kind of paracitic organism. George's son, Kirk's nephew, Peter Kirk, was the only surviving member or that brance of his family. It was theorized the young Peter went to live with Kirk's only surviving parent, his mother.
In the Academy Kirk earned a reputation as a slight bookworm. His constant tormenter for three years was an upperclassman named Finnegan. During his years at the academy, Kirk also served as an instructor, one of his students was named Gary Mitchell, the two became best friends. In fact, Mitchell once took a poison dart in the side that would have killed Kirk. Mitchell also set Kirk p with a "little blonde lab technician" Kirk almost married. It is speculated this "blonde lab technician" was in fact Carol Marcus. Another great friend of Kirk's at the academy was Ben Finney, who named his daughter after Kirk. During this time. One of Kirk's role models was Garth of Izar, a famous starship captain. His other role model was Abraham Lincoln. The highlight of Kirk's final year at the academy was the KOBAYASHI MARU senario. It is the no-win senario and was never beaten up to that point. Kirk took the test three times and lost the first two. The night before the third he reprogrammed the computer to make it possible, but not certain, to win. He defeated the senario and was given a commendation for original thinking.
After the Academy, Kirk's first assignment as Lieutenant was aboard the USS Farragut. On one of his first missions in 2254 he visited Tyree's planet. Tyree and Kirk became fast friends and on a later mission during the Enterprise's five year mission Tyree saved Kirk's life. In 2257 a disaster involving a gaseous creature claimed the lives of over 200 members, half the crew, of the Farragut. Amoung the deceased was Captain Garrovick, he had taken Kirk under his wing and considered him a good command officer, Kirk took his death hard and blamed himself for years. Later during his years on the Enterprise he again encountered this creature again, in this encounter, he and Garrovick's son, who was a security officer, killed the creature.
Kirk's greatest fame came from the historic five-year mission aboard the Enterprise from 2264 to 2269. By 2267 he had earned many commendations for courage, bravery, thinking, and command ability. In 2267 he was the first Starfleet captain to ever stand trial, he was accused of the death of Ben Finney. The trial was held at Starbase 11 and Kirk was exonerated, Finney had faked his death to get revenge on Kirk for an incident long ago when Kirk reported a negligent act, he did not know it was Finney. Kirk was declared dead once during the five-year mission when another constitution class starship, the USS Defiant, was trapped in a spacial interphase. The Defiant disappeared along with Kirk, who had chosen to remain behind so the other members of the away team could return to the ship during a low point in power due to the spacial interphase. He had made a tape of his last orders that asked his two argumentative firends, Spock and McCoy, to help each other and work together for the good of the ship. Kirk was recovered from the spacial rift and did not find out for many years that Spock and McCoy had viewed. Some of his exploits were never really believed at Starfleet Headquarters. It was said by Admiral Jellico, whose grandfather worked in Headquarters during Kirk's time, that whenever uncontrolled laughter rang through the halls, Kirk had put in another whopper. Of course, each and every one of Kirk's reports were true. Many of Kirk's adventures involved time travel. When the Starfleet created the branch of Temporal Investigations, Kirk soon became a nightmare for the Investigators. He was said to accumilated 17 seperate temporal violations. An investigator was quoted once on DS9 as saying, "The man was a menace."
Perhaps Kirk's most fascinating missions involved a small creature called a tribble or that consumate conartist, Harry Mudd. Mudd was posing as a ship captain the first time he and Kirk had the misfourtune to meet. This was proven false and Mudd was arrested for dealing in the illegal substance, Venus Drug. In the next year, Kirk and Mudd again found themselves face to face. Mudd had broken jail, stolen a spaceship, was fired upon, and landed on a planet populated by androids. The androids wanted more humans to study, so Mudd promisde them a starfleet captain and crew. They soon got Kirk and crew. Finding that the androids only understood logic, Kirk and his crew used total illogic to shortcircuit the androids. As punishment for his capturing the Enterprise, Kirk left him on the planet with the one thing Harry Mudd feared worse than death. Mudd had built a replica of his ex-wife Stella, whom he deserted, and had programmed her to act the like the original, but had added the progranning that the words "Shut Up" would shut her down. Kirk left him on this planet with five hundred copies of his ex-wike, minue the shut down program. As Kirk left Mudd shouted after him "Kirk, you can't do this to me. It's...it's inhuman!" The tribble fiasco came back 100 years later to haunt the crew of DS9, but that is in the DS9 section. Kirk was called to Spacestation K-7 for a distress call that signaled near or total distruction. Upon arrival they learned a Undersecratery in charge if Agricultural Affairs in that quadrant, Nils Barris, had issued the distress call to protect a shipment of Quadrotriticale, a type of grain. The grain was to be shipped to Sherman's planet. This planet was a contested planet between the Klingons and the Federation. Accordian to the Organian Peace Treaty, one side or the other had to use the planet to better advantage, production of food was especially high on the productive list. So both the the Klingons and Federation were trying to produce grains there, Quadrotriticale was the only viable Earth grain. There were rumors at K-7, the staging area for the grain, of Klingon sabotage. Kirk ordered 2 security guards put on station, an insult to Barris, and stated, "I have never questioned the orders or intelligence of any repersentitive of Starfleet...until now." Barris and Kirk continued to disagree with each other during the entire mission. This is where a trader, Cyrano Jones, and the tribbles enter. During shore leave, Uhura was given a tribble from Jones. The next day, she had 11 tribbles. The 12 hours later, those tribbles had a litter. The ship was quickly filled with tribbles. Kirk even sat on one in his command chair. In the end, some of the tribbles ate all the grain and died due to poison in the grain. A tribble also found the Klingon agent, Barris's assistant, Arne Darvin, that did the poisoning. Darvin had been surgicaly altered to look like a human. Tribbles have an aversion to Klingons, their high pitched squeal, which they give when alarmed or near a Klingon, is disruptive on the Klingon nervous system. Darvin was arrested, Klingon Intelligence turned their back on him. Some years later he went back in time to change the past and kill Kirk, but that is where the DS9 crew comes in.
After his five-year mission, Kirk was immediately promoted to the rank of Admiral. "A waste of resources" in Spock's opinion. Kirk has always hated "desk jockeys" and now he was one. His friends Spock, who went to Vulcan to study the disciplines of Kohlinar, and McCoy, who retired, lost touch with him after a time. In 2271 Kirk accepted, in fact fought for, a reduction in rank back to captain. The crisis in question was an unidentified cloudlike object, putting out incredible energy, it had destroyed 3 Klingon ships and a huge Federation post. It was on a direct course for Earth. Kirk took back command of the Starship Enterprise, after it's two year refit, but a clash between Will Decker, the man who was put in command of the Enterprise at Kirk's reccomendation, put the two at odds, which became tense especially when Decker was made first officer. The Enterprise's original crew was brought back, with the exclusion of Spock, who had left Starfleet by this point. McCoy was recalled by using, in his words, "a little known, seldom used, reserve activation clause. In simple words, Admiral, they drafted me." Kirk's responce with feigned disbelief was simply, "They didn't." It had been his idea. When Kirk arrived onboard and Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov learned he was to command again, Uhura's words were, "the chances of our returning from this mission, may have just doubled." No one disagreed with the exception of Decker who was absent at the time. After an accident involving the transporter, Decker was required to double as science officer. Soon after, an unexpected but very welcome guest arrived. The classic trek trio was once again complete with the arrival and reinstatement of Commander Spock. Upon reaching the object, it was discovered to have a tenth power energy field and was approximately 80 AU's. That is, 80 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun in diameter. Instead of being destroyed, as the other ships or bases that had encountered it had been, they were pulled inside and probed, but during the probe,a crew member, Ilea, a former fling of Decker's was killed. Later a likeness of her that was in actuality a probe appeared. V'ger was the object's name it was discovered, and V'ger had come looking for "The Creator." In a mood of desperation, thought he would have never admitted it, Spock attempted a mind-meld with V'ger. It nearly killed him, but he gained the information needed. Once they reached the center of the disturbance, they found V'ger was actually a Voyager probe, Voyager 6 to be precise, that had returned to Earth to finish it's programming. It needed to "bond" with it's creator. To bond with a human. Decker had rekindled part of Ilea in the probe and he wanted to stay, so he bonded with the probe. This is speculated to be the birth of the Borg.
After the V'Ger crisis was over Kirk was put back in his Admiral's job. This time he assigned to Starfleet Academy, ironic since 3 years of his academy stay was pure hell for him. His crew went into the academy as well and started to train new cadets. In 2285 Kirk went back into space on a training cruise with a crew of cadets aboard the Enterprise. Kirk was thrilled to be back aboard his ship, but the "easy mission" soon turned tragic with a distress call from space station Regulus I. It was Dr. Carol Marcus. She said only that someone was trying to take Genesis, then the transmission was jammed at the source. Because of this emergency, Kirk took command of the Enterprise, at Spock's behest, from then Captain Spock. En route to Regulus I the Enterprise encountered the USS RELIANT, upon which Chekov served as first officer. The Reliant made not communications, but instead fired upon the Enterprise. The Enterprise took heavy damage and sustained many casualities, including Scotty's nephew, who died having recieved a final order from Kirk to comfort the dying boy. Upon reaching Regulus I an away team composed of Kirk, McCoy, and Lt. Savvik found all the crew members of the spacestatin dead, having been tourtured to death by the same person whom had hijacked the Reliant and marooned her crew on an inhospitable planet, Khan Noonien Singh, a nemisis of Kirk's from the past, specifically the late twentith century. ( Khan was one of the eugenics products of that century, he was incredibly strong and intellectually a genius. He had conquered 1/4 of Earth before he disappeared. He was found by the Enterprise during its five-year mission aboard the sleeper ship Botany Bay. He had attempted to take the ship, but was stopped by Kirk. Now he wanted revenge.) When the Reliant had unwittingly stumbled upon him he had taken their ship and found out about the Genesis device by information in their databanks. The away team found Chekov and Captain Clark Terrell and one transporter operational. They then took Terrell and Chekov and beamed to the last used coordinates in the transporter's memory. The coordinated beamed them into the interior of the planet where they found Doctor Carol Marcus and, David marcus, who was her son with Kirk. Kirk had not seen him in many years. Captain Terrell then turned on them due to the control of a paracite Kahn had put in both him and Chekov. Terrell sent Kahn the coordinates of Genesis, but when he was ordered to kill Kirk his resistance finally built to the breaking point ang he turned the disruptor on himself. Chekov was given the same instructions to kill Kirk and he was knocked out by the pain the parasite instituted. The parasite then exited his head and was killed by Kirk. Upon return to the Enterprise Kirk found the Reliant repaired and recovered from their earlier fight and ready to go again. The Enterprise went into a nearby nebula which caused the Reliant to give chase and become vulnerable to the radiation of the nebula which made their shields drop. The Enterprise scored a direct hit but Kahn set up the Genesis device to explode. It was an unstoppable chain reaction and the only escape was to go to warp, but the warp engines were damaged and inoperable. Suddenly the Warp engines showed normal status and the Enterprise escaped. It was soon discovered Spock had gone into the irradiated area and done the necessary repairs, but at a horrible cost, his life. At Spock's funeral Kird said, "Of all the souls I have encountered, his was the most... human."
Kirk and the Enterprise returned to Earth where kirk was confronted by Ambassador Sarek, Spock's father. Sarek mind-melded with kirk in search of Spock's katra but realized kirk was not the carrier. It was soon discovered McCoy was the carrier and the crew reunited to retireve Spock's body from the newly formed Genesis Planet, the result of the Genesis explosion in the nebula. Uhura arranged to transport Sulu, Chekov, Kirk, and McCoy to the Enterprise which they then stole from spacedock while she went to Vulcan to coordinate with Sarek. But when the Enterprise warped to the Genesis Planet they stumbled upon a band of renegade Klingons attempting to discover the secret of Genesis. As hostages they held Kirk's son, David, Savvik, and the regenerated Spock, who had been healed and returned to life by the Genesis Effect. To show they were serious, the Klingons killed one of the hostages, David Marcus. Kirk was devastated by the blow and shouted bluntly, "You Klingon BASTARDS, you killed my son!"In a last ditch effort to save the technology on the Enterprise from the Klingons Kirk allowed them to board the ship to save the lives of the other hostages while he and the crew beamed down to the planet, the ship self-destructed soon after the Klingons reached the bridge. On the surface they found Savvik and Spock, but Spock's mind was blank due to the absence of his katrawhich he had put into McCoy. The Klingon captain beamed down to confront Kirk directly and the rest of the crew including Savvik was beamed up to the Klingon ship leaving only the two captains and Spock on the surface. After a brutal confrontation the Klingon fell into a lava flow and Kirk used the klingon's dropped communicator to call for himself and Spock to be beamed aboard as well. They captured the only remaining crew member of the Klingon crew and warped out of system just as the unstable Genesis Planet exploded. They returned Spock to Vulcan where they were net by Uhura and Ambassador Sarek. Spock's katra and body were reunited in an ancient and dangerous ceremony and most of his memories were restored, the remaining ones returned with time.
The crew of six unamiously voted to return to Earth to face the charges against them. Taking the captured Bird-Of-Prey, Kirk and his crew, including Spock, return to Earth, but upon arrival they find the planet in mortal danger by an unknown probe. After analyzing the sound waves being sent to the earth's oceans, it was determined the probe was trying to contact the long-extinct race of humpback whales.