Captain Kirk’s Kisses – Part Three
by Joseph Avery-North
Star Trek’s Captain Kirk has a reputation. Is Captain Kirk a ladies man? Is Captain Kirk a womanizer? Let’s look at Captain Kirk’s kisses in Season One…
We’ve arrived at Part Three of our examination of Captain Kirk’s kisses. Part One can be read here and Part Two is found here. Let’s look at the kissing action from Season Three and see what conclusions we can draw overall regarding his character (vs caricature) and the question… was Captain Kirk a ladies’ man?
Captain Kirk’s Kisses in Season Three
Star Trek S3E03 – The Paradise Syndrome
Kirk, Spock and McCoy are looking around on a planet, stealthily observing the natives (who are meant to be Native Americans and the planet is even named “Amerind”). They’re having a look around before beaming back to the Enterprise so they can deflect an asteroid that’s going to hit the planet and wipe out everyone. Unfortunately, while examining an Obelisk that is not native to the planet, Kirk falls down a trapdoor, gets zapped and loses his memory. Spock and Bones beam back, the ship warps off to stop the asteroid with phasers, fails and the warp engines burn out so they have to spend two months trailing the asteroid on impulse power while hoping to come up with a new plan.
These two months give Kirk, who still has amnesia, time to become a god to the natives and meet, fall in love with and marry the high priestess, Miramanee. However, as the asteroid approaches, the natives stone Kirk and Miramanee because Kirk can’t magically work the Obelisk like their prophecy says. Spock and McCoy arrive, Spock restores Kirk’s memory, they figure out the Obelisk’s controls and save the day but Miramanee’s injuries were too severe and she dies. Kirk, although not himself, loved and married Miramanee and the kisses were between husband and wife. And the end of this episode is actually very sad.
Star Trek S3E10 – Plato’s Stepchildren
Ah, Plato’s Stepchildren, an episode that some fans hate because they find it degrading and humiliating for our heroes… but it’s supposed to be! That was the whole point. Oh, and it’s also the episode containing what many claim to be the first interracial kiss on TV, at least on American TV. Google is your friend for that debated subject. Anyhow…
The Enterprise answers another distress call, something that never really goes well, and find the Platonians, aliens who visited Earth in the past, thought Plato was cool and the decadent Greek lifestyle worth emulating. They also have highly developed psychokinetic powers and are voyeurs and sadists that get off on degrading and humiliating our heroes, forcing them to do whatever they want which includes singing, dancing, and yes forced kissing between Spock and Chapel and Kirk and Uhura. While our heroes are fully conscious of what is happening to them they have no control over their bodies. McCoy manages to save the day by isolating the compound that grants the psychokinetic powers so our heroes can fight back.
Star Trek S3E11 – Wink of an Eye
Once again responding to a distress call from the planet Scalos, the Enterprise comes across what seems to be a planet devoid of life. It isn’t though as they soon discover. Radiation poising has had two detrimental effects – The people are hyperaccelerated, moving so fast they can’t even been seen in normal time and the men are sterile so their race will die off, not being able to reproduce. Despite being technologically advanced good old fashioned sex is apparently the only option they have.
A few drops of contaminated water in Kirk’s coffee accelerate him, he meets Deela, who has chosen him to be her mate and… there’s lots of kissing. Kirk’s first kiss is an attempt to lift the weapon she wears on her wrist. But Deela is wise to his tricks. Then they kiss again. Then there’s the implied sex with the famous “boots scene” ( does being hyperaccelerated mean a minute man would become a second man?) then more kissing then Rael, Deela’s right hand man who has the hots for her, storms in and gets jealous. Spock shows up, having accelerated himself after finding a message Kirk left for them, and the day is saved. Well, except for the Scalosians who still think procreation only happens through penetration.
Star Trek S3E13 – Elaan of Troyius
Ah, Elaan of Troyius, the episode with a name drawn from Greek mythology that retells Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew that proves Star Trek, and by extension, Trekkies, is cultured, well-read and totally highbrow… or something. The Enterprise is assigned to a diplomatic ferrying mission so the leader of one planet can marry the leader of another planet and the two planets can end their war. But the women of Elas, and Elaan is the female ruler of that planet, have a super power – any man whose skin is touched by their tears falls hopelessly in love with them.
Can you guess whose skin is touched by Elaan’s tears? If you said Bones or Chekov you’re wrong. It’s Kirk! Elaan doesn’t want to finish the Troyian Finishing School course she has to take before the marriage. She doesn’t even want to marry a Troyian so she cries on Kirk, they kiss a couple times but in the end, Kirk’s love of his ship and his duty break the spell.
The Memory Alpha (the Fandom wiki dedicated to Star Trek) write up for this story cracks me up so much I’m breaking my two paragraph policy for this episode’s kiss analysis – According to the author Kirk and Elaan do the deed.
When? Where? They kiss, the scene cuts to a saboteur in engineering to the bridge, the bridge hails Kirk and the scene cuts back to Elaan and Kirk sitting a bed. There isn’t even the implied sex from Wink of an Eye with the “boots scene”. Was there even time for sex in those cuts? Maybe if Kirk was still a little hyperaccelarated… I just don’t see it. Small sample, sure, but neither myself, my wife, nor anyone I know have ever seen sex in that scene. We all interpret the kiss and saboteur scene happening concurrently followed immediately by the bridge scene and hail to Kirk. I guess it’s open to interpretation but to me, that take is born of the misconception of the character in the eyes of some fans.
Star Trek S3E14 – Whom Gods Destroy
This is the episode that gives rise to the misconception/joke that Captain Kirk is into green alien girls. It also makes our beloved highly intelligent, famously logical Spock look like an idiot. The Enterprise arrives at yet another Federation Funny Farm and, just like the first time in Dagger of the Mind, things don’t go well. The inmates rise up, Kirk and Spock are taken captive and Kirk is tortured.
While laying in bed, barely conscious or cognizant after his torture, Marta, a batshit crazy inmate who claims she wrote Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (and the logic of her claim is pretty compelling actually) comes to Kirk. She claims she wants to help him, she kisses and caresses our barely functioning captain (who, in his diminished capacity probably can’t legally consent) and then she tries to kill him with a dagger she hid under the pillow. Nothing about Kirk being a victim says romance here.
Star Trek S3E16 – The Mark of Gideon
When fans talk about how bad Season 3 of Star Trek was they typically cite Spock’s Brain or And the Children Shall Lead. For me though, it’s this episode. There is so much wrong here, so much that’s utterly idiotic that I can’t even think to myself “interesting concept, bad execution”. I’ll watch the aforementioned two any day before this one. It’s so bad I don’t think I’ve watched it since I bought my DVD sets 20 years or so ago.
An alien race lives on a planet so overpopulated they claim they are literally a shoulder to shoulder wall of flesh across every square foot of the planet’s surface. They’re not a member of the Federation yet they got their hands on Kirk’s private medical records so they know he carries a disease that will start killing them. They also got their hands on detailed blueprints of the Enterprise so exact (which include Scotty’s custom mods too?), and found space somewhere on their wall of flesh world, they constructed a replica so perfect it fools Kirk when he’s tricked into beaming to the replica Enterprise to infect the daughter of the world’s ruler so the people will start dying. WTF?!? Oh, and Kirk just up and kisses her. I want to think Kirk was drugged. Nothing else explains this one. It’s just… ugh. Bad.
Star Trek S3E19 – Requiem for Methuselah
Kirk’s first ever kiss in the series was with an android so it’s only fitting his last kiss is with one too… I guess. At least, unlike The Mark of Gideon, I can say “interesting concept” with this episode. The crew has the cooties, killer cooties in fact, and the only cure is “ryetalyn”. The planet they go to to get the mineral has two inhabitants – an older man named Flint and a pretty young woman named Rayna. Oh, and Flint’s killer patrol robots.
While waiting for the ryetalyn to be processed Kirk, Spock and McCoy discover unknown works by da Vinci and Brahms and it turns out Flint is 6000 years old, from Earth and as been pretty much every major philosopher, inventor and artist in Earth’s history. Being immortal, he can’t die so he’s trying to build himself a robot bride. Kirk falls desperately in love with Ryana, which Flint actually wanted so he could be all pervy and watch on CCTV, then Kirk and Flint get into a fist fight for her affections and she short circuits. Oh, and since Flint left Earth’s magnetic field he’s now aging normally and will die. And Spock does a Vulcan mind meld so Kirk can forget his humiliating stupidity. It’s crap.
The Season Three Tally – Two kisses while in love (one of which was while married), one while mind-controlled, one while drugged, one tactical save the day kiss, one while barely conscious (and the kissee, not the kisser) and one… one, just because I guess.
And there was one massive missed opportunity… In Turnabout Intruder, the final episode of the original series (S3E24) Kirk undergoes a forced body swap with a bitter, and certifiably bonkers ex-girlfriend. She’s posing as Kirk and Kirk inhabits her body… There should have been kissing there!
So, Is Captain Kirk a Ladies’ Man?
Let’s sum up Kirk’s kisses to see if he was a ladies man, a womanizer or what…
Of Kirk’s 19 kisses seven were purely tactical seduction manoeuvers to save the ship/crew/mission when the enemy was female (human or alien) , three were Kirk truly in love, two while more or less harassed by colleagues, two while drugged and victimized by female aggressors, one while mind-controlled, one while possessed, one while barely conscious and about to be murdered by the woman kissing him and two were what I’m calling “nothing better to do”.
With a little help from Spock’s calculations we can see that 36.842% of the time Kirk was actually victimized by females and/or aliens, an equal 36.842% of the time Kirk used his masculine wiles to save lives, 15.789% of the time Kirk was truly in love with the lady (or sex robot) and 10.526% were just something to do. So no, Kirk was not a womanizer. He also wasn’t really much of a ladies man either. And could probably do with some counselling. I never really realised how much our poor captain suffered.
I also never noticed how much of a BDSM element there was in Star Trek… but maybe I’m projecting there. Or tramautised from reading Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath’s creepy, kinky Star Trek novels when I was a kid. Kirk/Spock slash fiction that was professionally licensed and published. Blech! Don’t believe me? Google it!
I blame Star Trek for that.
(Star Trek 1966-2005 RIP)
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