Yeah - we’re working thru TNG, and it is hysterical how they constantly paint Riker as on the prowl.
Didn’t recall how often they showed Picard shirtless either…
Kirk wasn’t married; he was about to propose: Antonia | Memory Alpha | Fandom
You don’t say!
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Nancy_Hedford:
I agree. On the Bridge of the Enterprise-B, having just met Demora Sulu, Kirk tells Scotty he was surprised that Sulu found time to have a family. Scotty quotes Kirk as having said, “If something’s important, you make the time.” Kirk’s expression says it all.
We never said that he was a dick. One can be a perfectly nice horndog. Whether one considers being a horndog a good, bad, or neutral thing is independent of whether Kirk was one.
True, no one used the word “dick”. I was paraphrasing in reaction to MrAtoz 's posts (underlining mine):
and
So, it seems to me that MrAtoz views Kirk’s actions as a negative personality trait.
The OP uses the word “reckless” in the thread title. (And doesn’t imply a “nice” horndog, IMO.)
Taken together, I was debating (indirectly with MrAtoz) against the idea that Kirk was only thinking with his gonads (or in some other way “reckless”) whenever women were around. (Being “a dick” to the guest female of the week would be reckless, too, if it jeopardizes his position of authority in the eyes of his crew. :o )
She doesn’t belong on the list. Kirk tried to seduce her (albeit kind of half-heartedly) in the ship’s botanical garden as a ploy to distract her from Spock’s attempt to mind-meld with Kollos. Being a telepath, she saw through Kirk immediately.
But he wasn’t, as Chronos said, “trying to get into her pants.”
The modern image of Kirk’s persona of a guy that flips the bird to authority comes more from the movies than the old show. Granted, Kirk doesn’t suffer fools easily so usually when he is being difficult it is because he is dealing with a jerk who is butting in. But mostly those jerks were outside the structure of command. When it comes to Command, he is pretty much a straight shooter.
He was even more so as a kid. he described himself a a"grim student". That’s one of the reasons the new Movies feel off. The Kirk they show is nothing like the one the show presented; it’s more like someone who just heard about the show wrote it.
IMHO, the only one who even came close to being “hot” was Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland) in “This Side of Paradise.”
Droxine had a pretty face, but she was skinny as a rake.
The Romulan Commander—ew! Not particularly pretty or intelligent, and a slave to her hormones.
If by that you mean “interested in screwing her purely for pleasure,” then no, he wasn’t. He had an ulterior motive.
Well, perhaps less me personally, and more a recognition that society in general has somewhat less tolerance for the notion of the “girl in every port” type of character. It seems to me that more people are willing to criticize that kind of thing nowadays. The OP even does so implicitly by using the term “horndog,” which strikes me as fairly judgmental. I was sort of playing off that use of “horndog” in assuming that the popular view of Kirk-as-player is to some degree a negative one.
Certainly in a lot of the Star Trek discussions that I’ve had over the years, there is a trend among some viewers to view Kirk’s “womanizing” as a negative, somewhat pathetic trait. When people are playing the “Who was the best captain” game that geeks are wont to do, Kirk’s promiscuity is frequently mentioned as a negative, as contrasted with every other Star Trek captain, none of whom even come close to Kirk in the amount of romantic action that they get. At least that’s been my impression, though of course your mileage may differ.
Note that the rebooted Star Trek movie, with Chris Pine, seems to poke fun at Kirk’s repeated (failed) attempts to seduce Uhura, who is not impressed with him in the least and regards his clumsy passes with barely concealed contempt. That strikes me as a recognition that the culture has changed, and the sort of macho lady’s man attitude that Kirk embodies is considered less acceptable than it was in the 1960s.
That’s why I was attempting to point out that, compared to other action/SF shows of the time, Kirk doesn’t really stand out that much. He was really pretty typical of your standard TV hero.
But why is it seen as a negative? As long as the women in question are ok with it, that is.
I don’t recall Kirk ignoring a “no”. (Barring a transporter accident, that is.)
Yup. It does… I’ve seen the trait expressed as a hyperbolic joke “to make fun” of Kirk… but no serious arguments.
IMO, that’s stretching it a little. I think it’s just intended to show that Uhura is too smart and sophisticated to fall for boyish antics. Notice Kirk succeeds with the redheaded Orion cadet.
I agree that that was the archetype in TV hero’s of the 60’s and 70’s. But are you suggesting that Kirk should be, in order to comply with today’s sensibilities, be passive, or celibate? Men aren’t allowed to ask women out? Must they wait for the woman to make the first move? What am I missing?
Even if being a horndog is a negative trait, though (a point of which I will not argue either side), it’s a different negative trait than being a dick.
There’s another thread asking which is the worst episode of Trek and the final TOS episode Turnabout Intruder gets a lot of votes. It’s worth mentioning that it isn’t hard to extrapolate this from the plot that:
Kirk met and had a short fling with (i.e. banged) Dr. Lester, but then he realized she was a kinda crazy, fragile, obsessive, already planning-their-wedding-type girl so he dumped her fast and hard, which is what probably sent her over the edge into full-blown chick-revenge murderous crazy-town*!*
Isn’t it also a given that Pine!Kirk can succeed with those twins?
I don’t remember the twins.
Here you go.
IIRC, they were together for a year at Starfleet Academy. Hardly a “short fling,” but I’m sure he wished it had been.
I’m not suggesting anything, really. Just trying (apparently without much success) to express my perception of a shift in cultural attitudes about the type of heroic figure Kirk is. I don’t know, maybe my perception is off-base, but it reflects the kind of discussions that I’ve encountered in my particular corners of Trek fandom.
Exactly. Kirk’s actions are presented as, just as you say, boyish antics. They may work with some cadets, but level-headed, sensible women like Uhura are too smart to fall for them. I’m not saying that Kirk is presented as some kind of sexual predator–the Orion cadet was clearly willing. I am saying that he is presented as childish and immature in his approach to women, and we are meant to think well of Uhura that she gives him the brush-off.
I must confess that I’m a little surprised by this discussion. Am I really so off-base when I suggest that our reaction to characters like this has changed since the '60s? Even the Bond films had Judi Dench calling Bond a misogynist!
And all of this really tangential to my main point, which was simply that I think it’s wrong to single out Kirk as a “horndog,” when he was simply one in a long line of such characters.
Well, Riker did have seven years to be humpin around, compared to Kirk’s three.
I don’t recall Kirk in the original series using the “boyish” approach to relationships. It’s only in the reboot movies the he does.
Society’s values changed, I recognize that. It’s just that I am the one surprised that a heterosexual man, entering into an occasional, and more importantly consensual, short term relationship with the current-guest-actress-of-the-week is seen as misogynist.
The OP is trying to make the argument that Kirk wasn’t a “horndog”. I happen to agree (for slightly different reasons).
How can you be surprised by this discussion, when you apparently don’t even agree with the OP? 