Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is officially bringing back the last Star Trek character I ever expected. Strange New Worlds is easily the highlight of Kurtzman’s Star Trek era, an ingenious prequel series that subtly reinterprets classic films and TV shows. It’s shone a particularly interesting light on the relationship between James T. Kirk and Carol Marcus, his lover, helping establish an under-developed relationship. But now, Season 4 is going one step further.
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According to SFX Magazine (via CinemaBlend), one episode of Season 4 will show James Kirk interacting with his son, David. “I don’t want to call it a rewrite,” showrunner Henry Alonso Myers said, “but it’s like a rethink. The experience of David was not a part of the series because they didn’t really figure David out until the movies….Kirk is heroic, and none of us wanted to imagine that he is a lousy father, so that offered a lot of opportunities about how to get into his mind, emotionally.”
Star Trek is Redeeming Captain Kirk’s Most Painful Story
David was Kirk’s love-child, and his parents only saw one another occasionally in their on-again-off-again relationship. Star Trek always implied David had only a passing relationship with his father, who was often absent due to various five-year missions out in the wider galaxy. It seems we’re subtly reinterpreting that, revealing Kirk was more a part of David’s life than we thought. Note Myers’ explanation; he clearly felt the idea Kirk was a “lousy father” undermined his character as a “heroic” figure.
That in itself is an interesting interpretation. In the past, Kirk’s lack of relationship with David was essentially the price of his heroism; but Myers clearly feels that price was too steep. His attitude fits well with a general shift I’ve noticed in popular culture, an eagerness for father-son and father-daughter relationships that are played straight rather than for drama. We tend to see it most in the found-family dynamics (think The Mandalorian and Grogu, or Star Wars: The Bad Batch), but it seems to me there’s a desire for real connection to a father figure. Flawed fathers were once the norm in fiction, but pop culture wants something much more wholesome right now.
This explains Star Trek‘s decision to reframe the relationship between Kirk and David, revealing there was more to it than we previously thought. It moves Kirk into place as a hero for the present generation, ticking the right boxes for the 2020s rather than the 1980s. We’ve heard talk of a Captain Kirk spinoff from Strange New Worlds; while there’s nothing concrete in play, this kind of smart repositioning is key to making it possible in the first place. Modern viewers are unlikely to be quite so accepting of a failed father as a show’s main hero.
This has the added benefit of adding yet more emotion to The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock. The stronger the relationship between James T. Kirk and David Marcus is, the more painful and tragic David’s eventual fate becomes. Tragically, Captain Kirk is destined to be the father who outlives his son, and who has to live in a world where the child he loved is dead. So, in an odd but chilling way, Strange New Worlds is both fixing a subtle Captain Kirk problem while improving the original stories. That’s the best kind of reinterpretation you can get.
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Image courtesy of DC Studios
