I WILL REMEMBER THIS EPISODE FOREVER BECAUSE IT IS A TIME-TRAVEL EPISODE AND THEY HAD TO ACTUALLY ~THINK UP~ AND THEN ~EXPLAIN~ THE CONTAMINATION OF TIMELINES ISSUE BECAUSE STAR TREK DOES EVERY TROPE FIRST
(ps I’m sure it had come up before then in sci-fi books and whatnot but i’m saying that nowadays in tv and movies it’s just a given that if time travel comes up that’s going to be an issue, at the time there wasn’t this sci-fi backlog of O NOEZ TIME TRAVEL and it is so weird to see them, like, NOT REALIZE IT’S GOING TO BE AN ISSUE until spock is like “hold up there is no way we can send this dude back to his family sry not sry”)
(Actually mostly Twilight Zone did it first, and then everybody else lifted it from that. But Trek did get to some things first! And so did Doctor Who.)
I love the Star Trek reboot, but Pine’s Kirk forever freaks me out a little, because in my head THIS is Kirk. He is young, but experienced and comfortable in himself and his abilities. He’s smart (and weird) enough to sometimes beat Spock at chess. He’s both a solid planner and good at improvisation. He’s ruthless enough to manipulate and seduce in the line of duty. (I’ll never get over how often TOS Kirk uses seduction to accomplish things. People call him a womanizer, but they tend to overlook his reasons. It’s not flattering, but it’s powerful and it’s not something people have the guts to write their heroes doing, these days.)
It’s just really hard for me to swallow the idea that they let someone with Pine!Kirk’s inexperience stay captain of an interstellar ship. You honestly just can’t jump into a job like that without more experience than “That one time you saved the galaxy.” And the way they set it up, his entire command crew (aside from Scotty) has just as little real experience as he does. It’s weird, if I let myself think about it.