Strange New Worlds Just Unpacked Jim Kirk's Saddest Chapter
Kirk family drama is foundational in Trek lore.
In Star Trek: The Original Series, James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was a fearless leader who rarely, rarely looked back. Outside of his crew, Kirk’s primary love was for his ship, the USS Enterprise. But, decades later, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, we learned that Kirk had had a son well before the events of the most famous Enterprise five-year-mission. David Marcus, son of James T. Kirk and Carol Marcus, was a retroactive character who became a permanent part of Kirk’s backstory starting in 1982. And now, as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds gets closer to the timeline of TOS, one of the most bittersweet and saddest aspects of Kirk’s backstory is getting explored in a way that it never has before.
In SNW Season 4, Episode 2, “The Griffin Incident,” Spock (Ethan Peck), La’an (Christina Chong), and Kirk (Paul Wesley) are plagued by visions and spirits on a ship that can only be described as haunted. And in this horrific, psychological hall of mirrors, Kirk is plagued with some visions of David Marcus, who, at this point, is only a baby.
Spoilers ahead.
How the Strange New Worlds timeline works with The Wrath of Khan
Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch) and David Marcus (Merritt Butrick) in The Wrath of Khan.
In The Wrath of Khan, Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch) made it clear she didn’t want young David in Kirk’s world. And, when you do the stardate math, this estrangement had been going on for quite some time. Kirk’s five-year-mission ends in 2270, and The Wrath takes place in 2285, which roughly checks out with Kirk’s line in the film: “There's a man out there I haven't seen in 15 years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help him.”
Technically, Kirk should have maybe said 18 years, since “Space Seed” occurs in 2267, but in TOS, and even in the early Trek films, the exact timeline of Trek was still getting nailed down. In both “Space Seed” and The Wrath, Khan cites “200 years” as the amount of time he was in suspended animation, but that’s only because when “Space Seed” aired, it wasn’t clear if TOS was taking place in the 22nd or 23rd century. TLDR, Khan should have said 300 years, but honestly, lately with the timeline changes in SNW Season 2, and Khan being born later, the (roughly) 200 years figure actually makes sense, again.
What does this have to do with David Marcus’s age in SNW? Well, basically, SNW has a little wiggle room with David’s exact birthday, because of the slight wonkiness of his age in The Wrath. Even the Trek wiki Memory Alpha says David’s birthday year is 2259 or 2260. In SNW Season 2, Episode 9, “Subspace Rhapsody,” Kirk tells La’an that Carol is pregnant. In theory, that episode takes place in 2260, but it sounds like David hasn’t been born yet at the time of year that episode occurs.
SNW Season 3 ended in the year 2261, roughly, which means Season 4 is happening in 2262, shockingly just three years before Kirk becomes the captain of the Enterprise, and TOS begins. So, at this point David is likely a toddler, which checks out with Kirk’s visions of a small child being trapped on the Griffin.
How SNW unpacks Kirk’s troubled fatherhood
Jim and Sam confront the unknown in Strange New Worlds.
Part of the story of “The Griffin Incident” centers on Kirk’s guilt about not making it home to bring David a small present. The message of the episode is clear: Jim Kirk chooses his career over his family every time. And it’s here, in this episode, that we get the first confirmation in SNW that Kirk and Carol are estranged. “It’s my fault, really,” Kirk tells La’an. “She was never a fan of Starfleet, always worried I would die alone somewhere in unknown space.”
Kirk also mentions that Carol has snagged a “dream project,” which could be a vague reference to the Genesis project that she’s working on in The Wrath. His line about dying alone is also clearly a reference to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), in which Kirk tells Spock and Bones: “I’ve always known I’ll die alone.”
The episode ends with Kirk trying to reach Carol and David via subspace, but the call never gets answered. By TOS and, of course, by the film series, Kirk isn’t in contact with Carol and David at all, meaning this scene could indicate the beginning of the moment Carol cuts all contact with Jim.
That said, there’s a bit of canon housekeeping SNW may still have to deal with this season or in Season 5: In The Wrath, Spock knows Carol Marcus, and in SNW, Carol has not appeared yet. Other than Bibi Besch, the only other person who has played Carol Marcus was Alice Eve, who played a different version of Carol in the Kelvin Timeline in Star Trek Into Darkness.
Will SNW give us a version of Carol? Time will tell!
SNW foreshadows Sam Kirk’s demise in TOS
Sam Kirk (as played by William Shatner with a mustache) in “Operation – Annihilate!”
After their extended stay on the Griffin, Kirk, Spock, and La’an all experience hallucinations, and one early piece of proof that almost none of it is real is the fact that Jim Kirk witnesses the demise of his brother, Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannotte).
Sam Kirk does, indeed, meet a horrible end in The Original Series, but that’s set in the future of this moment of SNW. “Operation – Annihilate!” takes place in 2267, six years from this point in SNW. At that point, Sam has also moved with his entire family out of the starship life and onto the Deneva colony. In “The Griffin Incident,” Kirk and La’an talk a bit about Sam’s parenting style versus Jim’s, which again foreshadows tragedy since Sam and his whole family will be wiped out on Deneva.
He might be the most famous hero of Star Trek lore, but as SNW reminds us, the family tragedy and family drama are foundational to the story of James T. Kirk.
