the sisko kirk hero worship homoeroticism would be entirely reversed if kirk ever showed up on ds9 thru his own time travel circumstances because the first thing that would happen is he would meet quark and the thing about kirk is there is nobody in the entire space and time of the universe that would annoy him more than quark it would immediately be like the worst day he ever experienced it would be like nonstop torment trying to understand why these things keep happening to him and then he would see sisko tactfully handling quark or god forbid see him getting quark to kiss the nagus scepter and like it would be over for him like sisko handling quark related paperwork would be the single most heroic thing hes ever seen like he would become immediately obsessed and bewitched
Fully agreeing with that last post that Love Potions/Love Magic are pretty much inherently unethical...but then I got to thinking about how one could have Love Potions/ Love Spells that are ethical
and I think the obvious first step is: it has to be something that affects the caster/ the person invoking the Love Spell , with their own understanding. It's ethical to fuck yourself up, even if it's a real bad idea. But then what could one do to oneself that would qualify as Love Magic?
Thought 1: make it essentially Magic Therapy/Medication-- something to help the user articulate their own feelings, or improve their memory/ understanding of their loved one , or perhaps achieve some sort of emotional clarity they can't reach on their own. Simple, straightforward, nothing one couldn't do with therapy but therapy tends to be short on the ground in fantasy worlds:P How long the spell lasts, if it counts narratively as "cheating" by taking an Easy Way, etc, are all up to The Narrative.
Thought 2: Invocation of Meet Cute/Matchmaker spell--a spell to put the user in a place where they can meet their love interest on socially equal/ favorable ground, or as a social equal. May involve some level of personal glow up, but not on the level of a the (D*xn@y) Aladdin-- maybe the user is wearing their best sweater/ doesn't have any obvious blemishes that day, or something, but the main thing is it's creating an opportunity for connection by moving the user, and also, that it still isn't forcing the feelings of the Intended; it's just creating an opportunity. Could be specifically focused or a more general thing, like "please let me meet someone I could have a romance with". Either way, the romantic hopeful still has to put in the effort to get past the hello.
..that's it. Well, I've only been thinking about it a few minutes XD but let me know if you have any other ideas for Love Magic that Isn't Kinda Evil!
Thoughts on rewatching S2E16, âBewitched, Bothered, and Bewilderedâ (2/4): Why is this episode so bad?
Ok so hereâs the rant. The central plotline of âBewitched, Bothered, and Bewilderedâ is bad for five independent reasons. In a previous post I summarise them as follows:
Xanderâs initial problem is way less sympathetic than the writers think
His response to it is way less sympathetic than the writers think
Love spells are way more horrifying than the writers think
The way the spell backfires is way less enjoyable to watch than the writers think
The final resolution is way less fair-minded than the writers think.
In this post I want to try to explain each of these, while also trying to figure what the writerly intentions behind these choices was, and why they go so wrong.
Problem 1
So first, the woes of Xander Harris. The connecting thread that links the every first scene to the very last is that he wants him and Cordelia to have a relationship - a real commitment, publicly affirmed and acknowledged, not just lots of furtive making out. But she's reluctant. If you asked him what his problem is, he would say: âI have feelings - real genuine feelings - for this girl, but she doesnât care about that, she only cares what her friends think.â
I think the writers (Iâll stick with the plural here, because I donât know how much of this is Marti Noxton and how much is Joss Whedon and how much is anyone elseâs influence) expect us to find this pretty sympathetic. I think on some level weâre expected to see Xanderâs desire for a more committed relationship as intrinsically sweet and noble, at least compared to either âtawdry teen lustâ, or Cordeliaâs concern for her social standing. His desire is âdeepâ and ârealâ, whereas both of those would be âshallowâ.
I want to resist this idea. Partly that's because Iâm inclined to think that more committed vs more casual is actually morally neutral in itself. But thatâs not really the main point. The main point is that surely the value of any sort of desire for someone is conditional on respecting and caring for them.
And by that standard it becomes very significant that Xander literally cannot say a single nice thing about Cordelia.
His friend asks why he canât date âsomeone more⊠betterâ, and his response is, basically, âthereâs no-one else to date, if it wasnât her Iâd be alone.â (I mean actually his response is to say âthe only other person Iâm interested in is unavailableâ while pointedly looking at Buffy, like some sort of fusion of creepy incel and stroppy 2-year-old⊠but thatâs not the issue here.)
He prepares a speech about why they should be together and he still canât actually think of anything nice to say, beyond the perfectly generic âMaybe something in you sees something special inside me. And vice versa.â
He is in the act of blackmailing someone into casting a love spell on her, and he shoots down the idea of them loving each other forever, because âa man can only talk self-tanning lotion for so long before his head explodes.â
And on one level, yeah I get that this is the comedic bit they are committed to. And I think weâre meant to look past his words and see that he really does respect and care about her⊠because he has romantic feelings for her (as per the operative idea that feelings like that are inherently self-justifying). But I donât think we have to do that. I think itâs just as reasonable to take him at face value: he doesnât respect Cordelia now any more than he did before they started making out. He doesnât even like her. He holds her in contempt and finds her annoying.
(A season and a half later, in âthe promâ, he does go out of his way to do a nice thing for her, and thatâs character growth, but thatâs not what we see in this episode.)
And to be clear, you donât have to like or respect Cordelia! Sheâs written to have a lot of very obvious flaws. But you have to like and respect her if you want to have a relationship with her! Itâs sort of a murkier issue if you should even make out with people you donât like or respect, but setting that aside, the desire to move from hate-kissing to hate-dating is not an inherently noble or sweet desire. Itâs actually kind of a scary desire. Because if youâre drawn to this person not because you like or admire them, itâs natural to worry that youâre motivated instead by some sort of possessiveness or drive for status.
And notice that when Amy asks him what he wants: he doesnât say anything about Cordelia. He says:
âWhat do I want? I want some respect around here. I want, for once, to come out ahead. I want the Hellmouth to be working for me.â
Which really sounds as if his desire for a deeper relationship with Cordelia is tied up with his own resentment and insecurity, his desire for status and respect, his perpetually wounded manhood. Which is about as sympathetic a motivation as Angelâs is.
Let me be clear, since I know I have mutuals who are Xander fans or Bandillow fans. Iâm not saying that Xander is in fact an abuser-in-waiting (though no less an authority than Xander Harris will express that fear later on, in âHellâs Bellsâ). I think a serious reading of this character, taking into account both his actions across many episodes and the way that other characters perceive and relate to him, would probably have to be that heâs a basically decent kid whoâs just very stupid and riddled with unhealthy feelings and desires. My claim is that this episode doesnât work well because the writers think they can take that for granted, so they donât show us it: they show us someone whoâs attracted to a woman he neither likes nor respects and feels entitled to a relationship with her because theyâve been making out a bunch.
Was this necessary? No. Suppose we grant that the writers want this Valentineâs Day episode to be about a love spell gone wrong. Thereâs no need for Xander to be responsible - you could easily find a reason for Willow to attempt this (she virtually does in S3, just with an âanti-loveâ spell instead) for some sort of quasi-altruistic reason. Or have Amy cast a love spell on Willow (because sheâs dying inside about the whole Oz thingâŠ). Or have a rando try it (Jonathan basically does this in S4), or one of the antagonists (Spike will try to have a love spell cast in Drusilla in season 3).
Or if it has to be Xander and Cordelia, then show us that he likes her. Have him actually stick up for her with Buffy and Willow. Instead of him complaining âWhen are you guys gonna stop making fun of me for dating Cordelia?â, have him complain âWhen are you guys gonna stop making fun of Cordelia?â, and list nice things about her, including ways sheâs helped, or the very fact that she keeps helping them out without having to, or whatever. It would be growth! It could be really sweet.
But it wouldnât solve all the problems, because there are four more.
Problem 2
The writers could have shown Xander going to Amy after a scene of him sitting despondently, showing some sign of thinking about Cordelia. They could have shown Amy actively offering to help him! (Itâs not like theyâre trying to maintain some coherent canon of who she is as a character.) They could have shown him hesitant - or seeing references to love spells in some book that Giles and Willow are reading, and then wrestling with the decision, and finally giving in. That would at least have conveyed some sense that this is a normally decent person giving in to their worst impulses in a moment of weakness.
Instead what they show is him being taunted by Harmony and other randos, establishing not any sort of feelings about Cordelia as a person, but a general sense of social inferiority and low status. Then he approaches Amy, blocks her way threateningly, blackmails her, comes up with the idea of a love spell by himself, and says his plan is specifically to make Cordelia love him so he can dump her and break her heart in revenge. This way, we are led to think, he will finally get âsome respect around hereâ. Start to finish, itâs his plan, driven by his determination to humiliate the woman who hurt his social status. If it requires threatening an unrelated girl, thatâs fine: heâs been treated unfairly by life, donât you see, so heâs justified in being a dick to anyone and everyone. To me, this doesnât read like âdecent person gives in to temptationâ, this reads like âI really hope there are no guns in this guyâs house because this is terrifying.â
And I don't really get why the writers pick the specific way of getting from point A to point B that paints Xander in such an unflattering light, if the rest of the episode is going to keep following his wacky antics and eventually reward him - i.e., if they expect him to carry at least some modest amount of audience sympathy. My best guess is that they think that sympathy can be taken for granted, either because of his plight (socially excluded and mocked, just like⊠most of our other characters at one time or another?) or because theyâve established him as a nice sensitive man by showing him worrying about whether Cordelia will like his gift, i.e. because he wants a girlfriend. The bar, as they say, is in hell.
(Thereâs one line later on where Amy says âI liked spending time with you. You're so sweetâ and⊠I know that she is under a love spell at that point, but surely there are more plausible rationalisations that her magic-addled mind could come up with? Literally every word Xander has said to her this episode has been some manner of threat or accusation or him spewing bile about Cordelia. And it almost feels like weâre expected to treat âhaving emotionsâ as in and of itself making a man sweet? Because at least heâs not Larry Blaisdell or some other hyper-masculine caricature⊠except that Larry also has emotions, just hidden, so maybe heâs sweet too, and maybe all men, just by virtue of having a rudimentary emotional life, can count as âsweet, sensitive, menâ underneath it all? Maybe this is an ideological system that functions to endlessly excuse menâs behaviour even while claiming to criticise it?)
Problem 3
In the final scene, Buffy seems to grasp the essence of what happened: Xander âinvoked the great Roofie spiritâ, i.e. attempted to use magic for something close to rape. (Her affect in that scene is wildly discordant with what this should imply but thatâs problem 5). But most of the episode seems to have a much less clear-eyed view of love spells.
Note three particular lines:
Amy says âintent has to be pure with love spellsâ, suggesting that there is some sort of âpure-heartedâ way to magically and non-consensually alter someoneâs feelings.
Giles reacts to learning what Xander did by emphasising what a âfoolâ he was, because people under the influence of love spells are âdeadlyâ, again sort of suggesting that if the spell did something more subtle and moderate, it might be ok.
Later, while in the midst of victim-berating, Giles says that what the spell produced is ânot love. It's obsession. Selfish, banal obsessionâ, again suggesting that the problem is that love spells donât really work as intended.
All of these statements suggest that thereâs a sort of ideal version of what a love spell is supposed to do, namely make someone feel genuine love, and that the criticism and problems we see Xander facing result primarily from the fact that this love spell failed to do that, and perhaps that love spells in general canât do that.
But look: if love spells worked as advertised, and made someone feel something indistinguishable from real, organic, love - made Cordelia want to be to Xander with her full rationality and emotional complexity, just the way she would if she really loved him - that would horrifying.
That would mean that someoneâs deepest feelings, and possibly a life-altering commitment, could be conjured by hostile actors at any time. That your heart can be hijacked and your life derailed and even if the person who did this to you admits it, youâll forgive them, because you love them.
And I think whatâs going on here is, again, connected to the idea that the desire for a romantic relationship is self-justifying: that if Xanderâs intent was âpureâ, if he really wanted to be with Cordelia forever, then the exact way that he âwins her heartâ is less important than his devotion to that noble ideal. Which is 100% abuser logic.
I think thereâs also, perhaps, the following line of thought subconsciously at work: love is already cruel and itâs already outside of our control. We donât consent to fall in love with someone, we donât control it, and it may very well make us miserable. Itâs like being shot full of Cupid's arrows, and you know, arrows kill people. Given this, autonomy and consent are just not relevant values - in the domain of romance, control and self-determination are impossible (or perhaps only possible by killing your openness to passion, and thus undesirable), and so the only thing we can hope for is to end up in love with someone who loves us back, living happily ever after. It doesnât really matter how that happens - divine intervention, love spell, arranged marriage, whatever. âAll is fair in love and war.â
I donât think this ethos is correct, but I do think it's present pretty strongly woven into our culture, partly because itâs the natural counterpart to the historically dominant type of social order, where at least half the population, and often more than that, werenât expected to exercise choice or self-determination in their romantic lives (or elsewhere).
I like to think a different, autonomy-based ethos is possible, corresponding to a different type of social order, and in that ethos it makes a huge difference whether someoneâs feelings arose organically within them or were imposed by magic, gods, drugs, brain surgery, or social pressure. Even if the person themselves has no more conscious control in the one case than the other (because organically arising feelings arenât consciously chosen), the act of someone else intervening to take control of their feelings is a profound sort of violence.
But the episode seems to see it as basically forgivable, just an extreme case of doing stupid things to impress someone or try to âwin their heartâ, and wrong mostly because itâs hubristic and stupid and overshoots in dangerous ways. The result is a constant level of uncomfortable dissonance for viewers who are partisans of autonomy.
Problem 4
I donât know why the writers decided to make the love spell go wrong. It seems like it working as planned could still hit a lot of the same plot beats. Cordelia becomes irrationally, dangerously, violently obsessed; Xander realises heâs in trouble, appeals to Giles for help, gets yelled at, etc. The threat level is definitely dialled down somewhat if Buffy etc. are helping rather than menacing, but you could balance that by having Amy get spooked and start to hide, requiring more effort to locate her.
(You might also have the gang discover that they canât reverse Amyâs spell without her participation, for some mysterious reason, which would actually fit really well with how they mysteriously canât reverse her rat-self-transformation next seasonâŠ)
And if you do really want the spell to go wrong in some interesting way, there are lots of options. One obvious one would be for it to misfire and affect Amy instead of Cordelia. Or misfire and affect Xander instead of Cordelia, so they have to tie him up when he starts trying to break into her house or something. Or if you really want it to be one of those episodes where some spell changes everyone at once, make it more of a character study: everyone in Sunnydale is suddenly unable to restrain their sexual and romantic feelings, and hunts down all their secret crushes to insist on declaring their love. Tense scenes with Giles and Jenny, Willow and Buffy, Cordelia and Buffy, Amy and Willow, etc. (or whatever unsupported headcanon you may have).
But it feels like anything would be better than the actual way they do it. First off: why does it affect all the female characters? Do women feel love with a different body part than men? Itâs not even âpeople attracted to menâ, because Larryâs not chasing Xander, and Wilow is. It makes what happens feel extra degrading, that itâs not just âyouâre altered by a spellâ but âyouâre altered by a spell because youâre a womanâ.
(The season 7 episode âHimâ does confirm that Willow is affected the same way as straight women despite not being into men; this is redeemed only by her immediate and joyous decision to magically forcefem the target.)
It also annoys me for how total the effect is: none of the women get to recognise or resist whatâs happening, even imperfectly. The only exception is Amy, who is successfully browbeaten into breaking the spell by Giles. It essentially means that the only characters with agency are Xander and Giles.
Jenny and Amy are especially galling: they know enough about magic that they either should be able to notice, or do in fact know, whatâs happened. Have they never considered magical countermeasures or Odysseus-tied-to-the-mast type failsafes? Wouldnât it be more interesting to show people who havenât lost âall capacity for reasonâ wrestling with new and confusing feelings?
(Sure, that might require more screen time per character. Maybe a good reason to not make this affect so many characters!)
Anyway, I am belabouring these points to underline that the particular way the spell goes wrong is not obvious or forced upon us. Itâs specifically chosen. So I have to assume that the writers thought this would be the most fun and entertaining thing to do.
And I guess YMMV. Maybe some people find âall women are suddenly brainless minxes obsessed with Some Guyâ fun and entertaining. Probably they are the same people who enjoyed watching Xanderâs extended fantasy scene where Buffy needs him to rescue her in S1E04.
I donât enjoy it. It feels a bit like Iâm watching a softcore porno tailored for people who identify with Xander Harris, with all the characters I like suddenly and humiliatingly reduced to titillating caricatures.
And I donât want to be a hypocrite here, as someone who is currently posting, you know, my own hardcore porn about those same characters, at times with humiliation themes involved. But (even setting aside that I think I still give them a lot more agency and interiority in said porn) the big difference is that Iâm posting it to an archive to be found by specific kindred perverts, with a whole load of tags and warnings, not broadcasting it to the entire viewing public. Because sexual fantasies are generally pretty uncomfortable to watch/read if they donât hit your specific buttons. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be included, because showing a character's fantasies can be a good way to explore them, but you should surely keep it to short snippets, right? Not make it last for half a whole episode?
Problem 5
Suppose you have, against my advice, written this episode exactly as it aired, up until the final scenes. The spell has been broken, the danger has passed, now what?
Surely we should expect this whole affair to have negative consequences? And âHow much groveling are we talking here?â, âOh, a month, at leastâ, isnât consequences in the sense I mean. Grovelling is the term these characters use for something they know in advance will be temporary, because they know in advance theyâll be forgiven and things will go on as before. This should be a thing which doesnât get forgiven, or at least the forgiving of which is genuinely in question. Xander should be genuinely asking "do you think Willow will forgive me?", or ideally even "should she?", not complaining that he's "back to being incredibly unpopular."
(And âalmost dyingâ isnât meaningful consequences because that happens to all of them every few weeks anyway.)
And I know the show mostly likes to re-set things at the end of each episode, but itâs doing lasting consequences for other people! Buffy is still grappling with the consequences of Angel turning, Jenny is still being snubbed because of [insert supposed crime here]. When Willow and Xander are caught cheating, it permanently breaks off one relationship and suspends another for a few episodes. In Season 6 Tara leaves Willow for half a year!
So itâs pretty unimpressive that, as far as we see, the only person actually holding this against Xander is Willow, and 1) sheâs not on-screen to tell him off, 2) she seems to be completely over it by next episode, and 3) itâs explained in terms of her idiosyncratic feelings about Xander, not in terms of his actual actions.
But it gets worse: not only is there barely any negative consequence, thereâs a major positive one: Cordelia is so touched by Xander trying to mind-rape her that she publicly tells off all her friends and gets back together with him.
Spinoza famously claimed to âhave made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.â So in that spirit Iâm going to push past the impulse to scorn and bewail, and try to understand. Because I think this way of ending the episode does flow pretty clearly from the idea weâve already seen, that wanting a committed relationship is âdeepâ and ârealâ in a way that makes it morally self-justifying. Because Xanderâs actions flowed from ârealâ and âdeepâ feelings, he still somehow has the moral high ground over Cordeliaâs friends, who are shallow and frivolous, and so Cordelia realises she should be sticking with him and not them.
Which, again, is just a scary mindset. Oh sure, he might be controlling and invasive and constantly put you down and ignore your consent, but thatâs just proof of how much he loves you, so you should give up your independent support system if theyâre telling you to ditch him. Sorry to be melodramatic but urgh.
(And I think for this to make sense even on its own terms, we need to think that Xanderâs real motivation was to re-start his relationship with Cordelia, and not, as he tells Amy, to humiliate her through rejection. The latter, weâre meant to have assumed, was just a face-saving deflection, a lie to avoid the vulnerability of admitting his real motives. If you take his stated motivations at face value then this ending is horrifying even within the love-justifies-all value system, because Xander tried to hurt Cordelia, lied by omission about this, and she took him back based on that lie. You see how the awfulness is fractal?)
This idea also helps explain the truly stomach-churning exchange where Buffy congratulates Xander on only violating her mind, not her body. âIt meant a lot to me⊠You came through.â
Like, Buffy, please - you made the roofie comparison just seconds ago. Would you really be so impressed with someone who roofied you if, when they had dragged your unconscious body back to their bedroom, they realise this isnât what they wanted, and decide not to go any further?
But I think it does sort of make a twisted kind of sense if youâre working with a framework that ranks types of desire rather than caring about autonomy. If he had gone ahead and had sex with Buffy, that would be âtawdry teen lustâ, sexual and therefore degrading. But as long as his actions stay at the level of âloveâ, they just canât be degrading in that same way. Because sex degrades, love elevates, and consent is an afterthought.
Anyway, thatâs my rant. Any one of these problems and I would probably be saying it was a fun episode despite some unfortunate implications, but the way they layer on top of each other makes it easily my pick for worst episode so far. I would petition for it to be excised from the canon altogether if it werenât for the fact that itâs our only window this season into the evolution of Amy Madison, who will be the focus of my next (hopefully shorter) postâŠ
Okay I said I was done and I lied because I am watching TNG's first Romulan ep and now I would like very much to speak to the writers about their decision to cast the entire Romulan species as tsundere.
I've just remembered that Clement wears his mask so he wonât see someone's future... What could be more terrifying than seeing the future of someone you love so badly?
The new storybook, Coming Calamaties is out and I am already in love. The first art looks epic.
The companions look so good and so incredibly detailed. The Valkyrie has me convinced we need more Amazonian built women on this game. She is gorgeous. Loki is cunty and beautifully done and Odin is actually very attractive too. I'll post the outfits and details of each Companion in a separate post. They gave us 8 outfits for this new book and I am so happy.
Heck yeah! I love the new Companions so far, and the story so far (I'm at 1.14) is fun and compelling, too; the prophecy is a good level of mystery. I'm really hopeful this will be one of their best books!
I like how in SNW they're making an effort to bring these aspects of the character back. They are also simultaneously playing with the pop-culture version as a kind of a wrong first impression that people sometimes get, and confuse with the real thing.
I absolutely love this approach to tackling Kirk Drift.
That is exactly how Roddenberry wrote Kirk in the TMP novel. He was written as a person that many talked about due to his reputation via his career, but only a handful genuinely knew him personally. The rumours often preceded the person, and Starfleet wasn't always necessarily kind to Jim. There was a lot of contention there.
It is implied in the novel that there are many rumours about Jim, a lot of old blood who were resentful that such a young man speed-ran by them through hard work and ambition to the flagship.
As we see in SNW, even his older brother exemplifies the sentiment of the older crowd who resent Jim for hustling so hard and succeeding so young.
We also get to see how vulnerable this makes Jim at times in TOS, and he will fret with McCoy or Spock privately about the pressures he feels; he is a young captain trying to live up to the magnitude of what he fought to get.
They beautifully worked in similar moments throughout SNW to showcase this:
He feels isolated and lonely, and he is aware that there are people just banking on him to fail so that they can have their shot at the flagship. His own brother has even voiced resentment toward him, and teases him about the fact that he got a posting on the Enterprise while Jim was assigned the Farragut.
The Enterprise isn't just Jim's dream, it is the dream of countless people enlisted at Starfleet during that time.
His intelligence carried him there, but he often self reflects and worries -- sort of haunted by the things people say behind his back, and occasionally to his face.
He isn't actually unflappable -- we learn that in private conversations with Spock and/or Bones when he goes to pieces and then puts himself back together before facing the crew in TOS.
He has deep insecurities, and valid ones, because people he has worked alongside of and even looked up to started side-eyeing him for his ambition.
His reputation/the Starfleet-Jim hate train also gets him blacklisted on a number of occasions, and it is mentioned to Spock multiple times that sticking with Jim and his shenanigans could potentially hurt his reputation in the fleet.
In Lower Decks, it is revealed that Spock gets invited to a Fleet party to be accoladed, and Jim isn't even invited. In fact, they won't let Spock in if Jim is his plus one.
Spock ends up having to choose between going to the party, or leaving at the front door with Jim.
Spock chooses to bail on the party to go to a dive bar with Jim, and it turns into their regular place.
There were times when Spock and the crew were the only friends Jim had in his corner at his own workplace.
It just goes to show that despite his self confidence, Jim was actually bullied and hazed quite a bit by Starfleet alumni. He was routinely bullied by Finnegan. And he continues to be undermined and talked down to for his youth throughout TOS by high ranking officials. It even continues into the movies.
When the crew is reprimanded for their actions in ST III, Spock is not accused of any wrongdoing. But when the rest of the Enterprise crew comes out to hear their charges, Spock walks down and stands with them explaining: "I stand with my ship mates."
We have always known that Jim was a cheerleader of Spock's, and how he would defend him when others said terrible things about him. But honestly, it also worked both ways. The fleet and people Jim worked for would frequently undermine or talk down to him. Spock would go out of his way to support Jim, and vice versa.
In a way, together, they tackled one another's demons. They had each other's back when nobody else did.
For all of Jim's hang ups, he still manages to show up for himself and his team.
**With them**, he feels like the best version of himself. They help him realize his potential. We see that in the SNW pep talk that Spock gives Jim during his first stint in the chair. I think the show has nailed that, and tied together a number of facets about Kirk threaded throughout the canon nicely.
SNW has an incredible opportunity to re-introduce him as he was in TOS, as opposed to the Kirk-Drift Zapp Brannigan take that folks seem to think TOS Jim was.
It isn't just a great opportunity to correct false ideas about Jim, but it is an awesome platform to let us get to know other characters such as Nyota Uhura better. I love her so much, and I'm glad we are getting better acquainted with who she was. Much later in life she apparently goes on to lend a hand in training a young Jean-Luc Picard -- I've always wished we could have seen that in a show, too. Obviously not SNW as it's a completely different time period, but spinoff series? DELULU FANTASTIES
Anyway, I digress.
TOS was never just "the Jim Kirk show". Of course it focused on the triumvirate, but it was always the story of the Enterprise crew, and how that group of people who as individuals felt like they belonged nowhere -- and they came together to build a home and place to belong. It reminds us time and again that Jim would not be the Captain he was known to be without that crew. It's so evident at the beginning of TMP when he doesn't have Spock and how things keep going awry. What a change in dynamic and efficiency there is when Spock returns.
I love that they are showing the incredible impact that these specific people had on Jim, as well as their hand in helping to shape the type of Captain that he will later become. It's a cornerstone to the TOS story which was never just a Jim Kirk story, but a story about how him and his found family made a home for themselves on the Enterprise.
