There's a level on which TOS Sam Kirk appearing solely as a corpse played by William Shatner in a fake mustache is really funny.
There's a different level on which I'm wildly over-invested in the handful of implications we have about Sam, Aurelan, their three sons, and of course how they relate to my ultimate TOS blorbo, Sam's much younger brother Jim Kirk.
Like, the main advantage to only allowing a brief glimpse at Sam for the obvious "William Shatner in a mustache" reason is that it forces the hints at (Jim) Kirk's relationship to his family to be mediated through Aurelan and Peter instead, so we get less of a sense of Jim and Sam + Sam's family, and more of Sam and Aurelan and their children as Jim's family. Basically the only thing apart from Sam's profession we knew about them before this episode was that not just Sam, but his wife and all three sons had come to celebrate (32-year-old) Kirk receiving command of the Enterprise.
It's never suggested to be the flagship in TOS nor does the idea make much sense for their mission in TOS, but it is one of only twelve ships of its kind, and its mission is a huge deal. So receiving the captaincy so young was definitely a major achievement, just not as monumental as it's treated later on. The implication of Sam and Aurelan showing up with all of their children to see Kirk honored this way not only speaks to the magnitude of his success but to their affection and support for him.
Later in "Operation: Annihilate!" we'll find out that Kirk has Aurelan's private number for emergencies and they're on clearly affectionate terms.
KIRK: Aurelan? Aurelan, it's Jim.
AURELAN: Jim? Sam, he's—
KIRK: He's dead. But your son's still alive. You've got to help us.
AURELAN: You are here. It is you, Jim!
TOS doesn't give the slightest implication about any other family member having any meaningful presence or significance in his life at all. We're given no reason in the show to think he has children or other family of his own (it's wildly unlikely for TOS Kirk tbh, for various reasons). We're given no reason to think their parents are in the picture or have been in a long time, certainly none to think either parent was at the ceremony—TOS Kirk is never associated with conventional parent-child nuclear family at all.
It was a friend of their family who helped Kirk apply to the Academy, not their parents. The people mentioned in TOS as guides or inspirations to him, or as people he looks up to, are all unrelated mentors in Starfleet like obvious father-figure Captain Garrovick or public figures like T'Pau. The only "traditional" family mentioned as there for him and whom he ever acknowledges is his older brother, sister-in-law, and nephews—all of whom he's clearly very fond of and has a close relationship with—not parents or children.
We don't know the ages or birth order of Sam and Aurelan's children, but for all three to be of appropriate ages for a significant Starfleet event, Sam is likely to be significantly older than Jim, with the extremely brief glimpse of Shatner!Sam + mustache obscuring how youthful he really looked (the writers had envisioned a 10-year age difference, though this is never mentioned onscreen; it does make the backstory from "The Conscience of the King" work more easily, though, since Sam's survival no longer needs to be explained—he would have already been an adult and off on his own life, if young, and frankly he and Aurelan seem to have done better by a troubled 13-year-old younger brother who had just survived starvation and genocide than Sarek and Amanda ever managed with Spock for... existing).
But the other thing about Sam as Bill Shatner With Mustache is the obvious implication that, while I don't think we're meant to think the brothers are diegetically identical, they do resemble each other very closely apart from age. Jim looks far more like Sam than Sam's one surviving child, Peter, ever will. And Sam is going to be 43 forever—to Jim, to Peter. But Jim lives. Every year his reflection looks a little more like Sam's.
ngl I think quite a bit about this in terms of Viola in Twelfth Night, a character who is already deeply fitting for comparison to James "What is gender, really?" Kirk:
I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
And all the brothers, too—and yet I know not.
I my brother know
Yet living in my glass. Even such and so
In favor was my brother, and he went
Still in this fashion, color, ornament,
For him I imitate.
Bonus feature:
She [Viola] pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
But there's more!
There is a cut scene from the end of "Operation: Annihilate!" where Kirk takes Peter (in a tiny Starfleet uniform!) to the bridge, and puts him in the captain's chair to ask which offered home he wants to live in: one is with Sam's research partner and his (the partner's) wife on Deneva (Peter's home, despite the horrors, which Sam had called the best place in the galaxy) and the other with his grandmother on Earth (I don't think it was stated whether this was Aurelan's or Sam's mother, though I'm inclined to think Aurelan's for various reasons, including the descriptions of Peter as the last survivor of Sam's family; Kirk describing her as "your grandmother" with no indication that he's talking about his own mother; and Kirk somberly responding "No one ever is" to Peter sadly saying that living with Sam's friends won't be the same as his own parents). Peter chooses to stay on Deneva.
Unsurprisingly, I adore the idea of Kirk not only asking Peter what he wants rather than unilaterally making the decision for him, btw, but sitting him in the captain's chair of the Enterprise—!!!—and lowering himself to nearly Peter's eye level to ask him what he wants. Uncle Jim understands symbolism, okay.
There's also this bit after Peter is beamed back down to Deneva where Scotty says that Peter seems a bright lad who might well end up in Starfleet, and Kirk grimly responds that he hopes not. He explains that he doesn't want Peter to ever have to weigh decisions like destroying a planet to stop the massacre of billions and will follow a different, happier path.
He's fine, they're fine, the remnants of this impossibly suffering family are totally fine.
Anyway I also wonder what it's like for Peter Kirk to have an increasingly famous uncle who looks just like his dead father.
Strange New Worlds really need to give us an episode where Sam's family go visit him in the Enterprise. I would love to see Aurelan and bonus points if it forces Spock or La'an to interact with his kids.
I had another TOS poll in the queue for when some big ones wrapped up, though this one is less about my intense Kirk/Spock shipping and more about Feelings About My Blorbo Specifically.
So, TOS Kirk has a lot of relationships with women that I find really compelling (in a positive way!) for some reason or another, out of all proportion to their screen time, based entirely on what we're told/shown in the original series itself. Pick which one of these relationships speaks to you the most!
Which of these relationships between James Kirk and women do you most care about?
Kirk & Aurelan
Kirk & Uhura
Kirk & Areel
Kirk (Prime) & Marlena
Kirk & Amanda
Kirk & unnamed reliable female friends
Kirk & the pretty yeomen Starfleet keeps assigning to him
Kirk & T'Pau
Kirk & Odona
Voting ended onNov 14, 2025
The only reminders for this one: I excluded the people I did for a reason, and it's all about Kirk in the show, not the various movie versions of Kirk or SNW or whatever. If you don't remember all of these relationships, some summations:
1— Aurelan is Kirk's sister-in-law, who he's on close, affectionate terms with; she showed up to celebrate his professional achievements, and he grieves her death after his brother Sam's in "Operation: Annihilate!"
2— Kirk and Uhura have a lot of intense platonic affection and respect for each other throughout the entire show. It's filtered through their strict professionalism and mutual presentations of soothing layers of composure and hypercompetence over their high-strung, anxious personalities, but below the surface they're clearly good friends.
3— Areel is Kirk's amicable ex and long-time friend in "Court Martial" (played by an actress the same age as William Shatner), and both adheres to her professional ethics as prosecutor and remains a staunch friend, by direct contrast to the unreliability of nearly all his once-friendly long-time male acquaintances in Starfleet.
4— Marlena Moreau is "the captain's woman" in the Mirror Universe from "Mirror, Mirror." Kirk is visibly uncomfortable with having to play along, but they like each other for real, and he tries to convince her to follow her own ambitions before deciding to befriend her prime counterpart.
5— Amanda is Spock's mother; she and Kirk get on like a house on fire when they meet at last in "Journey to Babel."
6— In "Court Martial," McCoy remarks that, apart from himself, Kirk's real "old friends" exclusively "look like Areel" (an attractive woman Kirk's age) whereas his own are doctors (implicitly aging male doctors like himself). McCoy earlier joked in "The Man Trap" that Kirk's affinity for flowers is why he gets on well with women.
7— Kirk has mutually strong rapport with his invariably female yeomen: they're loyal and concerned, even ones who aren't remotely attracted to him, and he treats them carefully.
8— T'Pau is one of the most prestigious people on Vulcan (and probably the entire Federation), and in "Amok Time," Kirk is revealed to be a massive fanboy of hers and she saves his career.
9— Odona is a young woman sent to acquire Kirk's blood (he once nearly died of meningitis) to bring death to her miserably immortal people in "The Mark of Gideon." She flirts with him to get near enough, but they genuinely like each other, (very unusually) she actually apologizes for the dubcon, and they respect each other's autonomy otherwise.
Thanks to @rain-sleet-snow for the WIP Wednesday tag! I'm squeaking it in, but I wrote a follow-up to the last Sam and Aurelan ficlet dealing with the drip-drip-drip of info out of Tarsus IV:
Dr. Disii's face and rigid antennae did nothing to dispel the impression as the doors opened and his electric blue eyes settled on Sam. With a few brisk commands, he ushered five or six more communications officers—all lieutenants, lieutenant commanders, and commanders, Aurelan noticed—from the conference room.
"Dr. Kirk," he said, then glanced at Aurelan, not so much as rising from his uncomfortable-looking chair. "Dr. Trent. I'm afraid I don't—"
Aurelan hadn't expected him to even know her face, but she kept her grip on Sam's bicep firm. He was stammering something inarticulate out as she placed her other hand over his elbow.
"I came as emotional support," she said flatly. "From what we've seen, it's not going to be good news."
Dr. Disii glanced at her hands, then at his own, tightly folded on the long, shiny table in front of him. He just sighed and disentangled his fingers, gesturing for them to come through the doors.
"Sit," he said, gesturing at two chairs opposite him. "I trust I can depend on your discretion, Trent?"
"Yes, sir," said Aurelan, obeying before he could reconsider.
Once they sat down, Sam's inarticulate, fiddling nervousness settled. He flattened his hands on the table in front of them, his face filling with the kind of desperate intensity that seemed almost uniquely him—she'd certainly not seen anyone else come alive, even with this terrible urgency, in quite the same way.
"I'm guessing you've heard more about what happened to my father," said Sam. "You don't need to beat around the bush. Just tell me." His glance skittered sidewise towards Aurelan, the tight line of his mouth softening a little. "Us, I mean."
"I'm sorry," said Dr. Disii crisply. "As I mentioned before, the nearest starbase had received a clear authenticated message from Tarsus IV about a catastrophic accident in the labs killing the entire Starfleet science team on the colony, including your father. There seemed to be some problem with the electrical infrastructure that was already under repair, but all communications in or out went down almost immediately thereafter."
"That's not unusual," Sam said, his voice almost steady, though his quick breaths weren't. "My family's been out there for five years. The communication system is rudimentary at best, without amplification from starships or improvements to the facilities. Subspace calls from my parents or my sister go down all the time."
"We're aware," said Dr. Disii, with what Aurelan guessed was unusual patience for him. "We certainly didn't have any starships anywhere remotely nearby, though we sent what could be spared to investigate the catastrophe. However, just five days ago, someone on the colony—we don't know who—transmitted another message across all subspace bands. That choice limited the distance of reception, but did allow for it to be almost immediately picked up by any ship in the vicinity. Fortunately, a small merchant vessel was just near enough to receive the transmission, though they lacked the resources to unscramble it. We only just managed to wholly interpret it today."
Sam leaned forward, his eyes very bright and his hands curling. "Did it explain what happened?"
Aurelan risked adding, "And why was it scrambled?"
Disii inclined his head towards her. "The scrambling, at least, seems just a matter of poor equipment and a rushed transmission. And I'm afraid it doesn't exactly resolve the mystery of what happened in the laboratories, but Starfleet feels the families of those on Tarsus IV still have the right to know."
"To know what?" Sam demanded. Aurelan's mouth was dry, though she had no idea what to expect.
Disii's antennae wilted a bit as he met Sam's eyes across the table.
"There's been a famine, Dr. Kirk," he said. "According to the message we de-coded, it struck very quickly, very unexpectedly."
Aurelan caught a gasp behind her teeth, instead reaching out to lay her hand over Sam's. He was just staring at Disii, though his fingers curled around hers.
"Some kind of fungus got into the food," Disii went on, "the agriculture, everything as far as we can tell. Almost all functional equipment on the colony had been seized by Governor Kodos's administration, it seems to use to provide rations for as long as possible. Some rudimentary matter conversion, perhaps. The transmission was impossible to make out in some spots. But the fundamentals seemed clear enough. They were begging the Federation for relief."
Sam seemed to only hear half of it. "What do you mean, famine on a Federation colony? Fungus? I—I don't—I'm sorry, sir, I don't mean—it's just, my mother and sister are there. My mother's Ona Dunayevskaya, she's a Starfleet engineer, a lieutenant. She'd be helping lead anything they needed to do with the equipment to keep everyone alive as long as possible." His voice cracked like a boy's. "And my sister—she's just a kid."
"I'm very sorry," said Dr. Disii.
"Sir," Aurelan said, "we are going to send relief, aren't we? The Federation, that is?"
His silvery-white brows shot up. "Of course. As soon as enough of the transmission was understood, Starfleet internally classified the Tarsus IV situation as a humanitarian crisis."
We're a slow-burning tune: Sam, Aurelan, Jess, if no one's asked yet? Or the Tarsus IV WIP.
Thanks! Here's something I had quickly written for "we're a slow-burning tune: Sam, Aurelan, Jess" (the side-story to my f/f Kirk/Spock AU), roughly following up from this, so also a Tarsus IV fic in this section:
Three days after their lunch meeting, Sam was once again called away without explanation, his face going pale. Aurelan barely hesitated before grasping his wrist.
"Let me go with you," she blurted out. Then she let her hand drop and cleared her throat, glancing awkwardly away at their microscopes and PADDs on the lab table. "I mean, if you want. You don't have to hear whatever they're about to tell you by yourself."
"That's—that's very sweet of you," he said, and when she glanced up at him, he was still blinking. "Aurelan, you really don't have to—"
Her hand closed on the nearest PADD. "Do you want to be alone for this? I won't bother you if you really do, but if you don't..." His eyes searched her face as if she were the sample in the microscope, so Aurelan didn't bother hiding anything behind professional decorum, let herself meet his gaze with all the affection and concern she felt. "Sam, you don't have to do it by yourself. Or anything. We're friends."
Now his blinking eyes looked like he was about to cry, but he managed a slight smile and nod before turning to his bag. While he gathered his bits of paraphernalia in the bag, Aurelan carefully recorded their notes to a disc and turned off the equipment, sticking the bright purple disc in her pocket.
Sam already knew his way through the upper levels of the facility, though he'd only gone through them all once. But even in a dense forest, he never lost his way, much less a well-constructed Federation starbase. En route, he told her that his last meeting had been with Dr. Disii himself, the Andorian commodore who commanded the entire science base, and Disii had promised to tell him personally when they had any news. Sam wasn't wholly sure that the commodore would allow Aurelan into the conversation, honestly—Disii hadn't declared anything secret or outright forbidden Sam from mentioning Dr. Kirk's death, but Sam had gotten a very strong impression that Starfleet didn't want too much chatter until they'd figured out what was going on, and they didn't have a real outpost anywhere near Tarsus IV. Even good news, if somewhere there was any, would take a few days to percolate out.
It had been more than a few days now, almost two weeks.
"Oh, we'll think of something to tell Dr. Disii," Aurelan said, squeezing his arm. "I'm not going anywhere."
Sam smiled again, not quite as weakly, and straightened his soldiers as he led them towards Conference Room C, the two of them weaving through increasingly crowded halls. Aurelan hadn't seen so many operations uniforms all at once since the Academy—of course, they had engineers and other technical people here, but it was just a lot more red than she usually saw. Not gold, at least, but bumps still rose on her arms, every instinct on edge.
She kept her hand on Sam's arm as they evaded officers rushing past the conference room, her progress through the final hall slower than three full floors prior to it. Still, she did her best to scrutinize the rushing operations officers as surreptitiously as she could, taking in their headsets and hushed, urgent conversations in too many languages for the universal translator to handle. They glanced curiously at Sam and Aurelan on their way past, but no more, focusing on whatever they were saying, to whomever they were trying to contact, on their way to wherever they were going.
Communications, Aurelan thought. Not engineers and technicians. Odd.
She was used to analyzing data, precisely and efficiently, and all the data converged on a single clear trend.
I was working on the Sam and Aurelan side-fic of the K/S TOS-only femslash AU, and while it's not the only reason I'm invested in the Jess-Sam&Aurelan relationship, nor the only reason I enjoy Shatner playing Sam's corpse with a mustache added (lol)—but still, a small detail it gives me in genderbending land that I really, really enjoy: Jessica very strongly resembles Sam, the ten-years-older brother who raised her, in a way that doesn't even slightly conflict with her being a very distinctly pretty, glamorous young woman.
After the "Operation: Annihilate!" plot, of course, it's full on Viola in Twelfth Night grieving Sebastian via her reflection territory. Except Sam is never coming back :(
