A detail of probably unintentional continuity in TOS that I periodically rotate in my head like a drunk Dalek:
In "Court Martial," we're told the name of the ship that the young Ensign James Kirk and less-young Lieutenant Finney served on (the Republic). IIRC we are not told the name of their captain at the time, or anything about him, only the Kirk-Finney backstory at the Academy and then their falling out on the Republic, when Kirk's commitment to The Paperwork led to him breaking the bro code by scrupulously logging Finney's mistake instead of shielding his friend from consequences.
However, we actually do know who the captain of the Republic must have been. In "Obsession," Kirk quite clearly states that Garrovick was the only captain he served under from the time he graduated from the Academy until Garrovick's death.
We also know from "Obsession" that Kirk was a lieutenant at the time of Garrovick's death. And we know from "The Deadly Years"—aired and produced prior to "Obsession"—confirming the implication in "Shore Leave" that Kirk was then 33 and is now 34 that Lieutenant Kirk was only 23 when Garrovick died on the Farragut, during Kirk's first deep-space mission.
This means that the whole Kirk-Finney falling out happened before anything to do with the Farragut, since Kirk was still an ensign on the Republic; that he couldn't have been older than 21 or 22 at the time; and that their captain at the time must have been Garrovick, and any resulting decisions or reactions from their captain would have been from Garrovick.
Given Kirk's very rapid rise under Garrovick continuing after the Finney incident (to go by ... everything we hear in "Obsession"), the implication becomes strong that Kirk's prioritization of proper logging over the bro code did not injure him with Captain Garrovick. And the thing that's wild but great is that this completely tracks with how Captain Garrovick is characterized in "Obsession."
Eleven years after Garrovick's death, Kirk still sees him as a model of heroism and nobility as a starship captain. Honestly, it's pretty clear that he was a more present role model in the very young Jim Kirk's life than he was for his actual son, then a child. He sounds like exactly the kind of captain who would look at Ensign Kirk refusing to compromise on proper documentation to cover for his older, higher-ranking friend, even though it destroyed their friendship, and see him not as petty but as incorruptibly principled.
He had already seen enough promise in Kirk to snatch him into his crew right out of graduation, completely bypassing Starfleet's implied practice of transitioning new graduates to teaching before sending them into service in space (mentioned in "Court Martial"; Finney had been kept in the transitional teaching position for much longer than was typical when Kirk was a cadet, for unknown but clearly not baseless reasons, and thus the stakes of his conduct on the Republic were very high). So my headcanon is that Kirk's actions wrt Finney only cemented his place in Garrovick's estimation and, if anything, only further smoothed his rise.
This is a very tangential scrap to the f/f K/S AU backstory centered on a... well, what we'd call a textual ghost in Tolkien fandom, an unnamed marginal character who has to exist but whom we know virtually nothing about.
Nevertheless, the Kirk-Finney friendship of the past is a dynamic that's always struck me as pretty weird even in canon, less in a "of course Kirk slept around with his former teacher/married friend in his barely 2-3 years at the Academy when the only thing he was known for was being a grim, driven nerd" way and more "Finney is like fifteen years older than him, seems to have been pretty obsessed with him even before things went wrong, named his daughter after him, and when he [Finney] was finally authorized for space service got assigned to the same ship—and I just feel like the weird vibes are going to be more conspicuous with this dude obsessing over a pretty eighteen-year-old blonde with heavy emotional baggage who just passed his class." And the textual ghost POV for this was, let's say, an obvious choice.
Throughout the years of their marriage, Marina had known her husband to befriend a number of his former students, especially the older ones, usually men in their early or mid-twenties who had dutifully scraped together some passable coding for Ben's course before settling in to their real careers. Sometimes he'd take a special interest in the more talented ones, connect them to higher-up programmers or technicians or scientists or personnel officers who were always happy to help one of his protégés. Ben had been planetside for years, since his own graduation; he knew everyone, and it seemed like just about everyone liked him.
Not everyone, he said darkly, every time he was assigned another year of teaching instead of the usual transition to near-space missions. He'd been Lieutenant Finney for years now, even gotten promoted out of junior grade not long ago, but he'd seen less of the inside of a starship than many of his students. And he was good at engineering, knew the latest warp cores inside and out.
Marina privately thought that liking Ben and believing him suited to the isolation and pressures of space service didn't have to be one and the same. She herself wondered sometimes, but he'd never hear it. Well, never mind; she liked having him here on Earth, and with no changes in his prospects on the horizon, they'd agreed it was the right time for a family. They'd always wanted children, both of them. So now there was the baby coming, even if Marina was barely showing, and a few more strings tying him to the Academy, to Earth was no loss as far as she was concerned.
She didn't think anything, therefore, of him befriending a cadet who'd recently aced his course, or his enthusiasm in recommending said cadet to more advanced instructors and helping her navigate the appeals process around course limits. Marina didn't even think much about the fact that the cadet was a young woman, and that while he hadn't hidden his protégée's gender, he hadn't really gone out of his way to mention it or name her until Marina asked.
"Hmm?" Ben said, looking startled. "Oh! Cadet Kirk's the one. Jessica Kirk. Brilliant girl, but a bit wasted on the science track, to be honest. She's a bit rough around the edges, but lots of personality once you get past it. I'm trying to convince her to switch to operations. More positions and she could probably handle engineering or navigation duties on any ship in the fleet."
Jessica Kirk— the name meant nothing to her, anyway. He had mentioned a female student early the previous term, complained about an opinionated cold fish of a girl with no sense of humor in his second-year computer sciences course. That sounded pretty typical of most people who took that class, but apparently the girl in question had kept interrupting his lectures to ask questions, and sometimes corrected something about his answer before asking even more questions. Marina didn't know if that had been Cadet Kirk. She had the feeling it was, though.
"Maybe she'd rather work with the Academy's laboratories instead of rushing off as soon as she's done her teaching hours," said Marina, setting down her silverware. She wasn't sure; she really knew very little about this latest friendship of Ben's. But there were so many. "If she's in the sciences and that brilliant, I mean. We have some of the best facilities in the Federation. She might be happy here."
She didn't think her voice sounded reproachful. She hoped not, anyway—Ben wasn't always great at reading between the lines.
"Jess Kirk?" said Ben, his face brightening as he laughed outright. "Oh, no."
So the actual reason I was poring over "Court Martial" the other day was for a fic scrap follow-up (of sorts) to this for today's WIP Wednesday (still about how the already weird, obsessive feelings Ben Finney developed as a teacher for a very young James Kirk would read even more suspiciously with f!Kirk, no matter how oblivious Jess herself is to how it looks):
It was Marc Renaud who first hinted to Marina that something might be going on between Ben and his (allegedly) brilliant protégée. He didn't say as much, and he wasn't anything but friendly, just mentioned that he hadn't seen Ben as much as usual lately—but then again, Ben had been spending a lot of time helping Cadet Kirk through some extracurricular problems and recommendations. Renaud didn't even say extracurricular the way some might have, with a sleazy kind of weight that couldn't help but convey innuendo. The moment passed, and the subject moved on to Marina's health and Renaud's assignment to teaching warp core theory, hopefully for just a year or two before shipping out.
She couldn't say she thought nothing of it. But she only thought a little of it, her mind supplying ready excuses (embarrassingly ready, she thought afterwards). She reminded herself of how often Ben took former students under his wing, how much he enjoyed connecting with the ones who had a real appreciation for the inner workings of his beloved computers, et cetera. They weren't usually women, nor so young, but realistically, a very young woman could use a kindly mentor's help with the practical hurdles of Academy life more than most. And Ben hardly ever mentioned her despite all the time he was apparently spending with her, but he'd been so distracted lately—not just with this cadet, with almost every part of his life and his work—it really didn't have to mean anything.
Hal Corrigan was nearly as discreet. They just happened to cross paths while waiting for the air tram, and he seemed a little surprised to see her there without Ben, then not surprised at all. More awkwardly, he complimented Marina on how much more understanding she was than his wife would be, if he was spending that much time away from him during one of her pregnancies, and some of that time with a cute teenaged blonde at that.
Marina forced a laugh and said that, of course, Ben wasn't one to go on about how cute one of his female students was.
"Or how young," she added.
"She's eighteen or nineteen," said Corrigan, with a sympathetic look that had alert sirens all but going off in her head. He wasn't like Renaud, smoothly pleasant but inclined towards a touch of exaggeration and carelessness; though younger, he was stolid and steady. "She's set to graduate with my cohort, though, for some reason—that's how I know. I didn't even know you could do it in two and a half years."
"Must be a bright girl," Marina said flatly, her eyes fixed on the tram zooming into the station above their heads. Thank God. Corrigan's kindness somehow felt worse than the betrayal itself; in that moment, she wanted nothing more than to escape it as the highest speeds possible.
Even worse, though: when she stopped pretending not to see what was in front of her eyes, Marina didn't find it that difficult to imagine Ben straying. She would have thought he'd choose someone older, maybe, with more life experience and less burning drive. But the fact of the matter was that Marina didn't know what about this girl appealed to him, knew hardly anything about her at all.
She wasn't proud of what she did next. She was already deciding on how she'd track down this blonde cadet while still in the tram, her fingers clenched. Ben—Marina and Ben would have to talk it over, of course. But they'd been married for years, he'd always been faithful before. Probably. They had a life. They could figure it out like civilized adults. She just needed to have a little chat with Jessica Kirk.
Starfleet Academy was, technically, open to the public. Plenty of people who weren't themselves affiliated with the Academy strolled through its parks, even requested the use of its research laboratories, library databases, and other facilities. There was no reason she couldn't go walking around if she wanted, chat with some cadets in their free time.
The next day, an hour after Ben left to teach his first class, Marina made her way to the Academy, a simple but clear plan in mind. She'd looked up Kirk's records, of course—in the middle of the previous night, while Ben was deeply asleep.
Full name: Kirk, Jessica Theodora
Service rank: cadet (midshipman), year 2
Age: 18 | DOB: 03/22/2233
Place of birth: Riverside, Arizona, United States of America, North America, Earth
Place of residence: Science Base Alpha, Juturna III
Species: Human
Height: 166 cm
Weight: 61 kg
Hair color: Blonde
Eye color: Hazel
Complexion: Light
Conditions or allergies: none
Next of kin: Dr. George S. Kirk (service rank: lieutenant), brother (2223-)
Track: Science
Credit hours: 70 completed or in progress
Achievement class: first, with honors (in progress)
Specialization: Psychology (clinical)
Practically nineteen, with a March birthday, Marina had thought for a moment, then crushed the desperate reach for what it was. Ben was turning thirty-five, what did it matter if he'd been swept off his feet by a girl closer to eighteen or nineteen? The little photograph of her face was too small and grainy to tell Marina much; it looked generically pretty, she supposed, which might be sufficient if he was so unhappy that—
But Kirk's age, reinforced by what even in the dull quality of the photograph looked like a soft, dainty, girlish face (nothing like Marina's had ever been) wasn't the worst thing. In her heart of hearts, Marina had held out hope that there might be some genuine difficulty Ben would be particularly equipped to help his protégée with. Kirk was science track; in some particularly technical field Ben could be just the person to help her get access to specialized equipment, figure out some elaborate engineering issues, get approved for all those extra credits she was obviously taking, get special admission to fourth- and fifth-year programming courses.
Psychology.
Marina's fingers, already clenched around the PADD, had felt cold. Clinical psychology, even worse. Ben didn't know anything about the social sciences, had hardly even cared to listen to Marina herself talking about her xenosociology research. It wasn't—it couldn't be—
She'd cleared the PADD's history and barely slept more than an hour or two. Her hazy plans to track down Kirk herself and confront her settled throughout the night.
The next day, at the Academy, Marina showed up at the information desk and rattled off the lie she'd made up: a student of her husband's had left a book in his classroom late in the previous semester, and he kept forgetting to return it to her, as busy as he often was. But Marina, during her pregnancy, had developed a habit of visiting the Academy to eat lunch in the park, so he'd asked her to deliver it to Miss Kirk directly.
"It seemed to be a bit of a ... sentimental possession," Marina said awkwardly, "so he didn't want me to just leave it around. I promised I'd put it into her hands myself." She gave a nervous laugh. "I only realized when I got here that I wasn't sure how to find her, since she's moved beyond his class now."
The man at the desk, a thus-far courteous Andorian, hummed under his breath.
"Who is your husband, ma'am?" he said, not sounding terribly suspicious. She guessed that pregnant human women didn't ordinarily show up to present much reason for it.
"Benjamin Finney," said Marina.
He tapped the sloping keyboard under his fingers, peering at a large grey terminal that blocked about a quarter of his face from ehr vision. "And the cadet?—Pardon, would you like a chair?"
"No, no," she said, with a light, strained laugh. "Not unless you expect this to take a long time, of course. Her name is Jessica Kirk. She's a second-year now, a midshipman."
Marina had wagered that Starfleet's principle of keeping records as open and public as possible would do the rest of the work for her. But you never know, really, just how far they'd live up to something like that versus every other consideration.
He squinted at the screen. "All right. Yes, it looks like she passed his course last semester, and she's still here. Damn, no idea how she got that schedule approved, that's insane! Uh, sorry, ma'am. Anyway, she should have just left Commander Zellen's course in advanced comparative literature, that's"—he tapped a few more buttons—"in the Dairon Center for the Arts, just the next building over. You're lucky, she's got an hour between that and theatre arts. I doubt you'll be able to catch up with her, but Zellen might know where she goes after his class, or who you might ask. I can give you his office number, but I'm afraid that's the best I can do."
Marina smiled, carefully restraining the curve of her mouth enough to keep her teeth mostly concealed.
"You've been very helpful," she said, honestly enough.
His expression didn't much change, but the blue-green stalks rising out of his silvery hair twitched. "Thank you. I am pleased to have performed my duty efficiently."
Making her way to Commander Zellen's office devoured another valuable ten minutes, but proved worth it. He was a human man, a greying, elderly instructor from Germany.
"Kirk?" he said, with a quick glance at Marina's slightly curved stomach. This time she did accept the offered chair. "Yes, yes, she's a student of mine. Very bright, very well-read—especially for a girl of that age. Many have their minds on other things in the first few years." He barked a short laugh from behind his much more cheerful desk, a reddish-brown wood carved in the style of some relic of the past. Or perhaps, like its owner, it was an actual relic of the past; either way, it included only a few traces of metal about its elaborately covered drawers and legs. "A pity she's set on space work rather than the space of the mind, if you understand."
"I do," Marina assured him, trying not to think about Ben. She avoided glancing at any of Zellen's chronometers.
The “Profile” for the May 12, 1928 issue was unusual in that its subject was not a titan of industry, or a prominent politician, or noted artist, musician or literary figure, but rather a dog—an extraordinary animal named Egon who would be lost to history were it not for Alexander Woollcott writing about this particular German Shepherd and his exploits on the French Riviera. May 12, 1928 cover by…
