#gary mitchell

[samwisekirk]

gary mitchell as toxic ex boyfriend has to be one of my favorite fanfiction tropes of all time

[old-type-40]

I just wanted to talk about how Unification was a great follow up to the other Rodenberry archive short film Regeneration which came out a year and a half ago. In Regeneration, we saw Spock visiting Kirk's grave on Veridian III and picking up Kirk's insignia from atop the grave where Picard left it after burying him.

Unification implies that the events of the photo novel Strange New Worlds are canon in that Gary Mitchell became a powerful non-corporeal being after his death on Delta Vega. Mitchell initially wants revenge on Kirk but Kirk eventually gets him to realize that he can set aside human desires and flaws. Mitchell sets out to travel the universe. And in Unification, Mitchell finds out about Kirk's death, sees Spock mourning at Kirk's grave, and Kirk's remains in storage at Daystrom Station.

So Mitchell brings Kirk back, has his insignia returned to him, and gives Kirk and Spock one last sunset to share together. And that's beautiful.

There's been so much focus on just the Spirk moment that I didn't want the rest of it to be overlooked and under appreciated.

[janedoodlee]

Star Trek deities are like. Here’s a man who ventured too far and became too powerful due to a strange barrier which humanity was never meant to cross, forcing his best friends to kill him for the safety of the galaxy. And here’s a spoiled little brat who wants to play knights. Here’s a man whose species is just beginning to evolve past their mortal flesh prisons, but his government was scared of this and thus persecuted all those suspected of evolving like this. And here’s a gay little shit who’s obsessed with a middle-aged bald man. Here’s a young woman whos parents were gods who tried so, so hard to be human, but were killed for using their godly abilities, and now she has to choose between living with the gods or living as a human and resisting the temptation to use her powers or face the same fate as her parents. And here’s the gay little shit’s even shittier cousin. Here are the gods of this alien culture who has been oppressed for decades, and they just discovered that these guys Are Real. And they chose a middle-aged man who DOES have hair and never believed in any religion much less this random alien one as their Jesus essentially. And here’s the gay little shit again. And then there’s The Koala

[tprings-hair]

this is a list (as complete as I can make it) of what we know about kirk's backstory in tos and the tos movies, with episode sources:

- he has a brother named samuel george kirk who he calls sam. sam has a wife named aurelan, three kids (one of whom is named peter), and a terrible mustache. (what are little girls made of? and operation: annihilate!)

- he was on tarsus iv and survived the massacre. we don't know his age or what he was doing there. we only know that he saw kodos, heard his voice, wrote down what he said about the massacre, and could tentatively identify him years later. (the conscience of the king)

- when security officer mallory dies, kirk says that mallory's father helped him get into starfleet academy. (the apple)

- he was a nerd in the academy. gary mitchell called him a stack of books with legs, and he admits to bones that he was a very serious cadet. he was picked on by a fellow cadet named finnegan, who he dearly wanted to beat up but never did. (where no man has ever gone before and shore leave)

- on a similarly nerdy note, he had a big history crush on abraham lincoln and could recite the constitution from memory. maybe this is a learned skill in american schools in this future, or maybe he's just a history nerd. (the savage curtain)

- he had john gill as a history professor, who he encounters in the series as the crazy old guy who made space nazis. (patterns of force)

- kirk did not meet but looked up to captain garth of izar, a starfleet captain and explorer who was eventually decided to commit genocide and was sent to an asylum. we don't know whether this happened before, during, or after kirk's study of him or how he might have taken the news. (whom gods destroy)

- he has a deep fear of being alone and unable to act or control his situation. (many episodes, but most obviously in and the children shall lead us.)

- at some point (we have no idea how old he was or if it was before or after the academy) he nearly died from vegan choriomeningitis, a made-up disease deadly enough to be used as population control when extracted from his blood. (the mark of gideon)

- he had some kind of relationship with areel shaw, a lawyer who later ends up questioning kirk in a court martial. (court martial)

- he had some kind of relationship with ruth. when he sees her again in season 1, or a representation of her, he says it's been fifteen years. (shore leave)

- when he took the kobayashi maru, he reprogrammed the test so it would be possible to pass and passed on his third try. (the wrath of khan)

- once he became a midshipman (a cadet training to be a commissioned officer, apparently never mention as a rank outside of this series), he became close with his instructor benjamin finney. at some point, finney named his daughter jame (pronounced jamie) after him. jame is a teenager when we see her in season 1. (court martial)

- he served aboard the uss republic, where finney made a mistake that could have been disastrous and kirk logged it, ruining finney's chances for promotion. (court martial)

- he served aboard the uss farragut under captain garrovick as part of a phaser gun crew, meaning he fired the ship's phasers from engineering, not on the bridge like chekov. he hesitated before firing on a creature which killed garrovick, and blamed himself for it years later. (obsession)

- at some point, he worked with janice lester and they had a relationship. she resented kirk for being a man and having his career goals easier to achieve (we are not given strong evidence whether this is true or false), and kirk says they would have killed each other if he'd stayed. (turnabout intruder)

- at some point, he and endocrinologist dr. janet wallace got into a relationship, though it ended because they were both dedicated to their careers. (the deadly years)

- at some point, he and dr. carol marcus had a relationship and conceived david. kirk knew david existed, but carol prioritised her career as a scientist and decided to raise david away from kirk's world. it's implied that david met kirk and knew that he and carol had a relationship at one point, and he calls kirk "that overgrown boy scout (she) used to hang around with". he didn't know that kirk was his father until the movie, though. (the wrath of khan)

- shortly before serving on the enterprise, kirk taught a class at the academy, which gary mitchell was in. we don't know what he taught, only that he had a reputation for making students think critically. mitchell admits to setting kirk up with a blonde lab technician, to which kirk looks aghast and says, "I nearly married her." we don't know whether this was janet wallace, carol marcus, ruth, areel shaw, janice lester, or some other unknown woman. (where no man has gone before)

- at some point, he and gary mitchell encountered "rodent things" on dimorus which threw poisoned darts at them. mitchell took one for kirk and nearly died. (where no man has gone before)

that's it! that's all we get. everything else -- including him being born in iowa -- was from other sources added later. I just realised there wasn't one good source that was specific to the original series (star trek wikis that don't differentiate between tos, other series afterwards, and aos drive me insane), and it might be relevant to someone else too.

[yaoiblackmold]

Gary Mitchell has probably got to be the most popular one episode character in TOS ever because I swear that bitch shows up in like 70% of fanfics I've read as Kirks ex-boyfriend, hell somtimes he even pops up in AOS fanfic, everyone is so compelled by him being Jims toxic best friend before Bones and Spock

[strangenewwords]

Gary Mitchell's Eyeballs Aka more Star Trek History

Because I'm me, I needed to know how they did this in the 60s.

Turns out it's really interesting.

To begin with, for those of you youngins who don't know about old contact lenses, they were literally glass back in the day. That's why in some old movies/tv shows, when someone loses a lens and they're panicking looking for it you hear a crunch when they inevitably step on it.

They also had to soak in these crazy ass things:

That's to give you some context about old contact lenses.

In the show, they took two of these lenses and sandwiched foil with a pinhole in the center between them. And then just made the actors wear them.

Apparently they were VERY hot under the lights (I'd imagine so) and it explains why the actor for Gary is tilting his damn chin all the time, I bet the director was constantly on him about it to get the best reflection.

PS, hot damn, that man was fine.

[trek-tracks]

Spock maintains that his first round of crew performance evaluations was perfectly logical and it was unfair to send him to "sensitivity training"

original

[anghraine]

I find Gary Mitchell morbidly interesting because he's such a deeply mediocre person, but a kind of great character for illuminating a lot about the people around him.

Some significant details that remain relevant throughout TOS that we find out in the first pilot of TOS as we know it, because of Gary Mitchell:

Kirk has been known for years as a bookish nerd; those, like Gary, who know him more personally know that Kirk particularly likes "longhair" writers.

People whom Kirk has a personal relationship with call him Jim.

Women in Federation cultures do still have to navigate institutional misogyny and it informs their motives, something we'll see many times again.

Humans can have natural telepathic abilities to varying degrees (though most don't), enough to be measured and recorded in medical records and family histories. (TOS follows this up in S3 with one of the greatest women of the week of TOS, Miranda Jones, and a really intriguing expansion of the world building around human telepaths.)

Kirk and Gary were not fellow cadets; Gary (against then-upperclassmen's advice) took Kirk's notorious "think or sink" class when Kirk was a lieutenant known as a strict and demanding Academy teacher, and Gary was a cadet, likely in his first year. Gary was a fairly poor student, to the point that Kirk is unflatteringly suspicious of Gary now being able to read someone like Spinoza that he couldn't as Kirk's student (this is the first of many implications that behind all the sci-fi paraphernalia, Kirk's core specialty is philosophy).

The show is deeply hostile towards pretenses to divinity, even backed by real power, all the more if the power is not accompanied by ethics and compassion (the nature of this kind of power is that it generally won't be).

Spock has served on the Enterprise for years alongside people like Gary.

Behind whatever front Kirk puts up, his overriding priority within the privacy of his mind is his mama bear fixation on protecting his crew/ship.

Figures in Kirk's life tend to be a bit creepily obsessed with him below the surface or to find him fundamentally off-putting and cold; Gary is very much one of the former.

Dehner is flawed and can be impulsively reactive in the way of many human characters, but she's basically governed by highly cerebral professional ethics in a way that's fundamentally more similar to Kirk than Gary's manly physical heroism without thought. That fundamental rapport (the first of many instances of it between Kirk and various women, from young to ancient) is what allows Kirk to reach her in a way he has never been able to reach Gary, his former student turned friend and protégé he's tried to guide onto more thoughtful paths.

Spock is coolly analytical in his judgment and will accept the deaths of his own colleagues for the common good (though not Kirk's, really) and is full-on Team Murder at times.

The Enterprise is not Kirk's first command, brilliant prodigy though he is; he requested Gary for the crew of his first command, Gary nearly died for him, and Gary served for years on the Enterprise while Kirk's star was rising.

Despite his charm and ready use of it, Kirk is in reality much less libido-driven and hedonistic about sex and pursuing women than more typical men of the future like Gary; where Gary favors casual (even if unwise) shore leave flings and hitting on his co-workers, Kirk strongly prefers serious romantic relationships and has been increasingly alarmed about Gary's habits including the shore leave flings. Back at the Academy, Gary had to plot with a technician who had a crush on Kirk to get him (Kirk) to notice her, though she was enough his type that they had a very serious relationship and nearly got married (the relationship was happy enough that this had the intended secondary benefit of Kirk slightly lightening up as a teacher, though he retained his stack of books with legs reputation, and he feels somewhat betrayed by discovering Gary's involvement even after the fact).

Kirk is determined to exhaust other alternatives before simply assuming someone is lost and there's no option but accepting death; however, while he'll try and buy time and figure out alternatives, he will accept loss and death that are truly inevitable, even if it means personally sacrificing someone he cares about.