James T. Kirk

(This is for the epic officer James T. Kirk, for Cadet Kirk, click here.)

The Basics

The epic officer James T. Kirk is the Command officer of the Enterprise Crew. He is the primary officer of the Morale Crew. The Morale Crew is perhaps the more effective all-purpose crews in the game. 

How Do I Get Epic Kirk?

You can get Kirk shards in Ultra Recruiting chests, Premium Recruiting chests, Federation Recruit chests. Additionally, you can spend 1000 Transporter Patters to get epic Kirk shards.

Captain’s Manuever

Leader – As long as the ship has Morale, Kirk gives all Officers on the ship a bonus of 40% to all their stats.

Officer Ability

Inspirational – At the beginning of each round, Kirk has a (50%, 60%, 70%, 75%, 80%) chance of inspiring Morale to the ship for 2 rounds.

Who Does Kirk Team Up Well With?

The obvious one is Spock and his shield regeneration bonus – which requires morale to activate. And the more you tier up Spock, the better this team will work together. Spock’s bonus is based off the defense of your ship, and Kirk brings an awful lot of defense to the table – plus he increases the defense of everyone on the ship by 40%.

If you’re using an Enterprise, you can run the crew without Spock, as the ship itself will give a shield regeneration bonus.

McCoy’s defense bonus, which increases the defense of all the officers on the bridge every time the ship gets is a pretty standard addition for a good general-purpose crew. It’s good for hostiles, PvP, and armadas.

On my Augur, I run Kirk Spock and Nero, to take advantage of the ship’s Obliterator weapon that only activates when the opponent’s ship is burning. This, by the way, is a great crew to run if you’re attacking a station with docked ships.

For armadas, you can go with Carol Marcus to blanket increase your damage, or Khan for his critical hit chance increase, or Decius for his increasing damage bonus. Kirk and Spock are a great armada crew because they’re going to help your ship survive for a long, long time.

Uhura will give you max synergy with Kirk and Spock, and her accuracy will help you in explorers attacking interceptors. Sulu also needs Morale to activate his energy weapon bonus.

Paul Zhou is another good one to add, as his officer ability will complement Kirk’s captain’s maneuver and greatly increase your ship’s Shield deflection, Armor, and Dodge.

You can also throw in anti-faction officers like Krell, Mirek, Yan’agh, Yuki, or L’Nar.

Feel free to play around with the third slot on your Morale Crew.

Should I Spend Command Badges Upgrading Him

Yes. Yes. Yes, and Yes. Also yes.

Shatner and Kirk Trivia

I covered Chris Pine in the article about Cadet Kirk. This article is all about Shatner in all of his glory. William Shatner was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1931. He’s the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants.

He graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1952, and trained to be an actor at the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa.

His film debut was in the Canadian film  Butler’s Night Off  (1951). Kirk’s dog in Star Trek: Generations, named Butler was named after Shatner’s deceased dog.

He made his TV debut in 1954, appearing as Ranger Bob in the Canadian version of The Howdy Doody Show.

In ’58, he appeared with the great Ralph Bellamy as a Roman tax collector in a live Hallmark Hall of Fame production of The Christmas Tree. Those of you under 60 will probably remember Bellamy best from Trading Places. Those of you under 25 should watch Trading Places.

Shatner later had a leading role on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and in two episodes of The Twilight Zone, including one of the more memorable in the series, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

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Kirk

After NBC rejected The Cage in February of 1965, and Jeffrey Hunter decided not to return as Christopher Pike in order to pursue his film career, Gene Rodenberry needed a new actor to play the role in the second pilot. Rather than simply replacing Hunter as Pike, a new character was created.

The characterization of Kirk was mostly unchanged from that of Pike (or Rodenberry’s original name for the character, Robert April:)

“The ‘skipper’, about thirty-four, Academy graduate, rank of Captain… a shorthand sketch of Robert April might be ‘A space-age Captain Horatio Hornblower‘, lean and capable both mentally and physically.” (Memory Alpha)

William Shatner had been on Rodenberry’s list to play Pike, though not a finalist for the role. He was the third actor to be offered the role of Kirk, after Lloyd Bridges (Sea Hunt!) and Jack Lord turned down the role. (Coincidentally, both Bridges and Shatner appeared in Airplane II.)

Shatner would appear as Kirk in 79 Episodes of the original series of Star Trek, 21 episodes of the Animated Series, eight feature films, and in archival footage in one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Work After Trek

After Star Trek, Shatner appeared in several Roger Corman films. He made guest spots on  The Six Million Dollar Man, Columbo, The Rookies, Kung Fu, Ironside, and Mission: Impossible.

He came back to voice Kirk in Star Trek: The Animated Series, and then in Star Trek: Phase II, which evolved into Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, and six more films after that.

In the 80’s, in addition to the  Star Trek films, Shatner landed a starring role on television as  T. J. Hooker. And this will probably be the only chance I’ll get to show you a picture of Heather Locklear. So here you go. The man in the back will be familiar to Star Trek fans as James Darren – who played the hologram Vic on Deep Space Nine.

Shatner Highlight Videos

Shatner for Promise Margarine.

Kirk vs. Spock on $20,000 Pyramid.

The video quality is awful, but the show is pretty funny.

Rocket Man

In 1978, Shatner hosted the 5th Saturn Awards. During the show, he performed a spoken-word version of Elton John’s Rocket Man. It’s been parodied many times, but I’m not sure any of the parodies are as ridiculous or funny as the original.

Blinking lights in Airplane II

Airplane II is basically a lazy rehashing of the original – but one of the highlights is Shatner’s performance.

At Fenway

And with baseball being back, here’s Shatner as an umpire.