Cynical Cinema

I noticed something odd about Star Trek when watching Season Three of the original series, out tomorrow (November 18th) from Paramount Home Entertainment.  William Shatner is the kind of character who might conceivably refer to himself in the third person.  He’s overblown and arrogant and overacts and so forth.  But he doesn’t refer to himself in the third person, he does something more bizarre.  His name, really, is James.  Certain characters call him James.  Kirk is his last name.  Most characters on Star Trek call him “Captain”.  Because he is the captain.  Captain Kirk.  So far so good?

OK.  Now, when he meets other people, as he does quite often in many episodes, he needs to introduce himself.  So he says his name is Captain Kirk.  But when he meets old friends, people he has known for many years, or even people with whom he has grown up, he refers to himself as “Kirk”.  Like, “hey, Steve, it’s Kirk”.   Would anyone in the world do this, for real?  Phone up a friend and announce themselves by their last name?  It makes very little sense to me.  Your last name could be the name by which your friends know you, (as is often the case with me).  But even if that is the case, you don’t refer to yourself by that name, because it is a nickname.  If you do, you come across like George Costanza when he tried to give himself the nickname T-Bone on Seinfeld.

Anyway, just something I noticed.  Star Trek:  The Original Series, Season Three comes out tomorrow, and features that awesome episode where the weirdo creepy kids take over the Enterprise.  That episode, in itself, makes the third season better than the second one.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 1:59 am and is filed under George Takei, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, 1968, DeForest Kelley, Gene Roddenberry, TV series, Sci-Fi, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.