Star Trek 924: Starfleet Academy!

924. Starfleet Academy!

PUBLICATION: Star Trek Annual v.2 #2, DC Comics, 1991

CREATORS: Peter David (writer), James W. Fry, Curt Swan, and Arne Starr (artists)

STARDATE: 2250 (Kirk's first year at the Academy)

PLOT: Kirk enrolls at Starfleet Academy and has trouble both academically and socially. Though studious, he isn't affirmative enough and is constantly the butt of other students' jokes and his teacher's ire. Eventually, Gary Mitchell steers him towards a "blonde lab technician" with whom he has a quick romance. When a teacher accuses one of the students of having cheated on an exam, the entire class is at each others' throats. Kirk, with the help of his few friends, gets into the computer system and finds out the truth. By the next day, he's taken leadership of his class and together they smoke out the teacher by all admitting to the crime. It was a lie to see how they'd react. Kirk follows up by screwing with Finnegan's Kobayashi Maru.

CONTINUITY: Sam Kirk sees Jim off (Operation - Annihilate!). Captain Decker teaches at the Academy (The Doomsday Machine). The Dean is Ben Finney (Court-Martial), and his student assistant is Finnegan (Shore Leave). Kirk's messy roommate is Gary Mitchell (Where No Man Has Gone Before). His ESP talent is prefigured in his photographic memory. The blonde Gary sends Kirk's way is Carol Marcus (ST II). Ruth (Shore Leave), his girl back home, moves to San Francisco. Finnegan takes the Kobayashi Maru test.

DIVERGENCES: Uhura, one year older than Kirk and a friend of Carol's? I cry foul (according to the Star Trek chronology, she would be 11 here). Ruth's hair style is totally unlike the one Kirk remembers in Shore Leave. I also wonder if Kirk should have gotten his revenge on Finnegan while in his first year, what with catharsis coming only much later. Sam Kirk's future wife is mentioned, but is erroneously called Aurela instead of Aurelan. Kirk's meeting with Carol contradicts the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Kirk didn't do so well in mime class either.
REVIEW: Peter David has pretty much taken every piece of canonical information on Kirk's early days and written scenes for them. The information comes mostly from Shore Leave and Where No Man Has Gone Before, though there's also the long-held belief that Gary's lab technician was Carol Marcus. See Divergences for when David overreaches a little (Uhura really shouldn't be there). This is a writer who excels at light character moments, and there's plenty of that here. A lot of it feels like a "repeat", at least if you remember the facts as told by various characters over the years, but the romance between Kirk and Carol is especially well done, funny, sexy and touching. Kirk's first taste of leadership, while not particularly epic, is good too. I think the Annual is made more interesting right now thanks to the Star Trek movie, which is, in effect, the What If? version of this story. This Kirk has to BECOME a smart mouth, but doesn't start there.