Captain's Log: Dead Fictional Girlfriends Report
Last July, I reported part one of the findings from my multi-year "Dead Fictional Girlfriends Research Project." Now, after 13 months of additional research, I have prepared Part Two: Captain James T. Kirk.
The Franchise
Star Trek was a low-budget sci-fi series that got summarily canceled after 3 seasons, and then had a major impact on literally every aspect of American culture, including our language, our space program, and our telecommunications science.
Part of this impact came from the extremely efficient way in which it built a world. For example, have a look at Episode 1, Scene 1, which aired at 8:30 PM on September 8, 1966:
To sum up, in the first 45 seconds of airtime, this show establishes:
The creators of Star Trek used it as a safe space to comment on contemporary issues, such as decolonization, women's liberation, and the civil rights movement. The result is a series that manages to be extremely optimistic about humanity's future, while also getting dark from time to time.
Lots of minor characters die, and a considerable number of them are female.
The Character
In most appearances, James Tiberius Kirk is the captain of the starship Enterprise. According to the fan site Memory Alpha, he was born in Riverside, Iowa, Earth in 2233, and died in 2371 on Veridian III. The existence of time travel, suspended animation, counter-clock universes, and something called "the Nexus" makes it hard to tell how old he was at the time of his death. The commonly-accepted estimate is 66 years old.
William Shatner originated the role and appeared in:
The Study
I conducted this study by watching TOS and TAS on Netflix, remembering the plots of the feature films, and consulting Memory Alpha to fill in any blanks. The guideline was that a woman would count as a "girlfriend" if she and Kirk shared an onscreen kiss. After consultation with my best friend, Trek expert, and catalyst for this project, I also gave credit to 1 female character who has a wrestling match with Kirk in his bed while trying to kill him.
My analytic methodology consisted of filling in Google Sheet while I watched. I'd put in the episode, the woman, whether she lived or died, whether her intentions were nefarious or innocent, and whether she was pregnant. Then, the Sheet formulas would spit out my percentages.
Note on Who is Excluded
When I began this leg of the research, I debated how to handle the so-called "Abrams!verse." Back in 2009, J.J. Abrams directed a movie called Star Trek, which took place in an alternate universe to TOS. A character named James Tiberius Kirk appears in that film, as well as its two sequels (released in 2013 and 2016). Kirk is played in all three by Chris Pine, who's famously Not That Chris.
I have excluded the women who romance Pine!Kirk from my totals, however, because the following differences suggest that he's meant to be a separate character from Shatner!Kirk.
So let's forget J.J. Abrams. As my sister says, "He may have brought Leonard Nimoy back into our lives, but we will never forgive him for Han Solo."
Moving on . . .
The Results
Despite his reputation, Kirk has a relatively low total number of romantic interests: 31. That's 0.37 women per hour of screen time, or one every 2.6 hours. James Bond, by contrast, has dated an average of 1.5 women per hour onscreen.
Mortality Rate
Of the 31 women, 8 of them meet their deaths on-screen, giving us a mortality rate of 25.8%. Due to the short length of these episodes, none of the dead ones live more than an hour past their first meeting with Kirk.
Causes of Death
Now here's where things get interesting. The 8 deaths are as follows:
This is quite the assortment (and yes, Captain Kirk does get involved with two completely separate female robots.) If we group these broadly, and assume historical determinism is a natural cause, we get the following breakdown.
Safety tip: do not become involved with Captain Kirk while in proximity to madmen, pre-warp civilizations, or Halloween episodes. Also, don't be a robot, or an innocent pacifist who wants to avert World War II. It's safest that way.
Pregnant Mortality Rate
Now, let us examine the rate at which pregnant women were killed off by lazy screenwriters for extra cheap drama. Unlike James Bond, James Kirk is known to be fertile. In fact, he has probably impregnated 100% of his 3 known sexual partners. Of the 3, one died before giving birth, making a 33.33% mortality rate for pregnant women in Kirk's life.
The audience first meets Miramanee, of the planet Amarind, in "The Paradise Syndrome." (Airdate 1968-10-04.) Miramanee and Kirk marry while he's suffering from amnesia, and conceive a baby. She dies a few months later in a tragic attack by Styrofoam rocks.
Then, in "Wink of An Eye" (Airdate 1968-11-29), Queen Deela of Scalos kidnaps Kirk for breeding stock because her native males have been rendered sterile by disease.
She lives, although Kirk does abandon her without mentioning that Dr. McCoy has found a cure for that disease. Jerk move, Kirk.
The audience eventually learns, however, that Kirk had fathered a child at least a few years before the events of TOS. Said child appears as an adult in The Wrath of Khan (1982). That movie makes a few things clear:
The fact that no one in-universe comments negatively on this situation suggests that the range of socially-acceptable family models has broadened in the future.
Nefarious Intentions
45.16% of the women surveyed have nefarious intentions towards Captain Kirk. In addition to the aforementioned kidnapping-for-breeding-purposes, Kirk has had women attempt to:
Observations
Despite appearances, the women on Star Trek are not constantly treated as sex objects.
Yes, all right, the women were usually showing quite a bit of skin. In context, however, that's clearly intended to be a sign that the future is more liberated. That's in keeping with how the miniskirt was perceived in the late 60s, when women had only begun encouraging each other to embrace their sexuality.
Furthermore, Star Trek loudly, emphatically, openly showed futuristic women and men serving together in the military, side by side, doing the same range of jobs. "So what?" I hear you cry. Well, so this series aired during the time in which that did not happen in the US military. Not even NBC could believe in such a future: studio executives infamously forced Gene Roddenberry to ax the female first officer who appeared in his first Trek pilot.
In fact, when the Enterprise crew encountered a man from the 1960s, he expressed shock that a woman was on board. Kirk shut him down.
The overall status of women in this universe helps to explain Kirk's comparatively-low totals.
Although he liked women, Kirk was not sleazy or cavalier about it.
There are 430 crewmembers under Kirk's command. He probably, therefore, is the boss of about 200 women. Yet - aside from the time his evil side took charge in "The Enemy Within" - he never puts them in inappropriate situations. He's noticeably embarrassed by the fact that he once flirted with a subordinate at a Christmas party, even though said flirtation only extended to "talking, dancing, and watching the stars."
In fact, in "Mirror, Mirror," Kirk was shocked to learn that his alternate-universe counterpart had a significant other from within the crew. His reaction to Marlena's existence involved reassuring her that she didn't have to be a "captain's woman," because "You can be anything you want to be."
Later on, Uhura kicks Marlena's ass. (By the way, women in Star Trek sometimes get violent and it is awesome.)
Unlike some of our contestants in this Dead Fictional Girlfriends Research Project, Kirk also spends screen-time showing concern for the women under his command. Jim Kirk spent 1967 being nonplussed by every disaster except the possibility that his dear friend Lt. Uhura might be in danger.
Meanwhile, James Bond reacted to the death of a woman in 1967's You Only Live Twice by calmly discussing the next step in his plan . . . while still in bed with said girlfriend's corpse.
So Kirk's ability to treat women as respected coworkers and trusted friends makes him an outlier among our competitors.
Conclusions
Kirk's attitude towards women makes him a better character than some of our contestants, but it won't help him win this contest. He comes in third by total number, and second by percentage, of dead girlfriends.
Honorary mention must go to him, though, for the following categories.
Most Heartbreaking Death: In "City on the Edge of Forever," Kirk is forced to let a sweet, innocent, well-meaning social worker die a pointless death because if she lives, she'll inadvertently let the Nazis win World War II. Rest in peace, Edith Keeler.
Weirdest Cause of Death: In "Catspaw," a non-humanoid woman is using technology appear human. When Kirk snaps her magic wand, she turns into a rubber chicken and then dies. Rest in peace, Sylvia.
Strangest Thing That Shocked the Censors: In "Plato's Stepchildren," Kirk and Uhura are forced to kiss each other by sadistic telekinetic aliens. This caused an uproar at the time not because of the non-consensual kissing, but because Kirk is white while Uhura, of course, is black. In Shatner's autobiography, he mentions that the network suggested having Uhura kiss Spock instead - since, y'know, interspecies kisses are way less scandalous than interracial kisses. In the end, though, Trek became the first show on US television to feature a black woman kissing a white man . . . or at least, that's what appears to be happening here:
Strangest Thing That Didn't Shock the Censors: In "The Mark of Gideon," Kirk has been kidnapped by a woman who wants to catch a deadly disease from him. (See "nefarious intentions," above.) Kirk's reaction is to ask why her overcrowded planet doesn't just "let your people learn about the devices to safely prevent conception."
The Franchise
Star Trek was a low-budget sci-fi series that got summarily canceled after 3 seasons, and then had a major impact on literally every aspect of American culture, including our language, our space program, and our telecommunications science.
Part of this impact came from the extremely efficient way in which it built a world. For example, have a look at Episode 1, Scene 1, which aired at 8:30 PM on September 8, 1966:
To sum up, in the first 45 seconds of airtime, this show establishes:
- The main characters live on a spaceship;
- Their first officer is an alien;
- This ship is orbiting an inhabited alien world;
- People can materialize (beam) from place to place;
- This spaceship's missions include medical examinations of alien archaeologists, one of whom is the ex-girlfriend of ship's surgeon Dr. McCoy.
And the heck with you if you didn't catch all of that, because none of it is going to be explained further.
The creators of Star Trek used it as a safe space to comment on contemporary issues, such as decolonization, women's liberation, and the civil rights movement. The result is a series that manages to be extremely optimistic about humanity's future, while also getting dark from time to time.
Lots of minor characters die, and a considerable number of them are female.
The Character
William Shatner originated the role and appeared in:
- 73 episodes of the original series Star Trek (1966-1969), hereinafter "TOS;"
- 22 episodes of an animated series, also called Star Trek (1973-1974), hereinafter "TAS;"
- 7 feature films (1979-1994).
This adds up to roughly 83 hours of screen time. That is the second-lowest total among our study subjects, with only James Bond below him at 50 hours. Still, you know what they say: it's not the hours, it's the mileage.
Why He's a Contestant
TOS and TAS were non-serialized. In other words, every episode had to have a self-contained story. That meant that no main character could have a long-term love interest, unless s/he got involved with another series regular (which never happened.)* In addition, Kirk has a reputation as a ladies' man both in-universe and out. The corollary is that Kirk has had a lot of short-term relationships.
Proposed in-universe explanations for why Kirk can't maintain a relationship include:
Why He's a Contestant
TOS and TAS were non-serialized. In other words, every episode had to have a self-contained story. That meant that no main character could have a long-term love interest, unless s/he got involved with another series regular (which never happened.)* In addition, Kirk has a reputation as a ladies' man both in-universe and out. The corollary is that Kirk has had a lot of short-term relationships.
Proposed in-universe explanations for why Kirk can't maintain a relationship include:
- Commitment isn't a widely-expected lifestyle in the free-love future.
- His one true love is his ship, the Enterprise. (See: "Elaan of Troyius," airdate 1968-12-20.)
- He's had his heart broken by girlfriends dying once too often.
* Note: There's considerable fan speculation that Kirk & Spock [or Spock & McCoy or Kirk & McCoy or Kirk, Spock, & McCoy,] are romantically involved off-screen. Back in the 70s, such speculation led to the coining of the term "slash fiction," which refers to fan fiction in which characters who present as heterosexual in-universe are written as homosexual. I will not comment on Kirk's potential male partners here, as they are non-canonical. It is noteworthy, however, that one of them was the first Trek character to actually rise from the dead.
I conducted this study by watching TOS and TAS on Netflix, remembering the plots of the feature films, and consulting Memory Alpha to fill in any blanks. The guideline was that a woman would count as a "girlfriend" if she and Kirk shared an onscreen kiss. After consultation with my best friend, Trek expert, and catalyst for this project, I also gave credit to 1 female character who has a wrestling match with Kirk in his bed while trying to kill him.
 |
| He tells her, "I'm rather enjoying this." 'Nuff said. |
My analytic methodology consisted of filling in Google Sheet while I watched. I'd put in the episode, the woman, whether she lived or died, whether her intentions were nefarious or innocent, and whether she was pregnant. Then, the Sheet formulas would spit out my percentages.
 |
| What a time to be alive. |
Note on Who is Excluded
When I began this leg of the research, I debated how to handle the so-called "Abrams!verse." Back in 2009, J.J. Abrams directed a movie called Star Trek, which took place in an alternate universe to TOS. A character named James Tiberius Kirk appears in that film, as well as its two sequels (released in 2013 and 2016). Kirk is played in all three by Chris Pine, who's famously Not That Chris.
I have excluded the women who romance Pine!Kirk from my totals, however, because the following differences suggest that he's meant to be a separate character from Shatner!Kirk.
William Shatner’s Kirk
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Chris Pine’s Kirk
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Eye Color
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Hazel
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Blue
|
Height
|
||
Place and Circumstances of Birth
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||
Number of Times He’s Destroyed the Enterprise
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||
Path to Command of the Enterprise
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Conning his way into a first officer position on a cadet mission that
goes horribly wrong; outliving the previous captain
|
|
How He Knows Carol Marcus
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Biblically
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Professionally
|
So let's forget J.J. Abrams. As my sister says, "He may have brought Leonard Nimoy back into our lives, but we will never forgive him for Han Solo."
Moving on . . .
The Results
Despite his reputation, Kirk has a relatively low total number of romantic interests: 31. That's 0.37 women per hour of screen time, or one every 2.6 hours. James Bond, by contrast, has dated an average of 1.5 women per hour onscreen.
Mortality Rate
Of the 31 women, 8 of them meet their deaths on-screen, giving us a mortality rate of 25.8%. Due to the short length of these episodes, none of the dead ones live more than an hour past their first meeting with Kirk.
Causes of Death
Now here's where things get interesting. The 8 deaths are as follows:
- Andrea, a gyndroid, commits murder-suicide with her creator;
- Edith Keeler, hit by a truck because of historical determinism;
- Sylvia, dies after Kirk breaks her magic wand;
- Miramanee, stoned to death by an angry crowd that has just realized Kirk is not a god;
- Nonna, becomes the first casualty of a war she's been trying to start;
- Marta, executed by a lunatic who's running his own asylum;
- Rayna, a gyndroid, has her circuits overload while having an emotional epiphany;
- Martia, shot by Klingon guards while trying to escape.
This is quite the assortment (and yes, Captain Kirk does get involved with two completely separate female robots.) If we group these broadly, and assume historical determinism is a natural cause, we get the following breakdown.
Safety tip: do not become involved with Captain Kirk while in proximity to madmen, pre-warp civilizations, or Halloween episodes. Also, don't be a robot, or an innocent pacifist who wants to avert World War II. It's safest that way.
Pregnant Mortality Rate
Now, let us examine the rate at which pregnant women were killed off by lazy screenwriters for extra cheap drama. Unlike James Bond, James Kirk is known to be fertile. In fact, he has probably impregnated 100% of his 3 known sexual partners. Of the 3, one died before giving birth, making a 33.33% mortality rate for pregnant women in Kirk's life.
The audience first meets Miramanee, of the planet Amarind, in "The Paradise Syndrome." (Airdate 1968-10-04.) Miramanee and Kirk marry while he's suffering from amnesia, and conceive a baby. She dies a few months later in a tragic attack by Styrofoam rocks.
 |
| It's actually pretty heart-wrenching in context. And also racist. |
 |
| Which is the kind of problem Joe Cartwright NEVER has. |
The audience eventually learns, however, that Kirk had fathered a child at least a few years before the events of TOS. Said child appears as an adult in The Wrath of Khan (1982). That movie makes a few things clear:
- Kirk and Dr. Carol Marcus have a son, David.
- Kirk is aware of this, but has not been involved in the child's life.
- David seemingly didn't know Kirk was his father until the events of the movie, instead referring to Kirk as "that overgrown Boy Scout [Carol] used to hang around with."
The fact that no one in-universe comments negatively on this situation suggests that the range of socially-acceptable family models has broadened in the future.
Nefarious Intentions
45.16% of the women surveyed have nefarious intentions towards Captain Kirk. In addition to the aforementioned kidnapping-for-breeding-purposes, Kirk has had women attempt to:
- Murder him because he witnessed the genocide her father committed;
- Put a spell on him while curing him of a poisonous monkey bite;
- Slip him a love potion because he calls her a spoiled brat;
- Catch a deadly disease from him in order to DIY a plague on her overpopulated home planet;
- Forcibly swap bodies with him to usurp his command;
...and I'll stop there. I bet you think I'm making some of these up. But I am not. Actual people got paid to write these plots.
Kirk also had less-than-honorable intentions towards 16.12% of the women. His motivations, however, were more often on the order of "I need some information/a diversion/a way to confuse this alien in order to save my ship! Also, I am pretty unimaginative."
Observations
Despite appearances, the women on Star Trek are not constantly treated as sex objects.
Yes, all right, the women were usually showing quite a bit of skin. In context, however, that's clearly intended to be a sign that the future is more liberated. That's in keeping with how the miniskirt was perceived in the late 60s, when women had only begun encouraging each other to embrace their sexuality.
Furthermore, Star Trek loudly, emphatically, openly showed futuristic women and men serving together in the military, side by side, doing the same range of jobs. "So what?" I hear you cry. Well, so this series aired during the time in which that did not happen in the US military. Not even NBC could believe in such a future: studio executives infamously forced Gene Roddenberry to ax the female first officer who appeared in his first Trek pilot.
In fact, when the Enterprise crew encountered a man from the 1960s, he expressed shock that a woman was on board. Kirk shut him down.
 |
| Christopher: A woman?! Kirk: A crewman. |
Although he liked women, Kirk was not sleazy or cavalier about it.
There are 430 crewmembers under Kirk's command. He probably, therefore, is the boss of about 200 women. Yet - aside from the time his evil side took charge in "The Enemy Within" - he never puts them in inappropriate situations. He's noticeably embarrassed by the fact that he once flirted with a subordinate at a Christmas party, even though said flirtation only extended to "talking, dancing, and watching the stars."
In fact, in "Mirror, Mirror," Kirk was shocked to learn that his alternate-universe counterpart had a significant other from within the crew. His reaction to Marlena's existence involved reassuring her that she didn't have to be a "captain's woman," because "You can be anything you want to be."
 |
| Pictured: Kirk advising a woman to "lean in." |
Unlike some of our contestants in this Dead Fictional Girlfriends Research Project, Kirk also spends screen-time showing concern for the women under his command. Jim Kirk spent 1967 being nonplussed by every disaster except the possibility that his dear friend Lt. Uhura might be in danger.
Meanwhile, James Bond reacted to the death of a woman in 1967's You Only Live Twice by calmly discussing the next step in his plan . . . while still in bed with said girlfriend's corpse.
So Kirk's ability to treat women as respected coworkers and trusted friends makes him an outlier among our competitors.
Conclusions
Kirk's attitude towards women makes him a better character than some of our contestants, but it won't help him win this contest. He comes in third by total number, and second by percentage, of dead girlfriends.
Honorary mention must go to him, though, for the following categories.
Most Heartbreaking Death: In "City on the Edge of Forever," Kirk is forced to let a sweet, innocent, well-meaning social worker die a pointless death because if she lives, she'll inadvertently let the Nazis win World War II. Rest in peace, Edith Keeler.
Weirdest Cause of Death: In "Catspaw," a non-humanoid woman is using technology appear human. When Kirk snaps her magic wand, she turns into a rubber chicken and then dies. Rest in peace, Sylvia.
Strangest Thing That Shocked the Censors: In "Plato's Stepchildren," Kirk and Uhura are forced to kiss each other by sadistic telekinetic aliens. This caused an uproar at the time not because of the non-consensual kissing, but because Kirk is white while Uhura, of course, is black. In Shatner's autobiography, he mentions that the network suggested having Uhura kiss Spock instead - since, y'know, interspecies kisses are way less scandalous than interracial kisses. In the end, though, Trek became the first show on US television to feature a black woman kissing a white man . . . or at least, that's what appears to be happening here:
 |
| Pictured: something the 1968 censors were comfortable with. |
Yeah, that's Captain Kirk bringing up birth control, on prime-time network television, when it was still illegal for unmarried Americans to use. I do not know how Star Trek slipped this past Standards and Practices, but I'm impressed.
Live long and prosper, Star Trek.
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