Co-Authors of Star Trek Talk About The Big Three

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, co-scribes of “Star Trek” (05.08.09) relate their approaches to the relationships between Kirk, Spock and McCoy and how this snapshot of their early days works with the larger canon we are all familiar with.

On writing and being Kirk. Get the whole interview (part 2 of 3) at SciFiWire.

Let’s talk about the three central characters and how your approach prefigures the characters people know and the arcs that they will travel to get there. The first character being Kirk, played by Chris Pine.

Orci: Well, the great thing about Kirk is that when you first meet him in the show he’s already captain. And he is already extremely disciplined, and he has already kind of drunk the Kool-Aid of Starfleet. So knowing that’s where you’re going to end up, we realized, “Well what a great opportunity to see exactly how he gets there. And if that’s where you end up, what does the drama require?” Well it requires you to start the character … as far away from where he ends up as possible. So that prescribed an approach to the character that allowed us to see Kirk in a way that has never been seen, but that hopefully is going to connect back to the Kirk you know.

Clearly there have to be some character elements of the Kirk we know, even in the early person.

Orci: The Kirk we know was always brilliant. The Kirk we know was always fearless. The Kirk we know has always had a slight problem with authority unless he himself was the authority. The Kirk we know had a healthy libido. The Kirk we know had a sense of humor. So all of those things are still part of who he is.

He was also kind of a hot head.