The Kirk

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I...can't...de...cide...but-I-must!

"Captain's Log, stardate 8675309: Once again I find myself faced with an impossible dilemma. Do I save the planet Pupolon by rescuing the High Priestess, despite her Klingon captors doubtlessly waiting in ambush? Or do I ignore their plight and, by letting it be destroyed, obey the Prime Directive and get the Aesoptinum needed to protect The Federation? My friends and officers Spock and McCoy have been debating this at length, with no clear answer. "There has to be a better way..."

Rounding out the archetypal Freudian Trio with The Spock and The McCoy, The Kirk must balance these opposing personalities while being able to take their advice and choose between them (or literally, choose "between them") without being overcome either by emotion or dispassionate logic, representing what in Freudian psychology is called the ego.

Usually, The Kirk is The Captain or a similar leader who needs to be practical rather than emotional or distant. It's not impossible for a show to have The McCoy or The Spock as the leader, but they'll have to be far more ideologically flexible than they would otherwise.

They usually share a lot of the traits of the Reasonable Authority Figure, but depending on the slant of the series he might lapse into less than heroic decisions, or end up choosing one of his two friends over the other more often. That said, the burden of deciding what course of action to take can be heavy, while the task of bringing his friends around to accept said decision is complicated as well. At the least, he's mostly immune to Death By Pragmatism. With poor characterization, may become the Standardized Leader.

Examples of The Kirk include:

Anime and Manga

• Mu La Flaga is The Kirk in Gundam Seed, but interestingly, is placed in a secondary position, with The McCoy as his commanding officer and the Sergeant Rock-ish Spock as an equal. This makes his meadiating efforts difficult to say the least.
  • Mu is technically the senior officer on board, but was indispensable as a combat pilot (one of only two available) and thus would've left the ship nearly defenseless if he were sitting on a chair on the bridge. Thus, he's not in command despite the fact that by strict military protocol he should be.
• Lelouch as Zero is The Kirk in Code Geass.
• Meowth of Team Rocket in Pokemon, although they're all pretty much on equal footing (early in the series, however, Meowth claimed to be the leader of the Trio and this may be why). Meowth typically subverts this by wholeheartedly agreeing with whichever one of his teammates happens to have the same ideas in mind he has.

Film

• According to co-writer Roberto Orci, the 2009 Star Trek film maintains this Trope, but swaps Kirk and McCoy:

"McCoy in a way represents for us, or represented for us, the extremes of Kirk and Spock. If Spock is extreme logic, ... extreme science, and Kirk is extreme emotion and intuition, here you have a very colorful doctor, essentially a very humanistic scientist. So he, in a way, is literally and figuratively a representation of two extremes that often served as the glue that held the trio together."

• Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi displays elements of this Trope in the Prequel Trilogy, alongside Anakin Skywalker's The McCoy with various members of the Jedi Council serving as The Spock. In the Original Trilogy, Luke serves as The Kirk to Han's The McCoy and Leia or Obi-wan's The Spock in A New Hope, but the dynamics start to twist up from there.
  • I'm not sure that this works. Luke is more the naïve farm boy (The McCoy) and Han the more sensible, pragmatic one (The Kirk, since he says Kirk-like things such as "Never Tell Me the Odds") but there isn't really a Spock-equivalent. Obi-Wan is less cynical than Han, and Leia abandons the entire Rebel Alliance just to save Han in Episode VI.

Literature

• Alyosha of The Brothers Karamazov, who, oddly enough, was played by William Shatner in the movie version.
• Meg in Little Women often takes this role in The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry between Jo and Amy.
• Tom Corbett, Eager Young Space Cadet: Tom is a classic Kirk, settling arguments between his two teammates almost every time they have to do anything, and almost always rightly.
• Harry Potter is very much this, with Ron as his McCoy and Hermione as The Spock. Initially played straight, but the dynamic is played with in later books.
• Tobias in Animorphs takes this role whenever he's alone with Marco and Ax.
  • What do you mean? Out of the Animorphs Marco and Ax are the two most logical. Both are occasionally given to bouts of emotion overwhelming logic (understandable seeing as they're both teenagers) but out of the group they're definitely both closer to The Spock end of the scale than The McCoy end.
    • A better example from Animorphs would be Jake, with Rachel and/or Cassie at The McCoy end, depending on whether the story is about saving things or killing them.

Live-Action TV

• This Trope is named for Captain Kirk of Star Trek: The Original Series. Notably, the original Kirk took a lot of third options like the Kobayashi Maru, but other times these decisions were likely to make many races angry in the future, leading some to think dick move.
  • And like The McCoy, there is a lot of Generation Xerox between the series, giving each their own Kirk.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation had Jean-Luc Picard, albeit he was more philosophical and Spock-ish than Kirk at times. Will Riker resembled Kirk much more in personality, at least before he grew the beard.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had Sisko act more like the entire Freudian Trio by himself.
    • Star Trek: Voyager usually had Janeway deliberate this way, with The Doctor and Chakotay advocating the Emotional choice, and Tuvok and Seven the logical (and possibly Straw Vulcan) or efficient one.
    • Star Trek: Enterprise of course had Archer, with T'Pol and Trip filling in The Spock and McCoy roles, respectively.
• Doctor Who: The Doctor has fallen into this Trope so far, he can no longer be deduced as either an Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain. He will give his life (but has not been able to, yet.) to save anyone, any race (minus the Daleks), and planet, or any specific cascade inspired by certain snake haired monsters of Greek mythology from an alien race known to exterminate any other race... You get the idea.
• Believe it or not, Jack O'Neill of Stargate SG-1 wasn't really his quartet's Kirk; that honor fell to Samantha Carter and occasionally Daniel.
  • Which makes Carter a good fit for the new leader in Stargate Atlantis, replacing another Kirk figure, Dr. Weir. The leader of the main team, Sheppard, tends a bit toward The McCoy-ish in his thinking, though he does have the Kirk-ish role in picking the proper course of action out of McKay's stream-of-consciousness TV Genius-ness, Ronon's rashness, and Teyla's more McCoy-ish tendencies.
    • Also, he gets all the hot alien princesses.
    • And the Genre Savvy McKay makes sure to point this out, comparing Sheppard to Kirk.
    • Sheppard fully ascends to Kirkdom in the last season. Woolsey is The Spock, while Teyla & Ronon are The McCoy.
• Mal in Firefly can be pretty emotional and amoral in his own right, but has the virtue (much as he'd deny it) of listening to his crew before making a decision, but being brave enough to take unpopular decisions regardless.
• Lee Adama in Battlestar Galactica usually brings the moral clarity to situations where other characters' judgement is blinded by prejudice or fear.
  • When he isn't blinded by his own prejudice and fear, that is.
• Carly in iCarly, the centre of the trio that includes The Spock like Freddie, and The McCoy-type Sam. In iDate Sam & Freddie where Samantha and Freddie start dating, she ends up having to solve all their fights, until the end where it becomes too much and she tells them if they can't stop fighting they shouldn't date at all.
• Jack Harkness from Torchwood.
• John Crichton from Farscape went from being The McCoy to The Kirk, while D'Argo and Aeryn started out more The Spock and became Kirk-ish as they went along. Pilot is probably the purest Kirk character on the show

Toys

• Tahu often fills this role in Bionicle. Although his Nakama is considerably bigger than a Freudian Trio, the two Toa he is most commonly seen interacting with are the emotionally distant Kopaka and the compassionate Gali. He is often reluctant to listen to either of them, however.
  • This depends on your point of view. Some may view Gali and Pohatu as The Kirk of the team, due to their efforts to maintain peace between the impulsiveness of Tahu and Lewa and the reasoning of Kopaka and Onua.

Video Games

• In the SEELE path of the original Persona, The Boy with the Pierced Ear is faced with a series of Moral Dilemmas. While his buddy Masao leaps to decisions driven by raw emotion, Kei Nanjo would rather do what is necessary regardless of how cruel it may appear. The choices he makes have far-reaching consequences.

Web Comics

• In The Order of the Stick, Haley and Roy take this role. V is The Spock; Elan and Durkon are The McCoy. Belkar is just there (except in combat, where he becomes another McCoy by trying to murder everything that moves).

Web Original

• In the Global Guardians, Guardsman is the The Kirk, even though he's not the team leader. Achilles, the actual team leader, is The Spock, while Arachne and Ultra-Man are The McCoy.
• In The Book of Stories, the Book is this, becoming the balance of Structure and Purpose, which is the literary equivalent of Logic and Emotion.

Western Animation

• Alien X in Ben 10: Alien Force that takes this concept more than a little too literally...
  • Ben himself is The Kirk alongside Gwen and Kevin, especially in the first season. Strangely, Gwen and Kevin barely fit as the The McCoy and The Spock respectively (both are intelligent and emotional) and can switch the roles depending on the situation. By Ben 10: Ultimate Alien it's hard to peg any of the three as any one of the archetypes, though Ben is definitely the The Spock in the season one finale since he decides Kevin has to be stopped by any means necessary and The McCoy Gwen is trying to save Kevin from himself.
• Blossom of The Powerpuff Girls provided a balance between the Tomboy and Girly Girl duo of Buttercup and Bubbles.
  • Of course, much of the time by-the-book Blossom and the equally bull-headed and proud "let's just punch them" Buttercup wound up arguing stubbornly while Bubbles was the one who brought them back together...