REVIEW: What Is the Story of Captain Kirk? by M. D. Payne

Summary and Review


This book tells the dual story of the creation of Star Trek, including the Original Series (TOS) show and movies, as well as telling the life story of main character, James T. Kirk.

This is a fun race through the highlights of a franchise with five decades of history. The book includes references to

  • the first pilot with Captain Pike
  • the movie plots of the 6 movies starring the original cast
  • descriptions of those main characters
  • a mention of the Animated Series
  • the series which followed TOS
  • the Kelvin timeline
  • some of the alien species.

As a Trek fan, this was a fun glimpse at a 50+ year phenomena. The focus stays on Kirk, so the famous Trek lore about Lucille Ball and MLK Jr. doesn’t get a mention.

There should be spoiler alerts throughout the book as the movie summaries especially are pretty revealing at times. I also felt like the publisher missed a HUGE opportunity by not including episode titles, even in footnotes or end notes, for any readers who wanted to dig deeper on something the book referenced.

Overall, this is a fun, high level look at James Kirk and the original Trek series.

Rating: ♥♥♥♥*

*♥♥♥♥ = Great! Might re-read