🚀 go-pugleaf

In Star Trek VI, the Enterprise meets up with the Klingon battle
cruiser.  As the cruiser appears on the viewscreen, Kirk (in the still
shown here) looks with some awe and says, "I've never been this
close".

Anyone understand this line?  He had done hand-to-hand combat with
Klingons.  He actually boarded and took over a Klingon vessel in Star
Trek III, then commanded the Klingon vessel all the way through Star
Trek IV, then boarded another Klingon vessel in Star Trek V.

Why, then, in Star Trek VI, does he act as if he has never been this
close to a Klingon vessel before, or to a Klingon before?

Perhaps based on his line to Spock earlier in the film, when he says
"Let them die"... in this moment the anger in him has been
stewing since they launched, and seeing that ship up close, knowing
who was on board...

Maybe in that moment he was very much aware that given the state of
the Empire, he could order that ship destroyed and it would be the
closest the Federation would come to fully defeating the Klingon
Empire.

The line could be a commentary on the infectious nature of hate. Maybe
he really didn’t mean and it only showed where his mind was soon
before those torpedoes actually hit.

That action… seeing it truly woke and shocked his moral center.
Perhaps it made him feel tremendous guilt, even in the uncertainty of
whether or not it was Enterprise that fired, in that it was what he
WANTED to do... and it sort of breaks him, and ultimately changes him.
It's part of the most human journey they could have given Kirk.

Kirk was such a flawed character, clever, but ultimately that he could
experience these things and come out of it inspiring change that would
change the Federation for the better, and truly show the best of what
Star Trek has to offer.

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