wahid@dvinci.DEC (Parwez Wahid) (08/22/85)
Reply to George Raiche's inquiry I was on a trivia panel at a convention in Boston in 1983. Some kid in the audience stumped the three of us with this question. Yes the gravestone does read James R. Kirk. This show being the second pilot they (the production folks) probably hadn't given much thought to what the middle name was going to be. I suppose the T for Tiberius came in later after Star Trek got the OK to be a regular t.v. series. So how does one explain the "R" on the gravestone? Well you figure Gary Mitchell used his powers to create the tomb and despite being such a good friend of Kirk's he never knew Kirk's middle name, or had always mistaken Kirk's middle name for Rodney (no respect) or Rogers (as in mister). Or as a joke Mitchell used to refer to Kirk as the big "J.R." (Mitchell must have got hooked onto some 20th century entertainment tapes about the lives of rich oil people living in Texas.) Parwez Wahid DEC, Marlboro MA