All told, I’d say it’s James T. Kirk who had the highest ration of shit heaped his way over the course of the series and movies. In his pilot episode (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”), he was forced to kill his best friend, Gary Mitchell. In “The City On The Edge Of Forever,” he was forced to let the love of his life die so humanity could prosper and a week later, “Operation — Annihilate!” showed the death of his brother and sister-in-law from a plague of flying parasites.

Over the course of the series, Kirk also: saw a trusted colleague betray him (“Court Martial”); was accused of heinous crimes after a transporter accident left his personality bisected (“The Enemy Within”); left an amazing woman behind in a parallel dimension (“Mirror, Mirror”); was forced to fight his other best friend to the death (“Amok Time”); left behind another amazing woman (“The Paradise Syndrome”).

Then we get into the movies, where we see him forced to face down his hubris and lose his best friend in the process (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) before he loses his ship and his recently-discovered son in the course of a single afternoon (Star Trek III: The Search For Spock).

The fact that he kept going after everything that happened to him speaks volumes about the strength of his character. Jim Kirk’s very career made him a magnet for tragic events but he kept going forward, kept…boldly going.

(And I didn’t even mention that when he was a youth, Jim Kirk witnessed the slaughter of thousands of innocents under the reign of Kodos the Executioner.)

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