What Is Captain Kirk's 'Casino Royale'? Paul Wesley Picks His Favorite Classic 'Star Trek' Episode
For 60 years, the name “Captain Kirk” has been synonymous with humor, bravery, intelligence, and the kind of masculinity that’s easy to admire. “Everyone’s a superhero, everyone’s a Captain Kirk,” Nena sang in the 1983 pop song “99 Red Balloons,” and today, with superheroes showing no signs of going anywhere in pop culture, the legend of Captain Kirk looms larger than ever. Since 2022, following in the footsteps of William Shatner and Chris Pine, the incumbent James T. Kirk has been whiskey expert and all-around cool guy Paul Wesley, starring as the younger Lt. Commander Kirk in the popular Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
As Strange New Worlds Season 4 heads into its final episodes, many of these adventures are very Kirk-heavy, and in the just-aired Episode 8, “Orders of Magnitude,” Wesley has turned in a classic Trek performance, full of complex space battles, debates about doing the right thing, and a lot of guts. And, with the impending Season 4 finale, Wesley teases even more action from Kirk behaving like a captain, and not just another guy in Starfleet. As Star Trek celebrates its 60th anniversary and Strange New Worlds airs a batch of can’t-miss episodes, Men’s Journal caught up with Wesley to get a sense of his version of Captain Kirk, what makes a great hero, and why he thinks one 1967 Star Trek adventure explains why Kirk is the way he is. Mild spoilers ahead.
Paul Wesley is giving us James T. Kirk’s leadership evolution
In the latest episode of Strange New Worlds, Lt. Commander Kirk gets put under the command of a visiting higher-ranking officer, Admiral Reeger, as played by beloved actor Joe Morton. But Kirk and Reeger don’t see eye-to-eye on how to attack a hidden enemy ship, which leads to Kirk having to stand up to Reeger while millions of lives hang in the balance.
“If you’re going classic Trek, this is classic Trek,” Wesley tells Men’s Journal, talking about the new episode. “This episode was, for lack of a better word, less about gimmicks, and more just straight character drama, which is really what I love. Plus, Joe Morton is a theater actor, and I felt like playing with Joe was perfect.”
What does Wesley mean by “classic Trek?” Well, that although the drama takes place in space, the sci-fi aspect is almost secondary to the face-to-face conflict. In “Orders of Magnitude,” Kirk doesn’t just face off with Reeger, but has to step up and think of himself more as a captain, which teases more development in the coming season finale. “I realized that if Kirk is going to be captain, he has to have confidence, and a way of speaking in which people trust you,” Wesley says. “He can show vulnerability, but in a private scene with someone where he opens up.”
Does Captain Kirk’s emotional origin story come from a classic tragic episode?
Speaking of Captain Kirk’s vulnerability, Wesley has given a great deal of thought to how William Shatner was able to alternate between hardass Kirk and softer Kirk. Recently, the actor was in conversation with Shatner for Interview Magazine, which, in a sense, mirrored the duality of the Captain Kirk heroic archetype, alternating between emotional and practical.
“We ended up just having this organic conversation that was flowy and just went all over the place and was vulnerable,” Wesley says. “It was so cool. He’s a very insightful and creative guy.”
So, as Star Trek celebrates its diamond anniversary, what does Paul Wesley consider to be the GOAT in terms of classic Star Trek episodes?
“There’s this kind of cliché notion about Kirk that he’s like just a playboy,” Wesley says. “But it’s not true. And you can see it’s not true in an episode called ‘The City on the Edge of Forever.'”
Wesley is referring to the beloved 1967 episode, written by firebrand Harlan Ellison, and often considered a defining moment of Star Trek. In order to correct history, Kirk and Spock go back in time to 1930, where Kirk falls in love with a social worker named Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), who is doomed to die to keep history on track. And because Kirk has to give up his true love in order to save the universe, Wesley points out that this is much like James Bond’s Casino Royale moment: the idea that Kirk was broken by tragedy, which made him even more hardened.
“I love the romantic side of Kirk. There was just something so awesome about it. It goes down as being one of the best episodes because….he obviously was very hurt, and then he goes back to being this relatively stoic guy,” Welsey says. “The classic show was so self-contained and episodic that you really didn’t get much character development. And for some reason, that episode always stuck with me because it felt like it explained Kirk in many ways.”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: The Original Series stream on Paramount+. You can check out Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder’s Brother’s Bond whiskey in the Men’s Journal Spirit Shop right here.
source https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/paul-wesley-star-trek-captain-kirk-best-episode
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