Why Captain Kirk’s Best Star Trek Quote Resonates After 58 Years

There are certain lines of dialogue that become so famous they almost stop belonging to the movies and TV shows that produced them. “May the Force be with you.” “I’ll be back.” “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” You do not need to know the context because the words have long since transcended their original context.

Star Trek: The Original Series has plenty of those. Spock’s wish that everyone to “live long and prosper” is arguably the franchise’s signature phrase. He also turned the simple word “fascinating” into a catchphrase simply by raising one eyebrow before saying it. Dr. McCoy played by DeForest Kelley spent three seasons reminding everyone, “I’m a doctor, not a…” and declaring, “He’s dead, Jim” while standing over the latest redshirt who wandered a little too far from the landing party.

If I could only pick one line to represent everything Star Trek stands for, it would be four simple words spoken by Captain James T. Kirk played by William Shatner halfway through “Return to Tomorrow,” the 20th episode of season 2:

“Risk is our business.”

On the surface, it does not seem like an obvious choice. It is not printed on T-shirts nearly as often as “live long and prosper.” It is not endlessly quoted by people who have never watched an episode of Star Trek. Unlike “beam me up, Scotty,” it never became part of the broader pop culture vocabulary. That is exactly why it is the best quote. It does not just capture Captain James T. Kirk. It captures the entire philosophy of Star Trek.

First broadcast on February 9, 1968, the episode “Return to Tomorrow” finds the Enterprise answering a mysterious distress call from a dead planet. Captain James T. Kirk and his crew discover Sargon, one of three survivors of an ancient civilization that has existed as beings of pure energy for half a million years. Sargon asks Captain James T. Kirk, Spock played by Leonard Nimoy, and Dr. Ann Mulhall played by Diana Muldaur to temporarily surrender their bodies so he, his wife Thalassa, and the ambitious Henoch can build android bodies and begin life again. Dr. McCoy believes the aliens are manipulating them. Captain James T. Kirk believes the chance to learn from a civilization hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than humanity is worth the danger.

The episode also marks the first of three Star Trek appearances by Diana Muldaur. She plays Dr. Ann Mulhall here before returning as Miranda Jones in the third season episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” Years later, Diana Muldaur became a series regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation as Dr. Katherine Pulaski. “Return to Tomorrow” is also a fun piece of Trek trivia because it is one of the times Spock describes Sargon as “pure energy,” a phrase longtime fans immediately recognize.

Faced with allowing unimaginably powerful aliens to occupy the bodies of his crew, Captain James T. Kirk does not issue an order. He makes an argument and reminds his crew that every leap forward in human history required someone willing to embrace uncertainty.

Captain James T. Kirk says they used to say if man could fly, he would have wings, but he did fly and discovered he had to. He likens Sargon’s offer to humanity’s own journey from the Moon to Mars and eventually the stars, arguing that the potential for knowledge outweighs the danger. Only then does he arrive at the four words that define both the captain and the franchise. Those four words explain Captain James T. Kirk better than decades of pop-culture impressions ever could.

The real Kirk

For years, pop culture has reduced Captain James T. Kirk to an oversimplified caricature: the swaggering captain who punches first, flirts with every alien woman he meets, and somehow loses his shirt during every other away mission. The real Captain James T. Kirk is far more thoughtful than that. He takes risks, certainly, but not because he enjoys gambling. He takes them because he believes some opportunities are too important to ignore.

There is a world of difference between being reckless and accepting risk in pursuit of discovery. Captain James T. Kirk is not arguing that danger is exciting. He is arguing that progress is impossible without it.

More importantly, he is explaining what separates Starfleet from almost every other organization. Plenty of fictional explorers travel because they are ordered to. Others do it for conquest, profit, or survival. Starfleet goes because knowledge itself is worth pursuing.

That is why I think this quote is even more meaningful than the famous opening narration about boldly going where no one has gone before. The opening tells us what the Enterprise does. This one explains why.

The power of optimism

The timing of the episode makes the speech even more remarkable. “Return to Tomorrow” aired in early 1968, roughly 17 months before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. America was still trying to prove humans could successfully reach another world, and Star Trek was already imagining the next step beyond that. Captain James T. Kirk’s speech places the Enterprise in the same lineage as every explorer who came before it, suggesting humanity’s future will not be built by playing it safe.

That idea has become the beating heart of Star Trek. Optimism, in the Star Trek universe, has never meant believing everything will work out. It means believing the unknown is worth facing anyway.

There are more famous quotes in The Original Series. There are funnier ones. There are certainly more quotable ones. No other line distills what Star Trek has always been trying to say better than four words Captain James T. Kirk spoke nearly 60 years ago: “Risk is our business.”

Source: Polygon