THE KELVIN INCIDENT It’s the year 2387, and a star that is about to go supernova has the potential to wipe out the whole galaxy. A Vulcan plan to detonate Red Matter, to form a black hole that will consume the exploding star, is put into action – but the star explodes shortly before the Red Matter-carrying vessel arrives, destroying the homeworlds of the Romulan Star Empire, Romulus and Remus. Further destruction is thwarted at the last minute when the Red Matter payload is detonated, but the little Vulcan ship responsible is confronted by a massive Romulan mining vessel, the Narada, commanded by Nero – a Romulan hell-bent on revenge for the destruction of his home planets. Both starships are sucked into the singularity, and through a rip in the space-time continuum…
… Over 150 years earlier, the arrival of the Narada irrevocably alters the timeline when it destroys the U.S.S. Kelvin, along with its heroic first officer, George Kirk. Kirk’s wife, Winona, escapes aboard a medical shuttle, while giving birth to the couple’s son, Jim. Growing up in Iowa without his father’s guidance, James Tiberius Kirk becomes a cynical rebel who gets caught up in barroom brawl with a group of Starfleet cadets, after he tries to hit on their fellow student, Nyota Uhura. The fight is broken up by Captain Christopher Pike, who knows who Kirk is, and goads him into joining Starfleet by daring the cocky Kirk to better his father’s feat of saving 800 lives in only 12 minutes of command. On the shuttle to Starfleet Academy, Kirk meets Leonard McCoy, a recently divorced fellow cynic who has joined Starfleet as a last recourse. The two immediately become firm friends.
The U.S.S. Kelvin takes on Nero's fearsome Narada, in Star Trek (2009)
THE KOBAYASHI MARU SCENARIO Three years later, Kirk finds himself under disciplinary action for cheating on the Academy’s Kobayashi Maru test – a battle simulation for which there is no winning scenario. Kirk’s hearing brings him face-to-face with the simulation’s programmer, the halfhuman/half-Vulcan Commander Spock. However, when Spock’s homeworld issues a distress call, all cadets are called up for duty on an emergency rescue mission – all except for a grounded Kirk! Recognizing similar warning signs that appeared before the destruction of the Kelvin, Kirk gets McCoy to smuggle him onto Pike’s ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, to warn the captain.
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STAR TREK MAGAZINE
Kirk is stranded on Delta Vega
George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth)