Star Trek and Shirtless Kirk – Trope and Truth

I’ve been wondering: How often did William Shatner really lose his shirt in Star Trek: The Original Series?

I’m not obsessed with Mr. Shatner’s physique—though obviously he was quite the dashing leading man during the early days of Star Trek.

But recently, while tweeting with fellow fans during a TOS episode, I saw someone make a comment along the lines of, “Aaaaaaand there goes Kirk’s shirt! Take a drink!”

It got me wondering how frequently Star Trek viewers got to see the good captain’s bare torso.

“Everybody knows” Captain Kirk loses his shirt!

“Shirtless Kirk” is one of those things “everybody knows” about Star Trek, right?

It’s even the basis of a joke in the loving Star Trek parody film GalaxyQuest, when the late and great Alan Rickman’s Dr. Lazarus snaps at Tim Allen’s Kirk-esque Captain Taggart, “I see you managed to get your shirt off!”

Yep, “everybody knows” Captain Kirk gets his shirt off… just like “everybody knows” the “Beam me up, Scotty” catchphrase… which no one in the franchise ever said in just that way until 1995, when Shatner himself read the line in the audiobook version of his novel, The Ashes of Eden.

Could the bare-chested James T. Kirk be another piece of Star Trek lore “everybody knows”—and gets wrong?

As William Shatner and Star Trek fans celebrate his 90th birthday, it seemed the perfect time to get to the bottom—or the top—of the matter.

A dozen memorable episodes featuring a shirtless Kirk

I started my investigation by sitting down with a list of all 79 original Star Trek episodes. It’s the series I’ve known the longest and still know the best.

I marked the episodes I knew for certain contained scenes of a shirtless Jim Kirk, for one reason or other:

• “Where No Man Has Gone Before” – In Captain Kirk’s very first outing, his velour tunic gets ripped pretty good as he fights his old friend-turned-superbeing, Gary Mitchell.
• “The Corbomite Maneuver” – In Captain Kirk’s very first regular episode outing, he’s shirtless while huffing and puffing on McCoy’s medical table for crew physicals.
• “Charlie X” – Kirk strips to the waist before teaching Charles Evans how to fight in the ship’s gym.
• “The Naked Time” – Dr. McCoy rips Kirk’s sleeve open to give him a vaccine shot in the arm. (How very timely.)
• “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” – We actually get two completely clothes-less Kirks for the price of one, as Dr. Korby creates the captain’s android doppelganger.
• “Miri” – No “blah, blah, blah,” but plenty of Kirk’s bare arms and dangling sleeves.
• “Shore Leave” – Kirk fights another former acquaintance—or the synthesized image of one—and again ends up flashing some chest.
• “Amok Time” – I’ve always thought those bloody scratches Spock’s lirpa leaves behind on Kirk’s chest had to really smart, like chest-wide paper cuts.
• “Mirror, Mirror” – You can tell Evil Spock by his goatee, and Evil Kirk Green Wraparound by its lack of sleeves and plunging neckline.
• “A Private Little War” – When on planet Neural, wear as the Neuralian men wear, another sleeveless number. Plus, we get to goggle Kirk’s chest as Nona does do that voodoo that she does so well.
• “The Gamesters of Triskelion” – Captain Kirk with no top but a training harness? You bet your quatloos.
• “Patterns of Force” – We’re singing the Ekosian prison blues as Kirk and Spock end up shirtless in a Nazi jail cell. (If you’re more interested in the bare chest of Leonard Nimoy, this is the one and only time in Star Trek you’ll see it.)

Those were a dozen episodes I knew, without any research, showed us Captain Kirk without his shirt. That’s 15.19% of the original 79 episodes.

So far, Kirk far from “always” lost his shirt.

But I didn’t want to leave this question to my memory alone. I knew I needed to consult an outside source, both to confirm my recollections and point out instances I’d missed.