Carol Marcus
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
 | |
| Gender: | Female |
| Species: | Human |
| Children: | One son, David Marcus (deceased: 2285) |
| Played by: | Bibi Besch |
Doctor Carol Marcus was one of the leading molecular biologists in the Federation. She devoted her life to her research.
During the late 2250s or early 2260s, Carol became involved with a young Starfleet officer named James T. Kirk, and in 2261 she gave birth to their son, David. However, she felt that they had no basis for a lasting relationship, with Kirk traveling around the universe while she worked in a lab, so she asked that Kirk leave her alone to raise the boy. That they both cared more for their careers than they did for each other was never disputed. As Carol saw it, she and Kirk lived in entirely different worlds, and she wanted her son to be raised in hers.
Carol continued with her work. She enjoyed much success, and in 2284 she proposed the most ambitious and potentially dangerous of her plans to the Federation, dubbed "Project Genesis". Once her proposal was accepted for Federation funding, she began a three-stage development process, accompanied by a highly skilled team of scientists which included her son, Dr. David Marcus.
She and her team made remarkable progress and by 2285 they were ready to try out their new invention. However, before they could find a suitable planet on which to test the Genesis Device, Khan Noonien Singh and his band of "supermen" intervened, bringing Kirk back into her and David's life.
Though she didn't share her son's mistrust of Starfleet, she was incensed when told that her project and all her files were to be taken by the crew of the USS Reliant, under orders of the new Admiral Kirk. She was determined to fight this unexpected incursion into her territory, though she was willing to give her former lover the benefit of the doubt. When it turned out to be Khan, not Kirk, who stole the Genesis Device, she gratefully accepted Kirk’s assistance.
Throughout the quest to save the device from Khan’s evil plans, it was apparent that, although Carol Marcus still felt affection for Kirk, her true love was her work. Even as havoc was erupting all around, she gazed on the glory of the Genesis Planet forming exactly as her specifications and years of research had indicated it would. The Genesis Project appeared to be a success, and her pride in her work was unmistakable.
The encounter with Khan gave Carol the opportunity to tell David who his father was and to mend some old wounds between her and Kirk. When her son was later killed by Klingons on the Genesis Planet, Carol was left with her projects and her research, the life that had sustained her for many years. (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
Almost a century later, in 2374, Captain Kathryn Janeway referred to Dr. Marcus in her Captain's log when she was in search of the omega molecule, and forced to face enforcing the Omega Directive. In her log she noted that in spite of her apprehensiveness, she knows now how Carol Marcus must have felt when she developed the Genesis Device, watching helplessly as science took a destructive course. Janeway, however, noted that unlike Marcus, she had at least chance to prevent it from happening. (VOY: "The Omega Directive")
[edit] Appendices
[edit] Background
Carol Marcus was played by actress Bibi Besch. Early drafts of Star Trek II featured Dr. Janet Wallace from "The Deadly Years" in the role of Kirk's old flame. It has also been suggested that Carol was the "blonde lab technician" Kirk was introduced to by Gary Mitchell years earlier, mentioned in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Of course it also could have been Janet Wallace or some other woman we never saw.
[edit] Apocrypha
According to the CD-ROM game Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Carol Marcus was assigned as the Chief of Research on a Federation Research Station, Ark-7, near the Romulan Neutral Zone, in 2268.
In the novelization of Star Trek III and Star Trek IV, the relationship between Kirk and Carol breaks down when she discovers Starfleet's intentions to hush up information about Genesis — something Kirk had nothing to do with. She elects instead to pay condolence calls on the families of the Regula One staff that were murdered by Khan. It is during one of these visits that she is informed of David's own slaughter.
At the beginning of the Star Trek VI novel, Carol is visiting one of the families again on the Themis colony (presumably over 15 years after the Genesis incident) when it is attacked by Klingons — presumably General Chang, using the prototype Bird-of-Prey that will later cause the Enterprise crew trouble. Carol is severely injured and on life support, news which affects Kirk deeply; over the years, he and Carol had healed the rift over David's death and became friends again, and they were planning on making a life together after his retirement. For this reason, his hatred of Klingons is even more extreme in the novel than in the movie — not only did they kill his son, they may have also killed his future life partner.
In William Shatner's novel The Ashes of Eden, Carol and Kirk are initially shown living together in Kirk's San Francisco apartment. However, their relationship seems strained due to Kirk's restlessness regarding his retirement. He ultimately decides to join the Klingon/Romulan hybrid Teilani on a mission to her homeworld, leaving Carol behind.
During the Genesis Wave series, it is revealed that Carol is still alive well into the twenty-fourth century, having been concealed on a distant planet during the Dominion War to prevent her knowledge from falling into the wrong hands. Despite the precautions taken to secure information about the Genesis Project, Carol is captured by a race of sentient plants capable of creating mental illusions, who trick her into creating the 'Genesis Wave', a wave of energy that terraforms all planets in its path into something that can be inhabitated by this species. However, Carol manages to shake off their illusions during a brief period of illness, and, accompanied by Maltz- one of the few Klingon survivors of the original Genesis catastrophe- she destroys the space station that would have launched a second Genesis Wave, both she and Maltz dying in the process.
