American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"Star Trek Into Darkness" (2013)

Captain James T. Kirk Addresses Crew at the Rechristening Ceremony for the USS Enterprise

There will always be those who mean to do us harm. To stop them, we risk awakening the same evil within ourselves.

Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are taken from us.

But that's not who we are.

We are here today to rechristen the USS Enterprise, and to honor those who lost their lives nearly one year ago.

When Christopher Pike first gave me his ship he had me recite the Captain's Oath -- words I didn't appreciate at the time.

Now, I see them as a call for us to remember who we once were, and, who we must be again -- and those words:

Space:

The final frontier.

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.

Her 5-year mission:

To explore strange new worlds,

To seek out new life and new civilizations,

To boldly go where no one has gone before.