Benjamin Finney

Benjamin Finney was a human Starfleet officer and instructor who served during the 23rd century.

Biography
In the late 2240s and early 2250s decades, Lieutenant Finney was serving as an instructor at Starfleet Academy. At the time he was the youngest officer to ever serve as an instructor and often felt isolated from his colleagues. When James T. Kirk entered the Academy in the year2250, Finney and Kirk soon became good friends, and Finney even named his daughter, Jamie Finney, after Kirk.

However, that friendship was severely strained in early 2251, when Finney and Kirk were assigned to a training mission aboard the starshipUSS Republic. When Kirk relieved Finney of duty when he was monitoring the ship's impulse engines, Kirk discovered that Finney had left the atomic matter piles open. Kirk closed the piles and reported the incident to Captain Rollin Bannock. Bannock reprimanded Finney and sent him to the bottom of the promotions list.

Finney became extremely resentful of Kirk when Kirk was given command of the USS Enterprise, a command Finney believed should have gone to him instead. After Kirk took command of the Enterprise, he had Finney assigned to the ship, not realizing how Finney felt about him. Gary Mitchell, however, had overheard Finney complaining about Kirk and alerted him to what Finney had said. Following Mitchell's death, Kirk's personnel officer recommended Finney to replace Mitchell as first officer. Now knowing how Finney felt about him Kirk refused to do so and instead named Mr. Spock as his new first officer.

In mid-2267, as a records officer on the Enterprise, Finney saw his chance to have his revenge on Kirk. After an ion storm, he went into hiding, leading the crew of the Enterprise to believe that he was dead. Finney tampered with the computer records of the Enterprise, and when Kirk gave a sworn statement, the Enterprise computers contradicted his statement and Kirk was forced to stand in front of a court martial board. Finney sabotaged the Enterprise shortly before he was exposed in an attempt to kill a number of high ranking officers. Kirk repaired the damage, and the bridge crew was able to save the Enterprise. All the charges against Kirk were then dropped.

Afterwards, Finney was himself charged for his actions following the storm. Samuel Cogley, who had defended Kirk in his court martial, took on Finney as a client, and was confident that he could get Finney acquitted.

Finney however was found guilty of his crimes and was sent to the New Zealand Penal Settlement. He was still incarcerated there when Kirk visited him in the 2290s. By then Finney was due to be released a short time later. Finney's daughter Jamie and her wife intended to take Finney in once that happened. Even though Finney no longer hated Kirk and had forgiven him for his past actions, he informed Captain Kirk that it was probably best that Kirk make no further attempts to contact him, feeling it would interfere with the progress of his rehabilitation.