"you never expected me to be anyone but Jim, who never expected anything more of you"

Nicely put!

Thanks for filling in what -- in the movie's limited time frame -- had seemed like a fairly superficial character, and an extremely superficial encounter that existed only so that Kirk would overhear Uhura's comment about the Klingon message. You really did a great job of making a meaningful connection between Gaila and the larger events in the movie.

(Also, thanks for the heads-up about the poor quality of the novelization -- that'll save me a few bucks!)

Thank you! I'd heard a little bit about Gaila's intended backstory beforehand, and was disappointed how much got cut from the final product, so I wanted to fill some back in. =)

(The novelization, as a book, is OK; as a novelization of the movie, it's just-- disappointing. ADF was clearly writing from a very old script, as much of the dialogue and action is severely off, and all of his character's internal voices sound the same).