Question 1 is why I don’t have an answer for the scenario; it depends on my standing orders. I expect the answer is “Humanitarian relief at captain’s discretion assuming short and limited blah blah blah.”
Question 2 deals with one of the more fuzzy subjects in the star trek universe: Communication range and speed. I think it was generally the case that reporting back to the home office took a meaningful amount of time each way (in the original series), though I wouldn’t swear to the consistency of the continuity.
Yes, one thing that I’ve noticed is that occasionally when they’re out on the edge of the Federation it takes ‘3 hours’ or whatever to get in touch with command, however once the contact is established, it’s a face-to-face video chat with absolutely no lagtime.
Which initially sounds like a :smack:, but there are ways to fanwank it, I suppose. Like that the ultra-high-speed subspace tranceivers require that each side know the galactic co-ordinates of the other, and the local starbase can’t keep its tranceiver occupied tracking the Enterprise’s movements.
So, when they need to call in, they send a slower message saying essentially, “Starbase 213, Captain Picard would like to route through a communique to Admiral Jenkins. Please connect us to Altair 5 ASAP. We will be holding position at these co-ordinates.” (Or “We will be proceeding at warp 4 along this heading towards the Bynar homeworld.”)
Starbase orients the transceivers appropriately, and you’re in business to chat away with Jenkins, not that he’ll do you any good.
Communications with Federation command typically operate at the “speed of plot”, as J. Michael Strazynski would say. If the plot demands that the ship not be able to instantaneously be in touch, it won’t be.
You also don’t want commanders to constantly rely on orders from Starfleet Command - they must be able to think/react on thier feet.
Most of the time, you hear Kirk say “Notify Starfleet Command…” only on rare occasions (taking command of the ship later in TWOK) do you hear him say " I want to talk to starfleet command".
Comapre that with the Commander of the USS Grissom at the beginning of ST3 - that wants guidance on every little_ thing.
Even so, taking an important test is stressful – I’m sure the cadets are under pressure to do well and become increasing frustrated / frantic when they can’t figure out the answer, in front of the Admiral and other top brass.
Leaders have to make the best decision possible with the available information. The Federation commander does not know that the Kobayashi Maru is a decoy ship. In any event, I don’t know the intricacies of the Neutral Zone treaty, but the whole scenario seems a bit forced to me.
Responding to an emergency distress call is a valid reason to cross a proscribed boundary. If it turned out to be a trap, what did the Klingons have to gain from this? Surely an alert, well-armed Federation warship could take out at least one of the Klingon ships before being destroyed, so it’s not like the Klingons would come out unscathed.
If a single Federation ship is so vulnerable, maybe Federation doctrine should be changed, and they should travel in battle groups.
So in short, I would not ignore the distress call. I would:
[ol][li]Send a message to Federation HQ outlining the situation.[/li][li]Man battle stations and raise shields for maximum defensive capability.[/li][li]Enter the Neutral Zone to attempt the rescue.[/li][li]Be on the alert for Klingon warships. If surprised by them (as the scenario dictates), attempt to negotiate, and, failing that, fire on them first if any aggressive moves were made (e.g. charging weapons, etc.)[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
According to the book (which is a jolly good read :)), entering the Neutral Zone is ‘a direct violation of Treaty’. The Klingons promptly declare war.
If told you are on a rescue mission, they ignore you and attack. They will even follow you out of the Neutral Zone. :eek:
As for the ‘freighter’, I agree you can’t tell it’s a decoy (although their only explanation for being in the Neutral Zone is ‘we must have slipped course’ :smack: )
My point is that Sulu achieves the best possible result from the scenario.
He asks what the Kobayashi Maru is doing there, notes that the ‘freighter’ can’t be seen on scanners and refuses anyway to breach the Neutral Zone with a Constitution-class Starship as it would be an act of war.
He tries to contact the nearest Starfleet base to get Klingon permission to enter the Zone.
And avoids interstellar war!
Star Trek Online (a MMORG) is in development. On their forum, they post “KM-like” scenarios.
The latest one they did posits that you and your crew comes down with a deadly disease, curable only by a plant (that can’t be replicated) rumored to grow on a planet somewhere in Romulan space, and is the sole nurishment for a sentient, non-warp-capable race. What do you do?"
There were a lot of posters replying that they would be taking their ships across the Neutral Zone, usually “covertly”.
I was thinking, “I would check in to Star Fleet Medical, let them get all the samples they need for research, load up some Orion porn, and die with a smile on my face.” Not glamorous enough for TV or books, true, but really. Romured to be on some planet? And I am to risk war? snort
I think I remember reading once that Roddenberry said this (before I had read Hornblower myself), and either he didn’t get Hornblower at all, or he had no control over Star Trek (which other accounts seem to contradict.) I mean, the infamous Stephen Ratliff apparently read Hornblower before his last work (based not only on all the naval stuff, but on the specific names of minor characters), and didn’t get any idea about interesting characters, compelling battle scenes or similar from a good writer like Forrester.
Similar, if Roddenberrry wanted Kirk to be a Hornblower, he should have never taken Shatner, with his “charge-ahead, think later, or preferrably, not at all” approach of cowboy heroics.
To me, the dialogue in the cave, when Kirk admits to cheating, highlights how immature Kirk (at this point middle age) is, and how cowardly he shys away from dealing with things like death. Reading Shatners own books only underscores the contempt for him as not-heroic guy.
Not if the computer is rigged, and it’s a test of character. If good leaders aren’t supposed to believe, then you end up with people (I don’t want to drag current events into this, so I won’t name examples) who simply refuse to accept reality.
From a bigger perspective, you win the simulation if you don’t start a war by violating the border; but you still loose the freighter through this.
I’m all for alternative, lateral, creative thinking outside the box, and seeing things from more than the simplistic black/white view. But in real life, you have dozens of situations - from small to big - where both parties loose (or both win, but that’s rarer). Looking at the greater good of avoiding a war doesn’t help you achieve the goal of saving the KM.
A leader who can’t accept reality and face tough decisions, who wants to have happy hollywood endings, like Kirk, is a bad leader.
Indeed, beginning with Hornblower, the standard Hero, R.N. has a flaw. Hornblower became seasick on each voyage, another author’s protagonist was afraid of heights, etc. Kirk has no flaw, save getting really, really pissed off if you tear his shirt.
I remember it different - the examiner had outlined the situtation to Hornblower of sailing along, and then one spar had broken or similar, a sudden change had turned everything on his head. Hornblower hadn’t expected this and was completly frozen, and because he didn’t react, the situation of his hypothetical ship got worse as wind and tide carried it on the rocks. (That is until the enemy - French or Spaniards - showed up with fire ships in the harbor, and Hornblower went away with two officers for a brave rescue operation. At the end when he complained about having to wait several months for the next exam, the officer reminded him gently that his hypothetical ship was on the rocks and he would have failed, (which would have meant a far longer waiting period), so he was saved by the alarm bell and should be grateful.
Hornblower not only got seasick, he was also afraid of heights, too. But that was a problem mostly in the later books when he was a young cadet and lieutant and had to climb the masts and deploy the sails on cutting expeditions; as a captain, he only had to deal with his seasickness. I believe Forrester was mostly inspired by Nelson for this - he wrote a biography about Nelson, too - as a real-life hero with a brilliant tactic brain but weak body.
But what makes Hornblower far more interesting to me is not only the physical problems, but his eternal self-doubts which we get to see from the narrators POV, and which Forrester set up deliberatly. He didn’t want a shining hero, because he didn’t believe that. Kirks attitude (apparently greatly influenced by Shatners own personality) of “I’m the hero, I’m right and save the day” is the complete anti-thesis to Hornblower’s character and Forrester’s style and beliefs.
Did that happen to Jack Aubrey, also? I confuse those guys, although I’d rather serve with Aubrey who ran away from the 100 gun Whatchamacallit in the small frigate * Surprise,* than Hornblower who would go after the Spanish Armada with a time machine, a whale boat with Bush to row and two flintlocks.
If you start a war, there will be losses. But it’s very important to be the innocent side. So the Klingons would gain the righteousness of being attacked, even if they lost the first ship.
And the trap isn’t by the Klingons. The point is that the Klingons deny the rescue because they believe the Federation faked the distress, that it’s a pretense to cross the border for some other purpose. It doesn’t matter if the KM is really an innocent ship or whether the Federation (Section 31, maybe) is spying - if you can’t convince the Klingons that your intentions are honourable and innocent, and they continue to deny, then you would violate the treaty. It’s not as if similar problems haven’t happend on Earth.
The question isn’t how vulnerable a single ship is. They are not in open war, like WWII, where ships traveled in convoys, but they have a treaty. To guard a border, a nominal force is enough. The US soldiers in West Germany during the cold war could never have stopped 1 million Soviets in the Russian Army; but the Russians couldn’t have crossed the border without attacking, and that would have started a real war. When you draw a line in the sand, you watch it, and only if the line is violated do you start the fight.
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So in short, I would not ignore the distress call. I would:
[ol][li]Send a message to Federation HQ outlining the situation.[/li][li]Man battle stations and raise shields for maximum defensive capability.[/li][li]Enter the Neutral Zone to attempt the rescue.[/li][li]Be on the alert for Klingon warships. If surprised by them (as the scenario dictates), attempt to negotiate, and, failing that, fire on them first if any aggressive moves were made (e.g. charging weapons, etc.)[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Not if the Klingons deny entry because they believe the Fed. is lying. There have been enough Earth examples during the Cold War of the US using something as cover for spy missions.
The original call in the simulation was garbled and interrupted. Insert favourite space problem that affects long-term radio transmission - sun spots or sub-space holes, whatever, technobabble - which means communication is cut off.
Besides, if HQ says “Leave the KM alone, we don’t want to start a war” would Kirk have obeyed it? (Who doesn’t even obey the prime directive?) Would it be easier for the cadets just because they follow orders?
I don’t know, I haven’t read Aubrey. Other dopers in an older discussion thread said that Aubrey was created by the author on purpose to be the opposite of Hornblower, because the author thought Hornblower too wimpy or not enough man or something for having doubts and being afraid, so apparently Aubrey is a Kirk-type of man. And plays a musical instrument, while Hornblower is tone-deaf.
What time-machine are you talking about? That’s too easy for Hornblower And don’t forget, the men always loved serving under him (as the narrator tells us), because there was action and excitment and a good chance of winning. (And Hornblower himself is puzzled by the admiration, feels unworthy of it, and thinks the men are idiots for wanting action when they can die).
If the plot demands that the ship not be able to instantaneously be in touch, it won’t be.