# So what happens if a cadet passes up the Kobayashi Maru? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 27, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467 "2013-05-27T16:11:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/41 "2013-05-28T16:53:57Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Sulu does exactly this in the 1989 novel _The Kobayashi Maru_ - just refuses to enter the Neutral Zone. Other authors have explored variations and I have to admit, the entire test seems more like an amusing role-playing game with little value as an actual training tool. Aside from starting _TWOK_ in a violently cool fashion, as well as introducing the Saavik character, I’m still unclear on what the test was supposed to accomplish. I like to think (meaning “fanwank”) that the test was intended to act as a starting point where the cadet(s) discuss and evaluate themselves (and what they thought they knew of themselves, not just their decisions) afterwards. “Cadet, why did you assume _x_?” “Cadet, you hestitated before ordering the evacuation of your ship. Why?” Knowing what biases you have, or what decision making processes you favor, etc., is an effort to try to get you to expand your leadership and decision making skillset. Also, the scenario also helps to point out that real life command decsions are sometimes going to fall in “grey areas” that the academy may not predict, and that the lesser of two bad decisions may be all that you can achieve. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/42 "2013-05-28T17:42:34Z")
> [@oft\_wears\_hats](#): > > Sulu does eventually make captain. Can’t remember the name of his ship, but I remember an episode of _Voyager_ where Tuvok was serving under him in a flashback. Though I’m sure whoever wrote that episode probably didn’t read _The Kobayashi Maru_. Sulu was first notified he was considered for command of the Excelsior in “STIII: The Search for Spock,” but his promotion was put on hold while Starfleet investigated the incident with Khan and the Genesis device. It was given to Captain Stiles and was the ship Scotty disabled so it couldn’t pursue the Enterprise when Kirk & crew hijacked it to get McCoy and Spock’s katra to Vulcan. Sulu later assumed command in “STVI: The Undiscovered Country,” which the Voyager episode “Flashback” makes direct reference to. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/43 "2013-05-28T18:13:41Z")
Ah, I’ve only seen ST movies 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 10, so I didn’t realize that Sulu’s command was previously addressed. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/44 "2013-05-28T19:02:36Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > I like to think (meaning “fanwank”) that the test was intended to act as a starting point where the cadet(s) discuss and evaluate themselves (and what they thought they knew of themselves, not just their decisions) afterwards. > > “Cadet, why did you assume _x_?” > > “Cadet, you hestitated before ordering the evacuation of your ship. Why?” > > Knowing what biases you have, or what decision making processes you favor, etc., is an effort to try to get you to expand your leadership and decision making skillset. > > Also, the scenario also helps to point out that real life command decsions are sometimes going to fall in “grey areas” that the academy may not predict, and that the lesser of two bad decisions may be all that you can achieve. Funny thing, none of this came through in the movie. As I recall, Kirk said to Saavik “Well, now you’ve got something to think about” and that was it. The novelization went into greater detail, but I guess Vonda McIntyre was trying to come up with some kind of rationalization to explain what was essentially just a “let’s kill everybody in the first five minutes and then reveal it was all just a ‘dream’” movie cold opening, hardly unique. Of course, the scene has a greater significance not for Saavik at all, but for Kirk, who is facing his own mortality and (eventually) that of his best friend. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/45 "2013-05-28T19:19:24Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Funny thing, none of this came through in the movie. As I recall, Kirk said to Saavik “Well, now you’ve got something to think about” and that was it. It’s not Kirk’s job to do all that. Maybe Spock’s. But in any case, I think when Starfleet had to reactivate the Enterprise due to loss of comms with the space lab, Saavik’s test results got sidelined. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/46 "2013-05-28T19:24:58Z")
Here’s the full quote from IMDB: **Saavik** : Permission to speak freely, sir? **Kirk** : Granted. **Saavik** : I do not believe this was a fair test of my command abilities. **Kirk** : And why not? **Saavik** : Because… there was no way to win. **Kirk** : A no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face. Has that never occurred to you? **Saavik** : No, sir, it has not. **Kirk** : And how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say? **Saavik** : As I indicated, Admiral, that thought had not occurred to me. **Kirk** : Well, now you have something new to think about. Carry on. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/47 "2013-05-28T19:27:49Z")
Yes, Spock’s “Trainees, to the briefing room” was far more detailed and richly layered with drama and philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/48 "2013-05-28T19:29:28Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Yes, Spock’s “Trainees, to the briefing room” was far more detailed and richly layered with drama and philosophy. You’re right. That’s why I called it “fanwanking”. ☹ Didn’t mean to annoy you. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/49 "2013-05-28T20:15:50Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > ☹ > > Didn’t mean to annoy you. You should have seen him in the ST:ENT threads! 😛 ST:ENT – talk about no win scenario… ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/50 "2013-05-28T22:35:26Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The novelization went into greater detail, but I guess Vonda McIntyre was trying to come up with some kind of rationalization to explain what was essentially just a “let’s kill everybody in the first five minutes and then reveal it was all just a ‘dream’” movie cold opening, hardly unique. Vonda McIntyre couldn’t write her way out of a wet paper bag. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/51 "2013-05-28T22:55:37Z")
> [@oft\_wears\_hats](#): > > Ah, I’ve only seen ST movies 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 10, so I didn’t realize that Sulu’s command was previously addressed. If you saw 6, that was “The Undiscovered Country.” Sulu was in command of the _Excelsior_. Of course, “Voyager” had not yet aired, so Tuvok wasn’t in the movie. He was retconned onto _Excelsior_ once the series aired. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2013, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/52 "2013-05-28T23:06:19Z")
I wonder if any cadets just straight up attacked the Kobayashi Maru with photon torpedos or something. Sort of like Speed’s “shoot the hostage” philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/53 "2013-05-29T01:25:43Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > If you saw 6, that was “The Undiscovered Country.” Sulu was in command of the _Excelsior_. Of course, “Voyager” had not yet aired, so Tuvok wasn’t in the movie. He was retconned onto _Excelsior_ once the series aired. I saw it a looooong time ago. And yet I remember that random _Voyager_ episode that featured Sulu. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/54 "2013-05-29T01:38:50Z")
> [@oft\_wears\_hats](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > If you saw 6, that was “The Undiscovered Country.” Sulu was in command of the Excelsior. Of course, “Voyager” had not yet aired, so Tuvok wasn’t in the movie. He was retconned onto Excelsior once the series aired. > > I saw it a looooong time ago. I read that in the voice of George Takei. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/55 "2013-05-29T01:44:20Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > I read that in the voice of George Takei. Oh, my. ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/56 "2013-05-29T01:58:11Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Vonda McIntyre couldn’t write her way out of a wet paper bag. :mad: I liked Vonda’s writing when I was younger. She did have some good qualities (I liked the fact that she worked a reference to “City On The Edge of Forever” into the STIV novelization, and I kind of like the Saavik/David romance) but she had one unfortunate tendency in her Trek novelizations…to spend FOREVER on the new characters and subplots she introduced into the story. Often, this wasn’t just expanding on the backstories of the existing characters like many novelizations do (including the much better ones by J.M. Dillard–she did V and VI as well as the Next Gen ones) but introducing people who hadn’t even shown up in the movies and then spending pages and pages on them. For example, she introduces Scotty’s niece (brother of his nephew Peter who died in TWOK) into her STIII novelization and dedicates what amounts to the majority of a chapter to her interactions with Scotty and others. And I’m not kidding–she goes on forever about ONE OF THE GARBAGEMEN in STIV. Furthermore, she junked what was there onscreen to make up her own story. In STIII, it was obvious that Valkris (the Klingon woman who transmitted the Genesis data to Kruge) was Kruge’s lover and that he was knowingly forced to kill her along with the spaceship crew for seeing the data. But instead, McIntyre erases all connection between them, makes up a different backstory for her, and hastily explains away the “and my love” line as “She did love him as the hope for her bloodline” or something like that. I mean, jeez, Vonda, wasn’t what was already there dramatic enough? By contrast, J. M. Dillard’s novelizations expanded on things in a much more organic way. She actually redeemed STV and added a subplot to STVI that made Kirk’s resurgence of hatred against the Klingons make even more sense. ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/57 "2013-05-29T02:17:49Z")
> [@oft\_wears\_hats](#): > > Not only that, but he asks the Kobayashi Maru what they were doing in the Neutral Zone in the first place. IIRC, their response had a bad smell and it made the scenario look fishy. Just the sort of thing that the Klingons or Romulans might whip up to start a war. IMO, Sulu’s apology and refusal to assist would have been an appropriate response. Call command, tell them you’ve got civilians stuck in enemy territory, and have Starfleet commence negotiations for their return. I really liked that novel. The topper on Sulu’s story is his relationship with his beloved great-grandfather. (Hope you don’t mind open spoilers, but the previous posts had them, so…) Hikaru has always had a very close relationship with his great-grandfather, who for years has been living with a cancerous brain tumor, keeping it in check with treatment. Eventually, however, it begins to get the better of him, and he opts not to continue with treatment, reasoning that all it would do is get him a few more months–and those without even much quality of life. Or, as he explains to Hikaru, after over a hundred years he wants to say goodbye to life while he’s still on good terms with it–he doesn’t want to end up hating life even as he holds onto it. Hikaru is upset by this not wanting to lose his great-grandfather, and goes back to the Academy still angry at him. After a few more weeks, he gets a message that Poppy has passed away peacefully. A day or so later is his Kobayashi Maru test, and as other posters have pointed out, he opts to pass the ship by, alerting the authorities, and not risk his crew’s life over what may be a trap. He has taken his great-grandfather’s lesson to heart–to choose to live as long as there is something to live for. (You can actually read the whole novel [here.)](http://members.tripod.com/nerd_42/maru.html) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/58 "2013-05-29T18:32:25Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Yes, Spock’s “Trainees, to the briefing room” was far more detailed and richly layered with drama and philosophy. So they had a briefing room. What do you think was discussed in there? Anyways, my assumption is that, if you pass up the _Kobayashi Maru_, the Klingons use its presence in the Neutral Zone as justification to destroy both it and you, starting an interstellar war. Since you don’t know that the other outcomes also would have caused similar results, you think you’ve failed. For a “no-win scenario” to work, there must be no way to actually win. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/59 "2013-05-29T19:01:59Z")
Another possibility if you leave the Kobayashi Maru alone is that you have to stay on station, on your side of the Neutral Zone, and watch the civilians be killed, listening to increasingly desperate and dire distress calls. That would also test the character of the command cadet. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2013, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467/60 "2013-05-29T19:06:36Z")
As more and more of your “crew” plead/challenge/revile you. The next step would be one of the “plants” staging a mutiny. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-happens-if-a-cadet-passes-up-the-kobayashi-maru/659467.md?page=4)