For anyone who hasn’t seen the film there’s a very mild spoiler ahead, but anything more major will be boxed.
Mild Spoiler
There’s a scene in the new movie which features the Kobayashi Maru simulator program, which was previously used in STAR TREK II. It’s a computer program designed (in both movies) by Spock in which the cadets in training must come to the rescue of a fictitious starship, the Kobayashi Maru, that is under an attack that there is no possible way of winning.
My question (as somebody who followed the original series but doesn’t qualify as a Trekkie or Trekker) is what is the purpose of this exercise?
I know part of it is to see how the person would react to a no-win situation, but the problem would seem to be that everybody knows going in the K-M is unwinnable, thus it wouldn’t really be any more of a real gauge than seeing how somebody does in World of Warcraft would do in an actual swordfight.
Or is it to see if somebody can actually win?
Or is it a different program everytime, except for the name of the ship in need of rescue?
Thanks for any answers. (And again, if anything major is spoiled from the new movie please box it.)
I think it just gives Starfleet recruits a chance to wreck a ship without actually wrecking a ship. Like, it’s not a party until something gets broke? Same thing- you ain’t a commander until you’ve wrecked your command.
And wrecking shit is fun. But I don’t think this is what Spock had in mind while he was programming it.
That, and to give the kids a feel for the real world, in which no-win situations are distressingly common, and force them to accept it. These kids are “the best of the best,” who will be pushing into areas that cannot be imagined and situations that cannot be anticipated. Up 'til now they’ve been coasting–life’s been easy because they are smarter and more clever than everybody else–and have never had to make hard decisions. Kirk cheated to win, but that inability to admit that he could lose followed him through his career, to his detriment and that of his crew. Sure, he pulled it off at the last second, but that’s because it was TV and his (Shatner’s) name was the first on the credits. In real life Kirk’s luck would probably not have held, and people would’ve died unnecessarily and he’d likely be court martialled for being a swaggering tool. He never learned that, nor did he learn that there were options other than the one he took. Hell, in “reel” life, even his foolhardy decisions usually resulted in a slap on the hand.
The simulation is written to ensure that any course of action will result in failure, so I’d guess that the instructors want to see how someone handles the situation (staying calm and poised as opposed to flipping out) and maybe there are ways of reducing casualties even if they can’t be eliminated completely.
I’m a Trek nerd, so I’ll admit that this reminded me of the episode of TNG in which Counselor Troi wants to take the test to be a commander and she keeps failing the simulation because she tries to get through it without anyone dying. Finally she realizes that the only way to save the ship is to send Geordi to his death on a repair mission from which he can’t possibly return. She passes the test and Riker explains that sometimes while in command it’s necessary to make hard decisions for the good of the ship and crew.
As Spock famously said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one.”
I think the government requires an agency on the set to make sure no red shirts are actually injured during production (part of the the Enterprise Away Team Safety and Protection Act Motion [EAT-SPAM] of '83).
The K-M of the new movie is dumber than the original. IIRC, in ST2 part of the test is that in order to try to save the crippled ship you have to violate the neutral zone and risk a war that would be far more serious than the loss of one ship. What you do in that situation might tell them something about how you will act as a captain.
However, in the new movie, the scenario starts with “the ship is disabled and starfleet has ordered us to rescue it” - that takes the real decision out of your hands and now it’s just a tactical simulation where you try to fight impossible odds. A much less interesting and useful scenario.
I always thought it was a standard observation under stress test. Does the cadet brainlock? Start yelling at the computer, or step outside of the excersize and start whinning at his instructor? Or does he maintian his military bearing, as we called in when I was in boot camp, and soldier on appropriately.
This would be my opinion on why such a simulation would be useful. A commander who thinks he’s unbeatable is much more likely to get himself into a situation where he’ll be beaten. The Kobayashi Maru simulation will show future commanders that there are some situations they can’t win and that sometimes running away is the best option.
Well, Spock had time to improve the test by the time he was Captain. He doesn’t even seem to have a firm grasp on its purpose in the new movie. It is only a few years old, y’know.
Of course it’s entirely possible that there are actually several different scenarios. After all, Wesley Crusher faced a different test when he was at Starfleet Academy.
In fact, it may be that the K-M is Starfleet’s version of Room 101.
The movie did say Spock had programmed it ‘for the last (3, 4 ?) years’, not ‘4 years ago’; it’s a new version annually it seems. They should change the name annually as well to keep the cadets from knowing what it is before they enter the room.
Wesley’s test was the first thing that came to my mind when I entered this thread. But there is a critical difference between Wesley’s test and the K-M. Namely, Wesley knew he’d get tested, and he knew that the test would be adapted for his own fears, but he never knew WHEN the test would occur, and when it finally did come, he mistook it for a real event.
In sharp contrast, Kirk (or Saavik, as the case may be) enters the bridge, with the full knowledge that “Okay, here we go, it’s going to be a no-win scenario. Let’s show them how well you can handle it.” What kind of test is that? Any psychologists around? I can’t believe that Starfleet - or even the testee himself - would gain any useful information from this fake test. The testee has to think it is real for any validity at all.
IIRC, Troi’s test (which Rainbowthief cited) was NOT a Kobayashi Maru. It did illustrate a useful point of these simulations, which is to see whether the testee will come up with a good strategy. But that is manifestly NOT the point of the Kobayashi Maru. The opening of Star Trek II, and the closing of Star Trek III, make it very clear that the point of the K-M is not “can you figure out how to win” but rather “how do you deal with losing”.
I didn’t get the impression that the test was widely known by the cadets to be unwinnable, just that no one had ever won it. In the movie (the current movie), when Spock accused Kirk of cheating by changing the program, Kirk accused Spock of cheating by making the program unwinnable – and, by inference, presenting it as winnable, or implying it was winnable, because otherwise that wouldn’t be a “cheat.”
I don’t recall how the K-M was presented in the other movie, but again, I didn’t gather from this movie that the cadets knew going in that the test was unwinnable. I agree that with Sampiro that if you knew that, the test would be kind of pointless. Everyone would do the same thing – the most noble, captain-ish thing – knowning that they could not possibly win the test.
Excellent point, truly excellent. And I thank you, because now I understand that scene mich better. (I had some trouble understanding why Kirk accused Spock of cheating, but this makes it extremely clear.)
But over the subsequent decades – perhaps even immediately after Kirk’s win – it became well-known as being unwinnable.
If my memory serves, it is clearly stated in Star Trek II that it is a test of character, nothing else. Even if you knew before taking the test, it still tests your character. In real life, you know that no-win situations are possible, and must have the brains and balls to snatch the smallest loss possible out of the jaws of utter catastrophe…TRM
