General Trek Questions and Observations

Perhaps the gravitic minefield pulled the Kobayashi Maru out of her shipping lane and into the neutral zone where one of the mines disabled her, and the Klingons had set up the minefield to trap a freighter and use it as bait to provoke a war.

 

I think that's the manual switch lever, having been removed and turned into a bludgeon.

 

Better still.

 

I've always had a bit of a problem with Kirk's 'I don't believe in no-win scenario's', since these do actually exist. There are situations where there really isn't any way to win, and there's no way out, either, and denying that these situations do exist comes across as being just plain dumb or arrogant (in my eyes).

But since some time, I've come to interpret his comments (and his solution to the Kobiyashi Maru) as : 'When faced with a seemingly no-win scenario, don't assume too quickly it really is no-win, there might be an unconventional way out.' I also think that's why Starfleet awarded him a commendation for original thinking, rather than punishing him for cheating.

 

The Kobiashi Maru is a test of character. Kirk's solution to it showed how he would face down an "unwinnable" situation: he would find a way to win. Like that bumblebee, the one who shouldn't be able to fly but damn if it doesn't fly anyway.

 

Random question, I was watching a Star Trek Online playthrough video (I don't play it myself) and saw a rather nice looking ship class with a very long, cylindrical engineering hull, two drooped circular nacelles, and a fairly long thin saucer. Can't find the video but would love to know the name of the class if anyone recognises it from my description! Era would be late 24th / early 25th century.

Edit: should point out, I lost the video link too. Oof.

 

Why not post a picture or link with time index?

 

The test is a bit like Schrodinger's cat. If you choose to save the freighter, it was a Klingon trap all along. If you choose to stay out of the Neutral Zone, it really is a ship in distress.

 

It can be both. If you choose to stay out of the Neutral Zone, there's no reason that the Klingons would tip their hand that it had been a trap.

 

I can't find the video

 

Either the distressed ship is just barely inside the Neutral Zone, or then the simulation features time compression. After all, it only takes seconds for Saavik to hit forbidden space (and a further projected two minutes to reach the distress location specified), and there are no cuts in that part of the action.

Simulations are free to feature time compression. But if the Kobayashi Maru is just barely inside the NZ, this whole thing is no biggie. There could have been a slight navigation error that immediately sealed the fate of the ship since the Zone was heavily mined. Saavik never commands warp, so for all we know, the fuel carrier hit the mine just two meters into the wrong side, and then drifted those two impulse-minutes deeper in.

"Deadly Years" nicely established that bold skippers in this neighborhood can skim valuable time from their journey by violating the Zone. Neutronic fuel might fetch a better price if delivered swiftly...

Timo Saloniemi

 

No, because successfully avoiding a Klingon trap would be a win. Once communication with "Starfleet" is established you will discover there was no lost ship, and thus you beat the test. And that can't happen.

 

I think we're getting cross-wired. The ship always exists and is lost. Successfully avoiding the Klingon trap by staying out of the Neutral Zone still loses the ship, even if you never confirm the trap was set and they were ready to pounce. The ship has lost power and everyone aboard will die, from life support failure, if nothing else and if they don't hit another mine first.

 

As the audience, I think we are meant to assume that there actually was a ship in the scenario, stuck in the Neutral Zone and needing rescuing. But in this discussion we've just been going on the tongue-in-cheek hypothetical possibility I raised on the previous page, that in Saavik's test, the Kobayashi Maru vessel didn't really exist. After all, the (simulated) Enterprise never actually confirmed its existence on sensors or on visuals. They rushed into the Zone with no effort to confirm that what they were hearing on comms was real, and then sensors picked up the Klingon ships, but not the KM, and then the viewscreen showed the Klingon cruisers, while the KM was nowhere to be seen (disregarding real-world budgetary constraints that required re-use of existing footage).

Even if that was the case, it's still possible for the program to be adaptive based on the testee's course of action, and probably some random factors to make the scenario a little different each time. You take the test one week, and you are deep within the Zone and it turns out there is no Kobayashi Maru; it was all a Klingon ruse to lure you to your doom. So you take the test again next week thinking you've got it all figured out, and this time you stay outside the Zone to play it safe. But long-range sensors somehow detect that the ship was real after all right at the moment of its destruction, and comms pick up the helpless screams of the dying crew as they curse you with their last breath for not coming to their aid. So then you have another go the week after that, thinking that the very first test must have been a fluke, and you try to go into the Zone at Ludicrous Speed to get to the ship before the Klingons, but you get there just in time to see it get blown to smithereens. Or the Kobayashi Maru goes headfirst into an asteroid before you can get within transporter range. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Anyway, I was kinda joking about the vessel not actually existing.

Kor

 

I get that.

But also, the simulation could have the Klingons interfering with sensors somehow and doing so in a way that Federation science doesn't understand, so that no matter what teching of the tech the cadets try in the simulation nothing will work to cut through the interference. That sort of interference could be programmed in the test along the lines you say, by making the simulation program reactive and adaptive so that the interference cannot be defeated no matter what the cadets try. But it's not necessarily a cheat per se, because a) having encounters with adversaries who possess superior technology is something that happens and can be expected to happen, and b) how potential starship commanders react when the fog of war descends is something that Starfleet would be interested in.

 

But just how useful is a test that everybody knows about?
If the cadets were walking into a Kobayashi-Maru test not knowing what exactly they were being tested for it might be more effective.

 

Or even that they WERE being tested. Wesley's test in Coming of Age made more sense.

 

Ah, yes, well, there's that, for sure.

 

I don't think there's any reason to believe the cadets do know what they're being tested for. Saavik was certainly under the impression that it was just another standard test which was supposed to have a specific solution. In fact, apart from the franchise wanting to make fans happy with references, I don't think there's any reason to believe cadets could necessarily recognize the test even if someone had told them about the possibility of it because there's no reason the test should always involve the same scenario nor even always involve a ship named the Kobayashi Maru.

 

According to Michael Burnham in the recent Discovery episode named after said test, they don't.