Clearly not. They admitted to STID, not STXI.
ST09's Kobayashi Maru Test
- Thread starter ConRefit79
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Clearly not. They admitted to STID, not STXI.
Doesn't matter if they admit to it or not, Trek XI is littered with too many TWOK references and call-backs. Granted they didn't go the extent of remaking an entire scene from TWOK, although the Kobayashi Maru in XI does use many of the same sound effects as the one in TWOK.
Don't bury yourself in the part.
I find that VERY hard to believe.
And I'm sure the Admiral would have come to the same conclusion had they had a chance to discuss it openly. Probably Kirk would have pointed that out, that the test cannot induce fear simply because the cadets already KNOW it's a test; that even Spock doesn't fully understand the point of the test and that programming it the way he did simply presented a problem for Kirk to solve.
His final argument would be that Starfleet officers should neither fear defeat nor accept it easily, that a good Captain does anything neccesary and possible to ensure the safety of his ship and crew.
Unfortunately they never got a chance to talk about it because Vulcan had to go and get destroyed right at that moment. McCoy was right, the board would have ruled in his favor but they wanted to hear his explanation first.
Well it is the truth if you believe it or not. They mentioned it in the DVD Commentary.
"Hey, let's have Kirk eat an apple in this scene. It'll make him look even more like an @$$hole."
Seriously, ST09's Kirk was very much a Han Solo-esque character. He grew up without a proper authority figure other than the jerk uncle/stepfather/whichever is canon, and his instinct was to rebel against that authority figure because he was trying to replace Kirk's father. As Pike said in STID, Kirk wasn't ready for the chair, but they gave it to him anyway. Funny enough, if Kirk hadn't lied in his report about the Nibiru incident, he probably would've gotten a slap on the wrist. Why? Cause Prime Kirk pulled crap like that all the time. But he never altered his captain's log to make it seem like he didn't do anything. That's what KT Kirk had to learn, and did by the end of the movie. He's not just one man. As the captain of a starship, he has a responsibility to the crew under his command.
Personally, I always felt the Starfleet Academy novelization interpreted Kirk's solution to the Kobayashi Maru corectly. He made it where the Klingons would recognize him and allow him to save the stranded crew. That way it was subtle. But authority hating Kirk had to stick it to the man in the most obvious way possible.
That's not exactly a gospel truth source of information. ALOT of people are involved in the making of a major motion picture and not everyone knows specifically what everyone else is doing. They may not have known it was a reference when the idea was first pitched to them; for all we know, Abrams handed Pine an apple and said "Here, chow down during this scene. I'll explain later."
Well Abrams was in the Audio Commentary
Along with Bryan Burk, Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
I don't recall which of them said it was a coincidence, been a few years since I listened to it.
The challenge was to rescue the crew of the KM. It was rigged to be unwinnable, supposedly to teach future starship captains to accept inevitable defeat. That's BS, in my opinion, and once Kirk figured that out I think he was right to change the parameters so he could accomplish the objective.
There was no rule against changing the parameters of the test, because they couldn't have foreseen someone as clever as Kirk.
He showed the Academy that they might be wrong about the no-win scenario, something they had not previously considered.
There was no rule against changing the parameters of the test, because they couldn't have foreseen someone as clever as Kirk.
He showed the Academy that they might be wrong about the no-win scenario, something they had not previously considered.
This has always been one of the biggest problems with the new movies.
In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Kirk is said to have been a 'walking pile of books' when he was at the academy - very serious, very academic, etc. Then in the new movies, he treated things flippantly. I like them, but these are the things that irked so many viewers.
But it's a different Kirk that grew up without his father, and ending up being a bit of a bar-cruising womaniser instead of the Kirk you refer to in WNMHGB.
That's Gary Mitchell's somewhat waggish description of his "think or sink" Academy instructor and friend, Lt. Kirk. There's also Kirk's own description in "Shore Leave" of himself as an Academy underclassman:
However, I don't think either can be reasonably considered as anything approaching a complete picture of the young James T. Kirk. They're more like memory snapshots filtered through a fair amount of nostalgia, and neither implies that Kirk was necessarily always serious to the point of being grim.
It is fear. Fear of failure or living with the guilt of lost lives hanging over you. But yeah, Kirk handles it as though he thinks he's a Q, able to mess with reality. That or the script writer.
Specifically, with the apple. He was eating an apple while taking the test in the 2009 movie - that was also from the old Wrath Of Khan movie back in 1982. He was also eating an apple in one scene when he said "I don't like to lose."
The retcon I always turn to, probably won't satisfy many but still, is that the key difference is: NuKirk never went to Tarsus IV.
Prime Kirk is a genocide survivor. Granted, NuKirk has a crappy childhood, but I'm thinking that the difference might make his natural disposition to be a punk (which you see in some of the novels, which apparently Orci read) muted as Prime Kirk matured. He's going to be more serious, possibly, because of a serious case of survivor guilt. Whereas NuKirk is more of a juvenile delinquent.
NuKirk has daddy issues and had a mean/abusive stepdad. Prime Kirk possibly has much more baggage that might have resulted in his being much, much more driven to succeed.
Just an idea.
That's not how I saw it. In TWOK, the simulation wasn't about rescuing the KM because that was an optional part of the simulation. Their primary mission was simply to head towards Gamma Hydra. When they receive the distress call, Spock is actually surprised by Saavik's decision to order an Sulu to intercept the KM.
Knowing that rescuing the ship is an option, the no-win scenario takes on a much different meaning than simply being blown away by Klingons. It's more about coming to terms with the notion that no matter what choice you make, there will always be a negative outcome. If the Saavik had continued on it's course to Gamma Hydra, she and her crew would survived but they would finish their mission know that they had just abandoned 381 people to their deaths. As Saavik's "...Damn." delivery indicates, leaving that many people is too much of a heavy burden. She was not ready to 'lose' that many people.
And that theme carries over to Kirk. Choosing to defy what the simulation was supposed to teach him robbed him of really knowing what it means to lose on a personal level, not based on skill or cunningness. And when Spock dies, Kirk comes out defeated and admits to knowing nothing. And this despite actually winning the battle against Khan. Even if they had won the battle, there was still a negative outcome that Kirk was not prepared for deal with. And that's how the movie ends. Kirk just endured a real no-win scenario and we see how he deals with it in the end. Like he said, it's a test of character.
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