The Kobayashi Maru Solution.

[C.E. Evans]

^^^
Or Kirk was taking postgraduate classes at the Academy while he was a lieutenant and Mitchell was dismissing him as a know-it-all who was throwing off the grading curve...

 

[T'Girl]

Mitchell said;
"I remember you back at the academy. A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from upperclassmen was, Watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink."

 

[SpyOne]

Keeping countless generations of students surprised by the scenario is probably not a problem after all. They may know going in that they're facing what everybody calls the no-win scenario: their reactions to that might be interesting nevertheless, or perhaps exactly because of this

Saavik, at least, seemed surprised it was a no-win scenario, or that facing a no-win scenario would have any value as a test. When Kirk says that every commander might face a no-win scenario (for real), Saavik says that had not occurred to her, which she repeats when Kirk suggests that how we deal with death is as important as how we face life.

In fact, I think the test loses all value if it doesn't come as a surprise. The purpose isn't to see how you face a no-win scenario, it's to see where and how you keep looking for the way to win. Saavik is a bit of a prodigy, having spotted that the scenario was unwinnable after one run. Kirk may have spotted it in one, and used his second for intelligence gathering for his "adjustments", but I prefer to think he didn't get it until after the third. And I think Starfleet forgave his tinkering with the program because he genuinely believed he was fixing the simulator, because he genuinely believed there were no situations in the real world where there would not be SOME way to win. ("Perhaps if I offered to give my ship to the Klingons in return for repairs to the freighter?")

Over the years, we have seen a pattern of Starfleet Academy tests that are not testing for what they seem to be testing for, from the Kobayashi Maru to Wesley's "psych test" to Troi's test where she realizes the point is to see if she can order someone to die to save the ship.
It reminds me of one I know from the real world: an essay question on an aptitude test about what would happen if every human on earth lost the ability to speak. The reporter taking the test told the person giving him his results he thought his essay might have come off a bit misogynist, but she told him that nothing he said in that essay was used to complie his results: they counted the number of word he wrote as a measure of how readily he accepted new ideas.

I think the Kobayashi Maru test is hard on the simulator because, ... it is a doomed scenario. There is no way to rescue the ship, so most cadets are either going to get the "ship" destroyed (so lots of splodey consoles) or get it mostly destroyed before they turn and run (so lots of splodey consoles). Hard on the cadets because, ... nobody likes to lose, and facing defeat has psychological consequences.
I wonder if part of how they keep it secret from the cadets is that some of them never figure it out? I mean, just because you lost does that mean there wasn't a path to win?

 

[SpyOne]

Mitchell said;
"I remember you back at the academy. A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from upperclassmen was, Watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink."

This just might be a reference to Kirk rising quickly.
I'm just thinking how "his class" is used in colleges to refer to two different things, the first being the class taught by whomever the pronoun references, the second being those who will graduate the same year as the pronoun (and, less often, a class with the pronoun in it as a student).

Less pedantically, many institutions have upperclassmen take on some teaching duties.

Although I do really like the idea that this was a warning about Kirk the student: having him in your class meant you'd have to work hard to keep up the good grades (if the teacher graded on a curve), or just to avoid seeming like an idiot by comparison.

 

[RookieBatman]

I wonder if part of how they keep it secret from the cadets is that some of them never figure it out? I mean, just because you lost does that mean there wasn't a path to win?

I think this is a very good point. Kirk told Saavik because she kinda guessed it on her own. But it's not like they line up all the cadets after they take it and say, "Guess what, folks, it's no-win! Ha-ha, suckers! Thanks for playing!" If most of the cadets just thought they failed, there would be no secret to spread or not.

I love that the Starfleet Academy PC gamed used basically the same solution from the novel (which was also used in a DC comicbook set at the academy), but I think it made a misstep in having the cadets hear about the no-win scenario before it happened. True, it was only as rumor (IIRC, it's been quite a while), but I still think it would've been better if Forrester had gone through the scenario once, lost, and then began to figure it out. Oh well.

 

[SpyOne]

The shere number of student has always bothered me. There is no way all the officers required in Star Fleet can be trained at the same place.

There is, actually.

Not that I'm not with you on the idea that there are other ways to become a Starfleet Officer.
But, even if all Officers are also Academy graduates, SFA only has to be huge if Starfleet itself is huge.
The number of people graduating in any given year must be large enough to replace any officers who died or retired that year, plus some to account for growth.
Let's say 5% of Starfleet officers die in any given year, and another 5% retire or quit. That would make a graduating class at SFA about 10% the size of all Starfleet Officers , so all four years would be nearly half as many as there are officers in Starfleet.
First of all, reducing the deaths or lengthening the career will reduce those numbers a lot. But far more importantly, that gives the size of SFA as a proportion of Starfleet as a whole, which means the bigger the fleet gets the bigger SFA will be, and the other way around.
Just using guestimate numbers here, let's say that half of Starfleet personnel are Officers, and the average ship has a crew around 400. That means for every ship in the fleet, there's about 100 students in SFA. If Starfleet has 3000 ships, SFA is the size of a city (300,000) (Washington, DC for example). If Starfleet has 10 million ships, SFA is the size of a planet. And if Starfleet has 500 ships, that would be a very large town.
Most of the Universities I have experience with have less than 20,000 undergraduates (often less than 10,000), but I don't think SFA has gotten impossibly large, or even improbably large, until you have at least 500,000 students there.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I know they're not canon, but the novels have spoken of Starfleet Academies on other Federation worlds. Considering the size of the Federation (well over 100 worlds) it's the only way it would be feasible to staff all those ships. One academy would take years to staff even one of those giant fleets (of which there were at least 7) in DS9.

Remember that the cadets at Starfleet Academy on Earth (and even then probably only the third and fourth year students) staffed only seven of the (admittedly larger) ships in STXI.

 

[T'Girl]

The Federation and Starfleet in Kirk's time would have been smaller and more compact than it was during the Dominion war. Still if there was only one Starfleet academy, then a sizable piece of San Fransisco might have been dedicated to the academy. Either in one big chunk or the academy could have been spread all over town.

Standing behind alternate Kirk at his academy hearing there were about a thousand cadets, those perhaps were the members just of his one class or form. If the academy graduates a class ever month instead of every year, that would easily handle Starfleet officer replacement requirements.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Or then we could interpret Spock's death scene line "I never faced the no-win scenario" as Spock bragging that he won. He just didn't do it as cadet, like Kirk (because then Kirk wouldn't be the only one), but instead as a postgrad, like Saavik.

He doesn't just refer to the no-win scenario. He never took the test at all. Spock specifically says "I never took the Kobayashi Maru test."

 

[Mr Silver]

He doesn't just refer to the no-win scenario. He never took the test at all. Spock specifically says "I never took the Kobayashi Maru test."

To add to that quote

Spock: "I never took the Kobayashi Maru, until now..what do you think of my solution"

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that the most realistic way one could win a Kobayashi Maru scenario, would be self sacrifice to save others ("The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few...or the one")

The Enterprise was in a Kobayashi Maru situation, as Khan armed the Genesis Device, the Enterprise had no hope in escaping the Genesis Wave, while restricted to Impulse Power, the only way for them to get Warp Drive back online was for someone to sacrifice themselves, but not just anyone

Spock possessed qualities required to make the sacrifice successful

*He had extensive knowledge of Starship Systems
*His Vulcan physiology would allow him to survive in a radioactive environment for longer than a human
*He was aware of the problem and knew how to fix it

From what we know, no-one else onboard possessed these qualities (except Scotty, however Scotty was human and would not survive long enough to repair the problem, just going in the Reactor Room to switch off the Warp Drive made him pass out due to Radiation Poisoning, Spock not only went in there but survived long enough, despite releasing a massive build up of plasma radiation to fix the problem, re-activate the Warp Drive and then survive long enough to deliver his final words to Captain Kirk )

Therefore, arguably we can say that Spock defeated the "No-Win Scenario", although at the cost of his own life

Later on in TNG we'd see Deanna Troi (in the Bridge Officers Test) have to order a crewmember to their death in order to solve a similar problem, it would seem Starfleet took inspiration from Captain Spock's sacrifice

 

[C.E. Evans]

Mitchell said;
"I remember you back at the academy. A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from upperclassmen was, Watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink."

This just might be a reference to Kirk rising quickly.
I'm just thinking how "his class" is used in colleges to refer to two different things, the first being the class taught by whomever the pronoun references, the second being those who will graduate the same year as the pronoun (and, less often, a class with the pronoun in it as a student).

Less pedantically, many institutions have upperclassmen take on some teaching duties.

Although I do really like the idea that this was a warning about Kirk the student: having him in your class meant you'd have to work hard to keep up the good grades (if the teacher graded on a curve), or just to avoid seeming like an idiot by comparison.

Yep, that's the way I saw it.

 

[Timo]

I don't think SFA has gotten impossibly large, or even improbably large, until you have at least 500,000 students there.

We have million-student universities today already, although they aren't necessarily as centralized as SFA.

And it wouldn't be contrary to onscreen evidence to assume that the entire city of San Francisco is SFA in the Trek future: campus proper, adjoining services, camp followers...

Remember that the cadets at Starfleet Academy on Earth (and even then probably only the third and fourth year students) staffed only seven of the (admittedly larger) ships in STXI.

Which may mean there were no more cadets available - but which much more probably simply means there were no more ships available. Ships present at Vulcan clearly included at least all the eight ships seen at Earth, and actually featured at least one further ship (the Mayflower, which wasn't mentioned as part of the original eight when the cadets were assigned), so we have no pressing reason to assume that any ships would have been left at Earth because of lack of cadets to crew them.

Spock: "I never took the Kobayashi Maru, until now..what do you think of my solution"

...Which we might read as "I took the SS Yankee Clipper test for my no-win scenario" if we wanted.

But the writers did seem to want to suggest that the no-win test is something not all (or indeed only a select few) officers would have faced during their training. That's probably something we should work into all our models of the training regime and the use of the no-win scenario.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SpyOne]

Remember that the cadets at Starfleet Academy on Earth (and even then probably only the third and fourth year students) staffed only seven of the (admittedly larger) ships in STXI.

[angry rant]
The stuff shown in "Star Trek 2009" has about as much bearing on how things might be in the Star Trek Universe as .... say, Gundam or Space Cruiser Yamato, and considerably less than sources like Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica, and I really wish people would quit bringing it up like it was relevant to anything. It is a wholly separate take on the Trek Universe, and one that happily waves goodbye to Star Trek's somewhat tenuous relationship with things like realism.[/rant]

 

[JarodRussell]

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to use anything in Star Trek 2009 to try to explain things of TOS or TNG/DS9/VOY or ENT.

 

[DonIago]

And this has what to do with the KM scenario, exactly?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Remember that the cadets at Starfleet Academy on Earth (and even then probably only the third and fourth year students) staffed only seven of the (admittedly larger) ships in STXI.

[angry rant]
The stuff shown in "Star Trek 2009" has about as much bearing on how things might be in the Star Trek Universe as .... say, Gundam or Space Cruiser Yamato, and considerably less than sources like Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica, and I really wish people would quit bringing it up like it was relevant to anything. It is a wholly separate take on the Trek Universe, and one that happily waves goodbye to Star Trek's somewhat tenuous relationship with things like realism.[/rant]

1. Sorry, but get used to it. Star Trek = Star Trek.

2. Star Trek lost it's grip on reality when aliens spoke English and were all humans. It dived all the way over the fence into magical fantasy land in 1981 with Wrath of Khan's Genesis Device and hasn't looked back since.

 

[JarodRussell]

Remember that the cadets at Starfleet Academy on Earth (and even then probably only the third and fourth year students) staffed only seven of the (admittedly larger) ships in STXI.

[angry rant]
The stuff shown in "Star Trek 2009" has about as much bearing on how things might be in the Star Trek Universe as .... say, Gundam or Space Cruiser Yamato, and considerably less than sources like Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica, and I really wish people would quit bringing it up like it was relevant to anything. It is a wholly separate take on the Trek Universe, and one that happily waves goodbye to Star Trek's somewhat tenuous relationship with things like realism.[/rant]

1. Sorry, but get used to it. Star Trek = Star Trek.

Come on, no, not really. Why? Different creative teams, different interpretations. You can't use stuff from TNG to explain things in TOS, because TNG had a different creative staff with different ideas and opinions. And except for Nimoy, nobody involved in the original show or movies was involved here.

For example, San Francisco clearly looked different in TMP than in the new movie. Because Roddenberry & Co had the idea of people working underground, returning Earth to a more natural state. Today it's different, because Abrams & Co obviously doesn't share that idea and thinks megacities are more appropriate. Or if you look at the Kobayashi Maru scenario (to get the thread back to where it came from), if you watch TWOK, read the script and the novelization (all of them count to see the intentions of the creative minds behind TWOK), you get a whole different idea of what the actual purpose of the scenario was compared to the scenario in the new movie (because they had their own interpretation). Of course we can't be sure about that. We'd have to ask Nicholas Meyer and/or Jack Sowards (if he weren't dead) if they think Orci/Kurtzman they got it right or wrong.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I see what you mean, but Starfleet Academy and related concepts have already been though TOS, TWoK, TNG/DS9 and STXI versions, all different, yet based on/building upon the same ideas. Thus a question of "how many Starfleet academies are there?" should take into account evidence from the whole canon, unless what was asked was a more specific "how many academies were there in TOS?", like the "TOS Photon Torpedo" thread in Tech a while back, discussing what photon torpedoes were originally concieved as (some sort of energy weapon), before TWoK decided they were coffin missiles, and Enterprise reused that concept for the prequel series.

 

[Captrek]

How they should have done it:



As somebody suggested, the simulator is used mostly for routine stuff. Cadets spend a lot of time in the simulator and test scenarios are selected at random and presented. The KM isn’t necessarily presented to all cadets. It comes up from time to time. It’s generally regarded to be a no-win scenario because, hey, three Klingon ships appear out of nowhere, jam your communications, and blast you from all directions — what can you do?

Kirk faces the scenario and fails. He beats himself up for failing. Spock tells him that everybody fails sometimes, there’s nothing he could have done that would have made a difference, and he has to learn to deal with failure and move on.

Kirk refuses to accept that there’s nothing he could have done differently and says that, faced with the same scenario again, he would beat it. Spock says he can arrange for Kirk to face it again, and they bet on it. Kirk faces it again and fails again, and Spock wins the bet.

Kirk figures out that the simulator is rigged and Spock knows it. Spock, confident that absolutely nothing Kirk does can change the outcome, is enticed into another bet, with outrageous odds. Kirk hacks the simulator, rescues the ship, and wins the bet.

An “Original Thinking” commendation is traditionally given out to students who catch the attention of the staff and student community with clever original thinking. Kirk’s outrageous stunt — and Spock’s public humiliation pursuant to the terms of the bet — get everybody talking and Kirk gets the commendation.

 

[DonIago]

An interesting scenario, but Spock never struck me as a gambling man, and the movie didn't have the time for this, unless you're suggesting they cut something to accommodate it. Given the overall plot of the movie I think this would have placed a great deal of undue weight on one particular sequence as well.