The Kobayashi Maru Solution.

[F. King Daniel]

Correction, Captrek: You and other long-time fans knew that 27 years ago. Star Trek XI was intended to attract a new audience, people who haven't seen Wrath of Khan or any Star Trek at all.

The Kobayashi Maru was a retelling of a legend, like how Bruce Wayne discovers the batcave in the different Batman films. The current writers put their own spin on it. It wasn't perfect, but it did it's job. I never had a problem with it.

Kirk was "indulged" three times at the test in the prime universe as well. I don't think it's wasting time for a student to retake a simulation if they so desire. Learning how events may play out if you choose a different course of action sounds reasonable to me. If it's not too much of an inconvience, why not let them try again? I doubt Kirk was the only command student to use the simulator that day.

I don't think Kirk treated his friends with contempt at all. He wasn't being malicious toward them, he never tried to implicate them in what he'd done.

 

[Captrek]

The Kobayashi Maru was a retelling of a legend, like how Bruce Wayne discovers the batcave in the different Batman films. The current writers put their own spin on it.

Each time the legend of Batman is retold, the new tellers try to add something new and interesting to the story. If they fail to do that, and instead just put crap on the screen and defend it with “Hey, it has Batman and it has a cave, so it’s all good,” I’m going to be disappointed with it and might suggest ways it could have been done better.

The new film gives us:

• Expository dialog between Kirk and McCoy, retelling events already told but telling them in a way that makes no sense.
  
  
• The simulation depicted in a way that is not funny, interesting, or believable.
  
  
• A hearing scene giving us more clunky exposition, then Spock and Kirk trying to expound for the viewers on the profound lesson that has been demonstrated, with neither of them making sense.
  
  
• Nero, bless his soul, sparing us from any more of this nonsense by interrupting the hearing with an attack on Vulcan.

Kirk was "indulged" three times at the test in the prime universe as well.

True. TWOK didn’t expound on the details of why he did so and why he was allowed to do so, and for the dramatic purposes of that film didn’t need to do so.

If the new film had filled in those details in a way that was believable and interesting, that would have been a positive original contribution to the story. But it didn’t do that.

I don't think it's wasting time for a student to retake a simulation if they so desire. Learning how events may play out if you choose a different course of action sounds reasonable to me. If it's not too much of an inconvience, why not let them try again? I doubt Kirk was the only command student to use the simulator that day.

If you want to make up an explanation, fine. But if you could have made up the same explanation after seeing TWOK — and this one you certainly could have — then the new film hasn’t contributed anything new in that respect.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm sorry you didn't like it, it didn't make any sense to you and you didn't find it interesting or believable, but I thought it was fine, it made sense to me and I have better things to do than try to explain why to you. Enjoyment can't be quantified with bullet points. It's not a formula.

 

[DonIago]

Indeed.

 

[T'Girl]

...well, we don't actually know exactly how PrimeKirk beat the scenario.

Exactly no, however we were able to observe original Kirk during dozens of TV episodes and half a dozen movies. This provided us with enough information to make a evaluation of his character. We observed alternate Kirk during three points/ages in his life (I'm excepting his birth) in the last movie, and while a smaller sample, this is what we have to evaluate him. They're not the same man, it fairly safe to say that their individual solutions would also not be the same. What we do know beyond a doubt is this ...

Original Kirk receive a commendation and there was no mention of a ethics hearing.

Alternate Kirk faced a ethics hearing and there was not mention of a commendation.

These points are canon.

 

[DonIago]

In the admittedly non-canon TWoK novelization Kirk's inside voice notes that he almost got kicked out of the Academy immediately after the line about him getting the commendation. That the ethics hearing isn't mentioned for one and the commendation isn't mentioned for the other doesn't exclude either of them from having transpired.

That being said, I'll be the first to admit that it seems unlikely that NuKirk got a commendation in the end. But maybe if his ethics hearing hadn't been interrupted by Nero...damn you, Nero!!! (laughs)

 

[Captrek]

I'm sorry you didn't like it, it didn't make any sense to you and you didn't find it interesting or believable, but I thought it was fine, it made sense to me and I have better things to do than try to explain why to you. Enjoyment can't be quantified with bullet points. It's not a formula.

I’m sorry you didn’t like my suggestions for how the movie could have been made better, it didn’t make sense to you and you didn’t find it more interesting or more believable, but I think it’s better and it makes more sense to me. I have tried to explain my position because discussion of such ideas is the purpose of the forum and the subject of this thread. I’m especially sorry that my position has provoked such personal animosity in you.

Really, I’m not a bad person. I just don’t like the way the KM was handled in STXI.

 

[Timo]

We observed alternate Kirk during three points/ages in his life (I'm excepting his birth) in the last movie, and while a smaller sample, this is what we have to evaluate him.

Funnily enough, we know a lot more about the alternate Kirk than we know of the prime one, in terms of his all-important youth.

We never got good insight into what Kirk Prime was like in his formative years. We know he was a "stack of books with legs" and "in his class, you had to think or sink", perhaps suggesting a nerdy overachiever but telling nothing about his attitude towards authority. We know he squealed on his friend "several years" after the Academy, perhaps suggesting he did respect authorities a lot, but possibly emphasizing that he had unconventional personal priorities that would surprise those around him. Finally, we know he "cheated" on his no-win scenario test (David Marcus' take) and "beat" it (McCoy's), by "altering the parameters" (Kirk's version), which was "unconventional" (as per Spock) and earned him a commendation, at least per his own words.

Picard was a hellraiser in his youth, a carefully calculating taker of moderate risks later on - we have various witness statements on that. Kirk may have been same-o, same-o throughout his career, or he may have gone through a transformation as well. Here we don't have flashbacks or references to formative moments, other than Kobayashi Maru which, as said, is given three different descriptions and one derisive comment.

What we saw in STXI could have happened to Kirk Prime as well. Perhaps he, too, lost his father tragically in his youth - after all, we never see him, or hear about him. Perhaps he, too, fast-tracked his way through Starfleet Academy, motivated by something more or something else than the desire to become a good officer. Perhaps he, too, was juvenile in his youth (the horror!).

I don't think any plotline in the movie could work with Kirk and Spock starting out in neutral terms. It's highly important here that Kirk starts out hating everything and everybody, including himself, and very slowly finds a series of friendships that all start off awkwardly but then proceed steadily towards increasing trust. Any back-and-forth hemming and hawing would detract from the all-important drive of the movie, and leave more of that drive to dubious means such as faster pacing, chase scenes, superfluous action and other things we already got aplenty.

Kirk confronting Spock on something that really is fantastically unimportant to both, and being juvenile about it, is a great way to get the relationship started when the goal is the standard cop movie "oil and water do mix if you stir vigorously with danger for two hours" plotline. If the goal is something else, then the whole movie would have to have a different script... Not fine-tuned, but completely rethought.

That is to say, yes, interesting ideas there - but I find them faulty. And I would be remiss in my duties as a net kook if I didn't bring that input to this discussion. It's not a personal attack, it's merely a profound disagreement on what works and what doesn't, from my POV. I'm sorry you felt my outright opposition to your basic idea was limiting you or your freedom of expression. But I don't think I'm in any way obligated to pretend that I liked the ideas or thought that they might have worked in the context of the movie we saw.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

What we saw in STXI could have happened to Kirk Prime as well. Perhaps he, too, lost his father tragically in his youth - after all, we never see him, or hear about him.

Spock Prime in ST Eleven stated that George Kirk lived to see the original James Kirk become Captain of the Enterprise, that mean at least until Kirk was in his early thirties.

We never got good insight into what Kirk Prime was like in his formative years.

But we did get a real good view of how original Kirk turned out.

 

[RookieBatman]

...when the goal is the standard cop movie "oil and water do mix if you stir vigorously with danger for two hours" plotline...

I think that pretty much sums up exactly why these characters' interactions rubbed me the wrong way. The Kirk/Spock relationship in the original was never any standard formula, nor so very shallow.

Sorry to be negative, but you said it first.

 

[JarodRussell]

which was "unconventional" (as per Spock)

Unique, the word is unique.

 

[kkozoriz1]

A bad cop buddy movie sums it up perfectly. And it was done much better by a pre-insane Mel Gibson and the great Danny Glover. The problem with Trek XI isn't that they learn to rely on each other, Spock surrenders to Kirk. Kirk doesn't change at all.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

If that was a "bad buddy cop" movie, then here's hoping for lots more of the same "bad" stuff.

 

[kkozoriz1]

Yup, more of the same, just what Trek needs.

 

[Captrek]

I don't think any plotline in the movie could work with Kirk and Spock starting out in neutral terms. It's highly important here that Kirk starts out hating everything and everybody, including himself, and very slowly finds a series of friendships that all start off awkwardly but then proceed steadily towards increasing trust.

I don’t think I ever said that they have to start out on “neutral terms,” and certainly never meant to. Maybe you understood my references to WNMHGB as a suggestion to mimic the tone of that scene. I think you may be objecting to details that you (consciously or not) filled in and not to anything essential to my concept.

I’ll attempt to clarify that what I’m suggesting is entirely consistent with what you are saying the film needs. I’ll put it in a spoiler box so, for anyone not interested in reading any more about it, it will be easy to skip over.

Spoiler: idea of how the KM could have been done better

I imagine Spock and Kirk butting heads from the get-go. Spock needs Kirk to do something and Kirk is refusing to do it because he’s rebellious, because he dislikes Spock, because he’s in a shitty mood about the outcome of his first run at the KM exacerbated by Spock’s condescending lecture about no-win scenarios and counterproductive emotions, or all of the above. Spock sees an opportunity to successfully resolve the first conflict with Kirk and at the same time make his point about no-win scenarios and, logically, he takes advantage of it. When Kirk realizes he’s been played, he retaliates. He sacrifices his own academic record for the sake of revenge and catches Spock completely unprepared for such illogical behavior. What started out as an angry, egotistical, rebellious student butting heads with an authority figure thereby becomes a very personal conflict.

Isn’t that a more compelling basis for enmity than the (IMO nonsensical) philosophical argument at the hearing?

If there are details you don’t like, try working on those details instead of dismissing it as impossible for this concept to evolve into anything better than Orci & Kurtzman’s version. I asked people to identify positive contributions O&K made to this part of the story and, at least in my perception, nobody in this thread has identified even one such contribution, so let’s give an alternative a chance, OK?

(Personally, I will give O&K a point for contributing the idea of connecting the start of the Kirk-Spock antagonism to the Kobayashi Maru. That’s not a bad idea and I have maintained it in my own version of the story.)

It's not a personal attack, it's merely a profound disagreement on what works and what doesn't, from my POV.

I think that profound disagreement is actually a profound misunderstanding.

I'm sorry you felt my outright opposition to your basic idea was limiting you or your freedom of expression.

When I spoke of making it personal, I was not referring to your opposition to my idea. I was referring to things like “joyless person,” “urge to spread hate,” “childish tantrum,” and the dismissive classic “I’m posting in this thread just to say I have better things to do with my time than discuss the subject of this thread with you.” I have no problem with the tone of anything you have posted, but Don Iago and King Daniel were posting comments that were personally disrespectful to me so I asked them to stop doing that. It had nothing to do with you.

 

[RookieBatman]

If that was a "bad buddy cop" movie, then here's hoping for lots more of the same "bad" stuff.

Hoping? Tons of the stuff comes out every year. If that's what you're hoping for, you should have no trouble finding it.

 

[RookieBatman]

The problem with Trek XI isn't that they learn to rely on each other, Spock surrenders to Kirk. Kirk doesn't change at all.

^That's the problem I have with the following statement...

I don't think any plotline in the movie could work with Kirk and Spock starting out in neutral terms. It's highly important here that Kirk starts out hating everything and everybody, including himself, and very slowly finds a series of friendships that all start off awkwardly but then proceed steadily towards increasing trust.

Kirk doesn't develop friendships, in my opinion; he just proceeds along in his egotistical, superior manner, and the others slowly bow to his awesomeness. That's fine if you're into that, but that's just not the type of hero I'm interested in seeing.

 

[DonIago]

I think what we have here is a difference in perception, because the way I see the movie, Kirk does mellow a bit and become less insufferable by the end of the film. I suspect meeting the older Spock and learning that he really did have the potential to be a decent person (and in fact, in a different timeline became one) was a catalyst.

 

[RyanKCR]

Granted this insight comes from reading the novelization, I think Kirk's problem in the begining is that he was given no respect ( or, I can't think of the word I want here) as a child so he decided he would take whatever attention he could to a point where he could try to demand respect. He had good ideas but didn't know how to express them respectfully until his meeting with Spock Prime. This is why I believe that, at the end, the crew actually likes and respects him. He learned to show people his good ideas without being beligerent about it.

 

[RookieBatman]

I think what we have here is a difference in perception, because the way I see the movie, Kirk does mellow a bit and become less insufferable by the end of the film. I suspect meeting the older Spock and learning that he really did have the potential to be a decent person (and in fact, in a different timeline became one) was a catalyst.

I agree completely that our differences of opinion about the movie are borne of a different perception of the character's journey. I'm afraid I just don't see any growth exhibited by nuKirk. I've had a similar discussion here with Christopher Bennett (writer of Star Trek books), and he had the same opinion as you. I consider myself a very perceptive movie viewer, and so I don't understand how I could've missed something like that. Nonetheless, it just wasn't there for me.

I know this is kinda drifting from the thread topic (if you feel we should take this to a new thread, I won't mind), but can you offer any specific examples of how he "mellows and becomes less insufferable by the end of the movie?" I haven't seen it since a few months after it came out. I'm trying to convince myself to watch it again pretty soon here, and such examples would give me something to look out for.