Size of the new Enterprise

[Atlan]

I never said that it is a valid justification for the above.

I pointed out that the accusation of academic cheating is unjust.

So if you cheat but you make a big joke out of it all, then you're not cheating? Precisely what definition of "cheating" do you use?

He never had the intent to pass the test for any sort of academic credit?

Since he made his cheating so blatantly *obvious* it seems extremely unlikely he thought he'd get away with it, and if he knew he wasn't going to do this unnoticed he did it because he wanted attention drawn to the test being unwinnable. So yes, he "cheated", but not with the intent of getting any sort of personal gain out of it.

If he'd sabotaged a compulsory test and tried to cover his tracks; yes, that would have been ground for severe disciplinary action. And he should still be in trouble for hacking the simulator. But as a formal charge, I doubt cheating would have stood up very long.

The Joys of living in another time zone...

Thank you Bounty, for making my position abundantly clear.

It didn't, to me, look as if Kirk was trying to get academic credit out of this. All it is to him is a joke or a way of calling attention to the KM test. It can easily be argued that it was a bad/inappropriate joke, and it can certainly point to a lack of responsibility to do something like this with SF Academy equipment and manpower, but as Bounty points out, academic cheating it wasn't.

[Havok]

To add to that, how can you cheat on a test that there is effectively now way to pass? I think we can all agree the test isn't even a pass or fail situation, but an evaluation of reactions and behaviors. That being said, it is reasonable to assume that the information Starfleet wanted about Kirk was gained from his first pass on the KM, and possibly even the second. It is also reasonable to assume that they were just humoring Kirk by letting him take the test a third time, since clearly the cadets know there is no way to pass it, and the instructors as well as the cadets (Uhurah) were just going through the motions and obviously expected the same out come that every other cadet ever, had gotten.

It seems pretty clear that Kirk was attacking the test itself and the ideas behind it and not trying to score points or get better grades.

[Darth Wong]

What the fuck kind of lame argument is this? The test is unimportant, so it's not cheating when you cheat at it? That's not how cheating is defined, kiddies. And quite frankly, I think the only reason you're focusing on this made-up narrow definition of "academic cheating" is because you're desperate to find some way to blunt the charges against his character. Otherwise it comes off as pure nitpicking.

[Knife]

What the fuck kind of lame argument is this? The test is unimportant, so it's not cheating when you cheat at it? That's not how cheating is defined, kiddies. And quite frankly, I think the only reason you're focusing on this made-up narrow definition of "academic cheating" is because you're desperate to find some way to blunt the charges against his character. Otherwise it comes off as pure nitpicking.

I'm not so sure. In lots of vocations, there are 'checks in a box' you have to have that is not necessary dependent on how you do on that box. You can fail miserably at doing CPR on a dummie as long as you can recite 30:2 on chest compressions to breaths. You still get the card and nobody knows how you'll do with real CPR untill you jump ontop of your first dying body and do so. You still get the card and the card is all a lot of places want for employment or whatever.

[Darth Wong]

What the fuck kind of lame argument is this? The test is unimportant, so it's not cheating when you cheat at it? That's not how cheating is defined, kiddies. And quite frankly, I think the only reason you're focusing on this made-up narrow definition of "academic cheating" is because you're desperate to find some way to blunt the charges against his character. Otherwise it comes off as pure nitpicking.

I'm not so sure. In lots of vocations, there are 'checks in a box' you have to have that is not necessary dependent on how you do on that box. You can fail miserably at doing CPR on a dummie as long as you can recite 30:2 on chest compressions to breaths. You still get the card and nobody knows how you'll do with real CPR untill you jump ontop of your first dying body and do so. You still get the card and the card is all a lot of places want for employment or whatever.

I don't see what lax requirements like that have to do with the notion that something which is obviously considered cheating by the Academy is somehow not cheating because it was voluntary and he was "just kidding". Hell, Kirk himself didn't even deny that it was cheating; he simply tried to pull a Tu Quoque fallacy on Spock.

[Junghalli]

Kobayashi Maru really needed to be left out of this film. It worked once, as a set-up for the personal tragedy Admiral Kirk would face in TWOK. It should been buried with TWOK. But if it had to be a part of this film, it should have been as Kirk expressing a protest over the scenario through his monkeying with it (making it fairer to make success possible, not installing God-Mode Cheat™ and making the thing a cheap prank) and later, as part of his defence, pointing out how illogical and unrealistic the scenario is and therefore meaningless as a training or evaluation exercise of any sort. When Spock tries pointing out at the hearing how the whole point of the exercise is to acquaint cadets with facing fear and death which Kirk undermined, have Kirk rebutting that by saying, point-blank, "That's something you can only face Out There; not in some damn simulator where you KNOW it's not real and the game is rigged."

Have the film then fade to "Three Years Later", after Kirk's been a serving lieutenant in Starfleet and coming to the Enterprise when the scramble to Vulcan is taking place. Show him boarding the ship with split-second flashbacks to "the Farragut Disaster," which he survived but from which he still suffers some lingering trauma. Would have made Kirk a far more grounded character and wouldn't have taken all that much additional screen-time. One of the earlier fluff scenes could have been dropped to accommodate it if run-time was critical to the final cut of the movie.

You could make room for it by cutting car chase scene which doesn't really accomplish anything.

It's really pretty sad how the people here consistently come up with better ideas than the people who are actually paid money to write the scripts.

[Stark]

I don't see what lax requirements like that have to do with the notion that something which is obviously considered cheating by the Academy is somehow not cheating because it was voluntary and he was "just kidding". Hell, Kirk himself didn't even deny that it was cheating; he simply tried to pull a Tu Quoque fallacy on Spock.

Indeed, the whole sequence is played as 'renegade vs constricting rules', where Kirk is a hero for not just going along through the soulless machinery of education and that's why he's the best captain ever. I really struggle to see any deep thought or agenda behind his actions, even in the suspension scene. It's possible to give him all these motivations, but I'm not sure how much of that is in the movie and how much is in the minds of TOS fans.

And regardless his conduct was retarded anyway; but the point of the academy sequence seems to be 'rules r bad mang'.

[DaveJB]

The movie should have driven home the point that reality doesn't resemble either Spock's "DIE DIE DIE" scenario, nor Kirk's "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em" reprogramming of the test. In real life you can achieve a victory against the odds, but still encounter situations where you can't truly achieve victory, as evidenced by the Kelvin's crew escaping albeit at the cost of Kirk Sr's life, and the Enterprise stopping Nero, but not before Vulcan and 99.9% of its population got swallowed up by a black hole.

(Plus there's the fact that TWOK and TSFS had already built their premises on showing that there were scenarios you couldn't truly win at, but hey...)

[Stark]

Well the stupidity is even highlighted in ST, where Kirk's must-win mentality prompted him into conflict on the bridge because he wanted to commit suicide getting killed by Nero. Turns out no-win scenarios are actually pretty common.

[Darth Wong]

I've written before on TOS Kirk's massively overrated tactical prowess. I grind my teeth whenever some idiot refers to him as a "tactical God" or some other such worshipful nonsense. When he says "I don't believe in the no-win scenario" I can only interpret this as proof that he has studied zero military history. Every strategic retreat in history has been prompted by a commander who realized he was facing a no-win scenario.

Of course, there have been officers in real-life who had Kirk's attitude toward the no-win scenario. General Custer comes to mind.

[Stark]

Well that's Patrick's point I think - in TWOK, it was MEANT to be pompous, character-flaw stuff and was exposed as such. There's a diference between being positive, dynamic and aggressive and just being black-and-white dog-with-a-bone tunnel-vision madness, and that's what Kirk learnt.

It's just 20 years of nerds missed the point.

[Knife]

Fair enough, but I really call the bullshit flag on how academic the test was rather than an institutional trial. Should there have been a sanction? Sure. Not like cheating on your math test though.

[Darth Wong]

You know, there is one way to salvage the Kobayashi Maru as a starship captain's test, and that's to make it a test of the starship captain's discretion. A good captain will accept that he can't win, and choose to save the lives of his crew. The test could be designed so that you lose marks for failing to rescue the transport, but you lose more marks for failing to rescue the transport and getting yourself killed. The lesson to be learned is that you can't win every scenario, but you can minimize your losses.

Unfortunately, Spock decided it was about "fear", which is utterly idiotic.

PS. Mind you, they totally undercut this by using the same name for the simulation over a 20 year period, so that everyone knows it's a no-win scenario. It would work far better as a scenario that they just spring on you during one of many simulations, most of which are normal winnable scenarios.

[Stark]

That's right it's not. Cheating on your maths test doesn't waste your classmate's time, supervisor's time or involve breaking into a bridge simulator simply out of pride.

[Darth Wong]

How do we know that the Kobayashi Maru carries no academic weight whatsoever, anyway? Why would anyone bother taking it at all if it's worth nothing? Why would they bother administering it?

The fact that you can voluntarily take it more than once doesn't necessarily prove it's academically worthless. It might simply mean they have a policy of allowing retries.

[Bilbo]

How do we know that the Kobayashi Maru carries no academic weight whatsoever, anyway? Why would anyone bother taking it at all if it's worth nothing? Why would they bother administering it?

The fact that you can voluntarily take it more than once doesn't necessarily prove it's academically worthless. It might simply mean they have a policy of allowing retries.

The point according to Spock is about fear and how you feel when you have no chance of winning. Since this is a simulation none of these goals really exist. It is like studying someone who is playing WOW to see how they handle their toon getting killed.

On the other hand the entire sceanario does have some use as a psych evaluation type test for Starfleet. How you react to taking the "no win" test, your attitude in the test, whether or not you are nervous, do you blow it off, these tell Starfleet something about your character. In Kirk it told them that he is stubborn as hell (gee what a surprise) and will go to whatever lengths he feels are needed to make his point and get the last word in.

In a way it fits in with the TNG test Wesley was given when he thought the lab was going to explode and he had to abandon one person to save another. Did Wesley really learn anything from that test of value? Or was it more what Starfleet learned about how Wesley will react to sudden dangerous situations.


So it makes sense that you let a cadet take the KM over and over again. You learn when the cadet is willing to give up and move on versus how frustrated angry he gets, etc. Of course if the test has been used for years then it should eb common knowledge among the cadets that the this is the reason for the test and this would color the results some. Better would be something less predictable like the test Wesley was given

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The problem I think with the Kobayashi Maru scenario, is which captain would willingly stupidly place himself in a situation where he knows he would be swamed by the enemy? It was idiotic. The ship was in the neutral zone, and a lone starship goes into the jaws of the enemy?

The "fear" part was crap. If I were the captain, I wouldn't have bothered to save the ship. I would have destroyed it to prevent Starfleet equipment from falling into the hands of the enemy and then butt out ASAP.

[Uraniun235]

Er, I don't think the captain knows he's going to get swarmed by a whole heavy attack squadron. Well, he might have heard about it beforehand, but they might deduct points for acting with "out of character" knowledge.

I mean, do the Klingons really hang around the Neutral Zone in droves, waiting for Federation starships to wander across the border? If so, where are the droves of Federation starships to counter them and make sure the Klingons don't just charge across the border?

[Darth Wong]

Er, I don't think the captain knows he's going to get swarmed by a whole heavy attack squadron. Well, he might have heard about it beforehand, but they might deduct points for acting with "out of character" knowledge.

I mean, do the Klingons really hang around the Neutral Zone in droves, waiting for Federation starships to wander across the border? If so, where are the droves of Federation starships to counter them and make sure the Klingons don't just charge across the border?

Even if he genuinely doesn't know beforehand, the Enterprise was always supposed to be faster than Klingon ships, so it could just flee. I don't know if the Enterprise is still faster in this new continuity, but still, it seems like you want to just run away as soon as you realize you're horrendously outmatched. Any captain who stubbornly stays and fights in a hopeless situation is just throwing his ship and crew away.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Er, I don't think the captain knows he's going to get swarmed by a whole heavy attack squadron. Well, he might have heard about it beforehand, but they might deduct points for acting with "out of character" knowledge.

I mean, do the Klingons really hang around the Neutral Zone in droves, waiting for Federation starships to wander across the border? If so, where are the droves of Federation starships to counter them and make sure the Klingons don't just charge across the border?

Erm, it is well known that the Federation regularly patrols the Neutral Zone, and you would also expect the Klingons to do so. It's for the same reason that on DMZ in Korea, there are troops parked on both sides of the zone.

The Klingons have listening posts. The minute crossed the Neutral Zone, you will be detected. That happened when the Enterprise crossed the Neutral Zone in Star Trek VI.

[Uraniun235]

Er, I don't think the captain knows he's going to get swarmed by a whole heavy attack squadron. Well, he might have heard about it beforehand, but they might deduct points for acting with "out of character" knowledge.

I mean, do the Klingons really hang around the Neutral Zone in droves, waiting for Federation starships to wander across the border? If so, where are the droves of Federation starships to counter them and make sure the Klingons don't just charge across the border?

Even if he genuinely doesn't know beforehand, the Enterprise was always supposed to be faster than Klingon ships, so it could just flee. I don't know if the Enterprise is still faster in this new continuity, but still, it seems like you want to just run away as soon as you realize you're horrendously outmatched. Any captain who stubbornly stays and fights in a hopeless situation is just throwing his ship and crew away.

In TWOK, Saavik tried to retreat. Sulu said he'd "try", and the Klingons managed to overwhelm the Enterprise anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that retreat in the face of overwhelming odds is appropriate, I'm just saying that running didn't work when we saw the scenario in TWOK.

Erm, it is well known that the Federation regularly patrols the Neutral Zone, and you would also expect the Klingons to do so. It's for the same reason that on DMZ in Korea, there are troops parked on both sides of the zone.

The Klingons have listening posts. The minute crossed the Neutral Zone, you will be detected. That happened when the Enterprise crossed the Neutral Zone in Star Trek VI.

I don't think that's "known" as of TOS, especially given how far the Enterprise had to run to aid the Romulan zone outposts in Balance of Terror. I don't even know if it's "known" that they regularly patrol it, just that the Enterprise is sometimes on patrol. If you recall episodes that say otherwise, please share.

Also, if they do regularly patrol it, in TNG they usually patrol so far apart that they can't expect help to arrive before the Klingons/Romulans arrive from the other side (TNG The Enemy). So if the Klingons can assemble a squadron of heavy cruisers within moments of detecting an intrusion - a squadron which can ambush and take out one of Starfleet's finest within moments - where is the Starfleet equivalent on their side of the Zone?

Me, I still think the scenario as presented in TWOK is a trap.

(As for the listening posts, they're apparently so poor that they cannot even distinguish a Starfleet starship from a civilian freighter without relying on being able to distinguish a real Klingon voice from a computer translator voice.)

[Darth Wong]

In TWOK, Saavik tried to retreat. Sulu said he'd "try", and the Klingons managed to overwhelm the Enterprise anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that retreat in the face of overwhelming odds is appropriate, I'm just saying that running didn't work when we saw the scenario in TWOK.

I haven't seen that in many years. Did they attempt to retreat the moment they detected the Klingons approaching, or did they wait until they were already being pounded?

[Ghost Rider]

In TWOK, Saavik tried to retreat. Sulu said he'd "try", and the Klingons managed to overwhelm the Enterprise anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that retreat in the face of overwhelming odds is appropriate, I'm just saying that running didn't work when we saw the scenario in TWOK.

I haven't seen that in many years. Did they attempt to retreat the moment they detected the Klingons approaching, or did they wait until they were already being pounded?

They raised shields, attempted communications, then tried to retreat. In retrospect it was along the lines of "Oh...fuck, okay...they aren't wanting to talk.".

Personally Kirk was very apt when he answered Saavik with "Prayer, mister Saavik. Klingons don't take prisoners."

[Darth Wong]

They did not appear to be at warp speed when the Klingons began firing at them. Just how hard were they trying to escape?

[Ghost Rider]

They did not appear to be at warp speed when the Klingons began firing at them. Just how hard were they trying to escape?

Exactly, no warp, no nothing. It was her issuing the order, the Klingons firing and wrecking them. All in all it looked more like the instant they encountered the Klingons a giant sign saying "Grab ankles and get lube" was flashing.