It Was Done Better in a Game – The Kobashi Maru Test February 14, 2013

One of the best openings for any movie I have ever seen in my life is the opening to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  In the movie’s opening, a very Vulcan looking Kirstie Alley is commanding the USS Enterprise on a routine survey mission on the border of the Klingon Neutral Zone.  Suddenly, the Enterprise picks up a distress call from the USS Kobashi Maru.  The captain of the Maru said they hit a mine and was accidentally knocked into the Klingon Neutral Zone.  They had suffered many casualties and pleaded with the Enterprise to assist them.  After confirming the registry of the Maru and determining there were over 300 Federation civilians on board, Alley orders the crew to plot an intercept course.

Mr. Sulu turns around and reminds Alley if the Enterprise entered the Neutral Zone for any reason, it would be considered by the Klingons an act of war.  Alley takes the notice under advisement and orders the ship move in.  Mr. Sulu complies and plots a course.

The ship moves into the Neutral Zone, and very quickly Klingon battleships start to surround the vessel.  Alley tries to hail the Klingons to tell them they are only on a rescue mission, but the Klingons were jamming all the frequencies and wouldn’t listen.  The Klingons start firing on the Enterprise, causing heavy damage to the ship.  Consoles start exploding on the bridge, causing fatal injuries to the bridge crew.  Scotty reports from Engineering that the ship is dead in space.  All the crewmen on the bridge are dead.  Alley orders everyone still alive on board to head to the escape pods and that all hands abandon ship.

Suddenly, we hear a familiar voice from offscreen say, “All right, open her up.” and the front of the ship’s viewscreen slides open, revealing Admiral James T. Kirk.  The formerly dead crew get up and walk off the bridge no worse for wear and the audience quickly discovers what we saw was nothing more than a 23rd century video game and that this was a test.

This is the first time we as a Star Trek audience are exposed to the procedures of Starfleet Academy.  While it had been referenced several times over the original series, and as Starfleet itself was heavily inspired by our naval traditions, we knew an Academy would have to exist and this was our first time seeing it on-screen.  Later series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation would expand on it further, but The Wrath of Khan was instrumental in laying a fantastic building block which would be reused constantly in the franchise, The Kobiashi Maru No Win Scenario, and established that James T. Kirk was the only man to ever beat it.

One of the last great space flight simulators I ever played was a game called Starfleet Academy.  It was developed by Interplay and released to the PC in 1997.  In the game, you take control of Cadet Forrester, a Starfleet Academy student training to hopefully take command of his own starship some day.  It expands greatly on the role of Starfleet Academy we saw in The Wrath of Khan.  We learn that cadets train together as bridge crews and Forrester is assigned his own crew of cadets which each have their own specific bridge duty.

The game is more than just finding the best way to win preselected flight-sim missions.  Trust me, many of those missions get pretty hard.  You also have to navigate through what amounts to a Choose Your Own Adventure Star Trek Movie, where you passively control Cadet Forrester during the school year and have to make the right decisions managing your time, your crew, all of which affect the game’s plot.  There’s a lot of weight to selecting the right decisions when interacting with your crew while off duty, as it affects their test scores, and their test scores reflect yours.  If you make a very bad decision during the FMVs, you can be expelled and the game will end, regardless of your performance in the simulator.  It also determines the ending to the game, and if you navigated the game’s dialog trees properly and your scores are high enough, you’ll get the chance to take command of the real USS Enterprise and play the game’s secret final mission and see the true ending.

This was no minor production!  There were probably several hours worth of videos on disc, and the game spouted the acting talents of George Takei, Walter Koenig, and The Shatner himself, all reprising their classic roles.

Halfway through the game, Forrester and his crew are given the Kobashi Maru test because its part of the program routine they’re expected to complete.  He had nothing to lose if he failed it, it’s what the Academy expected, and you can fail the test in the game if you choose to.  The novelized version of the game written by Diane Carey went even further.   In the book, Forrester and his crew had gotten into a very bad position when trying to find evidence to exonerate one of their classmates of a crime.  Instead of being expelled outright, Captain Sulu decided instead to put their fates in their own hands and ordered them to take the Kobashi Maru.  If they failed, the negative mark would have impacted their grades terribly.  So, they had to pass, because if they had failed they could have flunked out.

However, just before you take the Kobashi Maru test for yourself, there’s a wonderful scene you have to navigate through when you’re working on the simulator program and find James Kirk’s original cheat, and the possible solutions as to how he was able to pass the test.  If you so choose, you can actually bring up a really nice scene with Kirk reminiscing to Forrester about his experience with the test, and giving his blessing to use his cheat code if you choose, but still telling you that you need to pick the right solution out of the three possible options he programmed into the test.

When Paramount announced that the first Star Trek movie in years was going to feature a young Kirk and Spock meeting for the first time at Starfleet Academy, I was really excited.  I thought this would give movie goers the chance to finally see Jim Kirk take on the Kobiashi Maru test, and hoped it would be as awesome as the story Kirk told Forrester in the game.

In the 2009 movie, Kirk and his team took the test for the third time, and Kirk’s cocky demeanor during the test didn’t help his squad feel any better about taking it, they were all expecting to fail again.  Uhura followed an order Kirk gave him, and all of a sudden, the simulator started acting like someone had obviously tampered with it.  Kirk obviously expected this and acted like this malfunction was all part of his plan.  The Klingon ships were now very weak and could be defeated with just one photon torpedo a piece.  They take out a few Klingon ships and begin rescuing the stranded crew, ending the simulation.  It was as if Kirk beat it simply by putting in a cheat code, and nobody working on the simulator had any idea how he did it.

I hated this scene.  I felt that it went against everything that had been previously established about Kirk, and violated the rules that were already set up in the Starfleet Academy game.  Kirk’s solution in the movie never would have worked in the game.  Even if Kirk had weakened the Klingon ships or made them fight dumber, no matter how many ships you defeated, they would have just kept coming!  You’re in the middle of the Klingon Neutral Zone, the Klingons could send every ship they had after you!  On top of that, even if you were able to get away, you just started a war with the Klingons that could mean the end of the Federation!  How is that a win?

The proper solution as established in Starfleet Academy was not to make the Klingons easier to defeat, but to give yourself a psychological edge over your opponent by programming in a reputation for yourself as an honorable and courageous Captain.  This is exactly the kind of thing Kirk would have done.  We saw how Kirk had acted over three seasons of the TV show and seven movies, and there had been several times that he used aggressive negotiation like this as a tactic instead of inviting an all out battle.  It was more than just a simple cheat, it was a proper tactic an actual Captain could have used in a real situation.

I understand that there was a bit more to this scene than what was shown on theatres.  A few expanded scenes were written and filmed but cut out of the movie for time and ended up on the Blu-Ray Disc release as a special feature.  Originally, the reason why Jim Kirk was making out with the green-skinned girl from Orion who was Uhura’s roomate was because Kirk knew she worked at the diagnostic lab for the simulator.  He told her he had written her a letter and sent it via email, and asked her to check it at a time he knew she would be at work.  However, there was more than just a breakup letter in that email, Kirk had planted a computer virus into it, hoping that she would open it in the diagnostic system, and would plant a cheat into the test while he was taking it, making his ship near invincible and weakening the Klingon Battle Fleet, allowing him to rescue the stranded crew.  This tactic sort of seemed like something that Kirk would do and I wish it had stayed in the movie, but I don’t agree with the solution they chose to go with that enabled him to beat the test.  I think the proper solution used in Starfleet Academy was a lot better and true to Star Trek.  Remember, the solution he used in the movie would have FAILED the test in the game, and would not have worked in real life.

Even Mr. Plinkett made a mention of this in his review of the Star Trek movie (it’s mentioned in the second part of the review).  Although he made no references to the game (it’s quite likely the guys at Redlettermedia never played it) he was also very unhappy with how the test was depicted in the 2009 movie.  He said the original purpose of the test was to gauge character and see how an individual would act in a life or death situation.  This parallels what Kirk said to Kirstie Alley at one point during The Wrath of Khan.  In the 2009 movie, Mr. Spock clearly states during Kirk’s hearing that the purpose of the Kobashi Maru was to make the starship’s commander feel fear.  As Mr. Plinkett said, it is impossible to feel fear when you know you’re in a simulated environment.  On top of that, it would be impossible or downright disrespectful to any Vulcans or other emotion-repressing species to make them take a test designed to promote a response their species cannot produce!

It’s a small gripe to a movie I otherwise enjoyed, but I can’t help but feel surprised that a video game was just able to do it better.  It depicted the test in a proper fashion with respect to Jim Kirk’s character and the tradition of Star Trek.  The 2009 movie took the easy way which may have worked better with a wider audience, but didn’t seem as true to the actions of Kirk’s character as established.  Starfleet Academy just did it better, over ten years earlier.  Thank you for reading, and please feel free to post a comment on what you thought of this article, or any ideas you had for future articles for this series!