History Literature / StarTrekTheKobayashiMaru

* DespairEventHorizon: After his failure during the Aslan scenario, Chekov is convinced that he'll be booted from the Academy.

!!Kobayashi Maru provides examples of:

* CallForward: When an Admiral is questioning Kirk on what he did, Kirk firmly declares, [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan "I don't believe in a No-win scenario."]]
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The Kobayashi Maru is designed to win at any cost, be it generating ever increasing waves of Klingon ship's to enhancing the damage of enemy attacks while downplaying that of Federation ship's

* DespairEventHorizon: After his failure during the Aslan Scenario, Chekov is convinced that he'll be booted from the Academy.
* EasilyForgiven: Chekov's friend, Robert Cecil, doesn't hold Chekov's actions against him, and even points out that the challenges at the Academy are designed to teach them to learn through failure so that they know what not to do when they get into space for real.
* TheEngineer: Scotty, naturally. This story tells how he went from command school to being the finest Engineer in the fleet.

* TheHerosIdol: Kirk is Chekov's idol throughout his time in the Academy, and he pridefully believes himself worthy of serving on the ''Enterprise''. When he fails the Aslan scenario (and is told that Kirk did it completely differently), Chekov is devastated, believing he'll never be able to live up to his hero.
* LogicBomb: For once in a Star Trek work, it's ''Scotty'', not Kirk, who does this. Scotty effectively caused the computer running the simulation to crash by employing a scenario that looked good on paper [[note]] Klingon ship's traveled in groups of three to interlace their shields and strengthen them. In theory, an antimatter discharge at the vertices where the shields connected would cause a cascade reaction that would destroy the ships[[/note]] but didn't work in reality. The computer could only recreate the mathematical theory, though, so it treated the solution as legitimate. However, it was also programmed to win at any cost, so it kept sending ever growing waves of Klingon ship's until the computer itself couldn't hold up. The reason Scotty knew it didn't work in real life? He disproved it himself at age 16 with a practical test.

* TheMedic: Dr. [=McCoy=] spends the time listening to the stories of the Kobayashi Maru while tending injuries that the others sustained when the shuttle hit a gravitic mine. Kirk had a badly wrenched right knee that he couldn't put any weight on, and Sulu had a dislocated shoulder. With the limited supplies aboard the shuttle, all Bones can really do is try and numb the pain, and he's worried about overdosing his patients.

* PerfectPlayAI: Lieutenant Commander Constrev uses this reasoning to explain why the Kobayashi Maru test is unbeatable.
--> ''"Computers cannot be indecisive. Computers can think faster than any biological organism currently known. Computers take their knowledge base from the knowledge of ''all'' species, not just one. They are smarter than you, faster than you, more patient than you."''

** Commodore Kramer tells the class that they all failed, that while Chekov was the most creative "killer" in the group, he wasn't the first or only one, and that none of them had understood the difference between survival and command.
** Commodore Rachael Coan gives students an exercise in representing different worlds. Sulu is assigned a low tech world with low contact ability, which he simulates by sending paper cranes. The group devolves into a name calling shouting match, with two students about to come to blows. Coan says they're the most childish, petulant cadets she's ever had the misfortune of training, that Sulu was the only one trying to be creative, and the rest of them had mocked him for it.

** Chekov's solution to the situation was to order all hands to abandon ship, then kamikaze the Klingon ships. His instructor calls him on this, pointing out he just destroyed ''four'' Warp Capable ships with anti-matter drives, to say nothing of all the antimatter warheads in the photon torpedoes they carried as ordinance, meaning the area would be too dangerous to travel for at least a century.
* ShamingTheMob: Sulu decides that the Kobayashi Maru is probably a trap to lure a Federation ship into the Neutral Zone to spring a trap as a pertext for war, and deigns to abandon the hypothetical ship. His fellow cadets start to mutiny, until one of his classmates actually calls them out, saying that they ''are'' mutinying, and disobeying the right and lawful orders of their captain.

** There is, of course, the TropeCodifier, the Kobayashi Maru, a "no-win scenario" designed to test the character of potential commanders.
** Chekov relates a second scenario, The Aslan Scenario, where Starfleet puts cadets in an abandoned facility, tells them one of them is an assassin, gives each of them a phaser permanently set on Stun, with a hit being registered as a "kill", and told they must survive to the end of the simulation. Chekov ends up in a solution that causes the whole class to fail. Then he's told only one cadet, one James T. Kirk, actually passed the scenario. Kirk had figured it was a test of command, not survival, and so gathered a group of trusted cadets to serve as guards, had them stand at the entryway to the food replicators, and then told every cadet who came to get necessary food that they were free to enter, provided they surrendered their phaser.
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: Four different flashbacks for the four men who participated in the Kobayashi Maru scenario.

** Commodore Rachael Coan gives students an exercise in representing different worlds. Sulu is assigned a low tech world with low contact ability, which he simulates by sending paper cranes. The group devolves into a name calling shouting match, with two students about to come to blows. Coan says they're the most childish, petulant cadets she's ever had the misfortune of training,that Sulu was the only one trying to be creative, and the rest of them had mocked him for it.

* {{Corpsing}}:InUniverse. One of the cadets in Kirk's most famous take on the test was "killed" early on. He begins laughing when he realizes that Kirk has altered the programming.

** Kirk programmed the simulation to have the Klingons recongnize him as "The" Captain Kirk, and be honored to assist him in the recue of the ''Kobayashi Maru''.

** Chekov relates a second scenario, The Aslan Scenario, where Starfleet puts cadets in an abandoned facility, tells them one of them is an assassin, gives each of them a phaser permanently set on Stun, with a hit being registered as a "kill", and told they must survive to the end of the simulation. Chekov ends up in a KillEmAll solution that causes the whole class to fail. Then he's told only one cadet, one James T. Kirk, actually passed the scenario. Kirk had figured it was a test of command, not survival, and so gathered a group of trusted cadets to serve as guards, had them stand at the entryway to the food replicators, and then told every cadet who came to get necessary food that they were free to enter, provided they surrendered their phaser.

* KillEmAll, Chekov's solution to the Aslan Scenario. It's the wrong answer, as Commodore Kramer pointedly tells them.