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the_moonmoth July 8 2009, 19:46:37 UTC
What I really wonder is, is the very act of coming back and taking this thing repeatedly a failure?

I thought the exact same thing!

I think of it as more like a right of passage that the students see as an "exam" but which isn't graded, more sort of annotated and analysed and added to the body of psych work they must be collecting on all the cadets. In an atmosphere like starfleet academy, with all those clever, ambitious people, I expect there's more than a little competition and most things are seen as a test.

Although my original trek knowledge is at best incomplete and I could be waaaay over here in makebelieve land :)

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stillane July 8 2009, 22:59:36 UTC
I thought the exact same thing!

It makes sense, though, right? I mean, if the point is to demonstrate that you're cool under pressure and able to recover from defeat, isn't that negated a little bit by obsession with the unattainable? Except, as elandrialore pointed out below, it could also be taken as perseverance in the face of adversity.

But then, that's what's driving me nuts about the whole deal. You could spin any decision (aside from the above-mentioned Jabberywocky meltdown thing) in a bunch of different directions. How do they decide what's a healthy response? What does Spock, of all people, do with the results of a test which are potentially this ambiguous? Especially this Spock, who's pretty much spending this portion of the movie with his hands over his ears chanting, "Lalala can't hear you. I am not emotional and you can't make me be," except when he's really pissed off. I can't decide if he's the best or the worst person ever to be in charge of eliciting and classifying psychological responses ( ... )

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the_moonmoth July 9 2009, 00:45:49 UTC
I can't decide if he's the best or the worst person ever to be in charge of eliciting and classifying psychological responses.

I always took it that he was just the programmer, not the one in charge of evaluating the cadets' responses. I know in TOS he was meant to be some computing specialist.

That does not sound disturbingly familiar.

Nope, not at all :)

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stillane July 9 2009, 01:08:50 UTC
Thanks! This made everything a lot clearer in my science-wired, occasionally-too-binary brain.

I think of it as like a psych test or even as simple as a personality test.

Hm. That makes a huge amount of sense, particularly what you said about the ability to cheat the test simply by knowing it's purpose. To that end... The simulation has to follow the same basic idea each time, right? The details may get to vary all choose-your-own-adventure style, but in the end rocks fall, everybody dies. Is the experience less valid if you just repeat it enough? Do other cadets occasionally take it over again, or is Kirk just that unique? I know Bones seems surprised at the announcement, but I wonder if it's unheard of.

They still need to know how he'll handle the pressures, etc.

This makes me really want to know what happened the first two times. I almost think they just keep letting him try again out of sheer curiosity. O_o

but I also think that on the other hand it could also be considered perseverance and the inclination to never give up ( ... )

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darsynia July 9 2009, 04:36:46 UTC
There was a version of this that they did with the Next Generation, and it involved sending an important crewmember to their deaths in order to save the ship. I wonder if it's that sort of thing here? Like, in order to pass, you have to make tough decisions, and in order to fail, you have to waste time NOT making the tough, sacrificing decisions? I think TNG did a much better job of it, imo.

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stillane July 10 2009, 01:42:11 UTC
it involved sending an important crewmember to their deaths in order to save the ship.

Ooh. How much would I love to see that one applied to these guys in fic? Soooo much. *g*

Like, in order to pass, you have to make tough decisions, and in order to fail, you have to waste time NOT making the tough, sacrificing decisions?

That makes a lot of sense. I can certainly believe there'd be some element thrown in there to directly test their ability to weigh odds and make hard calls based on the personal vs. the professional. It doesn't hurt that my cut-and-dried, either/or brain likes the idea of there being a quantifiable better or worse performance evaluation possible for this thing. *g*

(Also, because I've utterly failed at saying so: Congratulations on the miniLemon! She's such a tiny, amazing little thing!)

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