l33telboi wrote:According to the novelization Kirk was under the firm belief that he had done the right thing in that instance. His argument was basically that the test itself was a cheat since you went in under the assumption that it was beatable, and the parameters were contantly reprogrammed and changed to prevent someone from winning (without the students knowledge, Kirk noticed this on his second attempt at the test). And thus cheating a test that in itself was a cheat was only fair, and nothing in the rules said it wasn't allowed.
In essence: The test was officially said to be beatable. The only way to beat it was to cheat. Thus cheating would have to be allowed.
We also know that ultimately the brass would've agreed with him on that point.
As for why it would be effective: It seems the test is pretty much one of the last things you do at the Academy (given that the people who took it graduates afterwards), and so it stands to reason that students will go in expecting much of their training and evaluation to hang on that one singular test. Thus the instructors look on what they do when they finally start realizing that their going to fail that last test. Do they do what they're supposed to as captains, or will they start taking weird risks in a last hope to defeat the test?
One would say that the false setting is precisely there to mirror reality, in which case some battles or campaigns are considered already won, for various reasons, like expertise, misinformation, bad interpretation, cockyness or else, and fails. It's there to give a taste of failure and poke the quickly inflating egos.
But there could be more to this, with practical applications for future missions.
Since it's a test that has never been cheated and likely always missed by graduate wannabes, it's that Starfleet deems it go as it is.
To me, this test (which seems auxiliary, right?) is more a way for Starfleet to build an unofficial list of captains for special missions: there are the good qualified captains who will make good "family" captains, work by the line and fill the ranks very well, but you should not expect too much from them in very dire situation. And then there are the few wackos, those who may even be borderline on ethics (which leads to the special operations/spy system) and those who, because of these ethics, will also challenge rules, but because of concern for equity, fairness, survival and tolerance, not for mission completion and efficiency regardless of the concerned lives.
