DC’s Green Lantern Corps presented its own take on a classic Star Trek concept

DC’s “Green Lantern” comics followed an intergalactic police force; members of the Green Lanterns from various alien races, chosen to safeguard the universe sector by sector with rings that can create anything from green energy. This means that “Green Lantern” comics often straddle the line between superhero comics and space opera.

A new issue “Green Lantern Corps” #10 (written by Morgan Hampton, drawn by Fernando Pasarin) builds on the greatest space franchise of all: “Star Trek”. One of the issue’s subplots follows a Green Lantern recruit in training under the pig-faced drill sergeant, Kilowog. Recruits mentioned – Teen Lantern Keli Quintela, the android Aya, squirrel-like Narf, and Vexar’u (a Tamaraneen, like Starfire from the Teen Titans) — must run an obstacle course without their rings. Their final test, the Aleta Zahir, is described as a “no-win dilemma” and sees an armored opponent made from green energy attack them. They manage to defeat him, but that still leaves them free for Kilowog to trap them in a bubble with his ring.

“Congratulations, you just lost Aleta Zahir. But it’s not meant to be adopted,” he explains. The real goal of the test is to teach Lanterns to work as a team and think without their rings. This unbeatable test and its hidden objective are reminiscent of Starfleet’s Kobayashi Maru test.

The test setup is as follows: a Starfleet cadet is placed in a simulator where he plays the role of a starship captain. Their ship picks up a distress signal from a freighter, the Kobayashi Maru, stranded in the neutral zone between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Crossing the neutral zone is considered an act of war. If the student chooses to try to save the Kobayashi Maru, a swarm of Klingon ships appears and destroys their ship.

The Kobayashi Maru is impossible to win because the real goal of the test is not for the student to pass it. Rather, it is about assessing how a cadet handles a no-win scenario. Once you go out into the field as a soldier, or a leader, or in any vocation, you must face situations for which there is no right answer. The Kobayashi Maru test is not there to measure a cadet’s skills, but to teach them how to cope with failure.

The concept comes from the 1982 film, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, where the Vulcan cadet Saavik (Kirstie Alley) takes and fails the test like all the other Starfleet cadets – except one, James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Kirk passed the test by reprogramming it; Some would say he cheated, but Kirk said he doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios. There, that tells you something about him; he thinks outside the box to get results and if he doesn’t like the terms of a situation, he won’t accept them.

The Kobayashi Maru motif returns at the end of the film, where Spock (Leonard Nimoy) sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise. Spock told Kirk that his sacrifice was, in essence, his solution to the Kobayashi Maru test; Spock, like any logical Vulcan, knows that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or one.” Kirk, too, finally finds himself in a real no-win situation. He defeated Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) and saved his ship, but he lost his best friend.

The 2009 film “Star Trek,” a prequel/reboot set in an alternate reality, showed Kirk (Chris Pine) takes the test and brazenly cheats. He hacked the simulator so that Klingon ships lost all their shields and became so fragile that a single photon torpedo could destroy them. THE 1989 novel, “The Kobayashi Maru” by Julia Ecklarshows a different version. The novel is not canon, but I prefer this more subtle version of Kirk foiling the test.

In the novel, Kirk reprogrammed the simulation so that the Klingons recognized “Captain Kirk” as a famous Starfleet captain. His reputation causes the Klingons to step aside and let Kirk save the Kobayashi Maru. After all, Kirk had every intention of becoming a captain of galactic fame, and that’s exactly what he did.

Ecklar’s book shows how some other senior Enterprise executives took the Kobayashi Maru test and the unique ways in which they all failed. Sulu chose not to save the freighter and risk starting a war, Chekov initiated his ship’s self-destruct to eliminate the Klingons, and Scotty used an engineering trick to beat the Klingons that worked in the simulation, but not in reality.

The 2008 “Star Trek: Enterprise” novel “Kobayashi Maru” by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels suggests that the test is based on an event in Starfleet history. In 2155, Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) was faced with a no-win situation; he was ordered to rescue the disabled Kobayashi Maru, but in the face of a Romulan attack, he was forced to leave the ship to save his own crew. So, the Kobayashi Maru test was designed to prepare Starfleet officers for situations where they must choose who to save – a situation that Green Lanterns must also prepare for.