Note
While The Orville is not Star Trek in name, it most certainly embodies the spirit of the very best of Star Trek. In particular, Season 3 includes many stories that rank alongside the classic, powerful Star Trek episodes.
Let's examine the Orville episode Twice in a Lifetime, a touching and emotional example of a Kobayashi Maru scenario.
After being trapped in the past for years, and giving up on the hope of rescue, Gordon reaches out to the only person he knows, the woman from the antique cell phone he acquired back in his own time. As the years progress, they get married and start a family. Despite being separated from his friends, his time, and everything he knows, he makes a life for himself and he is happy.
The Orville does eventually succeed in coming back from him, but they imprecisely arrive 10 years after he did. When Ed and Kelley show up, he is amazed and glad to see them but doesn't want to go back; he doesn't want to leave his family. This creates an incredible moral dilemma for Ed - does he rip his close friend away from his family and back to the future, or does he allow him to remain and contaminate the timeline?
Gordon pleads with Ed to let him stay, or to bring his family with him, but Ed firmly states that he cannot, that he has no choice. The emotion is palpable, and it feels like Ed has stumbled into his own Kobayashi Maru. To make matters much, much worse, he then learns from Isaac that they have obtained the necessary fuel to make another jump into the past. This new development sends a bitter shockwave through Gordon, as he realizes they are going to go back 10 years and erase his family from existence. As his crewmates leave his house, Gordon breaks down and spends the last few moments with his wife, son, and unborn child. There are very few scenes in all of the Star Trek universe as emotional as this:
Ultimately, they are successful in rescuing him only 4 months after he arrived in the past, and he is grateful and happy. When Ed and Kelley explain the whole story to him, he is adamant that they did the right thing and he forgives them, but Ed tells him that he doesn't feel any better. The fact that he still feels the incredible weight of the choice he had to make is powerful and parallel's Captain Kirk's decision to let Edith Keller die in The City on the Edge of Forever. In an interview, Seth MacFarlane elaborates on what makes this a compelling quandry:
Here’s the interesting thing about that. You saw the life that he had, but you didn’t see the life that she would have had. That’s the thing that I haven’t seen commented on enough, is that the life that Gordon had with [Laura] was no more real than the life that she probably had in the prior timeline with this other guy. That and the kids that Laura had, were probably just as real as Gordon’s timeline. So it’s all about perception. We’re more attached to Gordon because we know him, and it’s a lot easier to sympathize with someone we know than with a complete stranger.
As I've said before, this is one of the things that makes Star Trek great - when it asks deep philosophical questions.