I think you’re thinking about the 1979 novel Enemy Mine, and 1985 movie. Which itself was building off any number of shipwreck and wartime survival tales.

Enemy Mine has been repeatedly adapted to Trek shows from TNG’s early episode where Geordi and a Romulan survive together.

Using this trope again with a ‘curious demigods running experiments’ twist is novel enough. In fact, it’s harder to believe that Arena was the first time the Metrons put humanity and Gorn into one-on-one engagement.

As for the Martian, book or movie, they’re both pretty weak, derivative, middle school stuff. They’re overhyped and couldn’t hold the attention of the hard scientists in our household. If the middle school (sanitized) version of the book hadn’t been so hyped for our kids, we wouldn’t have made the effort to slog through it before they read it.