Not most of the time. Sometimes. In other cases, they will experience some personal problem and act irrationally because of that. They do. It's just that behavior isn't consistent. For example, someone will be in pain due to the death of a loved one and because of that may act irrationally in certain cases. It's not a matter of changing principles but being affected emotionally by various experiences, and that in turn affecting behavior.
No one is saying that experiances don't change you, but if you were against doing A, and an experiance changed your mind so you didn't mind doing A. Fine. Just don't go back to be against A, then in favour of A, then against A. For example in ST if you believe that the PD should be upheld despite your circumstances, fine. If an experiance changed your mind to never mind the PD I'll do whatever it takes, fine. But if you are flip-flopping bewtween the two then there is an issue. I would also expect starfleet Officers esp. those that have acheived the rank of Captain, to have had training not to act irrationaly based on some personal problem.
In the Pale Moonlight yes... that still doesn't change it's a PD violation. He never got permission from anyone to tell Worf to kill Gowron though.
Well strictly speaking he didn't order Worf to kill Gowron, as you said he was ordered "to do whatever it takes.". Now you can say it was implied but that isn't the same as actually ordered to do so. Splitting hairs perhaps. And a subordinate killing a senior officer who they believed unfit for command is permitted under Klingon Law. And Worf did succed Gowron as Chancellor, and again under Klingon Law he named his succesor.
Of course it was implied and of course it's splitting hairs. As Odo would say... a tidy arrangement. Just more than a bit hypocritical being Sisko ripped into Worf a few seasons earlier for assisting Kurn's request for suicide even when it was the accepted Klingon Law.
People in real life behave contextually. How you behave depends on the situation you're in. I didn't sense that Sisko was intending Worf to kill Gowron. Worf's decision to kill Gowron was based on Ezri's analysis of the Klingon Empire and how corrupt it was.
People in real life with no moral compass behave contextually. How you behave when you have no moral compass depends on the situation you're in. That being said, Klingon's seem to have a different set of most valued virtues than humans.
Pretty much everyone in real life behaves contextually. In practice, most moral compasses point towards being friendly, i.e., most of all, doing what everyone else does and when you don't, calling your accomplices "friends." As demonstrated yet again, discussions of PD precedents in previous incarnations of Trek is hopelessly confusing, because the concept is confused and undefined. The episode provides the relevant reading to the story via Tuvok's assertion that her action violates the PD. Like Kirk, she does what's right instead.
The Vulcan's had something very similar which T'Pol educated Johnboy about, that of course, he wasn't bound to.
TUCKER: I cannot wait to get down there. T'POL: I'd advise against that. It's standard protocol to wait until a society develops warp drive before initiating first contact. TUCKER: Those are Vulcan protocols, not human. Civilization, which was before Dear Doctor. Too bad he didn't use his knee jerk reaction against "the Vulcans say.." when it actually counted. It's not like he was going to get into trouble for deciding either way, he was pretty much the space king until he blew up that whole atmosphere.
Season Two's the Communicator touched the Subject too. Archer is in jail awaiting execution when he says this: "If I know T'Pol, she won't want to leave any contamination behind. It may take some time, but she'll find a way to get everything back. Including our remains."
Though that happened after Archer's decision to let a race die he could easily save in Dear Doctor. I was just looking for how much of this radical idea Archer had heard when he did that (Dear Doctor is ep 13 of season 1). However it seems that T'Pol has been banging on about it quite a bit from this at the end of season 2 in The Expanse: TUCKER: Literally. I can't wait to get in there, Captain, and find the people who did this. And tell me we won't be tiptoeing around. None of that non-interference crap T'Pol's always shoving down our throats. Maybe its good thing she's leaving. ARCHER: We'll do what we have to do, Trip. Whatever it takes.
The Prime Directive cannot apply to species which have declared war on the Federatio... Oh, the Mouse that Roared, the Prime Directive cannot apply to species that have the muscle to back up a declaration of War against the Federation. Besides, Starfleet doesn't declare war or accept declarations of War. The Federation does. The Federation Council is not Bound by Starfleet Regulations. Starfleet is an arm of the Federation that does what it's told, but surely it won't follow ridiculously illegal orders just like anyone else wouldn't either? China got Iraq's oil. That's hilarious.
Personally, I think FASA might have come up with the best description of the Prime Directive in their Federation sourcebook. It certainly sounds better to me (with the best part bolded) than some of the canonical attempts to explain or defend it.
Actually, if you look at shows like TNG, you will see a lot of flip-flopping regarding the PD. It has to do with the argument that the PD is probably not as solid as one thinks it to be. With that, notice that complexity of behavior extends even to circumstances. For me, that's what makes stories well-made. In any event, don't confuse consistency with the creation of cardboard cut-out characters.
That's far too wordy Unicron. I personally believe that any Captain who thinks that they have the right to break the Prime Directive to put right a cockup which they are personally responsible for creating in the first place is a sanctimonious prick, because by fluffing up so awfully enough to wreck an entire culture once, only proves that they already have a history of fluffing up enough to wreck a planet and that they have a predilection for fluffing up so bad that they can wreck any planet no matter what wise decisions which they think are the safest most timid courses of action because they are too clueless to anticipate even the immediate knock effects from any Culture rape they are in the process of committing, and the therefore can't be trusted to put into motion a controlled Prime Directive breach/Culture rape, which they think(hope/wish/gamble) will lessen the last culture rape, reduce the rape aftermath/aftershocks, when they are already responsible for raping a culture to the point of fluff, where they are already criminally responsible enough to lose their ship, which means that there are no further consequences to their continued raping of an alien culture that they can't lose their ship twice, so they might as well continuing raping the culture until it seems less likely that they will lose their ship. You don't fix rape, with more rape. (In the Reeves-Stevens novel Prime Directive, set after the TV show, Kirk lost his ship for breaking the Prime Directive.)
But there are degrees. When they left the communicator behind in ENT's The Communicator it wouldn't have raped the culture to just leave it there. Someone would have developed the tech earlier than normal (perhaps) and one government may have ended up in a more powerful position than they would have as a result of that. The idea that every jot and tiddle is a culture's destiny gets sucked into PD at times, oh noes he never would have been able to seize power if he hadn't learned the power of transistor radios 80 years before his culture should have. Well so what, someone is always in power and unlike with Edith Keeler where they knew there was an unfavourable outcome who is to say that transistor power guy wouldn't have been a happy alternative to a naturally developed tyranny that the culture was in for? Rape is what the Founders did to the living-in-trees Vorta.