Prime Directive Mulligan

[RobertScorpio]

What Star Trek(s) episode should they have violated the prime directive? We all know episodes where they did break it...but then there are many the didn't, and maybe should have....Can you think of any that should have had the rule bended to achieve a better result?

Rob

[AdmiralGarak]

Jean-Luc Picard, great character that he may be, is the prime offender here.

While he eventually did bend the rules in "Homeward", Picard's insistence that the aliens-du-jour were better off becoming extinct than culturally contaminated is out-right offensive to my primitive 21st Century mind. It's been a long time since I've seen "Pen Pals", but I believe that there was similar inaction taken in that episode.

Also, while I like the end of "The Hunted", it strikes me that Picard abandons the Angosians right when they most needed an impartial Federation mediator.

[JoeZhang]

One of the SCE novels picks up on both Picard's and Kirk's application of the prime directive.. now which one was it...

[RobertScorpio]

AdmiralGarak wrote:

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Jean-Luc Picard, great character that he may be, is the prime offender here.

While he eventually did bend the rules in "Homeward", Picard's insistence that the aliens-du-jour were better off becoming extinct than culturally contaminated is out-right offensive to my primitive 21st Century mind. It's been a long time since I've seen "Pen Pals", but I believe that there was similar inaction taken in that episode.

Also, while I like the end of "The Hunted", it strikes me that Picard abandons the Angosians right when they most needed an impartial Federation mediator.

PEN PALS is a small episode on the grand scale of things. But it is incredible how that one episode is constantly referred to due to its strange dialog about the Prime Directive. I totally agree with you on this one. Once they started down the slippery slope of Pen Pals, why even keep the directive???

Rob

[A beaker full of death]

AdmiralGarak wrote:

---

Jean-Luc Picard, great character that he may be, is the prime offender here.

While he eventually did bend the rules in "Homeward", Picard's insistence that the aliens-du-jour were better off becoming extinct than culturally contaminated is out-right offensive to my primitive 21st Century mind. It's been a long time since I've seen "Pen Pals", but I believe that there was similar inaction taken in that episode.

Absolutely right. The writers of these episodes totally misunderstood the prime directive and couldn't even see how absurd their philosophy was.

[Penta]

Not recalling the ep well, I grant, but: The Prime Directive is great...for an anthropologist. For anybody else, though...It's often a thin excuse for moral cowardice, and usually just a thin excuse for avoiding moral culpability for one's actions (or inactions).