Is it Really Okily Dokily to Double-Break the Prime Directive to fix an Earlier Botch Job?

[Guy Gardener]

Imagine there was a steaming bowl of fresh custard on your kitchen counter.

Feeling hungry you penetrate that bowl of yellow goo with a straw, and slurp it all up a little too quickly.

You cough, and then sneeze the entire yellow contents back into the same bowl it had just left.

Your very handsome husband enters the kitchen, ready to eat his bowl of custard unaware of your little adventure.

Do you...

1. Say nothing. You can't fix the custard, it might lead to a divorce, and it probably tastes the same any way since it was only inside your face for three seconds at most. You did a bad thing, and nothing you do can amend the horror that is to come if the horror is brought into the light. Although you might want to wait a month before kissing your husband next.

Or...

2. Tell your husband that you did something bad, but down't worry, you can fix everything by reversing the bad thing you just did, putting every thing back how it was before you'd started this misadventure, which in this case would be to snort the custard back up your nose, and then vomit it into the bowl. Which means that everything has returned to it's previous state of equilibrium and you are not at fault and they can have their pudding fearlessly because its as if nothing bad had ever happened.

 

[hux]

Who the fuck eats bowls of custard?

No husband of mine, that's for sure.

 

[Drone]

I love custard. But aside from that irrelevancy, there's a much easier solution. Just tell him that you spilled it all over the floor and just now finished scooping it back into the bowl, ready to rinse it out in the sink. That will leave it up to him to consume it, with pretty much the same results, more or less. I suppose you could leeringly suggest an alternative to his precious dessert, but if the marriage is pretty much on the outs, he really really wanted that custard, or he's just an a**hole, well then I guess you're fucked.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think South Park covered it in their 100th episode how Starfleet feels about the prime directive.

It allows them to interfere in other cultures, but still say they don't want to.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Enjoyable as it was, damned if I can figure out what the OP has to do with the thread title.

My vote would be that it depends on how thoroughly the Prime Directive was broken the first time.

If one of the natives saw something that they didn't really understand and won't be able to explain to other natives, or they won't be believed (alien abduction story), then I would say no, leave it be: unfortunately, your poor native will just have to live confused and/or considered crazy.

If 10,000 natives of a tech level better than, say, the Enlightenment, witnessed your ship drop down into the atmosphere and blow up another ship that was going to attack their city, destroy their world, whatever... then I'd say the jig is up. Just go ahead and land, introduce yourselves, etc. The Prime Directive is out the window - it wasn't cracked, it was BROKEN - and at this point the truth will probably do less damage than possibly leaving them with a xenophobic belief that not only are there aliens but they're all violent.

If, though, your ship was witnessed by, say, a isolated native family who also managed to take very clear pictures, and the natives are of a species where wiping their memories is not an option, then yes, I would say going back to them, introducing yourself, explaining everything that is going on including the Prime Directive and the reasons for it, and hoping that they will understand that they need to keep what they saw to themselves, would be an acceptable risk to take, even though it involves breaking the PD again.

 

[MacLeod]

Who the fuck eats bowls of custard?

No husband of mine, that's for sure.

Could be worse could have been fish fingers and custard. )

But it seems the PD evolved over time and what might have been ok in say the 23rd century would be frowned upon in the 24th Century. Even today laws move with the times just because you needed a particular law two hundred years ago doesn't mean that you need it today.

But from what we have witnessed in ST shows the PD seems to be an inconveinace at best that is often stretched to it's limits if not outriight broken often my CO's.

 

[Makarov]

Violating the prime directive is kinda like opening a can of pringles, once the lid is off you might as well finish the can...

 

[hux]

Could be worse could have been fish fingers and custard. )

I think that's one of pot noodle's upcoming flavours.

What if I travel back in time (breaking the prime directive) but while I'm in the past, I hear one of Picard's smashing PD speeches which makes me realise I shouldn't have broken the PD. If I don't travel back and break the PD, I'll never learn how important it is not to break the PD.

 

[HIjol]

Custard? Yellow? No, Man...just...no.

It is not ok to break the Prime Directive.

Otherwise, it would be called:

One of the Guidelines We Try to Adhere to, But You Know Those Darned Writers!...

 

[Guy Gardener]

The custard is the alien culture.

Sucking up and nose barfing the custard is breaking the prime directive.

Snorting and vomiting the custard is breaking the Prime Directive again for a second time to glad over any interference you exacted while breaking the Prime Directive the first time.

Of course then you fall into the Ahab Rabbit Hole that Anorax did in (Voyager's) Year of Hell.

The custard still isn't completely the way it was before you failed to eat it, so how many more times are you going to partially digest and aerosolize that same 800 mls of custard until you admit that it still might be 800 mls of gelatinous semi-liquid passing in and out of you, but it is emphatically now neither custard nor yellow.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Snorting and vomiting the custard

 

[hux]

This would all make much more sense if it was trifle.

 

[Drone]

Enjoyable as it was, damned if I can figure out what the OP has to do with the thread title.

My vote would be that it depends on how thoroughly the Prime Directive was broken the first time.

If one of the natives saw something that they didn't really understand and won't be able to explain to other natives, or they won't be believed (alien abduction story), then I would say no, leave it be: unfortunately, your poor native will just have to live confused and/or considered crazy.

If 10,000 natives of a tech level better than, say, the Enlightenment, witnessed your ship drop down into the atmosphere and blow up another ship that was going to attack their city, destroy their world, whatever... then I'd say the jig is up. Just go ahead and land, introduce yourselves, etc. The Prime Directive is out the window - it wasn't cracked, it was BROKEN - and at this point the truth will probably do less damage than possibly leaving them with a xenophobic belief that not only are there aliens but they're all violent.

If, though, your ship was witnessed by, say, a isolated native family who also managed to take very clear pictures, and the natives are of a species where wiping their memories is not an option, then yes, I would say going back to them, introducing yourself, explaining everything that is going on including the Prime Directive and the reasons for it, and hoping that they will understand that they need to keep what they saw to themselves, would be an acceptable risk to take, even though it involves breaking the PD again.

How were the way Future's End (Voyager being shown on the news) and more significantly, Blink of an Eye, handled, fit in your conception?

 

[MacLeod]

This would all make much more sense if it was trifle.

Now, Now, the PD is not to be trifled with.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm looking up Flan recipes.

Mmmmmm.

Thank you Mexicans.