Robert Beltran says the Prime Directive is 'fascist crap'

Picard apparently never developed the hornies for any of the Indian women, if he had things would have been different.

Then explain Picard's medical condition in the last TNG episode.

 

Fine. They don't have a significant medical problem then. They are certainly in a luxurious position from the prism of here in the 21st century. They can wait for the next few decades to find a way to replicate or extract the particles in a holistic way. The stuff is valuable but this issue ain't urgent. A spark on the Cardassian-Federation border on the otherhand could set off a generalised war and the stakes are quite big if the CoC two parter was anything to go by.

 

You're probably right.

 

Even if it concerned only a small percentage of the population of the federation that would still be millions of people, way more than the few hundreds of aristocrats of the movie. And that means that every hour there are hundreds of them dying (IE more than the entire population of snobby aliens ) and that's how non urgent this issue is. I am sure that to the ones watching their loved ones dying instead of being given a reprieve with the new treatment it DOES seem like it's an urgent issue.

 

Baku immortality. The children on that planet have been children for 300 years. It's why they are so good at playing kick ball.

There are no new babies.

There is no next generation.

Evolution stops.

That's not health, that's altering the definition of existence.

 

I don't think so. I haven't watched this movie for a long time but I seem to remember that the kids age normally until they reach adulthood and then only they stop aging. I believe you're thinking of Miri.

 

It's not urgent. And it's weird stuff that you have to be exposed to constantly. Better to revive the eugenics stuff.

There's no knife edge war & peace scenario in Insurrection. The only urgency is to process the stuff before the writers have a chance to forget they wrote this fairytale juice in the first place.

 

It's urgent to the people who are dying.

 

People die all the time. It's not an urgent issue for the Federation.

 

I don't see the logic of this argument. What's more urgent than the saving of lives?

 

Any Immortality creates a problem with resources if the elderly stop dying, and keep eating when there's young that were expecting to be earmarked for that cornstarch.

Yes, that is the horror story of Miri.

There's only 600 people on Baku.

There must have been a lot of cousin fucking, if the original colonists have been ###ing and multiplying their base for three hundred years, yet there's still only 30 score. So if their base is doubling every generation, I'm thinking that most of the Baku probably must commit suicide after a few hundred years, or they left, because #### another day in paradise.

Okay, you're right, but that's ridiculous. There is no rational way that radiation can tell the difference between a "mature" person and a baby unless it was artificially put there, and it's state was manipulated/regulated by a third party of perhaps space gods.

Although if it's about building up to a critical mass, which is why the Sonar can't reverse their condition quick enough before they expire, it'd seem that Picard would also need to be planet bound for 30 years before his hair would grow back.

"Sigh"

Although if it takes 20 to 30 years to saturate a Baku or a Human, it'll take 20 to 30 minutes to saturate any given non specific sperm, or perhaps the Baku only have have a brief window of fertility between puberty and immortality?

600 people is an unsustainable genetic sample.

In BSG, 50,000 people is maybe not enough.

Although it's possible that they are "smart" to only make children when they need children so that their population stays at a desirable level relative to their environment, otherwise they would be constantly expanding their infrastructure like we have to on Earth.

 

The logic of the argument is death is inevitable, people die all the time as a matter of course and governments continue on regardless. The Feds can still hawk off their eternal youth potion, they just need time to do it right.

 

You're allowed to donate kidneys to people you don't know.

Take a test.

See who you are compatible with.

They give you a list of people who need kidneys, begging for kidneys, and you get to pick one, who you think is the most deserving of more life and your kidney.

If that's how you feel.

It's selfish for you to truck along with two kidneys when there are thousands of people every day dying of Kidney failure.

 

Or maybe they have their children at a slowing rate, by the time they get to a thousand years they'll be maybe only one kid for them all.

 

What's that got to do with the present discussion?

Give me a million dollars!

 

Your claim is that the Baku are selfish for hoarding immortality and not sharing it with the rest of the Galaxy. You go on to imply that the Baku are responsible for everyone that dies that could have been saved if they had shared their radiation belt.

The Baku are genocidal.

On a smaller scale, but same difference.

If one life matters, and every life must be saved, so why don't you save a life tomorrow?

Give a kidney to a 95 year old.

 

I never said the Baku were the problem. I said Picard and his clique are the problem. They're on the wrong side. I am not saying that the Baku have to donate their immortality because it isn't theirs to donate in the first place.

Now, how about that million dollars, will you send me a check or...?

 

I do have a million dollars of compost in my back 40.

Do you know what to do with 1,500 tons of semi-wet dung?

 

You can debate whether Picard is wrongheaded. I let other members of the Trekbbbs brain trust to chew on that little notion. But there's no doublestandards at play.

Picard had a generalised war with a major galactic power looming over him in the Indian episode. (I still think he behaved appallingly but 'keeping the peace' is a big thing with Picard)

Picard was chastened by his experience in the Indian episode and this experience then went on to inform his conduct in Insurrection. We live n' learn as they say.

 

I never liked it when the Prime Directive was stretched to cover warp-capable societies, but for a different reason.

I find the whole notion of pre-warp and warp societies to be condescending and presumptuous. There's no reason to presume that all non-warp societies will or should become warp-capable societies, much less that all planets with warp technology will share a similar kind of superior social development.

Nevertheless, I'm in favor of something like a Prime Directive for non-warp societies, to protect them from the meddling of supposedly well-intentioned people more technologically powerful than they are. Once that inequality is more or less removed, once a race of aliens is on something like technological par with the Federation starships it encounters, I see no need for a policy of complete non-interference, though some guidelines and application of such that err on the side of restraint would probably still be a good thing.