Spoilers STAR TREK BEYOND
- Thread starter Khan 2.0
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You take a chance of breaking it every time you enter someone's star system. Its very existence is counter to the Starfleet charter of "going where no one has gone before".
That episode of Enterprise with the origin if the Prime Directive - where a non warp species find the E, comes aboard, takes the E to their planet where half the population is going extinct from a virus, Phlox cures the virus, and then Archer and Phlox lie, say that they don't have the cure, and leave, condemning billions to death, tells you everything you need to know about the Prime Directive.
Didn't Robert Beltran make the news not long ago for talking about how BS the prime directive is?
The observer effect alone should mean that the Prime Directive is pointless.
Didn't Robert Beltran make the news not long ago for talking about how BS the prime directive is?
The observer effect alone should mean that the Prime Directive is pointless.
Also, you are invading someone's territory and world without permission. Which to me would seem to be in violation of Federation ethics.
Privacy doesn't exist in the Federation.
Edit: And even if it did, you're not significantly evolved enough to have unalienable human rights until you achieve warp travel. Before that you're wildlife.
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Jesus. The primary reason for the prime directive (and a good one at that!) is to prevent situations like on Stargate where they regularly travel to new civilisations, sell them their newest guns and teach them how to be little proud Americans.
Also, it's to prevent other species (e.g. klingons) from doing the same in their name. It's not "never look at or touch anything", it's "don't do the whole Colonialism thing again". Which is IMO a pretty good and necessary reason.
Also, it's to prevent other species (e.g. klingons) from doing the same in their name. It's not "never look at or touch anything", it's "don't do the whole Colonialism thing again". Which is IMO a pretty good and necessary reason.
1). Federation laws don't apply to Klingons.
2) A private little war directly establishes that arming other species to fight the people the Klingons arm is one of the few times they're allowed to violate the prime directive.
3) Pretty sure you'll find a lot more examples of the Prime Directive being used not to help people than being used to prevent colonialism
I doubt it would pass any modern research ethics board if you submitted it for review.
It's actually VERY flexible, it's just that some officers have an inflexible interpretation of it.
Pretty sure you're wrong about this one. A lot of the more interesting invocations of the Prime Directive come from the Bajoran Situation, where Starfleet has to weigh its desire to help the Bajorans against the fact that they cannot and should not compromise Bajor's capacity to self-govern. "The Hunted" is another example, with the Angosian government asking Starfleet for help and Picard basically saying "Not my circus, not my monkeys. Call me when you've got this sorted out."
In anticipation of your protest: yes, these are all examples of colonialism. A stronger power taking responsibility for social and political stability of a weaker one undermines the political autonomy of the latter. This is usually deliberate, and against the wishes of the local government; Deep Space Nine is the Gold Standard of this use, as Starfleet is prevented from actually taking sides in the war and helping the provisional government crush the rebellion, BUT is not prevented from letting the new government -- and everyone else, for that matter -- aware of the fact that the rebels are backed by Cardassian operatives. Likewise, Starfleet's alliance with the Klingons prevents them from joining the war against Duras, but it also doesn't prevent them from forcing the Romulans to stay the hell out of it.
The opposite of colonialism is not indifference. The opposite of colonialism is respect for one's own sovereignty. The Federation has rules in place that make sure that they cannot violate the sovereignty of any other civilization, even if that civilization asks them to do so. This probably prevents some struggling civilizations like, say, Bajor from pulling a Mouse that Roared, e.g. declaring war against the Federation, deliberately losing that war, and then offering "annex us into the Federation" as terms for surrender. The Feds would be the first to say "Just because we beat you doesn't mean we OWN you. You've got to solve your own problems, dude."
Prime Directive as a non-interference directive is mostly good. Not meddling with other powers internal stuff, not accelerating their rate of technological advancement without them having the social maturity to back it up. All that is apt.
Problems arise when a civilisation are understood to be dooooooomed. Do you intervene then to save 'em? Guess, the answer should be yes. As long as they aren't doing it to themselves, you save 'em. In the TNG era, anyway, they are debarred from doing that apparently.
Problems arise when a civilisation are understood to be dooooooomed. Do you intervene then to save 'em? Guess, the answer should be yes. As long as they aren't doing it to themselves, you save 'em. In the TNG era, anyway, they are debarred from doing that apparently.
I don't think they are. I think there are certain things you have to do in order to provide aid and still be in compliance with the Prime Directive. I think Starfleet officers know full well what those things are, but some officers -- Crusher and Picard, for example -- apply an incredibly rigorous standard for when those conditions can be met.
As it stands, Picard had no trouble whatsoever relaxing his standards when Sarjenka's planet got into trouble. It's clear from his reaction that they COULD have helped all along, but he had decided ahead of time that it would have been too difficult for them to come up with a solution that would meet the non-interference standards. Which, under normal circumstances, would probably be the case, but his engineering department managed to pull some space magic bullshit out of their asses and stop the planet from destroying itself WITHOUT having to either evacuate the entire population or reveal to the locals what was really going on. A hundred years earlier, the same basic thing happens on Nibiru; helping the natives didn't actually violate the prime directive, only revealing their presence to them (Kirk didn't even get in trouble for that part, since the revelation was a violation by technicality; he got in trouble for falsifying his log entries, which demonstrates he can't take responsibility and own his mistakes).
Other interesting examples come from "Deja Q" where Enterprise is helping a group of aliens deflect an asteroid from their planet, and in "Devil's Due" where the Enterprise is technically only involved because some Federation citizens are involved in the riots but Picard decides to stay and help anyway because the final verdict is ultimately up to the locals (and Data, unlike almost any other life form in the universe, has the ability to actually be impartial). This also happens in "Reunion" and "Redemption Part 1" where Picard is asked to act as Arbiter of Succession just because K'mpec trusts him to make the right call; in that case, too, the final decision is still up to the Klingons, and Picard is just acting as a consultant.
So on the whole, we can conclude that Starfleet has to be careful to limit the effects that their intervention may have on the society in question; there are times when their assistance would only be possible by completely unraveling said society and forcing it to start from scratch, in which case they either try to find an alternative solution or they bite the bullet and just stay the hell out of it. The latter situation is a lot more rare, but the overall intent is for Starfleet to avoid putting itself in situations where their actions would destabilize the status quo on whatever world they're visited. They're supposed to leave things more or less as they found them on their departure.
While not verbally confirmed on screen, it's pretty much implied that the prime directive has an equivalent in all spacefaring alpha quadrant species (and thus probably is more the result of intergalactic negotiations than Federation ideology). That's why everytime another species wants to "meddle" with another species (like the Romulans during the klingon conflict) they have to do so in secret.
Indeed, pretty much EVERY time old Kirk violates the prime directive it's because the prime directive already has been violated, and the new action is to reverse the impacts of the first violation.
Well, everytime an episode is directly adressing the prime directives, the writers feel the need to create a moral dilemma. What's more telling is everytime the prime directive is used without specifically putting a focus on it. And that's probably the majority of times.
Again, the prime directive is pretty useful. But I absolutely agree it shouldn't be applied when the species in question would be doomed otherwise (aka "dear doctor")
Where? When?
Literally any time other species don't violate the prime directive...?
Just look at how different it is in the beta quadrant, where the prime directive obviously isn't enforced...
Also, Enterprise, where it was specifically mentioned the Vulcans have one, and thus their peers probably as well...
The Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians are well known to be respectful of other groups sovereign space. That's why they're called Empires.
The Prime Directive is more like a declaration of neutrality.
It's not really related to how states recognise each other as diplomatic actors. So I wouldn't say that the Klingons and Cardassians have a PD or anything like that.
It's not really related to how states recognise each other as diplomatic actors. So I wouldn't say that the Klingons and Cardassians have a PD or anything like that.
The PD is needed because the way to hell is paved with good intentions
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