Reminds of this exchange:
PICARD: It is no longer a matter of how wrong Data was, or why he did it. The dilemma exists. We have to discuss the options. And please talk freely.
WORF: There are no options. The Prime Directive is not a matter of degrees. It is an absolute.
PULASKI: I have a problem with that kind of rigidity. It seems callous and even a little cowardly.
PICARD: Doctor, I'm sure that is not what the Lieutenant meant, but in a situation like this, we have to be cautious. What we do today may profoundly affect upon the future. If we could see every possible outcome
RIKER: We'd be gods, which we're not. If there is a cosmic plan, is it not the height of hubris to think that we can, or should, interfere?
LAFORGE: So what are you saying? That the Dremans are fated to die?
RIKER: I think that's an option we should be considering.
LAFORGE: Consider it considered, and rejected.
TROI: If there is a cosmic plan, are we not a part of it? Our presence at this place at this moment in time could be a part of that fate.
LAFORGE: Right, and it could be part of that plan that we interfere.
RIKER: Well that eliminates the possibility of fate.
DATA: But Commander, the Dremans are not a subject for philosophical debate. They are a people.
PICARD: So we make an exception in the deaths of millions.
PULASKI: Yes.
PICARD: And is it the same situation if it's an epidemic, and not a geological calamity?
PULASKI: Absolutely.
PICARD: How about a war? If generations of conflict is killing millions, do we interfere? Ah, well, now we're all a little less secure in our moral certitude. And what if it's not just killings. If an oppressive government is enslaving millions? You see, the Prime Directive has many different functions, not the least of which is to protect us. To prevent us from allowing our emotions to overwhelm our judgement.
There are parts of that scene that work very well, but parts of it are ridiculous. There is no such thing as "fate." There's no evidence of a "divine plan" that the crew was interfering with -- and if there
were a divine plan, surely the Federation and its agents would be a
part of that plan.
The bit that has validity is the idea that one of the functions of the Prime Directive is to make sure that the Federation is basing its choices on careful consideration, not impulsiveness and irrationality.
I would also argue that the PD is valid insofar as it is anti-imperialist. It is morally invalid insofar as it means allowing people to die without a strong overriding moral consideration such as anti-imperialism.
What is the difference between allowing the Dremans to go extinct due to a natural disaster, and allowing them to go extinct from a war? The former is an unavoidable catastrophe that is undesired by anyone. The latter represents the exercise of the Dremans' sovereign right to make decisions for themselves about how they will treat themselves. Anti-imperialism justifies anti-interventionism in the case of an intra-Dreman war.
I mean, it can be argued many different ways, and I can certainly see the more anti-interventionist elements invoking similar arguments.
I think there are a lot of factors at play, and that it isn't just bigotry, or anti-interventionism, or limited resources but a perfect storm of all of the above.
I believe that's what I said...?
With the Romulans though, it is a different issue. How could they ever have been a serious threat to the Federation? It is 150 member worlds vs just one world, Romulus.
The Romulan Star Empire was literally that: an
empire. Empires usually function by appropriating the resources of the periphery and redistributing them to the center. The Federation, by contrast, is highly decentralized, and does not appropriate all of the resources of its Member States. It's perfectly plausible that a post-supernova Romulan polity might be able to maintain its position as a major military power if it prioritizes military spending, even at the expense of its civilian population (since in the ST Universe, it is possible to obtain a great deal of wealth without relying on a large population to obtain it).
The Feds should have squashed them like a bug. I have mentioned this before and been told that maybe there are many worlds in the Empire. And so their total resources are similar. Well, if that is the case, why couldnt Romulan refugees have gone to the large number of Class M planets in their Empire? Why would they need to go to the Federation?
The issue is one of logistics. As history has shown time and again, moving thousands or even millions of people is an extremely difficult, time-consuming process. You can't just shove people into ships like sardines -- at least, not if you want them to live.
Let's do some quick numbers. Let's say the supernova was going to irradiate approximately one sector of space containing 10 inhabited planets with populations that hover in the area of 7 billion each. In other words, it's 2385, and you have two years to move 70 billion people.
A
Galaxy-class starship has a maximum carrying capacity of 15,000 people. This means it would take a
Galaxy-class starship, the largest starship we've ever seen the Federation build, 466,667 separate trips to evacuate a single planet. Or, to put it another way, you would need almost half a million starships capable of carrying 15,000 people each to evacuate a planet in one go.
Now multiply that by ten.
And get it all done within two years.
And remember, this is all assuming that the evacuation goes perfectly and that there are no major problems with mustering, staging, infrastructure, supplies, etc.
This is a logistical challenge that is simply beyond the scale of anything we've seen canonically from the military fleets of
Star Trek. The largest fleets we've ever seen have had hundreds of ships --
not hundreds of thousands. It is unclear if there even
are more than a thousand or so starships in Starfleet, the Klingon Defense Force, or the Romulan Imperial Fleet.
Simpy put, Picard's rescue fleet would have been the most difficult, most ambitious, most astonishing mustering of resources in the known history of local space. It's no wonder they were apparently reactivating ships from the 2250s per "Children of Mars," and it's no wonder it was controversial (you can't muster those kinds of resources without a backlash), and it's no wonder that his failure to mobilize the Federation led to him becoming so despondent he stayed home for 15 years. He tried to do the most amazing thing in history, and he failed, and tens of billions of people probably died as a result.
Supernova's can affect a radius up to 50 light years. Even if there were only 5 inhabited worlds within that range with the same population Romulus, the Romulan fleet would be screwed trying to respond. Lets say Romulus has a population of 9 billion, and the 5 systems within 50 light years also have that same population, that's 54 billion refugees needing new homes. Even if the Romulan empire had 2000 colonies at it's disposal, that's still 27 million per planet that need to be provided with food, shelter and medical care. That is a big task even for a race as powerful as the Romulans.
Yep. And I doubt the Romulan Imperial Fleet had the numbers necessary to transport these refugees by themselves.
I think that even a *token* effort would had gone a long way. Starfleet ships are designed to evacuate colonies. Just go to the border, spam we want to help, just show up. Even if only a few Galaxies and Excelsiors and Constellations filled to the brim arrive and transport as much as they can, around the clock...a lot of the bad blood would had gone away. But apparently the Admirals go 'Nah we ain't got it' - maybe there's a cold war with the Breen going on (far from implausible), maybe the Tholians are doing stuff, so they can barely spare anything. But why not just throw the Merchant Marine at them if that's the case? Do something, anything, you know?
That would be the moral response. But it is not the response the Federation chose.
I think that, if there's a sapient species on the planet and there's a natural disaster that could be averted without them knowing, Starfleet should try, of course without them knowing. A asteroid on a collision course within 10k years? Move it slightly. A Volcano about to erupt that'll Toba them? Do what into Darkness did. A small genetic disease killing their crops or their reproduction rate? Just throw a cure down and about. Just to give them a chance due to their sapience alone. Geopolitical stuff or actions caused by their own sapience, however, gets far more trickier, and thus I can understand the hands-off approach, though it still leaves a sour aftertaste. I don't doubt for a second that immediately after FC, many people blamed the Vulcans for not interfering in WW3, the Eugenics Wars, WW2, WW1, or whatever.
Sounds about right to me. Though I say rescue the pre-warp civilizations from natural disasters even if that means they figure out you're aliens to them. A changed society is better than a dead society.
Yep, it makes no logical sense for these 14 (not 17, as someone said) planets to leave the Federation. And yet, I give you Brexit!
Too, too true.
But on a more serious note, the prequel novel does tell us that these worlds were all along the Romulan border and there was at least one world there that wasn't in the Federation who were planning to form an alliance with them once they left.
There are moral implications to playing god, even if technology enables us primitives to take a wack at it.
How do you shepherd a planetary ecosystem offworld in a way that doesn't prevent other life from evolving in the newly settled space?
You don't, and you shouldn't. It is immoral to prioritize hypothetical life that does not actually exist over actually-existing life. (Hello, anti-abortion protesters who claim an embryo is a person.)
