In none of those instances did billions of people die, as you inferred earlier. We don’t even have proof that one person died because of Starfleet’s actions or inactions.
How would you retcon Strange New Worlds?
- Thread starter Voodoowoman2
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In none of those instances did billions of people die, as you inferred earlier. We don’t even have proof that one person died because of Starfleet’s actions or inactions.
In the first instance, Starfleet was prepared to allow billions to die. In the second, hundreds of millions died. In the third, we can presume that billions died. And these are just three instances on two starships in a fleet of thousands. Is that really the Starfleet you want to see?
‘Prepared.’ ‘Presumed.’ And you assume that billions of Boraalans died when the episode implies that the total population was just the village Nikolai was trying to (successfully) save. So all you are doing is making assumptions that aren’t borne out by what happens in the episodes. Picard et. al are still able to save said people even by being hamstrung by the Prime Directive. They found ways to allow those people to still survive while doing the work under their noses. i. e., they reinterpreted the PD in a way that didn’t incriminate themselves rather than the obvious bastardizing of the PD that Kirk uses to justify his blatant and overt interference in the Neural culture, for example. So yeah, I think TNG utilized stories dealing with the PD better than TOS did.
It feels like you're trying to bait me into being a dick here, so I will simply say that I think you are capable of enough critical thinking to read between the lines of what is explicitly stated and shown, and should not need anyone to explain this stuff to you.
Again, I choose not to believe that your position is that an entire sentient species with a developed language and culture and economy was limited to one small village. I don't know what kind of ridiculous game you're playing, but I will not play along with it.
No. Picard freely acknowledged the PD violation in the first case, and was strongarmed into a PD violation in the second one. And in the VOY episode, Janeway nearly killed Tom Paris to prevent him from saving a world.
The entire species was 16 people? That is unbelievable.
Also they're probably going to go extinct anyways despite saving them. because 15 people is not enough for a viable gene pool lol
No, they're not. They're generally among the worst TNG episodes.
As Pike said, "To Hell with General Order One."
I’m not baiting you into anything. I just don’t agree with your hypothetical interpretations based on what I saw in the episodes you quoted. Don’t take it so personal. I don’t even know you and have no interest in trolling you.
Prove to me that the episode shows there were more people than what we saw.
That’s your opinion, which I don’t share. What else is new?
Well, all I can say is that that's not the Starfleet I see in TOS. To me, it looks like an org that is as much devoted to settler-colonial support, border defense, and waging proxy conflicts with the Klingons as anything else.
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Re: TNG and PD.
I'm with @Jono11 on the Federation letting sapient species go extinct as a result of natural disasters. That's some bullshit. The purpose of the Prime Directive is to prevent the Federation from dominating less-powerful cultures -- to stop the Federation from "doing an imperialism." Letting an entire sapient species go extinct is just monstrous.
Agreed, it's one of Picard's worst moments. Maybe his worst moment period. Had it been me, I'd have been diverting all power to life support, and beaming up Boraalans until my transporters blew out from overuse. And if I was worried about cultural contamination, a little anesthetic gas in the holding areas would do the trick.
I don't know how many Boraalans the Big D could hold, but I would find out (quarter of a million, maybe?). And once they were safely resettled and Starfleet dragged me out of the captain's chair for 250,000 violations of General Order #1... I would take my permanent exile in lovely New Zealand with a big fat crap eating smile on my face.
Sometimes karma has sharp teeth. Another example is "Half a Life", where the people of that planet effectively murdered the only man who could save their sun because he was too old. Maybe another scientist of his skill turned up... but maybe not.
I'll go along with that. The Prime Directive was created to help people, not destroy them.
Another example is Paris and Janeway in "Time and Again".
JANEWAY: "Don't even think about it, Tom. The Prime Directive is clear. We cannot allow our presence to alter this planet's natural course of events."
PARIS: "Even if the natural course of events is annihilation?"
JANEWAY: "Yeah."
That one sticks in my craw the most. Don't save these people from certain annihilation; that's an order.
How many people do you believe live on Earth, right now?
Prove to me that there are 7.9 billion people on Earth right now. I've only seen a few thousand, personally. That means there are only a few thousand people. The only things that exist are the things I have personally seen.
That's why there are only a couple hundred Klingons in Star Trek. We've only actually seen a couple hundred Klingons, so there are only a couple hundred Klingons. It's pretty wild that they managed to have a space empire with so few people, but on the other hand, we haven't seen more than a thousand or so humans either. Or what about the Tamarians? There are only like six of them! Or the Pakleds! No wonder they're so behind in technology, there's only three guys in the whole race!
That's certainly a valid way to read Starfleet, in all of the first three series. I don't think it's how Starfleet sees itself, though, which is the material thing for this particular question, in my view. Starfleet, in TOS and TNG (and for much of DS9) does not see itself as a military but as a research organization only reluctantly forced to participate in conflicts. In the movies, though, it's heavily militaristic.
That's irrelevant to the discussion.
I don't need to, because that has nothing to do with what was presented in the episode in question. Nikolai was trying to save the villagers on an alien planet, and PD issues were localized to that group. Nothing else was said in the episode about any other planetary population being wiped out.
So your position is that the planet losing its atmosphere did not threaten any other Boraalans?
Was there mention of other people on the planet dying? Keeping in mind that this is a fictional planet at the mercy of the writers’ whims, and not based in any kind of reality?
In general, I would think that once a race gains the ability to travel across oceans (if there are any on its surface), the planet's population reaches certain numbers based on its ability to sustain them. And, it continues to grow like that until they gain the technology to limit population growth. So anywhere between the tech equivalent of 1500 AD and that of around 1960, their population would be about comparable to ours, modified by amount of arable landmass.
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That’s your choice, since you seem to be evading my question anyway. And FYI, I’m not the one who just joined the TrekBBS and immediately started acting in a belligerent manner.
I’d rather her intolerance of the Romulans have its origins of how Ortegas has heard horror stories from the war, and seen the numerous war memorials, rather than a personal connection to that event. Therefore, there’s no hard canon to events relating to that war beyond what’s already been established. And would give her a reason to be a hardliner with Federation security.
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