Garrett Series/TV Show?
- Thread starter Continuous Cosmos
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General Order 24 was a thing. Some more modern fans can head canon and handwave it away and pretend it didn't happen, but Scotty took Kirk's order seriously and didn't remotely pretend it was a ruse to trick the Eminian High Council into freeing the Enterprise officers from captivity.
And after Starfleet was willing to set off a bomb at the very core of Qo'noS in Season 1 of DSC I can totally believe that the "enlightened" Starfleet of the 23rd century employed very scary and ominous orders when it felt it needed to use them. Even Admiral Cornwell and Ambassador Sarek were willing to blow Qo'noS to bits and kill untold billions.
And after Starfleet was willing to set off a bomb at the very core of Qo'noS in Season 1 of DSC I can totally believe that the "enlightened" Starfleet of the 23rd century employed very scary and ominous orders when it felt it needed to use them. Even Admiral Cornwell and Ambassador Sarek were willing to blow Qo'noS to bits and kill untold billions.
There are less incendiary ways to reference current politics. Hot-button topics belong in Misc or TNZ.
They head canon it as a bluff because General Order 24 makes absolutely no sense in the context of what we know before and since. The idea of General Order 24 isn't even bad in the most extreme of circumstances - e.g. a threat to all life in the quadrant.
I actually forgot about that stupidity in Discovery though. Shame Starfleet never used that leverage during the multiple times they needed the Klingons to stop being maniacs.
It doesn't surprise me that Starfleet is empowered to wield such terrible abilities. Kirk threatened it, Picard was willing to let cultures die, and Sisko rendered a planet uninhabitable for certain species.
They have great and terrible power.
Forgot about Jean-Luc "Prime Deathrective" Picard!
Picard was perfectly willing to let Sarjenka's homeworld in the Selcundi Drema star system be destroyed just because "Prime Directive."
And this is the same man that yells "who the hell are we to determine the natural course of evolution for these people" to Admiral Dougherty in Star Trek: Insurrection.
Personal growth, or inconsistent writing? Find out next time, same Star-time, same Star-channel.
I head canon the former, just because otherwise means Picard is still Season 1 and 2 dick Picard.
Yes, it was a wildly stupid and irresponsible argument for the Prime Directive that uses "nature" argument as codeword for "God". I am glad they came to their senses and made the ethical choice.
Let them die was an interesting argument to make, and the idea they were fated to die. Janeway made a similar argument against Paris warning a race of imminent destruction.
They always do make the ethical choice at the end of stories where the Prime Directive stops them from saving a world, that just makes the dilemma even more ridiculous. No one likes or agrees with this interpretation of the Prime Directive, not even the writers! But we're given the impression that stories like Pen Pals and Homeward are the exception and other ships are just letting millions die for no reason.
Ethics are different in the future. They grow up in a different context and don't mourn.
That's Gene's vision.
But they do make the choice we would consider ethical now. In Pen Pals, Homeworld, Time and Again, Into Darkness, and so on.
And before the Prime Directive even existed Archer and Phlox struggled over whether or not to give a vaccine to the Valakians.
It's usually there to break or bend and give our characters a hero moment. Total forced drama.
And I get the feeling even Kirk's crew would have let the authoritarian, brutal Roman civilization on planet 892-IV be and not given much of a crap had the human Merrick and other officers from a Federation ship not disappeared on that world six years before.
Or the Occupation of Bajor.
Fixed that for you.
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