Best and Worst Prime Directive Justification Episodes

[apenpaap]

The best one is "Who watches the watchers?" as it really shows how badly stuff can go wrong when breaking it.

The worst is either Homeward or Pen Pals, as the choice in these episodes was to contaminate the culture or destroy it. In that way, Dear Doctor is different, as there would be people who benefitted from the destruction of the Valakians (The Mink).

 

[Anwar]

You got it backwards hyzmarca, if Picard had intervened and transplanted the Boraalans THEN he'd have been court martialed and sent off to a backwater ship. Because he broke the PD by intervening in a primitive culture, and he set into motion a precedent that would irrevocably alter Federation policy towards primitive races and likely result in the Galactic Nanny State I outlined and a Federation destroyed by it's enemies who took advantage of their spread out numbers to invade and conquer. Nikolai can write all the sap he wants, but stuff like what happened in "Homeward" had been happening for centuries by that point and no one's whinings on the matter had changed anything. Plus once they found out he had married and mated with one of the aliens he was sent to observe he'd be ostracized and ridiculued anyways so no one would take it seriously. Saving the Boraalans would NOT be seen as a success, it would be seen as a rogue action that ultimately would be recorded as the event that set into motion the transformation of the Federation into an overworked Nanny State that turned it's defense force into a force that dedicated nearly all its numbers to searching out and "protecting" all lesser races from every last little problem they encountered and having to set up outposts to observe them and continue to watch over them for hundreds of years, nevermind that those people would be needed on the front lines of a war somewhere. Oh no, babying the Universe is much more important than letting them walk on their own strength.

Yes, human emotions and ambition work that way, those who oppose the PD but were overruled by the smarter ones who supported it would then have the ammunition they needed to do away with it altogether, have a Starfleet going around handing out warp cores to cavemen and messing around with the internal affairs of other planets with impunity as egenrally making a mess of things. The PD is to keep those people in check and if that includes not messing with natural disasters either, than so be it. Civilizations and species grow thorugh adversity, and if the Federation protects them from every little thing the Galaxy will be inherited by a bunch of pansies millenia down the line who don't know how to live their lives.

 

[hyzmarca]

Well, maybe. Phlox never actually considered the very real possibility that the Mink's intellectual adaptations were a result of their interactions with the Valakians, in which case the death of the Valakians is likely to stymie them. Phlox also didn't consider the issue of interbreeding, which is pretty much inevitable when two groups live that closely together.

The episode was really marred by the simple fact that evolution does not work that way and by the unfortunate implied moral that genocide is alright if the people dying really are genetically inferior.

 

[Anwar]

the unfortunate implied moral that genocide is alright if the people dying really are genetically inferior.

I'd say it, but I try to avoid Godwin's law.

 

[sojourner]

Well, as a secular humanist I beleive the PD is a good idea up until a civilization is going to be destroyed, whether through natural causes or self destruction. Forcing them to progress to the Federation's level of technology would be a shame. Think of all the culture you would be cutting short. An inferior culture never survives contact with a superior one.

Munich 1938 is a bad example as Germany was not an inferior culture. Technology wise they actually had quite an edge on us militarily.

 

[sojourner]

You got it backwards hyzmarca, if Picard had intervened and transplanted the Boraalans THEN he'd have been court martialed and sent off to a backwater ship. Because he broke the PD by intervening in a primitive culture, and he set into motion a precedent that would irrevocably alter Federation policy towards primitive races and likely result in the Galactic Nanny State I outlined and a Federation destroyed by it's enemies who took advantage of their spread out numbers to invade and conquer. Nikolai can write all the sap he wants, but stuff like what happened in "Homeward" had been happening for centuries by that point and no one's whinings on the matter had changed anything. Plus once they found out he had married and mated with one of the aliens he was sent to observe he'd be ostracized and ridiculued anyways so no one would take it seriously. Saving the Boraalans would NOT be seen as a success, it would be seen as a rogue action that ultimately would be recorded as the event that set into motion the transformation of the Federation into an overworked Nanny State that turned it's defense force into a force that dedicated nearly all its numbers to searching out and "protecting" all lesser races from every last little problem they encountered and having to set up outposts to observe them and continue to watch over them for hundreds of years, nevermind that those people would be needed on the front lines of a war somewhere. Oh no, babying the Universe is much more important than letting them walk on their own strength.

Yes, human emotions and ambition work that way, those who oppose the PD but were overruled by the smarter ones who supported it would then have the ammunition they needed to do away with it altogether, have a Starfleet going around handing out warp cores to cavemen and messing around with the internal affairs of other planets with impunity as egenrally making a mess of things. The PD is to keep those people in check and if that includes not messing with natural disasters either, than so be it. Civilizations and species grow thorugh adversity, and if the Federation protects them from every little thing the Galaxy will be inherited by a bunch of pansies millenia down the line who don't know how to live their lives.

So are you saying the Federation would suddenly decide they had to go on a crash course of exploring outside it's own borders looking for civilizations in trouble? Or do you think that there are simply thousands of proto-civilizations within federation borders that are all on the verge of extinction?

In Either case, why do you have this strong conviction that the federation government would suddenly go off on this radical bent based on such a scenario of saving a civilization facing extinction?

Oops, 2 in a row. my bad!

 

[flemm]

Munich 1938 is a bad example.

For a number of reasons, I agree. But I also think drawing direct parallels to real political situations is a flawed way of evaluating the prime directive, generally speaking.

The question is not: would the prime directive be a good idea in the real world? The question is more: is it an effective storytelling device in the fictional world of Star Trek? Obviously this varies from episode to episode, but I think on the whole it is important.

Star Trek is inherently optimistic and humanitarian. These characters for the most part would like nothing more than to intervene to stop a war, cure disease, provide some useful technology, whatever. The Prime Directive is like a permanent reminder that even with the best of intentions, an intervention might have unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences, might cause more problems than it solves, might truncate the natural development of a civilisation, and so on.

These are the kinds of things that would be easy to ignore in fiction. The Prime Directive makes sure this does not happen. In a sense, the directive targets Trek writers as much as Trek Captains.

 

[Anwar]

All it takes is one domino to topple them all, one action like relocating the Boraalans could easily become the beginning of a chain reaction that would lead to the Galactic Nanny State which itself would ultimately be destroyed because it wasted its' resources on babying the Galaxy instead of letting them face their problems and got itself destroyed by multiple invasions from it's hostile neighbors.

And yes, I do think that the Trek galaxy is full of endangered planets the Feds would have to create a Nanny State to protect.

 

[hyzmarca]

Yes, human emotions and ambition work that way, those who oppose the PD but were overruled by the smarter ones who supported it would then have the ammunition they needed to do away with it altogether, have a Starfleet going around handing out warp cores to cavemen and messing around with the internal affairs of other planets with impunity as egenrally making a mess of things. The PD is to keep those people in check and if that includes not messing with natural disasters either, than so be it. Civilizations and species grow thorugh adversity, and if the Federation protects them from every little thing the Galaxy will be inherited by a bunch of pansies millenia down the line who don't know how to live their lives.

If anyone actually cared enough to oppose the Prime Directive's 24th Century interpretation, they'd have already built their own fleet. The Prime Directive is a Starfleet general order, not Federation law, it doesn't stop an civilian from doing anything, and civilians can own starships. If there was a huge faction of civilians wanting to save endangered species, then they'd most certainly be doing it themselves by now. The fact that they are not demonstrates that there is no such group. Federation citizens, by and large, are selfish gits who don't care about other people.

Nikolai can write all the sap he wants, but stuff like what happened in "Homeward" had been happening for centuries by that point and no one's whinings on the matter had changed anything.

Yes, and Megan Kanka wasn't the first little girl to be raped and murdered in all of history. Human apathy did nothing to stop hasty and ill-advised legislation to be passed as a result of the torrent of public outrage. Never underestimate the power of a Lifetime-movie-of-the-week-worthy tragedy.

 

[Anwar]

There probably are silly pro-interventionalists in the Trekverse trying just that, but only Starfleet would have the numbers and personnel to make a difference in creating a Nanny State. Which is why they'd latch onto such a precedent as the Boraalans to turn Starfleet into the hands of a Galactic Nanny State to begin with.

Don't underestimate the intelligence of people within Starfleet or the Federation government to point out how the destruction of the PD would ultimately destroy the economy and the Federation itself. They're working round the clock to discredit the pro-interventionalists and whatever "evidence" they have.

 

[hyzmarca]

So basically entire argument is that stuff that was never in canon, which you just recently made up, must be true.

 

[Anwar]

I pointed out the bigger picture beyond just saving the Boraalans and tried to explain that's it's about more than just saving one planet from a disaster. It's no that clear-cut, and those who would jump right in clearly aren't thinking about the consequences: Galactic Nanny State.

 

[Disillusioned]

I can't think of any good Prime Directive episodes, personally. "First Contact" (the episode, not the movie) was the closest, though I find it rather odd that the first officer of the Federation flagship should be the observer, among other things. Most of them were contrived and/or preachy. In "Homeward" (I think), they actually have one of the aliens commit suicide in order to prove Picard's assertion that the entire species would have been better off dead, and how it was such a pain in the ass for any of them to still be left alive. "Who Watches the Watchers" was preachy and contrived as hell, and even as an agnostic I can't help but roll my eyes at Picard's assertion that atheism is the only way, and religion is a step backwards. Just as with the other alien killing himself to prove Picard's point, in this episode the alien that got saved turned into the same kind of batshit insane religious person that that woman in "The Mist" was like, being all for sacrificing people and all. The worst one with the most pathetic excuse for letting a species go extinct though has to be the "Dear Doctor" ENT episode. Doctor Phlox goes on about "playing god", then does just that by determining the evolutionary direction of two sentient species after only a few days of being exposed to them.

 

[Bertie]

The question is not: would the prime directive be a good idea in the real world? The question is more: is it an effective storytelling device in the fictional world of Star Trek? Obviously this varies from episode to episode, but I think on the whole it is important.

But plot, actually, isn't everything — especially in science fiction — universe building matters, perhaps more to some, less to others, but it matters. And so putting Starfleet on the record supporting the ideology of "Homecoming" and "Dear Doctor" and the like matters.

(And even judged purely in storytelling terms, there were more losers than winners among the PD episodes...)

(And please, don't try to claim victory on Godwin — everyone made the Nazi connection the day "Dear Doctor" aired...it's blatant.)

 

[flemm]

But plot, actually, isn't everything — especially in science fiction — universe building matters, perhaps more to some, less to others, but it matters. And so putting Starfleet on the record supporting the ideology of "Homecoming" and "Dear Doctor" and the like matters.

Well, storytelling is not plot alone, so you are misinterpreting my previous post. Certain episodes are more interested in establishing or defending the Prime Directive as a rule than in exploring the implications of it. That is bad because it is self-absorbed navel-gazing that assumes the Prime Directive is important just because it is part of Star Trek, and therefore must be defended.

I guess you could say that is bad universe building in a sense, but it is also bad storytelling.

 

[sojourner]

All it takes is one domino to topple them all, one action like relocating the Boraalans could easily become the beginning of a chain reaction that would lead to the Galactic Nanny State which itself would ultimately be destroyed because it wasted its' resources on babying the Galaxy instead of letting them face their problems and got itself destroyed by multiple invasions from it's hostile neighbors.

And yes, I do think that the Trek galaxy is full of endangered planets the Feds would have to create a Nanny State to protect.

Yes, because both of these statements have been clearly supported by what we have seen of the federation and by real world examples.

 

[Anwar]

You can't evacuate a planet of millions (there had to be that many on Boraal) with just one ship, you'd need hundreds working round the clock to do so.

And I try not to use real-world examples in the case of evacuating an entire planetary population and resettling them while also leaving a large observation/relocation assistance force behind to make sure they adapted (which would take decades if not a century).

 

[Myasishchev]

All it takes is one domino to topple them all, one action like relocating the Boraalans could easily become the beginning of a chain reaction that would lead to the Galactic Nanny State which itself would ultimately be destroyed because it wasted its' resources on babying the Galaxy instead of letting them face their problems and got itself destroyed by multiple invasions from it's hostile neighbors.

And yes, I do think that the Trek galaxy is full of endangered planets the Feds would have to create a Nanny State to protect.

I've argued before that our experience of cosmic disasters militates strongly against the proposition that saving species from disasters would occupy all of Starfleet's time and resources. Extinction level events, if there are a million inhabitated planets in this galaxy, still would only occur once every few decades, and in most cases with centuries of lead time.

Granted, Trek would have us believe that such events occur once or twice as season, but "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," for example, doesn't understand the size of space and I see little incentive in believing warpless asteroids could pose the slightest threat in a world where FTL is commonplace and sensors can detect the infrared signatures of individuals, let alone a freakin' asteroid, from parsecs away.

Anwar, you can evacuate a planet of millions given the warning they would realistically get ("Oh no, a star went supernova, we only have thirty years to save the people in its path!").

 

[Anwar]

Not with how Trek shows it. There, they'd have to send nearly all of Starfleet out to actively search out endangered worlds, have hundreds if not thousands of ships work round the clock for like months to evacuate everyone, find a compatible world for their species (which would likely also take weeks if not Months wherein they'd be cramping up said thousands of ships and getting antsy) settle them and then stay for years to help set up a civilization as well as leave a near-permanent presence there (a large one) to make sure they didn't collapse after a decade.

And they'd have to do like 10 of these (if not more) at the same time. And while they're wasting their time doing this, their hostile neighbours are busy burning Earth.

 

[Myasishchev]

The thing is, if it's really as common as the stastical aberration that is canonical Trek, there aren't going to be any sapient life forms to save in the first place. Extinction level events every season would pretty rapidly (on a cosmological timescale) exhaust the M-class planets in this galaxy...