ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Anwar
That's a joke of an argument - as many posters already proved conclusively.
Deal with it.
That's a joke of an argument - as many posters already proved conclusively.
Deal with it.
When Did The Prime Directive Change And Why?
- Thread starter sonak
- Start date
No, going around and playing Galactic Messiah is a silly fantasy that only leaves everyone worse off. Deal with that.
And McCoy sure did the future a lot of good by saving Edith Keeler, didn't he?
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Anwar
Already responded to your post - two posts ago.
The arguments you are using are transparently erroneous.
But you already know that, don't you - this was explained to you multiple times, by me and others.
You just don't want to accept it - probably because it makes Picard look bad or some other similar motive - and keep repeating the save sentences.
Already responded to your post - two posts ago.
The arguments you are using are transparently erroneous.
But you already know that, don't you - this was explained to you multiple times, by me and others.
You just don't want to accept it - probably because it makes Picard look bad or some other similar motive - and keep repeating the save sentences.
And I replied back. You just keep ignoring it.
The arguments YOU use are tragically short-sighted and small-minded, with false analogy as well. The Federation is not some Nanny State that goes around playing Big Brother to every species threatened by any little thing. Nor is it practical to go around and transplant entire civilizations.
The arguments YOU use are tragically short-sighted and small-minded, with false analogy as well. The Federation is not some Nanny State that goes around playing Big Brother to every species threatened by any little thing. Nor is it practical to go around and transplant entire civilizations.
No... he wasn't flagrant. There was a mistake made and the damage was done--he was exposed. A person was mortally wounded as a result of the Federation trying to do their job and in trying to correct that mistake, the myth of the Picard god was accidentally created. It needed to be rectified. And apparently this particular civilization wasn't like the Boraalan... they could comprehend the idea of sentient life visiting from other planets, without being knocked off balance and losing their peace of mind. But I would agree that this visitation probably altered the course of this civilization. They would be inspired to invent technologies and try to reach for the stars... something that might have taken more centuries of natural development otherwise. It was a mistake... the damage was done. What more could they do?
The main intent is to "not interfere" with a culture in a way that will notably affect the course of their development. Letting them develop as naturally as they would normally. The Federation is not perfect and does make mistakes. And sometimes there is a "situation specific context" that requires some flexibility for the officer in charge. But you're right... if Nikolai had not interfered, the civilization would have died. Picard did say the Prime Directive principle is non-interference, even at the expense of a civilization dying. You're talking far more people than the Federation could possibly rescue. Certainly the Federation would like to do something, but given the amount of time... what was it? Something like a few days before the atmosphere would completely disintegrate? I do wonder if it was observed as something that would take many months to a year, if the Federation might intervene somehow, without exposing their presence.
Picard: "This is one of those times when we must face the ramifications of the Prime Directive and honor those lives who we cannot save," as the Enterprise watched the planet's atmosphere collapse.
Anyway, the relocation of the entire single village was a major stretch on the PD. But the damage was done... Nikolai violated the PD, pushed the limit by violating Picard's orders to perpetuate the ruse with the villagers by transporting the village into the holodeck, and now Picard had to improvise. Of course, it was so ridiculous... how could the holodeck hold so many people?? There were a lot of plausibility problems with this episode, and I'd just prefer to look at it as an anomaly to "Star Trek canon".
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He's considered monstrous for not trying to save anyone, and you're saying he'd be considered monstrous for choosing which ones to save. So, in either case, he's going to be considered monstrous, but in one case he's considered monstrous and some beings are saved, and in the other he's considered monstrous and no beings are saved. Comparing the two, the former seems the more desirable result.
That assumes, of course, that his choice of whom to save would be considered monstrous. Medics, when confronted with too many people to assist, have a systematic approach by which to select whom to attempt to help -- triage. I don't see why a "kind" of triage couldn't be used in a rescue situation, too.
The fact that the practicalities weren't even mentioned tells me that they weren't even a consideration. For the Prime Directive to require "Don't even try to help here," then helping must have been practical. If helping were impractical, the Prime Directive wouldn't even have been an issue.
In almost any large-scale disaster there isn't any way to save all the victims. That they couldn't have saved everyone isn't really an issue. The episode wasn't about resource management, it was about the "cost" of the Prime Directive.
On a planetary scale of millions upon millions?
Or it's just that the PD is the first thing that springs to mind in these cases over practicality of saving them ALL. But when you think about it, practical concerns like how they were supposed to pull off saving thousands of Boraalans do seem like they should be logically in there. So maybe it's just a case of the writers just not going far ENOUGH with the story. It's not enough for it to be PD, the practical methods of it have to be taken into measure as well, and the aftermath.
The villagers would have been dead but for the violation of the Prime Directive. The "contamination" could have been cured by transporting the villagers back the now-uninhabitable surface of the planet. They would have just been a few hundred more corpses among the many. If non-interference is valued above life (and "Prime" here means "highest concern"), then Picard should have just killed the villagers.
Why not? This was a pretty quick disaster. Maybe scanners could have revealed that "Too great a proportion of the population on this island is already dead for the population to remain viable. The population that took refuge in this system of caves appears to be sufficiently intact to survive."
Working behind the scenes and without authorized access to the Enterprise's system, thus under even greater time constraints, one man was apparently able to make preparations sufficient to save an entire village. I have a hard time believing that with the full resources of the Enterprise and its crew more populations couldn't have been saved, even under the time constraints of this situation and one ship to work with. In situations with looser time constraints,
That's exactly my point. Picard wasn't concerned with the practicality of saving these people because he had decided not to save them. Practicality wasn't even a consideration. Maybe it was practical, maybe it wasn't, but that doesn't matter, what matters is non-interference.
That's the value judgment to which people are objecting.
Or maybe it's a case of the writers going far enough to make exactly the point they intend to make -- "It's not that Picard can't save these people, it's that he chooses not to because he values non-interference above sentient life."
He got it done faster due to his connection to that one village (the woman he knocked up) and it being a pretty small group (wasn't it only a few dozen people?). Even if the crew worked on it they only had a few hours to choose out of millions where his choice was made beforehand. Then like I said, there would still be the relocation, making sure the native life wasn't disrupted, and staying to make sure that the transplanted people survived. And this would be if they somehow did it without the people knowing.
Homeward actually presents a bunch of ethical problems. Boraal was becoming a hostile environment to its inhabitants. The planet was becoming incapable of supporting the life already on it. Could the Federation have stopped such a planet wide natural disaster? In my opinion, no it couldn't.
Now the questions becomes does the Federation let the planet's in inhabitants die? If it does, they could have dammed the Federation and the galaxy to some disease or war that Boraal could have helped defeat. If they don't let them die they could open up a Pandora's Box that could threaten the galaxy.
Well they were forced to rescue the Boraalans. Not because they chose the high road, but because someone with a vested interest in the survival of 1 persons forced it. I believe he did it not for the greater good, but for his own selfish reason. To save his child. Was that a good enough reason to save 1 village and only 1 from extinction?
Now a new home planet had to be found, one that could support their form of life, and here is the biggest of all the moral decisions. The Boraalans were placed on a planet that could support their life. It was a life bearing planet, that given time, could have developed intelligent life. Can you morally choose potential intelligent life over existing intelligent life? The planet they were placed on could very well be one that supports their life, but could also harbor disease that would be 100% lethal to Boraalans. Or, the Boraalans could introduce a microbe, or virus that is beneficent to them (and most life on Boraal) but lethal to the life on the new planet.
Nicolai forced the crew of the 1701D to play God. They had to say that the Boraalans were more important than any other species on the new planet. They had to potentially condemn any other form of intelligent life from becoming the dominant species. They had to potentially condemn the ecology of that new planet to death from foreign born disease. They had to potentially condemn the Braalans to death from unknown or accounted for species or disease. And if the Boraalans do become endangered again, then what? Do they move them again? or let them die?
Those are a hell of a lot of variables to take into account, all for 1 man who manipulated events for his gain.
Yes, I know a lot of the questions I raised can be used against terraforming or colonizing planets, but these are the questions the PD is meant to deal with. It is to take the burden - some of the burden - of these difficult questions off the crew of a starship.
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A question for everyone: Is interfering or not interfering, playing God?
Now the questions becomes does the Federation let the planet's in inhabitants die? If it does, they could have dammed the Federation and the galaxy to some disease or war that Boraal could have helped defeat. If they don't let them die they could open up a Pandora's Box that could threaten the galaxy.
Well they were forced to rescue the Boraalans. Not because they chose the high road, but because someone with a vested interest in the survival of 1 persons forced it. I believe he did it not for the greater good, but for his own selfish reason. To save his child. Was that a good enough reason to save 1 village and only 1 from extinction?
Now a new home planet had to be found, one that could support their form of life, and here is the biggest of all the moral decisions. The Boraalans were placed on a planet that could support their life. It was a life bearing planet, that given time, could have developed intelligent life. Can you morally choose potential intelligent life over existing intelligent life? The planet they were placed on could very well be one that supports their life, but could also harbor disease that would be 100% lethal to Boraalans. Or, the Boraalans could introduce a microbe, or virus that is beneficent to them (and most life on Boraal) but lethal to the life on the new planet.
Nicolai forced the crew of the 1701D to play God. They had to say that the Boraalans were more important than any other species on the new planet. They had to potentially condemn any other form of intelligent life from becoming the dominant species. They had to potentially condemn the ecology of that new planet to death from foreign born disease. They had to potentially condemn the Braalans to death from unknown or accounted for species or disease. And if the Boraalans do become endangered again, then what? Do they move them again? or let them die?
Those are a hell of a lot of variables to take into account, all for 1 man who manipulated events for his gain.
Yes, I know a lot of the questions I raised can be used against terraforming or colonizing planets, but these are the questions the PD is meant to deal with. It is to take the burden - some of the burden - of these difficult questions off the crew of a starship.
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A question for everyone: Is interfering or not interfering, playing God?
I honestly doubt transplanting a couple of thousand of people would take so many resources. And if all the subterfuge proves too complicated, just drop it. Surely it's better for a culture to have it's natural development 'corrupted' by contact with aliens than to have no development at all, through no fault of it's own.
And anyway, if one of Starfleet's key missions is exploration, wouldn't preserving an unique genome and culture be a resource-worthy goal in that light? You can't explore and study something that has been destroyed.
In Homeward, when the villagers witness part of the holodeck malfunctioning, Worf explains it away as the "Sign Of LaForge," and that it's a good omen. So creating a Picard god is bad, but creating a LaForge god is good?
Why the entire civilization? Don't get me wrong, that sure would be nice. But if you were going the save the Human species from a imminent planet wide disaster, that would not necessarily mean removing six billion people from this world. You would want enough people for a viable gene pool, enough for society and culture to survive. If the population you save is below a certain number then you would no longer have a "people," you would just have a collection of refuges.
This is likely going to be the determining factor in the decision on how many people are going to be moved.
In one of the early novel, Kirk is going to evacuate a planet, native population or colony I forget, to a nearby star system. The Enterprise will make multiple trips, Scotty points out that you can't just jam all the corridors, the life support wouldn't handle it.
Maybe, maybe not. If you could save ten thousand (round number), instead of just grabbing that number of people randomly from around the world, perhaps it would be better to pull an intact community of that size, something agricultural, complete with plants and animals, so that they will require the least amount of assistance once on their new home world. Somehow, I think a truly primitive culture would have an easier time of it. Hunter gathers, as opposed to city folks or factory workers.
And yes you might have to help them for years or decades. But once established the PD could come back into play.
1. As far as I can tell, they were already believing in omens, sears and gods. One more story left in their history wouldn't cause a big change.
2. Worf is not Picard. Picard didn't direct his actions directly. We were relying on Worf's judgement.
3. In this case, Picard decided to take as little part as possible, and stay as away from interference as possible. As some have pointed out, one of the purposes of the Prime Directive would be to avoid having to take responsibility for other people's matters.
4. They were trying to hide the truth from the villagers since it would be a major case of interference with their culture. In the “Who Watches the Watchers” case, the villagers have already seen too much of the truth, so they had to clear it up.
However, I agree that in “Homeward” their actions that caused so much change to the culture of the people that you can say that they killed one culture and civilization and create a brand new one. Only one village – only one viewpoint, more omen stories, different planet, different surroundings, a person with too much knowledge living with them, significant human DNA added to their gene pool, new plants and animals, different stars in the sky, and they managed to lose a major part of the history of the village, besides the relocation is now the most major event in their history, not to mention that all the other villages are gone now, and they'll never find them, or any trace of them. Not that it's a bad thing in this case but this would create an entirely new culture.
YARN
Fleet Captain
McCoy did the right thing, given what he knew.
Later on, the triad collectively did the right thing given what they knew. And what they had was a very rare sort of knowledge. What they had was the God-like future-knowledge that her death was essential to the development of the 20th Century. It is only because they knew what would happen if she did not die that they were forced to choose the lesser of two evils.
It is rare in the extreme that one could possibly know the outcomes (for good or ill) of such an intervention. Failing to act might start a war. Then again, failing to act might prevent a war. Speculation about what might happen cannot really inform our decision either way. You have to work with what you do know.
Without a God's-eye-view, the right thing to do is to save Edith Keeler and to deflect the course of an asteroid about hit the pre-warp planet.
Why do you nitpick on something that isn't really analogous? Worf is a security officer, not a diplomat. He improvised on very short notice. And it's just a means of trying to explain some phenomenon the people observed. Picard was clearly a being of alien origin to the Mintakans and they chose to believe he was a god. Well, Liko did anyway, and spread the concept to his people.
This comes back to a certain concept explored in Star Trek III: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." But in this case, it was a matter of preserving the timeline. They had to let Edith Keeler die as she was meant to, or otherwise risk a huge change to history and everything that happened in consequence (including the formation of the Federation). So, it doesn't really make sense to compare it with the PD choices...
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