My point wasn't about the type of violation, but that every violation may not be seen on screen.
Is the Prime Directive a bad idea, even in concept?
- Thread starter Deimos Anomaly
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My point wasn't about the type of violation, but that every violation may not be seen on screen.
I actually quibble with two of those being called violations, namely "Pen Pals" and "Code of Honor".
In "Pen Pals," you had the kind of extraordinary situation in which an entire civilization is about to perish. The Enterprise has the means to prevent that from happening. We've seen evidence of captains intervening in such situations before, apparently without reprisal from Starfleet, and I would like to hope that a directive principled on allowing cultures to survive would not actually be perverted in such a way that it would allow them to literally die out if it could be prevented. I would hope Starfleet has an exception.
In "Code of Honor," you have a civilization which is aware of and dealing with the Federation to begin with. This is not a primitive culture that is going to be contaminated by learning of the Federation and its technology. In fact, the Enterprise is specifically at the planet to engage in treaty negotiations. The prime directive would quite clearly seem to not apply in this case.
In addition, the root of Picard's interference began when one of his officers was kidnapped off of the Enterprise. Surely the prime directive would not apply to a society which is already aware of and in contact with the Federation, is in treaty negotiations with them, and then commits a direct attack against them. If the prime directive applied in that scenario, it would give every single space faring species carte blanche to attack the Enterprise at will.
Sorry, I've just gotta step in with an irrelevancy. The phrase is "pass muster", meaning to measure up to required standards. It refers to reviewing soldiers after gathering ("mustering") them.
"Pass the mustard" is -- well, now I'm hungry for lunch. Seeya.
That's your judgement. It's not relevant to what transpired in the Trek universe. In that universe, nobody indicated that Picard had violated the Prime Directive in these cases. And the one to indicate that he had done so in any case at all was a person of highly questionable credit deliberately engaging in intimidation tactics, i.e. somebody nobody would even expect to be telling the truth.
...Although one could take this as a humorous mixing of the phrase with the other close one, that about "cutting the mustard". Wordplays on this are fairly common.
Timo Saloniemi
I'll agree with Pen Pals. But his plan at Ligon II ended up effecting a change in the ruler of the planet. That would have to be a Prime Directive no-no.
This.
I mean, gee, it is blatantly obvious that Satie intended to interpret Picard's bendings of the Prime Directive as gross violations in order to get his ass. No other flag officer deemed Picard's actions as reprimandable (Nechayev probably considers him as the very opposite, as too dogmatic about Prime Directive matters) or even court-martial worthy.
True, the correct phrasing would be "cut the mustard", "Pass muster" is a synonym of it.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cut_the_mustard
And you know this how? We simply don't know if he ever got whacked on the knuckles for some of his command decisions.
Remember, you made the statement... so the burden of proof is on you.
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No, no, no. You made the statement, now back it up. Or your statement is simply bullshit.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Or, we simply don't know if Picard was ever reprimanded for any actions in regards to the Prime Directive.
That's quite alright. I'm not here to win the Nobel Prime Directive Prize. Just pointing out that you simply made something up to try and prove yourself right.
"No admiral accused Picard" is not a "statement", beyond being the stating out of the triviality, the default position of the universe. If you can't see that, I won't even bother to feel sorry for you. You already fail Debating 101. (Plus Elementary logic 101. Absence of evidence is always sufficient evidence of absence until proven false by counterevidence, which in this case means evidence.)
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Is intended as a statement of fact. When it's a statement that cannot be proven one way or the other.horatio83 said:
Actually, if we want to try and interpret what we see on screen and deduce meaning from it, I think we could, not unreasonably, infer that the dramatic change in Picard's approach to the Prime Directive between the early seasons and season 7 was due to him getting reprimanded over his early transgressions. Early season Picard is clearly more willing to bend the Prime Directive, while in "Homeward" he insists on rigid adherence. Perhaps he was called on the carpet for his earlier "flexibility" and has adjusted to a more rigid approach at the instance of Starfleet Command?
And is true by definition unless you provide counterevidence.
Then the default position is that nothing unreal exists. "A did not happen" is always true unless the happening of A is proven.
Makes sense. Although Picard could have come to the conclusion on his own as well, if a specific earlier bending resulted in regrettable consequences. It's just that we never quite learn of such consequences: all of Picard's actions ended in triumph at least in the short term, even though we can of course always speculate that decisions like that in "Symbiosis" may have backfired later on, off screen, in tragic ways.
It's just a bit uncharacteristic that Picard would be concerned about his own career (as in, minding reprimands from superiors) when not being personally convinced that his actions had been wrong in altruist terms. The early Picard might be expected to collect reprimands like trophies if this helped poor primitive civilizations in their struggles. So we're left asking what turned that early Picard into the late one, the one who might indeed mind reprimands more than the "evidence of his heart"?
Timo Saloniemi
Which is one way to interpret it. But still not proof one way or the other.
But the fact of the matter is this: what we see on screen represents 178 hours, give or take, of a journey that took 61,320 hours to complete. To say that the only important things that happened, happened on-screen is dumb. By the logic above they never went to the bathroom over those 61,000 hours either.
