Why did the crew walk away at the end of The Hunted?

Couldn't they have tried to assist James Cromwell against the soldiers and come to a more peaceful solution instead of taking the pretentious moral Prime Directive high ground? "We'll let you figure it out yourselves and maybe one day you will be as advanced as us."

 

Didn't Picard offer help halfway through the episode only to be rebuffed?

Besides, the Angosians needs to figure out how to fix the issue, not have the Federation do it for them.

 

The Angosians were asking them to help them persecute innocent people, which is a fact they concealed from them at the beginning.

I think this is the correct application of the prime directive, unlike the episodes like Pen Pals where it is interpreted as 'Saving them from apocalypse which is easily within our power interferes with the grand fate of the universe'. To help the Angosians at the end would have meant to interfere with a civil dispute on behalf of the powerful. If the Angosians asked them to act as mediators instead of asking them to exercise force on their behalf they would have probably agreed.

 

The Enterprise crew pretty much left them all with one option: Cater to the soldier's demands, or die.

 

Yeah, the "it's part of the natural development of a species to go extinct by a natural disaster" reasoning which was sometimes applied during TNG was stupid - not to say almost Darwinistic in "only the strong have a right to live" kind of way. Since when are external events beyond the species' control part of their natural development? Following this logic, being invaded by Cardassians or Klingons must also be part of their natural develoment.

But issues directly concerning the society of a species certainly fall under the Prime Directive though. So it was reasonably applicaple to the situation in "The Hunted".

 

A situation they would have ended up in naturally had the Enterprise not intervened, believing they were capturing an escaped criminal.

 

I'm not entirely certain the Prime Directive applies much here, anyway. Not only is this a warp-capable society that is perfectly aware of the Federation and its technology, they are actually applying for Federation membership. Obviously, Picard doesn't think there's an issue, because he is willing to help catch one of their escaped prisoners when asked.

I think it was simply more of a matter of Picard realizing he had been deceived and manipulated, and deciding that the only way the Angosians were going to learn was to be left to solve the problem themselves. I don't think he really had any serious concern that the Prime Directive applied.

 

Like it or not Picard and company got involved in their affairs... to just run away at that moment seems like a bad idea. What if the soldiers took over the government and decided everyone else wasn't fit to live in it, like an army of Khans?

It's a funny lighthearted ending to the episode but not one that holds up when I think about it, that's okay though I like the episode.

 

^Exactly

None of which excludes them from the application of the Prime Directive. They were naturally faced with a change to their society, or possible civil war. The Federation even withdrew from involvement in Redemption when it was clear they'd be involved in the internal development of the Klingon Empire, who are essentially a superpower in the region for centuries

 

Which is why the Federation did not interfere with the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, even though the Cardassians were essentially doing something along the lines of slavery/holocaust to the Bajorans.

 

I always thought that by leaving and not helping prevented a fight from breaking out. Weren't the soldiers "programed" to react violently to any threat? So by leaving they forced the government to fix the problem in a non violent way. You broke it. You bought it. Now, you fix it.

 

^Yeah, there was going to be no bloodshed, so long as no one tried to force the soldiers back into confinement. We're here. Deal with it, or get killed trying to imprison us. Leaving was the only solution

 

Call this a weird analogy, but can France impose its will on, say, Luxembourg should the latter need assistance? not really, since Luxembourg is a sovereign state.

So Picard had little right to impose anything. At best, he could offer help, but not force them to settle the dispute. And besides, even if the dispute had been settled there and then, if I were Picard i'd still send a report to the Federation Council and/or President saying "these Angosians can resolve conflicts quickly, but then they deceived us all the time. Not Federation material!!" lol..

 

Seems weird reasoning on the Federation's part IMO. They could have armed the Bajorans and had a "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing. And as the Prophets had conceived Ben Sisko to save Bajor, maybe that was an alternate route their prophecy to be fulfilled.

 

All it would take is one of them accidentally firing and everyone would be wiped out. Or if one of the soldiers actually wasn't nonviolent and wanted a fight. We only met one of them.

 

But then involved by chance. Picard and co. only thought they were recovering a criminal.

 

OldTrek: Let's repair this asteroid deflector thingie, well crap...let's burn out our warp drive trying to stop the asteroid and spend six months chugging along beside it.

NuTrek: "Eff those guys. You endangered the ship. You're demoted."

Man...blow up one core Federation world and everyone turns into an asshole.

 

I don't think Kirk lost his command over violating the Prime Directive. He lost his command because he lied on official reports.

 

More like, what if the army decided that only veterans could run things and that democracy was a sham, like in Starship Troopers?

 

The Feds didn't do anything over Bajor because Bajor was formally annexed by Cardassia. As in, the Bajoran Government at the time signed over their world to the Cardassians in a perfectly legal and acknowledged manner. Of course, it was probably a disruptor-to-the-head negotiation, but there's no real proof.

So even if what happened was brutal, the way it all came about was legal. The Feds couldn't just intervene all willy-nilly.