Prime Directive continued...

I am being the Prime Directive thread over here told by the moderator... link to the original thread...

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/prime-directive-or-a-sharing-universe.311709/

So the reason of the Prime Directive comes form the second season of Discovery...

https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-co...00,+9999&crop=0,0,100,602px&quality=100&ssl=1

Star Trek: Discovery’s General Order One Is Likely Evolving into the Prime Directive
In Star Trek: Discovery, Anson Mount’s Captain Pike is probably the most by-the-book Star Trek captain since Captain Picard, insofar as he’s a dude who really, really doesn’t want…

In Star Trek: Discovery, Anson Mount’s Captain Pike is probably the most by-the-book Star Trek captain since Captain Picard, insofar as he’s a dude who really, really doesn’t want to violate the Prime Directive, but ends up being forced to anyway. But while the most noticeable difference between the captains might be the pacing of their storylines—Pike never even stops for a tea break!—the biggest divide comes down to the idea that the Prime Directive isn’t really the Prime Directive during the era of Discovery. In fact, it seems the second season of Discovery is all about demonstrating how the Federation’s General Order One evolves into the more strict version of the Prime Directive seen in later series.

Here is a Voyager using the logic of the Prime directive to either protect or imprison a group of people...
Natural Law Episode...


Natural Law (episode)

When she returns aboard, Chakotay says they should restore the barrier, but Seven isn't sure; she believes the Ledosians could help improve their potential, but doing so would also end their resourcefulness and unique way of life. The captain decides the barrier will have to be returned, if anything to recover their technology.

She tells this to the ambassador, but he doesn't like it. He says they have been waiting a long time. She cites the strict sharing of technology policy, and asks if an hour will be enough for an evacuation. The response of the government is to send a fighter to disable Voyager's transporters with a well-targeted shot. The ambassador calls it restrained, and tells the captain to leave orbit.

So it looks like both of these posts are just copy/pasted whole cloth from other sites. The DSC picture appears hotlinked from Wordpress, and I'm guessing the VOY image is not showing up (at least for me) because it's hotlinked from Memory Alpha.

I changed the image to a link just in case.

The Prime Directive is a fair (if not frequent) topic, but simply cutting and pasting stuff from other websites is not a good way to start a discussion.

I will leave this open for now, in case people want to engage. In the future, please express your own original thoughts and questions for discussion.

"I will leave this open for now, in case people want to engage."

Nah.

1001001 said:

So it looks like both of these posts are just copy/pasted whole cloth from other sites. The DSC picture appears hotlinked from Wordpress, and I'm guessing the VOY image is not showing up (at least for me) because it's hotlinked from Memory Alpha.

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You seem to miss the point I make a statement or commit and then find an article to support the notion I am putting forth. Plus, this thread is a continuance of the thread inadvertently post in the wrong location at first. I move it as request.

Oddish said:

Isn't that why there's a Prime Directive?

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I think the Prime Directive was more about technology advance society form overwhelming lesser technological advanced society. When Europeans came to the New World most if not all of the Native American societies were stone age in tech. I think to avoid the colonialism aspects of Star Trek giving it a moral/ethical starting point...

I found this short article critical of Star Fleet captains breaking the Prime Directive... He defend the prime Directive well...

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/what-about-the-prime-directive/

It is hard to think of another fictional world in which its heroes so regularly disrespect the core values that they are supposed to espouse. Anyone who watched very many of the original episodes with Kirk would come away with the impression that the Prime Directive was a rule mostly observed in the breach, and most TNG episodes and movies would tell you that non-interference is either misguided or actually morally corrupt.

The advocates of non-intervention–the people invoking the Prime Directive most often–were portrayed in that feature as corrupt collaborators with the worst of the worst

Ferengi Prime 5 said:

I found this short article critical of Star Fleet captains breaking the Prime Directive... He defend the prime Directive well...

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/what-about-the-prime-directive/

It is hard to think of another fictional world in which its heroes so regularly disrespect the core values that they are supposed to espouse. Anyone who watched very many of the original episodes with Kirk would come away with the impression that the Prime Directive was a rule mostly observed in the breach, and most TNG episodes and movies would tell you that non-interference is either misguided or actually morally corrupt.

The advocates of non-intervention–the people invoking the Prime Directive most often–were portrayed in that feature as corrupt collaborators with the worst of the worst

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There are very few rules that are one size fits all. Every situation is unique. Which is why in Voyager, Janeway mentions 47 subsections to the Prime Directive.

BillJ said:

There are very few rules that are one size fits all. Every situation is unique. Which is why in Voyager, Janeway mentions 47 subsections to the Prime Directive.

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I wonder how many more "sub sections" will exist by the 32nd century for the Prime Directive?!?!

It could probably be it's own book by then.

BillJ said:

There are very few rules that are one size fits all. Every situation is unique. Which is why in Voyager, Janeway mentions 47 subsections to the Prime Directive.

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"When has justice ever been as simple as a rulebook?"

While I think the Prime Directive has merit in theory, I think in the day-to-day activities of the Federation (and everyone else, which is the problem) is pure BS. If a 'rule' can get ignored at a captain's discretion, then its not so much a rule as it is an excuse to take one side or another in something and use said rule as a way to avoid blame. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the Prime Directive gets completely ignored more often than not, and since the Federation can't be everywhere at once, it actually protects NO-ONE, since sooner or later some other culture WILL come along and make contact, after which the UFP can make contact, since its 'too late' at that point not to.

Also, whats the cut-off? Many species have a 'fall' from a technically advanced culture and regress back to a pre-warp one. Whats happens in those cases? A thousand years, sure, its a totally different society (maybe). What about 200 hundred years? A century? Just thirty years? What if they just had a cataclysm on Tuesday and now can't do warp? Is it 'soon enough' to still provide aid? See what I mean? its way too arbitrary.

Another scenario - a pre-warp culture has space-flight, but not FTL yet. They discover a warp-capable species in their system (and this has actually happened in ST) - what then? Or, what if there is some sort of anomaly in that system that actually prevents warp drives from working? That species just gets ignored forever because the rules say so? But what if whatever is causing the warp-interference is artificial? Can it then be removed, even if it has been in-place for thousands of years? We'd be helping, but also interfering.

Also, humans CHEATED. Jordi helped Zefram Cochrane, which means he broke TWO Prime Directives, and got the Vulcans to make First Contact illegitimately. Whats to stop every species from doing that? Going back in time and giving themselves the warp tech? Humans did it (sort of), but they would be hesitant about accepting anyone else who did that into the Federtion, so, hypocrisy? Like I said, its all way too arbitrary.

BillJ said:

There are very few rules that are one size fits all. Every situation is unique. Which is why in Voyager, Janeway mentions 47 subsections to the Prime Directive.

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That's a lot of subsections. If the rules regarding the prime directive are really that byzantine, perhaps it would be more useful for Starfleet to assign a counsel rather than a counselor to its starships. Someone to give legal advise about the proper application of the prime directive under various scenarios might be helpful to a captain.

All things considered, a lawyer may be more handy for a captain to have around than a psychiatrist, assuming Starfleet takes the prime directive as seriously as it claims to.

Wouldn't that be something, if a Star Trek showrunner created the role of a starship lawyer for their show.

Having said that, I am not advocating for that to happen. For most viewers, legal mumbo jumbo would not be any more appealing than Troi-style sappy psychobabble.

the way the Prime Directive was handled by writers/Gene changed between TOS and TNG.

How often would a marooned Starfleet Officer teach a fraggle of Aliens to be NAZIs?

Oh.

Janeway did it too.

If it only happened three times, I feel like that should be it's own General Order.

Is not the Prime Directive in truth the Vulcan Prime Directive...

https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Vulcan_Prime_Directive

The Vulcan Prime Directive (also called Savar's Prime Directive) was the primary rule of Vulcan's Offworld Service, derived from the theories and teachings of the service's first Prefect, Savar. Often expressed by the axiom "destruction before detection," it posited that the presence of Vulcan observers could have a negative effect on the sociological development of alien cultures, and necessitated that Vulcan explorers sacrifice their lives if they could not otherwise avoid discovery. (TOS novel: Strangers from the Sky)

It perhaps served as an inspiration for the Prime Directive that was adopted by the United Federation of Planets.

Ferengi Prime 5 said:

I think the Prime Directive was more about technology advance society form overwhelming lesser technological advanced society. When Europeans came to the New World most if not all of the Native American societies were stone age in tech. I think to avoid the colonialism aspects of Star Trek giving it a moral/ethical starting point...

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That's certainly one reason for it. Another is to prevent technologically immature species from suddenly gaining access to advanced technology that they do not have the wisdom to use without endangering themselves and others.

Guy Gardener said:

How often would a marooned Starfleet Officer teach a fraggle of Aliens to be NAZIs?

Oh.

Janeway did it too.

If it only happened three times, I feel like that should be it's own General Order.

Click to expand...

If there's anything Star Trek teaches us, it's that either aliens are strangely attracted to become Nazis if they happen to run across the concept in an earth reference book, or that Starfleet Officers are strangely tempted to teach them the Nazi ways when confronted with hapless populations of aliens.

MarkusTay said:

Also, humans CHEATED. Jordi helped Zefram Cochrane, which means he broke TWO Prime Directives, and got the Vulcans to make First Contact illegitimately. Whats to stop every species from doing that? Going back in time and giving themselves the warp tech? Humans did it (sort of), but they would be hesitant about accepting anyone else who did that into the Federtion, so, hypocrisy? Like I said, its all way too arbitrary.

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Presumably not in the original timeline, before the Borg decided to travel back in time and prevent it from happening. The Enterprise crew merely rectified the situation and ensured that history got back on track as it 'should' have happened, and in that sense I don't consider it cheating. It's the Borg that cheated. (I don't subscribe to the theory that it always happened the way we saw it, that would be true only from within that particular timeline's perspective. I think what we saw in TOS and TNG (the series) was mostly part of this original timeline, and for example DSC isn't.

The Federation Prime Directive is nothing more than The zoo hypothesis...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis

The zoo hypothesis speculates on the assumed behavior and existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life and the reasons they refrain from contacting Earth. It is one of many theoretical explanations for the Fermi paradox. The hypothesis states that alien life intentionally avoids communication with Earth to allow for natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination, similarly to people observing animals at a zoo. The hypothesis seeks to explain the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life despite its generally accepted plausibility and hence the reasonable expectation of its existence. A variant on the zoo hypothesis suggested by the former MIT Haystack Observatory scientist John Allen Ball is the laboratory hypothesis, where humanity is being subjected to experiments, with Earth being a giant laboratory.

The Federation use using the Zoo hypothesis watching pre-warp societies until it is time for them to pounce and assimilate... Star Trek promotes the Zoo hypothesis...

• In Star Trek, the Federation (including humans) has a strict Prime Directive policy of nonintervention with less technologically advanced cultures which the Federation encounters. The threshold of inclusion is the independent technological development of faster-than-light propulsion. In the show's canon, the Vulcan race limited their encounters to observation until Humans made their first warp flight, after which they initiated first contact, indicating the practice predated the Human race's advance of this threshold. Additionally, in the episode "The Chase (TNG)", a message from a first (or early) civilization is discovered, hidden in the DNA of sentient species spread across many worlds, something that could only have been fully discovered after a race had become sufficiently advanced.

I don't think it's the Zoo Hypothesis. I don't think it's concern that developing civilizations might go out-of-control with new tech, either. And I don't think it's something inherited from the Vulcans.

Sure, all of these interpretations and/or rationalizations could've been grafted onto it after the fact, in either Watsonian or Doyleist terms. But they miss the heart of the matter.

The crux of the Prime Directive, as devised Gene and company during TOS, and presumably as devised by Starfleet during its early years with much Earth history very close in the rear-view, is this:

Don't. Be. Imperialists.

Imperialism defined most of the contacts between previously distant civilizations on Earth, for centuries, and pretty consistently led to the more advanced ones exploiting the less advanced ones. Starfleet, and the Federation, were committed to avoid repeating that pattern in space.

(The Romulans? The Klingons? They were the thematic opposite. Both of them were explicitly interstellar empires, and proud of it.)

1. The Romulans expanded into the Beta Quadrant away from Vulcan. We had never seen a non Romulan operating on a Romulan warship until Nemesis, and the net result of the supernova in Star Trek 2009, was no more Romulan Star Empire, until the totality of the Romulan species settles on 3rd class Federation colonies, as the trash of the galaxy.

2. The Klingons are almost exactly the same. No integration with their conquered. It's possible that they declare the W, and then #uck off, like they did with the Cardassians in Season 4 DS9. Although they stuck around on Organia, and a conceit of Discovery is that Klingon's hybridize entire planets. They just beam down with no pants on and have sex with everyone than can catch, so they are like the Borg assimilating biological assets. But... Praxsis blew up and they were fucked. It's unbelievable that after a thousand years in space, the entire Klingon Empire was situated in one solar system that was hobbled by one moon blowing up. (I've always understood that the Klingon's downfall a metaphor fall of the soviet union, but I don't think I noticed before that Praxsis is a substitution for Chernobyl?)