I think a lot of analogies might possibly be worth discussing. When you are on your way home in the winter, and you pass a homeless person on the street, is it immoral not to invite him into your home, feed him, and provide him with warmer clothes to wear? Would that solve his problems even if you did? Would one night be enough? What happens now that he is dependant on you for survival?
Best and Worst Prime Directive Justification Episodes
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I think a lot of analogies might possibly be worth discussing. When you are on your way home in the winter, and you pass a homeless person on the street, is it immoral not to invite him into your home, feed him, and provide him with warmer clothes to wear? Would that solve his problems even if you did? Would one night be enough? What happens now that he is dependant on you for survival?
Hang on a minute. When was it established that either Eminiar or Vendikar was a warp capable civilization or potentially posed a "major threat" to the Federation? Not to switch franchises, but this sounds like a phantom menace.
If anything, the episode implied that the weapons aboard the Enterprise were far more powerful than anything Eminiar could have responded with, and that they were incapable of preventing the Enterprise from devastating the surface of the planet if they were so inclined.
I think that the issuance of General Order 24 proves the relevance of the Prime Directive in this instance rather than being proof of its non-application. Kirk took the drastic action of disabling the war computer to prevent having to execute the general order. In other words, the violation of the directive, while serious, was preferable to the destruction of the planet.
I don't think Kirk did anything wrong. What I was trying to say was given the bureaucratic mentality, Kirk would have been strung up for this right or wrong.
Of course, this is way off your point about the Prime Directive, and you are correct in pointing out the vast difference between the TOS and TNG definitions.
The main difference being that the TOS PD was just some random thing they changed episode to episode to give Kirk some order to disobey. In TNG they made it a rule that's supposed to be OBEYED.
As for General Order 24, I always assumed that it's a bluff order for the Captain and crew to follow and that there really is no "Destroy inhabited planets" command. I mean, we never saw anything that suggested they could do it.
As for General Order 24, I always assumed that it's a bluff order for the Captain and crew to follow and that there really is no "Destroy inhabited planets" command. I mean, we never saw anything that suggested they could do it.
Captain Garth of Izar ordered his fleet to destroy all life on a planet, it wasn't carried out because the planet was not hostile and Garth was obviously insane. Obviously, he had some grounds to think he could have gotten away with it.
We know that a Constitution Class starship's phasers can be used to mass stun a large area. It is not unreasonable to assume that phasers set to kill could also be used in a wide spread from orbit.
Okay, lets say it was a Mexican who was hit by a meteorite. There, both natural and foreign.
There is no evidence of that. In fact, they did help the Boraalans with no obvious consequences to them.
The Prime Directive was meant to prevent imperialism and colonialism, such as that which began during Earth's Age of Sail and continued on until the middle of the Twentieth Century. It was a caution against the temptation to "civilize" or "improve" "primitive" societies, essentially destroying their culture. It was intended to prevent this sort of crap and worse. It was never intended to mandate genocide by laziness.
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^Would have to agree. The PD was put in place to preserve unique cultures and to keep them from being destroyed by contact with a more developed culture. In the situation with the Boraalans, enforcing the PD using the strict definition of "noninterference" actually resulted in achieving what it was created to prevent.
It's a good example of sometimes judging whether to obey the intent of a rule as opposed to the letter of it.
It's a good example of sometimes judging whether to obey the intent of a rule as opposed to the letter of it.
They helped one small group of Boraalans, who did not realize what was happening to them and then were left on a world not realizing they had been transplanted at all. To transport the entire planet would have needed the massive force I outlined and the lengthy resettlement and cultural shock team afterwards. And once it was done once the pro-interventionalists would use it as a precedent and force Starfleet to actively search out every single endangered world and do the same there no matter what this would do to Starfleet's numbers and the Federation Economy. The PD is as much to protect the Federation from itself as it is to keep other cultures from being ruiend by contact with advanced cultures.
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I didn't realize the pro-interventionalists held a majority in the Federation government. Besides, there is a big difference between letting civilization die within your borders and "searching out every single endangered world". You don't see the elected members of the U.S. government trying to extend welfare benefits to people outside the U.S. The PD only protects the Federation in as such that it curbs tendencies towards imperialism.
If there was an interventionist faction, then they Prime Directive would have been undone long ago, or worked around. It's a Starfleet General Order, not a part of the Federation Constitution. Changing it isn't particularly difficult, and defeating it is very easy.
But at and rate, that isn't how politics works. People don't change things because everything goes well, people change things because people get hurt. A successful evacuation would change nothing, but the death of an entire civilization, in the hands of a skilled rhetorician would produce such an emotional outcry amongst the populace that the politicians would have no choice but to act drastically.
The issue of resource cost is a result of the Alpha Quadrent's rather stupid total reliance on space superiority to the exclusion of ground, air, and sea combat, a fact which leaves the major powers all without the large transports requires to move vast numbers of troops and planetbound vehicles. But constructing such vessels would not be resource intensive, they'd essentially be giant shells with life support and propulsion. And they should build such vessels, because the Dominion War has demonstrated the importance of ground superiority in interstellar conflict. A ship may be able to raze a planet, but it can't hold a planet.
A successful evacuation would set a precedent, and that's all that would be needed to turn the Federation into a Galactic Nanny State once a skilled rhetorician said that the evacuation was a key example of how Starfleet should react to all planets in danger. As a result the fleet would have to actively search out all endangered worlds and constantly repeat Boraal no matter how many resources it would take to do so, draining the Fleet's numbers and the Federation's resources.
The Federation exists in a state of abundance. They have billions of citizens, hundreds of worlds, and thousands of ships. They could handle it -- and that's assuming that everyone is as much of an extremist as to require that the UFP specifically seek out distant, endangered worlds far beyond its borders rather than simply requiring Starfleet to make heroic efforts to save civilizations located near or even within Federation space from extinction if so threatened. (To be fair, your argument would carry much more weight in the Federation that exists post-2381 in the novels, [spoiler="Star Trek: Destiny" and other novels]which has been absolutely devastated by the Borg invasion[/spoiler].)
In any event, I never cared for the way the TNG-era shows interpreted the PD. Instead of being a bulwark against imperialism, it became another tool of imperialism -- treating less technologically-advanced societies as though they were inferior to the UFP rather than as equals, and using the excuse of their supposed inferiority to enforce Federation technological dominance over its neighbors before, if INS is any indication, immediately inducting them into Federation Membership before they've had a chance to establish themselves on the interstellar stage as the Federation's equals. Oh, and if you haven't passed an arbitrary standard in technological development, we'll let you all die. It's basically passive imperialism rather than active imperialism.
I think that a story featuring the Prime Directive would be much more interesting if it were to be applied to situations akin to what we find today. For instance, the Sudanese government and government-backed militias have been engaging in a genocide in Darfur for years now. Under one conception of a Prime Directive-POV, the United States should not intervene (and, indeed, that is what has happened). On the other hand, the U.S. and its allies did intervene to stop a genocide in Kosovo. Was that right? Wrong? Look at the situation in Iran today. Under an anti-imperialist POV, should the U.S. intervene?
Many cultures in Africa practice female genital mutilation, which can be positively deadly if performed in unsanitary conditions; as a result, some Westerners want to teach people how to perform these acts in sanitary conditions to reduce deaths from infection. Others argue that that's essentially the same thing as becoming an accessory to assault and mutilation, and that we should either try to persuade these cultures to abandon the practice or do nothing at all about it. Some argue that those cultures have a right to follow their own practices, but some argue that if we accept the idea of universal human rights, this means that there are some things that no culture has a right to do to anyone, diversity be damned. Who's right? Who's wrong?
Similar situations would make for fascinating PD stories -- instead of dealing with the interstellar equivalent of the Primitive Tribal Savages Who Are Clearly Too Foolish To Deal With Our Clearly Superior Civilization And Technology (an archetype often used by Europeans to justify imperialism), let's see situations where cultures that are clearly technologically and intellectually comparable to the UFP doing things like committing genocides. Should the Federation intervene? What if there's a democratic movement trying to overthrow a tyrannical dictatorship on their homeworld and they're asking the Federation for aide? Does the Prime Directive stop the Federation from having diplomatic relations with governments waging civil wars, or with governments that practice de facto slavery over a majority of its citizenry? Should it? How do the Klingons feel about the fact that their last two Chancellors were installed by Starfleet officers -- was that legal under the PD? How do most Ferengi feel about the fact that their last two Grand Nagi were clearly so influenced by Federation cultural values that they instituted wholesale revolutions in gender relations and business practices -- was that a PD issue? If, say, Orion or Klingon culture requires the ritualistic mutilation of the bodies of, let's say, little boys, should the Federation get involved in trying to stop that? Or trying to at least prevent deaths from infection?
These sorts of conflicts and dilemmas would be much more realistic, and much less condescending, than the "OMG we can't let the primitive natives see us or use our radios!" nonsense we've gotten before.
I've always loved "Who Watches the Watchers?" and "First Contact". For years I would start season 3 with "Watchers" and skip the episodes before it just because I think it's the first truly excellent episode of the season (not that everything before it stinks). That "The Picard" stuff in "Watchers" always cracks me up 
, but I just want to smack that guy when he starts talking about killing Troi to appease The Picard. Raving lunatic! Picard's discomfort with being regarded as a God is hilarious, though, yet not as funny as Riker's "I'll call you next time I pass through your system" in "First Contact". Riker, you cad! 
I don't know if it counts in a thread about episodes, but I just want to point out how I think much like "Star Trek: First Contact" was sort of like a big screen version of a great Borg episode (no need to point out all the changes it made to the Borg from the series, as I'm well aware of them), I felt "Star Trek: Insurrection" was like the big screen equivalent of a story that represented TNG Prime Directive episodes at their worst
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I think the Prime Directive was generally a very unreliable story foundation, as evidenced by the fact that many Prime Directive episodes were maddeningly heavy-handed, preachy, and dull, like "Justice", "The Masterpiece Society", "The Outcast", and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm forgetting a few more.
, but I just want to smack that guy when he starts talking about killing Troi to appease The Picard. Raving lunatic! Picard's discomfort with being regarded as a God is hilarious, though, yet not as funny as Riker's "I'll call you next time I pass through your system" in "First Contact". Riker, you cad! I don't know if it counts in a thread about episodes, but I just want to point out how I think much like "Star Trek: First Contact" was sort of like a big screen version of a great Borg episode (no need to point out all the changes it made to the Borg from the series, as I'm well aware of them), I felt "Star Trek: Insurrection" was like the big screen equivalent of a story that represented TNG Prime Directive episodes at their worst
. I think the Prime Directive was generally a very unreliable story foundation, as evidenced by the fact that many Prime Directive episodes were maddeningly heavy-handed, preachy, and dull, like "Justice", "The Masterpiece Society", "The Outcast", and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm forgetting a few more.
The problem with doing what you suggest Sci, is that if they did do episodes like that the ending (depending on which action was chosen) would simply label the show as critiquing the government or being "too liberal" or "too conservative". They did those other stories to avoid stuff like that.
I don't think Star Trek should be afraid to take on real-world issues and to risk being labelled too much this or too much that. Star Trek has always had strong political leanings, and it was a mistake to get away from that. Sci-fi offers a wonderful vehicle for examining the problems with the world through new eyes, to distance ourselves from our biases and blind spots, to let us think outside the box about the world we live in. Trek should embrace that -- without, I hasten to add, putting a Very Important Message or Moral Of The Story ahead of actual storytelling.
I felt "Star Trek: Insurrection" was like the big screen equivalent of a story that represented TNG Prime Directive episodes at their worst
Really? I agree that Star Trek: Insurrection didn't really work well as a film, but I thought that it had one of the better depictions of the Prime Directive -- for once, the natives weren't being treated like inferior savages, but were regarded as equals capable of and entitled to self-determination.
The PD didn't even really apply in Insurrection, though. As far as I'm concerned, the Federation was assisting an ally in reclaiming territory from a deluded band of ecoterrorists.
No, human emotions don't work that way. Ever heard of Megan's Law, or the Amber Alert system? Do you think either of those would exist if some policeman had just stumbled upon the scene in time to save them? Of course not. If Pen-Pals ended differently, it is very possible that there would be demands for a Sarjenka's Law once the relevant logs filtered down to the civilian populace. Outrage is the most politically powerful of all human emotions. Contentment for a job well done rarely results in changes, it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and it's the horrific tragedy that provokes poorly thought out laws, not the sterling success.
All a tragedy needs is a face. Of Nocolai didn't save his village, if he obeyed the Prime Directive, then he most certainly would have been that face. All he would have had to do is write a few pieces about the Bolaarans, particularly his dead pregnant wife, appear on a couple of talk shows, and tearful Federation citizens would be screaming for something to do done. Picard would likely be scapegoated, busted down to Lt., and assigned to the worst hellhole imaginable, far away from any starship. And the PD would be amended to require rescue of engangered civilizations.
But a success, nothing was ever changed by a success. Success is what keeps that status quo. If success actually lead to massive changes, then we'd have a city on the moon by now.
The issue that the natives were Space Amish, clouded it a bit. They understood technology, and presumably had starships, they just chose not to use it. It was a lifestyle decision.Sci said:
One thing I would like to see is them get away from the concept of technology levels, and show us civilizations that have superior technology in some areas, which vastly inferior in others. For example, a warp civilization that never invented the integrated circuit or radio communication, and thus uses semaphore for ship-to-ship communication and doesn't have any computers, other than a handfull of highly specialized machines that are ran by punch cards.
Of course it did. The Ba'ku were a foreign society that had been inhabiting that planet since long before the Federation even existed. The Federation operation in INS constituted an invasion of a foreign society's sovereign territory, an attempted mass abduction, and forced relocation. It would, in short, have been an act of conquest and oppression, akin to the United States's Indian removal policies -- invading and conquering someone else's land, and forcing the survivors to go live somewhere else under your thumb. It would have been nothing less than ethnic cleansing.
As far as I'm concerned, the Federation was assisting an ally in reclaiming territory from a deluded band of ecoterrorists.
Lovely excuse for invasion, occupation, conquest, and forced relocation you have there.
^The B'aku--individually, due to their long life spans--were already guilty of a forced relocation--that of the Son'a. The planet B'aku was the Son'a's home, from which they were dispossessed by 600 tyrants.
At any rate, "conquest" is a little harsh, considering the planet has millions of square kilometers, of which the B'aku usefully occupy about a hundred tops.
No, it would be more like voluntarily repatriating people who had been exiled by an oppressive regime.
At any rate, "conquest" is a little harsh, considering the planet has millions of square kilometers, of which the B'aku usefully occupy about a hundred tops.
First off, that's not true. According to INS, they had attempted to launch a coup against the Ba'ku government and were then forced into exile when their coup failed.
But even if it was true, the Federation has no more right to interfere with an intra-Ba'ku conflict than it does with an intra-Klingon conflict. (Hence why Picard couldn't bring Starfleet to bear during the Klingon Civil War until it was discovered that Romulans were manipulating events.)
If the Federation had really wanted to intervene in the Son'a-Ba'ku conflict, it should have offered its services as a mediating partner between the two factions.
No, because it would involve forcibly removing the entire Ba'ku population, civilians included, and would have been done with the intent of rendering their planet uninhabitable in an attempt to exploit the rings.
It doesn't matter. It's their world, and no one else's. If you invade their territory, use force to take over, and then force the populace out of their territory, then you've engaged in a blatant act of conquest, pure and simple. It would be no different than Indian Removal.
Well, technically, the Federation wanted to harness the metaphasic radiation using a device that would render the planet uninhabitable. It wasn't repatriation so much as it was seizing a valuable medical resource.
Now, the Ba'ku didn't originate on the planet, they settled there. They chose it because it was out of the way, where they were unlikely to be disturbed, and because it was full of plot-device radiation that would render them ageless, or close enough to it that it makes no difference.
Their equivalent-of-teenage children wanted to explore the stars, and attempted a regime change so that this would be possible. For their trouble, they got the spaceships, but were exiled and left and die a slow death from age. They feared aging and death, something that their parents were immune to, and began to envy their ageless parents as they grew older. Their attempts to retard their aging just made them more and more inhuman in appearance, which made them more and more envious.
Now back on the Ba'ku's planet, they're practicing an agrarian lifestyle and using birth control to keep the population down so that they don't have to employ industrial farming techniques, though they're still having children, rarely.
This is an intentional decision. It is helped by the fact that the radiation retards the aging of their children, delaying puberty for decades, which is creepy and abusive from a certain point of view, but understandable. It's not like they have the infrastructure to raise their children away from the radiation. Of course, they lack the infrastructure by choice rather than by necessity, so issues are still raised.
The First generation Son'a are dying at this point, no longer able to defeat aging with their science, they desperately want access to the radiation that is keeping their parents and siblings young. Starfleet also wants access to that radiation, for good reason. If it could be reproduced, it would essentially unwanted aging in the Federation, meaning that death would only result from disease and violence. As a medical breakthrough, it's hard to find better.
Most of the So'na at this point are bitter and angery about their exile, and most important don't believe that they'd be allowed to return. Of course, most also don't want to return, they enjoy the little civilization they constructed for themselves, though they long for the immortality that hangs in front of their faces like a carrot just out of reach. They'd rather have both. They don't see a good reason for denying technology, especially since applied technology would allow them to share virtual immortality with the entire galaxy.
In the end, it isn't a matter of who owns the planet, but of the fate of an irreplaceable medical resource. Could the metaphasic radiation, once harnessed, be replenished, and might there be ways to reproduce in artificially? Harnessing the radiation all at once was a rash decision made by a desperate people. It warrants long term study, to properly understand how to stretch it from an absurdly valuable finite resource into something that can be freely shared with all people.
The Son'a plan would have likely destroyed the Federation by creating two classes of people, mortals and immortals. The elite and the powerful would be ageless due to the rare and expensive metaphasic radiation, while the vast majority of citizens would age and die as normal. The resulting class tensions would inevitably tear the whole thing apart. It's something that should only be attempted when they know they have an unlimited source of metaphasic radiation, so that they can continue their post-scarcity pseudo-anarcho-communist ways.
At any rate, the Prime Directive wouldn't apply for the same reason it didn't in Friday's Child and Errand of Mercy, the Son'a were poised to get raze the planet with their harvester. Their immanent intervention freed the Starfleet from such concerns. But it did not free them from basic morality, making direct contact with the Ba'ku and negotiating study and limited use of the radiation would have been the better solution.
Now, the Ba'ku didn't originate on the planet, they settled there. They chose it because it was out of the way, where they were unlikely to be disturbed, and because it was full of plot-device radiation that would render them ageless, or close enough to it that it makes no difference.
Their equivalent-of-teenage children wanted to explore the stars, and attempted a regime change so that this would be possible. For their trouble, they got the spaceships, but were exiled and left and die a slow death from age. They feared aging and death, something that their parents were immune to, and began to envy their ageless parents as they grew older. Their attempts to retard their aging just made them more and more inhuman in appearance, which made them more and more envious.
Now back on the Ba'ku's planet, they're practicing an agrarian lifestyle and using birth control to keep the population down so that they don't have to employ industrial farming techniques, though they're still having children, rarely.
This is an intentional decision. It is helped by the fact that the radiation retards the aging of their children, delaying puberty for decades, which is creepy and abusive from a certain point of view, but understandable. It's not like they have the infrastructure to raise their children away from the radiation. Of course, they lack the infrastructure by choice rather than by necessity, so issues are still raised.
The First generation Son'a are dying at this point, no longer able to defeat aging with their science, they desperately want access to the radiation that is keeping their parents and siblings young. Starfleet also wants access to that radiation, for good reason. If it could be reproduced, it would essentially unwanted aging in the Federation, meaning that death would only result from disease and violence. As a medical breakthrough, it's hard to find better.
Most of the So'na at this point are bitter and angery about their exile, and most important don't believe that they'd be allowed to return. Of course, most also don't want to return, they enjoy the little civilization they constructed for themselves, though they long for the immortality that hangs in front of their faces like a carrot just out of reach. They'd rather have both. They don't see a good reason for denying technology, especially since applied technology would allow them to share virtual immortality with the entire galaxy.
In the end, it isn't a matter of who owns the planet, but of the fate of an irreplaceable medical resource. Could the metaphasic radiation, once harnessed, be replenished, and might there be ways to reproduce in artificially? Harnessing the radiation all at once was a rash decision made by a desperate people. It warrants long term study, to properly understand how to stretch it from an absurdly valuable finite resource into something that can be freely shared with all people.
The Son'a plan would have likely destroyed the Federation by creating two classes of people, mortals and immortals. The elite and the powerful would be ageless due to the rare and expensive metaphasic radiation, while the vast majority of citizens would age and die as normal. The resulting class tensions would inevitably tear the whole thing apart. It's something that should only be attempted when they know they have an unlimited source of metaphasic radiation, so that they can continue their post-scarcity pseudo-anarcho-communist ways.
At any rate, the Prime Directive wouldn't apply for the same reason it didn't in Friday's Child and Errand of Mercy, the Son'a were poised to get raze the planet with their harvester. Their immanent intervention freed the Starfleet from such concerns. But it did not free them from basic morality, making direct contact with the Ba'ku and negotiating study and limited use of the radiation would have been the better solution.
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Back to the OP:
Good:
TNG: "First Contact" (The episode, not the movie). Still don't think I agree with even the modest form of the PD offered here, but at least it is debatable, and the story itself was decent enough.
Horrible:
ENT: "Dear Doctor", TNG: "Homeward", TNG: "Pen Pals", various TNG Season 1 stuff. The strong survive, the weak perish. Nature = good. Progress = bad.
I hate the Prime Directive. I hate it not because I am a conservative defending colonialism but because I am a liberal humanist who believes in reason and progress and the Prime Directive is the antithesis of both.
It is a relic of an unfortunate strain of liberalism that in America at least ran from the 70s through the 90s (later in universities, but its actual political power was basically gone by then) that valued diversity and perspective above reason and objectivity.
(Besides, to anyone seriously defending a total non-interference policy just say "Munich 1938" and that's that.)
Good:
TNG: "First Contact" (The episode, not the movie). Still don't think I agree with even the modest form of the PD offered here, but at least it is debatable, and the story itself was decent enough.
Horrible:
ENT: "Dear Doctor", TNG: "Homeward", TNG: "Pen Pals", various TNG Season 1 stuff. The strong survive, the weak perish. Nature = good. Progress = bad.
I hate the Prime Directive. I hate it not because I am a conservative defending colonialism but because I am a liberal humanist who believes in reason and progress and the Prime Directive is the antithesis of both.
It is a relic of an unfortunate strain of liberalism that in America at least ran from the 70s through the 90s (later in universities, but its actual political power was basically gone by then) that valued diversity and perspective above reason and objectivity.
(Besides, to anyone seriously defending a total non-interference policy just say "Munich 1938" and that's that.)
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