If the Prime Directive were done properly

[Brennyren]

Good in theory but probably bad in practice. How long does the captain have to wait for the committee to call a meeting, get together to discuss the situation, argue about it from all points of view (conference room scene in Pen Pals??), vote on the matter, and send a reply back? "Oh, thanks for getting back to me and telling me I can save the planet, but the asteroid hit it yesterday while you all were debating it."

Seriously, they put the guy (or gal) in command of the ship to make decisions. They sent him to school to learn the rules before sending him out. They picked him because they trust him to follow the rule, and to know when to bend or break the rules for the greater good. Right or wrong, the guy on the scene has to make the tough calls.

You have a point. Maybe the committee could be consulted if there were sufficient time, but otherwise be in charge of reviewing cases where a captain found it necessary to intervene.

The least that should be done is examine whether our intentions really our good or significantly just advancing our own interests.

Fair point.

Do you think characters are bad if they choose to not go back in time to prevent deaths or if they try to prevent other characters from doing so?

Meddling with the timeline is generally frowned on (just ask Dulmer, Lucsley, and Captain Braxton -- oh wait, skip Braxton, he's nuts), so I'm gonna go with "no."

Also is it particularly more moral to, if you don't have sufficient resources to save all the people, save half of a population of a planet and let the other half die or save 4% and let the other 96% die?

More moral than standing back and saving no one? Sure. Why would it not be? Do you really think it would be better if they let everyone die?

 

[DonIago]

Personally I think the entire prime directive makes for good stories but it's wrong. Why can't running into advanced species be considered part of evolution? If they can prevent a species from struggling, they should try. Imagine if instead of going to school, people had to just struggle to learn everything on their own, basically reinventing the wheel. It's a waste - share the technology freely instead

Not sharing their tech or making contact with them at all is basically turning their back on them

You mean like the way the European colonists of North America helped the Native Americans to evolve and tried to prevent them from struggling?

I'd actually be very curious to hear a Native American's take on the PD.

 

[Discofan]

You mean like the way the European colonists of North America helped the Native Americans to evolve and tried to prevent them from struggling?

I'd actually be very curious to hear a Native American's take on the PD.

Well, I suspect that just as everyone else, they don't all share the exact same opinion. Why would they?

 

[Makarov]

You mean like the way the European colonists of North America helped the Native Americans to evolve and tried to prevent them from struggling?

I'd actually be very curious to hear a Native American's take on the PD.

It would be more like TNG era mankind showing up and offering both the european colonists and the native americans advanced medicine, transportation and education, and a bit of wisdom, in the process probably resulting in a much more peaceful time

Just showing up with the knowledge of replicators and stuff would probably prevent resource wars. Plus the knowledge of an entire universe could bring people together

 

[DonIago]

While destroying their pre-existing cultures, sure. How helpful.

 

[Armus]

In one of my favorite TNG episodes Picard tries to violate the prime directive or some other regulation when he tries to get Rasmussen to tell him about the future so he can avoid destroying a planet. I would have preferred to see more situations where Picard was motivated to save lives and be a hero, rather than where he had to justify letting civilizations perish to uphold the PD, as in Homeward.

I enjoyed Symbiosis, Pen Pals, and Who Watches The Watchers because in the end Picard did try to help the each alien civilization. The Prime Directive is more about non contamination rather than rigid non interference.

In Symbiosis the moral dilemma is whether Picard will tell the Onarans that they are drug addicts not diseased, and Picard finds a way to disrupt their trade with the Breckians so that they may get off the drug at some point.

In Pen Pals Picard can't ignore the pleas of Data's young friend and he feels morally compelled to save her planet and erase her memory.

In Who Watches The Watchers Picard coldly tells Crusher she should have let the Mintakin die rather than contaminate their culture, but he is willing to take an arrow in the chest to prove he is not a God.

The best Prime Directive stories are where the Prime Directive forces the Enterprise to take action, rather than idly sit back.

 

[Discofan]

The prime directive is rarely done properly. For instance, there should be an exception when the people are about to go extinct. It makes no sense to preserve a people's "innocence" if the alternative is death.

Just like you're not supposed to enter someone's home but if the house is on fire and people are calling for help...

 

[Armus]

The prime directive is rarely done properly. For instance, there should be an exception when the people are about to go extinct. It makes no sense to preserve a people's "innocence" if the alternative is death.

Just like you're not supposed to enter someone's home but if the house is on fire and people are calling for help...

I agree, there is no rationale for letting a culture go extinct if the motive behind the Prime Directive is to preserve alien civilizations and protect their natural development.

 

[DonIago]

I maintain there's a difference between preserving a people and preserving their culture, as exemplified by the Nibiru, but I'll be the first to admit there's an argument that if the people die then the state of their culture may be a moot point.

 

[suarezguy]

Meddling with the timeline is generally frowned on (just ask Dulmer, Lucsley, and Captain Braxton -- oh wait, skip Braxton, he's nuts), so I'm gonna go with "no."

Sure but it's a not dissimilar topic-the characters have (if/since they do know how to time travel) the power to prevent deaths (we could alternately think of it as reversing deaths but thinking of it as preventing them is fine too, that kind of is the effect) and in not doing so they let people die-they do so because, as you agree, the negative consequences could be a lot worse, you seem to (understandably) feel negative consequences of acting to save lives in the present are much less likely or direct.

More moral than standing back and saving no one? Sure. Why would it not be? Do you really think it would be better if they let everyone die?

Well selectively saving half of a population let alone really less, only a small handful, is usually considered pretty controversial if not just immoral (at least or definitely in cases where saving a half or handful requires actively working against the rest, not sure about when the rest are doomed even without acting against them). It's not necessarily more or less moral to refuse to choose, both can be moral.

 

[Discofan]

Well selectively saving half of a population let alone really less, only a small handful, is usually considered pretty controversial if not just immoral...

In that case, the most immoral of all things would be to send money to an organization helping people less fortunate than you because it will help at best only a handful of people and in limited ways at that.

IMO, doing anything even a little is better and a great deal more moral than doing nothing.

IOW, there's nothing immoral about saving people. If you can't save everyone then the next BEST thing is to save as many as you can.

 

[suarezguy]

Well part of why people give to a charitable organization even though they know it can't help everyone is because they trust it will help who it can in a non-biased manner. Nikolai in "Homeward" trying to save the people from one village out of a whole planet because it's the one he studied and has his partner does seem biased enough to be pretty disturbing.

It should also be considered that saving a planet's population or part of it covertly of course makes sense, is generous and even a humanitarian obligation, but doing so not covertly, revealing the existence of more-advanced aliens, can inflict a lot of trauma, individually and socially, on the survivors.

 

[Discofan]

Well part of why people give to a charitable organization even though they know it can't help everyone is because they trust it will help who it can in a non-biased manner. Nikolai in "Homeward" trying to save the people from one village out of a whole planet because it's the one he studied and has his partner does seem biased enough to be pretty disturbing.

It should also be considered that saving a planet's population or part of it covertly of course makes sense, is generous and even a humanitarian obligation, but doing so not covertly, revealing the existence of more-advanced aliens, can inflict a lot of trauma, individually and socially, on the survivors.

I'd rather be traumatized by the vision of aliens and alive than ignorant of the existence of aliens but dead... I say this just in case some of those advanced aliens were listening...

 

[Shawnster]

As God said in Futurama, in my favorite encapsulation of what I think the PD should be: "When you do things right, people won't be sure you did anything at all."

And this is exactly the PD as presented in TOS. And how it should have stayed in TNG. Paradise Syndrome is the example. Deflect the asteroid before it hits the planet with the primitive people. The people will never know.

No identification of self or mission. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations. This obviously only applies to pre-warp civilizations and/or civilizations with no knowledge of extra terrestrials. That was the obvious point - don't let them know they aren't alone in the universe until they are ready for that knowledge. Once they have that knowledge, the the PD does not apply.

The PD was never "non interference" in the "let the person/culture/species die" approach. Not when originally presented. That changed.

In "Pen Pals," Picard argued the same reasoning. Would we save a planet from natural disaster? Would we save them from a plague? Would we save them from war? Even those who had said yes to the first two demurred at the last, and Picard acted as if he had scored a point. As if refusing to act under certain circumstances meant one couldn't act under any circumstances. Black and white. All or nothing. False dichotomy. Going back to my previous analogy: would I refuse to save a known murderer from a car accident? Very possibly. Does that mean that, given the opportunity, I should never try to save anyone in that situation?

You have two kids... Do you save one or both if they are drowning (natural disaster)? Yes. Do you save them if they are sick and need a doctor (plague)? Yes. Do you save them when they are fighting each other (war)? Maybe. Sometimes it's best for siblings to solve their own problems.

Same thing with cultures today. Do you jump in each and every time a parent disciplines a child? No. Do you jump in if you suspect child abuse? Yes.

Even a bad person or culture is worthy of salvation even though they are a bad person or culture. Should the whole of humanity been condemned because of Stalin? Should Russia or the Soviet Union? "Sorry, you have a tyrannical leader. Not going to help you. Go starve to death."

I'm not sure, though, how the Boraal civilization could have been saved without violating the PD in it's original form. No identification of self or mission. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations." The holodeck might have been the best answer. A holoship would have worked in this case (but the idea hadn't been conceived). Not enough time to get a holoship there, though. Maybe just stun/gas/knock out all of the natives and put them in stasis for the trip to the new world. Just don't explain what happened or how they got to the new world. I dunno how ethical that is. Wait, they weren't being transported to another planet at first, right? Just protected until the atmosphere was restored?

 

[DonIago]

As I noted in an earlier post, I feel Picard and Kirk faced very different PD-relevant situations (mostly), and perhaps it would be worth looking at specific cases and putting each captain in the others' shoes.

 

[Makarov]

You have two kids... Do you save one or both if they are drowning (natural disaster)? Yes. Do you save them if they are sick and need a doctor (plague)? Yes. Do you save them when they are fighting each other (war)? Maybe. Sometimes it's best for siblings to solve their own problems.

To me prime directive in the show is like waiting until they are adults before the parents reveal themselves, leave the kids to raise themselves in total isolation rather than just setting examples and teaching them

 

[Ghrakh]

More moral than standing back and saving no one??

Are you prepared to save everyone that ever existed?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

This reminds me of a recent series of Doctor Who. He saves Davros as a child who was trapped in a minefield. Had he not saved him he'd have died right there and not created the Daleks. But he chose mercy and to save him and I think that was the right thing to do.

 

[Brennyren]

Are you prepared to save everyone that ever existed?

I have no idea why you would think that's what I'm proposing. I'm supporting exactly the opposite idea: just because you can't save everyone, that's no reason to refuse to save who you can.

 

[Sgt_G]

IMO, doing anything even a little is better and a great deal more moral than doing nothing.

IOW, there's nothing immoral about saving people. If you can't save everyone then the next BEST thing is to save as many as you can.

I'm reminded of a TV commercial where a little kid was throwing starfish back into the ocean. His grandmother say, "Billy, you can't save all the starfish," to which he replies, "No, but I saved those ones."