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Prime Directive Influenced by Marvel Comics The Watcher?
- Thread starter elric428
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Something to keep in mind is that the Prime Directive in TOS is different than in TNG. In TOS the Prime Directive was, according to "Bread and Circuses"
SPOCK: Then the Prime Directive is in full force, Captain?
KIRK: No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet.
MCCOY: No references to space, or the fact that there are other worlds, or more advanced civilisations.
That's it. They could help another civilization as much as they want, so long as they did not reveal their presence, nor alter the natural development of the civilization. In other words, if an asteroid threatened to be an extinction level event for a planet (Paradise Syndrome), the Enterprise could attempt to deflect the asteroid and save the planet. TNG took the PD to the extreme that even anonymous or unobserved missions like deflecting an asteroid violated the principle of "No interference with the social development of said planet.". This is clear from TNG's "Pen Pals" where Picard chose to let Sajenka's planet die rather than interfere and save the planet even though that interference would be unobserved and not affect the social development of said planet (beyond the fact that it would actually save the population from extinction).
SPOCK: Then the Prime Directive is in full force, Captain?
KIRK: No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet.
MCCOY: No references to space, or the fact that there are other worlds, or more advanced civilisations.
That's it. They could help another civilization as much as they want, so long as they did not reveal their presence, nor alter the natural development of the civilization. In other words, if an asteroid threatened to be an extinction level event for a planet (Paradise Syndrome), the Enterprise could attempt to deflect the asteroid and save the planet. TNG took the PD to the extreme that even anonymous or unobserved missions like deflecting an asteroid violated the principle of "No interference with the social development of said planet.". This is clear from TNG's "Pen Pals" where Picard chose to let Sajenka's planet die rather than interfere and save the planet even though that interference would be unobserved and not affect the social development of said planet (beyond the fact that it would actually save the population from extinction).
Well, no; Picard ultimately chose to do the opposite of that. But yes, "Pen Pals" did claim that the PD said that's what they should do, so that Picard and the crew could have a philosophical debate about it before going ahead with it anyway. Which was definitely a problematical idea, making for a compelling episode but still not making a lot of sense when you think about it. And it led to the execrable "Homeward," where Picard and the crew did choose to let most of a species die based on stupidly legalistic arguments that contradicted the conclusion they came to in "Pen Pals."
The same way they handled Yonada. "The people... may be changed by the knowledge, but it's better than exterminating them." They would've done whatever it took to save as many lives as possible, because it's obvious to everyone except the writers of "Pen Pals" and "Homeward" that "We must let the entire population go extinct rather than risk harming them" is a contradiction in terms.
At the very least, they would've done what Nikolai wanted and erect shields to protect as many villages as possible. But they'd also probably have tried to evacuate as many people as they could. And the Federation would've sent in relief teams to help the survivors recover, the way they sent in relief teams to help the populations freed from Landru and Vaal.
Naren and Melinda? Those are some heavy hitters (not that I am even the slightest bit in disagreement with you on this).
No TV episode in a modern staff-driven show has a single writer, despite what the credits show. The whole staff breaks the story, and the showrunner does the final draft.
And being a good writer doesn't exempt one from having the occasional bad idea.
Quite.
Just what they did in "The Paradise Syndrome." They would have found a way to save the planet's population.
Well, the situation as presented in "Homeward" was that the atmosphere was already four days into its dissipation and they had less than 38 hours before the planet was uninhabitable, so saving the whole population was already a lost cause. They would've had to save whoever they could in the time they had left. But yeah, they would've prioritized saving lives over keeping secrets.
@Christopher - I realize he wrote outside his (editor's) comfort zone, but in the end, he linked together the majority of his written works as one giant story (from robots to Empire to Foundation and finally back to a robot), and its that body of work he is most famous for, and its that - despite all its glories - that is flawed by the humans being alone, IMHO.
Years ago I read a story in one of those scify "Years best.." collections, called 'Big Ancestor', and I would swear that's where the idea for the progenitor species in the Alien franchise comes from. Its a great read, if you can find it. Talk about taking the 'humans are the bestest' trope in a whole different direction, LOL
Oh, and I'll give you a hint - Voyager actually did a spin on this, with another species in The Void.
I do not worry about meeting aliens, I worry about why they haven't made themselves known, and if they have, I am even more worried about why most of us are being kept in the dark. Another major (and scientifically favored) theory is that only apex predators can make it into space - would we really want to meet others that got there first? Someone or something suffered for most of our current body of scientific knowledge. Science requires a certain level of amoral thinking, otherwise experimentation would not be possible. Earth would be just one more petri dish in space to them.
Years ago I read a story in one of those scify "Years best.." collections, called 'Big Ancestor', and I would swear that's where the idea for the progenitor species in the Alien franchise comes from. Its a great read, if you can find it. Talk about taking the 'humans are the bestest' trope in a whole different direction, LOL
Oh, and I'll give you a hint - Voyager actually did a spin on this, with another species in The Void.
You know the theory about putting monkeys with typewriters in a room, right? In an infinite universe, given an infinite amount of time, the only thing impossible is impossibility itself. The best (and truest) line Jeff Goldblaum ever spoke was, "Life will find a way".
I do not worry about meeting aliens, I worry about why they haven't made themselves known, and if they have, I am even more worried about why most of us are being kept in the dark. Another major (and scientifically favored) theory is that only apex predators can make it into space - would we really want to meet others that got there first? Someone or something suffered for most of our current body of scientific knowledge. Science requires a certain level of amoral thinking, otherwise experimentation would not be possible. Earth would be just one more petri dish in space to them.
Yes, of course he did, but you claimed that meant Asimov believed that aliens didn't exist in real life, and that is easily disproven by reading his vast body of non-fiction writing. You can't make assumptions about authors' beliefs about the real world based on what they create in fiction. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created tons of comic books about Norse gods, but they were still Jewish. Chris Carter created The X-Files, but he doesn't actually believe in UFOs or psychic powers. They told stories about those things because they were interesting to tell stories about, not because they believed the fiction was actually true. I mean, they were the ones who made it up, so they knew better than anyone that it was unreal.
Probably not, since it's a very, very commonplace trope in fiction, going back to at least the 1950s: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanityCameFromSpace
It's true that "Big Ancestor" by F. L. Wallace is one of the earlier iterations of the trope. But there are so many other intervening uses that there's no way to assume which one might have influenced Ridley Scott. Heck, if anything, I think if a recent work uses the trope, it might be evidence that its creators didn't know of any earlier examples and actually believed it was novel enough to be worth telling a story about, rather than the profoundly hackneyed cliche it is.
"Scientifically favored?" I doubt that. It seems like a very outdated way of thinking to me. Human civilization comes from the fact that we're a cooperative, highly social species. Social complexity requires sophisticated memory, adaptability, the capacity to imagine and predict others' behavior, and other advanced cognitive abilities, and the creation of a civilization with a stable economic surplus requires the cooperation of a large population. Strictly carnivorous species tend either to be solitary or to function in small packs, since hunters require a large territory and thus a low population density. If anything, strict predators are less likely to be capable of building a civilization than herbivores or omnivores.
That's absurdly reductionistic and does not reflect the universal consensus of scientists. There are a great many scientists who are dedicated to ethical research and deplore the moral abuses of their predecessors. There's long been debate over whether data obtained through unethical means should be used at all.
Except that our universe is quite finite. Did you know that 95% of all the stars that will ever exist have already been born?
As opposed to the best line his brother, George Goldblum, ever uttered:
"Today is a great day. You know why? Because every day is a great day!"
Words to live by.
Well, the observable universe is finite, but that's the only part that functionally matters. Also it's finite in age, so there isn't an infinite amount of time for things to happen.
Also, the laws of physics prohibit many things, so it's nonsensical to say that infinity makes everything possible. An infinite number of chances may theoretically guarantee something highly improbable, but it will never produce a physically impossible result, only one allowed by physical law.
In science, when your equations produce infinities, that's generally a sign that something's gone wrong with your equations, because infinity doesn't have physical meaning.
I actually never claimed Asimov didn't believe in aliens - if that's how it read I may have misspoke, or you misinterpreted what I meant. I am just disappointed that his better-known, uber-series had none (or to put it another way, I love his writing so much that I would have enjoyed his universe filled with aliens). Well... maybe not filled. Not like Star Wars. God no. LOL
I think Larry Niven had a good mix - he didn't have tons, just a decent amount to make stuff interesting.
Also, you seem to have confounded the word 'predator' with 'carnivore'. They don't mean the same thing. Humans are the best species at killing all other species, in every ecological niche. We've made hundreds - perhaps thousands - of species go extinct, our eating habits not withstanding. The theory is that in order to attain space-flight, a species would first have to rise to that apex position. The desire to 'be more', 'have more', and 'do more' all stems from greed. Even scientific knowledge - its greed for knowing more, so that we can control more (or why else would we even need that knowledge?). Only sapient species aren't satisfied with their lot in life - they want MORE. And that means going into space. Cows - they're just happy munching grass in a field.
I think Larry Niven had a good mix - he didn't have tons, just a decent amount to make stuff interesting.
Also, you seem to have confounded the word 'predator' with 'carnivore'. They don't mean the same thing. Humans are the best species at killing all other species, in every ecological niche. We've made hundreds - perhaps thousands - of species go extinct, our eating habits not withstanding. The theory is that in order to attain space-flight, a species would first have to rise to that apex position. The desire to 'be more', 'have more', and 'do more' all stems from greed. Even scientific knowledge - its greed for knowing more, so that we can control more (or why else would we even need that knowledge?). Only sapient species aren't satisfied with their lot in life - they want MORE. And that means going into space. Cows - they're just happy munching grass in a field.
Nonsense. You don't need to be a predator to be driven to expand territory. I suggest reading up on the "generalist specialist" theory of hominin evolution:
https://news.umich.edu/homo-sapiens-the-global-general-specialist/
https://www.inverse.com/article/47597-generalist-specialist-homo-sapien-adaption
According to it, the reason Homo sapiens prevailed over other hominins is not that we were more aggressive or greedy, but that we were better at adapting to new environments and new circumstances. Other hominins tended to be stuck in one ecological niche that was comfortable to them, and so they died out when the environment changed; but our ancestors spread out into every remotely habitable niche and found a way to live there, so we survived a wide range of climate shifts.
And note this part especially:
The notion that humanity prevailed by being more aggressive or violent or selfish is an outdated notion of the male-dominated anthropological community of the past, its simple-minded, macho idea of "nature red in tooth and claw." Modern anthropology has discredited that idea, showing how important cooperation and community have always been to humanity's survival.
Do we sometimes get it wrong and overrun an ecological niche until it becomes uninhabitable? Yes, all the time. But it's contradictory to say that specific behavior is what's required to get into space. After all, history shows that populations that do that to their environments are the ones that die out, like on Rapa Nui ("Easter Island"). The ones that survive to move forward are the ones that learn to use resources sustainably.
Indeed, it would be impossible for a civilization to master space colonization without learning the discipline to manage limited resources sustainably. Space is a sparse, barren environment, more so than any biome we ever occupied on Earth. The Biosphere 2 experiment of a few decades ago shows how difficult it is to maintain a self-sustaining enclosed habitat. Our old bad habits will never cut it out there.
The Watcher and the Prime Directive don't even operate on the same principle. The Watcher (on paper at least) is not supposed to interfere at all. The Prime Directive disallows interference until a given species has reached a certain point, after which Starfleet can go bananas.
That's not true. The Prime Directive prohibits revealing your existence to a pre-warp society, but it still bans interference in warp-capable societies' internal affairs. That's why Starfleet couldn't intervene in the Klingon Civil War in "Redemption" or the Circle takeover on Bajor in DS9 season 2 until they were discovered to be the result of external interference. It's why Janeway wouldn't let Torres give the androids in "Prototype" the ability to reproduce, and why she wouldn't give the Kazon (who were warp-capable) advanced technology that they weren't responsible enough to use safely. When Janeway hid the telepaths in "Counterpoint," it was explicitly stated that doing so violated the Prime Directive. When Neelix suggested in "Homestead" that Tuvok lead the Talaxian colonists in defending against their enemies, Tuvok explicitly said "It would be a violation of the Prime Directive."
It's a mistake to equate all contact with interference. Interference means getting in someone's way, imposing your will on them. Helping your neighbor wash their car isn't interference. Parking your car in front of their driveway so they can't get out is interference. It's a question of whether they have control over their own affairs. The PD allows interaction with post-warp societies, but not direct interference in their freedom of choice, e.g. by taking sides in a political or military conflict, trying to convert them to your belief system, or imposing an uninvited change in their way of life. The only reason there's a blanket ban on all interaction with pre-warp societies is because it's presumed that simply discovering the existence of alien life would in itself be a radical change to their way of life. Also because the power imbalance is so great that they couldn't resist if someone attempted to play god with them or meddle "for their own good."
Perhaps I am falsely associating the two parts of your statement, but R.U.R.'s robots were not mechanical. They were bio-engineered workers. The author's surname was used for Rayna in the TOS episode "Requiem for Methuselah," the first hint to the audience that "she" was not human.
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