Starting from the beginning--when does ENT get good?

[Go-Captain]

"Cogenitor" was a mess specifically because of Archer's magic Prime Directive sense.

What magic sense? He knows that messing with this society is wrong because of the events of "Dear Doctor". Trip knows as well but he follows his gut, he views this alien society through a human lense and from a human perspective the third sex is clearly mistreated.
But the whole point of the Prime Directive is that applying human ethics upon other species is ethically wrong. It is the 101 of interspecies ethics and not really that hard to understand once you think about it.

Virtually no species in the universe would behave like we wanted them to be. Even the Vulcans, their arranged marriages violate human rights.

Or think about the Klingons. In all important aspect they are the very opposite of is: they cherish death, humans cherish life, they are aristocratic, we are democratic. Humans never pretend that these differences do not exist and when the Klingons got nasty the Feds defended themselves. But precisely because they followed the Prime Directive an uneasy peace became psosible in the 24th century.

We are not out there to be missionaries and enlighten (meaning in this instance tyrannize) the galaxy via making out human ethics universal. They surely are universal on our planet but not universal in the galaxy.

Archers pulls Prime Directive sounding noises out of no where to rationalize his actions after the fact.

"Dear Doctor" is the worst offender, because Phlox's rationalization of not giving the cure is based on an asinine concept that evolution has some sort of divine plan that must not be interfered with. Phlox says as a doctor he is supposed to save people, but he is a scientist too and needs to consider the larger picture, and pulls out a bunch of meaningless what ifs.

The truth is, Phlox just likes the Menk more than the Valakians. If he were truly dispassionate about the whole thing, and really understood evolution, he would be fine saving Valakians, especially since it wouldn't harm the Menk. Especially because he should be a doctor first, and hobbyist second. McCoy would have cold cocked Phlox.

The next day, Archer states he changed his mind despite "going against all his principles," because he decided the Prime Directive will exist someday and they shouldn't play god. I guess letting millions of people die because blind evolution says so is okay. Phlox really needs to take a hard line stance and stop curing anyone of anything for the betterment of evolution.

At this point, McCoy would punch Archer for good measure. Picard would tactfully facepalm, because the aliens of the week directly asked Archer for help, and if you ask Picard for help he has to. He will even fix your ship for you if you ask nicely.

If anyone has reason to let a species die it is Picard, because by his period the Prime Directive has almost a religious following, at least with Picard. He actually goes against his own humanitarian desires in several instances while trying to rigidly follow that period's interpretation of the rule. Picard is in the thick of it, so it fits, and we can assume there is a lot of history backing Picard's thinking, but Archer has nothing. All he has is blurry future vision.

The original version of the plot is supposed to have Archer stick to his guns and give the cure to the Valakians, but one of the producers, or an executive said there can be no disagreements among the crew. As if it's TNG and not pre-TOS. Instead of changing Phlox's stance, they decided to change Archer's stance to the train wreck we saw.


If this were a real pre-Prime Directive episode, Archer wouldn't have pulled the Prime Directive out of no where for no reason, since it doesn't exist yet. He should have given the cure, and it should have bit him or humanity in the ass. That way we would actually see why the Prime Directive is important. But the way the episode is done we have no idea why the Prime Directive has any meaning, because the meaning we are given is meaningless.

The only point in the episode where there is some good ground work for the Prime Directive is when Archer is discussing options with T'Pol to help the Valakians. He says he is considering giving them warp technology, but he realizes they don't have the technology to build one even with plans. He says they probably don't know how dangerous antimatter is, but that's a weaker argument. T'Pol responds that Vulcans decided to help Earth and they've been there for 90 years, which is a much better argument, and fits nicely with the Valakians not having the technology for warp drives. It's easy to imagine Earth deciding to teach the Valakians how to build their own drives, step by step, or giving them a ship on a very long loan. Regardless it would be something which involves very long term contact, and could have interesting long term results.

Over all, that conversation highlights how aid can be very difficult, but for someone motivated to help, and who has resources, difficulty should not be a reason not to help. Thinking about it now, I think getting the cure is actually the wrong result to have in the episode, since not having the cure would force a long term solution like the ones described above. Instead of the quick easy lesson, like the Valakians blowing themselves up with antimatter, it could be something political or economic, and very long term.

You seem to refer to the notion that Starfleet should not make contact with pre-warp civilizations but misunderstand the motivation for this.
The goal is not to keep knowledge to yourself but rather to not influence a species who's path will be significantly changed after you reveal yourselves. The very culture might become xenophobic or submissive to the powerful aliens they meet. In short, all kind of nasty shit can happen when your very presence becomes one of the crucial historical moments of another culture.
It is no exaggeration that the first contact with the Vulcans was the single most important historical event for humankind, it lead to unification, peace and prosperity. Now imagine what would have happened if the Vulcans had landed on Earth and made first contact with Hitler or Khan. What if they had played nice protector and taken our nuclear weapons from us.

Messing with another species before they are most likely (First Contact shows that evem first contact with a civilization that has warp power is not guaranteed to work out well) ready to deal with the fact that there are other sentient lifeforms out there is a pretty horrible crime, forbidden by the rule number one of the United Federation of Planets.

I don't buy that angle of protecting non-warp civilizations from corrupting influences, at least not as the original reason behind the Prime Directive. I believe it for TNG, but for TOS it doesn't work, since by TNG the Prime Directive has become extremely dogmatic.

In TOS Kirk contacts plenty of non-warp looking groups without issue. He also states it's about "healthy civilizations." They believed contact was fine as long the civilization could adapt and grow, and they especially believed in interference if it would make the civilization "healthy." Kirk even deflects an asteroid from a primitive world without being asked, just because it's the right thing to do. They would keep contact minimal if the guys didn't have anything worthwhile like dilithium, but they would still make contact, just on the locals' level.

It is completely different from the treatment in TNG, and there is no information on the transformation of the culture which decided complete hands off is the best policy for protecting primitive civilizations, even if it kills the civilization.

I just realized, the Prime Directive could be a response to Archer's actions in "Dear Doctor." It's not because Archer inspired its creation with his actions, it's a backlash against his actions to ensure captains will help civilizations in need.

 

[horatio83]

The truth is, Phlox just likes the Menk more than the Valakians. If he were truly dispassionate about the whole thing, and really understood evolution, he would be fine saving Valakians, especially since it wouldn't harm the Menk. Especially because he should be a doctor first, and hobbyist second. McCoy would have cold cocked Phlox.

This is plain wrong. The episode deliberately contracts Phlox dispassionate and neutral position with the human, emotional reactions. While communicating with Lucas via the letter Phlox clearly says that he neither understands the human desire to help the Valakians nor their pity for the Menk.

He sees the larger picture, that both species have developed a kind of stable cooperation which is rare (genocide is more usual) and that the Valakians are the dominanting part in this relationship. Giving the Valakians a cure has nothing to do with evolution or biology but more with sociology. The cure would give them an SOCIAL advantage to continue suppressing the Menk.

Same the other way around. Suppose there was a Menk resistance group that asked for help. As the Menk are treated similar to slaves human rights would imply that we would HAVE to assist them in their emancipatory struggles.

Both kddns of assistance, supporting a slave rebellion and providing a cure for a horrible disease, make total sense from a human perspective. And no sense at all from an inter-species perspective as either kind of assistance would shift the balance of power between Menk and Valakians in favour of one group.

Hence the Prime Directive. What I love most about it is that it is so counterintuitive. Many fans do not understand it because it is absolutely antithetical to human rights (which, lest somebody pretends that I am a relativist, are of course universal for humans).
But interspecies ethics cannot be based upon human ethics for the very simple reason that there is another species involved. When should the Vulcans have intervened on Earth? When Alexander the Great killed thousands? When the Yorks and Lancasters slaughtered each other? When Hitler and Stalin killed millions? When the risk of nuclear war was at its highest?
What if there are some intelligent reptilian species out there, should they have prevented the mass extinction of the dinosaurs?

If this were a real pre-Prime Directive episode, Archer wouldn't have pulled the Prime Directive out of no where for no reason, since it doesn't exist yet. He should have given the cure, and it should have bit him or humanity in the ass.

The beauty of the episode is that it is fairly intellectual and abstract. There is no large-scale disaster looming around the corner (no idea why fans always associate that with the Prime Directive, perhaps out of an desire for simplicity.). The implications of giving the cure to the Valakians are long-term, social and hard to notice.

 

[ALF]

Wasn't part of the launch of (Star Trek: ) Enterprise to explore the origins of the Prime Directive? I could be remembering wrong. I thought it was one of the gimmicks of the series. Do you think that the writers think that we, the Trek audience at-large, are interested in the origins of the need for a prime directive? It certainly was never a mystery I was dying to have solved.

I just rewatched Carpenter Street. Not as bad as I recall from the original broadcast.

 

[Ithekro]

It be interesting if the resolution of "Dear Doctor" is actually an example of a failure of a First Contact, that would lead to the Prime Directive, instead of it being an example of the (pre-)Prime Directive in action. What if this was one of those missteps that came back to bite the Federation in the time before Picard, or maybe before Kirk. Someone later does give them a cure and they remember the Humans didn't help them, and join the Klingons or Romulans, or whoever willingly. Their population or something they do causes a mass of problems for the Federation later on and it is used as an example for later generations. What the example is may not be the idea of "cure or not to cure" but more and "don't even get involved" to the point were that choice wouldn't have come up.

 

[Christopher]

Wasn't part of the launch of (Star Trek: ) Enterprise to explore the origins of the Prime Directive? I could be remembering wrong. I thought it was one of the gimmicks of the series. Do you think that the writers think that we, the Trek audience at-large, are interested in the origins of the need for a prime directive? It certainly was never a mystery I was dying to have solved.

As I said, I always figured the rather extreme form the PD took implied that it was a reaction (overreaction?) to some really horrible disaster in the past. I felt that by having Archer adopt a noninterference policy so early, the show missed an opportunity to explore those interesting mistakes. Which is why I'm glad that I'm now writing the ENT novels and can feature other captains who don't necessarily agree with Archer's approach...

I just rewatched Carpenter Street. Not as bad as I recall from the original broadcast.

When I rewatched it, I found it just as bad as I recalled. Although I'm not sure "bad" is even the word. It's just boring and pointless. Showing us our present-day world isn't interesting in itself; we see it all the time. It's only fun if something is done with the future characters' reaction to our time, and very little was, aside from some inconsequential business about figuring out how to work a car (which "A Piece of the Action" did far better). It'd be entirely skippable if the business about the virus weren't important later in the season.

 

[Ithekro]

My father notices in "A Piece of the Action" that Kirk seems to instinctively find neutral on the stick like he's done it before.

 

[eyeresist]

I just rewatched Carpenter Street. Not as bad as I recall from the original broadcast.

Not great, not terrible, not essential. I did think the weasly guy would play a bigger part in the plot, but he kind of disappears. I did like the kinda-70s crime show vibe. They could have played that up more, maybe have them drive through some cardboard boxes...

 

[Goji]

There are moments in Carpenter Street that seem to want to be "The X-Files", which as a fan of that show I found interesting but not, on the whole, that compelling. I did like that it later gets referenced as the reason T'Pol gives up her longstanding skepticism regarding the existence of time travel.

 

[Destructor]

TNG totally missed the point of the Prime Directive. In the TOS era, the idea was "We mustn't be so arrogant as to think of other races as helpless children who need us to make their decisions for them; they understand their cultures better than we do and are more qualified to choose the paths that will work for them." But the TNG interpretation of the Prime Directive was "Other races are helpless children too primitive and ignorant to understand our sophisticated ideas, so we must make the decision for them that they must be insulated from knowledge, even if it kills them." It's embracing the exact same condescending White Man's Burden imperialism that the original PD rejected; it just flips the script from imposed intervention to imposed isolation.

Hrm. I take your perspective, but I'm not sure I agree. I think Picard/Roddenberry was saying that *even with the best of intentions*, if you use your superior technology to influence the course of a culture's development, you have taken autonomy away from that culture, and you do not possess that right. I think both TOS and TNG, while inconsistent in their application, both generally held with that philosophy.

 

[Christopher]

^But deciding to let a civilization die rather than inform them that they're in danger of dying, as in "Pen Pals" and the execrable "Homeward," is absolutely taking their autonomy away. It's unilaterally deciding that you're entitled to determine their fate for them. And it's an irreconcilable contradiction to say that letting a culture go extinct protects them from harm.

 

[ALF]

^But deciding to let a civilization die rather than inform them that they're in danger of dying, as in "Pen Pals" and the execrable "Homeward," is absolutely taking their autonomy away. It's unilaterally deciding that you're entitled to determine their fate for them. And it's an irreconcilable contradiction to say that letting a culture go extinct protects them from harm.

I've love to see what Picard would say to defend himself from this scathing - and incredibly accurate assessment!

The thing about Carpenter St is that when I last watched it there wasn't much to enjoy about them traveling to 2004. But watching it today revealed a bit of time travel-ism camp to it I enjoyed. All T'pol and Archer scenes of course... borrowing the car, the money, etc. Any time period where everyone isn't staring at their cell phones is refreshing.

"Have you ever operated a vehicle from this period?"
"I can pilot a starship!"

- T'Pol and Archer, just before departing in their stolen Dodge Ram​

Loomis is revolting, as much now as ever. As a representative of this century, I found the modern-day sociopathic archetype disturbing. The one big scene of levity, ordering fast food at a drive thru, leaves T'Pol with nothing to do but be disgusted.

Oh, ENT season 3. I love you, but you're weird.

I did like that it later gets referenced as the reason T'Pol gives up her longstanding skepticism regarding the existence of time travel.

Yep. That tired old cliche had outlived it's usefulness.... and how could she continue to deny it after that very real encounter?

 

[horatio83]

^But deciding to let a civilization die rather than inform them that they're in danger of dying, as in "Pen Pals" and the execrable "Homeward," is absolutely taking their autonomy away. It's unilaterally deciding that you're entitled to determine their fate for them. And it's an irreconcilable contradiction to say that letting a culture go extinct protects them from harm.

Well, if some intelligent reptilian spacefaring species had thought like that they might have saved the dinosaurs and thigns on this planet would have turned out totally different.

Hell, these nice guys might have also already interferred when there wasn't enough oxygen on Earth yet. It is after all toxic, at least for life that has the potential to become intelligent, so they should have increased oxygen levels back then as well.

Messing with the evolution of a pre-industrial species is plain wrong. Preventing the extinction of an industrial species is a crime.
Sounds paradoxical but if we are about to exterminate ourselves in a nuclear holocaust and the Vulcans land and stop us, well, what then? In any kind of society they would become the equivalent of Gods because, guess what, they did play God.

Nobody has any business messing with life in the universe. Gee, there was an entire Trek movie which was about the very problem of anthropocentrism, that we are oblivious of all the other intelligent lifeforms of our own planet.

So to get back to the beginning of my post, there are natural biases which prevent us from being objective about life. We are primates so we are miore inclined to view other primates as sentient.

The Federation is not out there to play God, save sentient life and thus inadvertently put its unconscious prejudices into practice. If we wanna go out there we need some friggin' humility.

 

[eyeresist]

^ Basically a religious argument - There are some things which are Forbidden to humanity. The Natural Order is Sacred. Stay in your homes and lock your doors - you might affect the world!

Why is contact with a space-faring species allowed but a pre-space species forbidden? What radical moral change takes place in that species' character when they invent warp drive?

And why not play God and save a species from extinction? It's not as though some divine plan is being interfered with. Nature doesn't select for "right to exist", just for survivability, and a lot of that is just down to luck (see the dinosaurs). And if a species is allowed to die out, there's no guarantee that something "better" (or even something else) will come along.

 

[Christopher]

Why is contact with a space-faring species allowed but a pre-space species forbidden? What radical moral change takes place in that species' character when they invent warp drive?

Well, if they have warp drive, it goes without saying that they're going to encounter aliens anyway. So there's no longer a reason to try to hide the existence of aliens from them. I imagine the same might be true of a culture that detected alien civilizations through their spectroscopic signatures, or that invented the subspace transceiver first and picked up alien radio signals, or that was visited by non-Federation aliens who don't have the Prime Directive. Whatever the mechanism, a "don't tell them about aliens" policy ceases to be applicable once their discovery of aliens is inevitable. The invention of warp drive is just the most obvious way, at least within a Trek context, for a species to cross that line.

It's worth noting that the Prime Directive does still apply to warp-capable species, just in a different way. The point is to avoid imposing change or disruption on another culture. In the case of warp-capable species that already know about aliens, that means not taking sides in their local politics or internal wars, not intervening to help one side win or impose your own values and agendas on their internal culture. That's why, in TNG: "Redemption," Starfleet couldn't interfere in the Klingon civil war until they had proof that the Romulans were behind it. They couldn't take sides in a strictly internal matter because that would've been cultural interference; but they could protect an ally from someone else's interference.

And why not play God and save a species from extinction?

Heck, that's not even playing God, it's just being a good neighbor. "Umm, hey, just thought you should know your planet's about to blow up. We can help you with that, if you'd like."

(Anyway, that whole "playing God" line grates on me. I've never understood the mentality of religious sorts who say, on the one hand, that we're God's children or created in God's image, but on the other hand, that it's wrong for us to play God. Isn't there an inherent contradiction there? If we're in the image of God, why wouldn't we act according to that image? Not to mention that the whole "don't play God" ship sailed the moment humans domesticated their first crop or altered their first biome through horticulture or pastoralism. We've been "tampering with nature" since long before we even invented monotheism.)

 

[horatio83]

Sorry to be so blunt but you guys are extremnly shortsighted.

First of all, I am a hardcore atheist and couldn't care less about fate or the plan of nature. I care about social stuff and power relations. Like in "Dear Doctor" all of this is not about evolution or biology but about simple trade-offs, favouring one form of life at the cost of another.

Claiming that the Feds should mess with evolution is an ethical bio-engineering imperative. As I already ttried to illustrate via my dinosaur example, if reptilian lifeforms save other life out there they will involuntarily be biased towards reptilian life just like we will be biased towards primates. Primate supremacy throughout the entire quadrant. Oh, and if there are some silicon-based lifeforms who are perhaps strating ro prosper precisely because a planet-wide multiple volcanoe erruption is about to end carbon-based life, well, screw these stupid silicon-based folks.

We humans have driven thousands of species to extinction. Shouldn't the "good alien neighbours" have blown us to smithereens for this multi-speciecide or at least prevented us from killing off any others species for good?

As I said, if you make such ludicrous anti-PD suggestions you cannot ignore their wide-ranging implications. You gotta think it through and in this specific case and in general people who oppose the PD have not thought it through.

 

[eyeresist]

As I already ttried to illustrate via my dinosaur example, if reptilian lifeforms save other life out there they will involuntarily be biased towards reptilian life just like we will be biased towards primates.

So what? As I said before, the "decisions" of nature are arbitrary. If someone puts their thumb on the scale, that isn't in itself a bad thing to do.

 

[Destructor]

As I already ttried to illustrate via my dinosaur example, if reptilian lifeforms save other life out there they will involuntarily be biased towards reptilian life just like we will be biased towards primates.

So what? As I said before, the "decisions" of nature are arbitrary. If someone puts their thumb on the scale, that isn't in itself a bad thing to do.

What? No! Don't put your thumb on the scale! The horror you are describing is EXACTLY the reason the Prime Directive exists: Because a well-meaning 'thumb on the scale' can have massive, wide-ranging consequences that cannot be predicted. The instant, the very instant, you start parsing 'well this versus that, and maybe if we' then basically that's it, you've decided to interfere. Some catastrophe MUST have occured in the Federation's history where basically they had to blanket say: "No more. We can't fuck up any more planets with our well-intentioned interference." We've had those catastrophes: India, Australia, New Zealand, America. Bloody hell.

[edited to tone down swearing]

 

[horatio83]

As I already ttried to illustrate via my dinosaur example, if reptilian lifeforms save other life out there they will involuntarily be biased towards reptilian life just like we will be biased towards primates.

So what? As I said before, the "decisions" of nature are arbitrary. If someone puts their thumb on the scale, that isn't in itself a bad thing to do.

This has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with SOCIAL influence upon other lcivilisations. Thankfully the Feds do not "put their thubms on the scale", they are not an imperial but a democratic force which does not mess with other folks.

What you are describing could be labelled "Primate Prime". It would be a funny basis for a mirror universe story precisely because it is antithetical to the actual UFP.

 

[OpenMaw]

Claiming that the Feds should mess with evolution is an ethical bio-engineering imperative.

Your dinosaur example is flawed. For one, dinosaurs weren't sentient beings. Your analogue would be if the Gorn showed up and saved a fellow Gorn-like species and thus prevented modern man from ever coming into being. So be it. Humanity was not a guarantee on this planet. We were simply the ones that drew the lucky straw for a short while. It's steeped in the notion that nature either has a plan, or is in some way our friends. There is no such thing as harmony in nature. It's chaos and luck. It's a lot of death and small changes over time. If you're smart enough to help yourself, you should. If you're smart enough to help others, you should.

 

[horatio83]

It's steeped in the notion that nature either has a plan, or is in some way our friends. There is no such thing as harmony in nature.

Nope. I already said that the Prime Directive has nothing to do with some stupid Gaiaism, the belief that there is some form of balance in nature. It is about sociology, about preventing the Feds from helping some folks at the costs of others. Or at their own costs. You cannot prevent a civilization from making numerous mistakes.
So when should you interfere? When Alexander the Great slaughters thousands? When Napoleons slaughters hundreds of thousands? When Hitler and Stalin slauhgter tens of millions?

If you're smart enough to help others, you should.

Nope. When it comes to aliens you are already in contact with and with whom you have a relationship, yes. But not when it comes at the disadvantage of some other sentient species. Gee, this is what Dear Doctor was all about!

About the dionsaurs, you obviously totally missed my point. "Devil in the Dark" was the first among numerous Trek episodes which illustrated anthropocentrism, that wemassume that sentient beings out there look humanoid. If they are some fish we already have a harder time to accept that they are sentient and if they are silicon-based lifeforms our sensors do not even register them as lifeforms. We might prevent a Vulcano outbreak on a planet to save some humanoids and at the same time we unwillingly destroy a food source for some siliconoids.

If the guys are non-corporeal we might not see them at all. And last but not least, we create life amongst ourselves, androids and sentient holograms, but we take years to notice that they are sentient and grant them full rights. We have no right at all to play judge and executor and decide which species may live and which species may die or which subgroup of a species to empower and which subgroup to weaken. We simply have no right messing with the entire galaxy. A galaxy in which every would behave like this, applying his standards of what is life and what is good, upon all other lifeforms, would be a genocidal hell.

The Feds' dubious understanding of life is one reason for why messing with pre-Warp civilization is the crime number one in the Federation. Good intentions can entrail horrible, unintended consequences.
The Prime Directive is all about humility and transcending or ignoring your anthropocentric perspective. It is thus simply a continuation of the enlightenment tradition for interspecies ethics.