You are right, but that isn't why. Its because we supported the mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s, eventually leading to the Taliban, so we are deeply involved.
the Prime DIrective and the rules for it. how i feel about the whole thing
- Thread starter urrutiap
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You are right, but that isn't why. Its because we supported the mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s, eventually leading to the Taliban, so we are deeply involved.
"Homeward" to me is the end result of bureaucrats getting sick and tired of people messing with planetary development, like John Gill or Captain Tracey or even Data and the crab girl, and just straight banning rescuing anyone. I kinda agree somewhat. Maybe they could have saved more Homewardians but that wasn't the story they were telling. I would have just changed the story so the Enterprise only arrived at the planet at the last second and Nikolai secretly beamed the Homewardians up then.
Yay, colonialism! To hell with what the indigenous cultures want.
You know that's not what's being said. "To hell with General Order One/Prime Directive" actually means "to hell with the belief that extinction is preferable to exposing a race to alien life."
No country, interstellar state, or government that has ever existed or will ever exist can be responsible for "saving" everyone everywhere. That is both unrealistic and a god-awful policy that will justify destructive interventions with unintended consequences.
In "Homeward," the crew have to improvise and create all sort of mythological bullshit when the Holodeck malfunctions to explain "the lines" which will probably become the basis for religious dogma, and you have the one Boraalan character who is told the truth driven to suicide because he can't handle it.
What if all of them had been exposed to the truth and chose ritualistic suicide just like Vorin?
The idea that you can just beam down to a planet and say we're here to help and "be greeted as liberators" and saviors that won't create new problems is the height of hubris and arrogance.
In "Homeward," the crew have to improvise and create all sort of mythological bullshit when the Holodeck malfunctions to explain "the lines" which will probably become the basis for religious dogma, and you have the one Boraalan character who is told the truth driven to suicide because he can't handle it.
What if all of them had been exposed to the truth and chose ritualistic suicide just like Vorin?
The idea that you can just beam down to a planet and say we're here to help and "be greeted as liberators" and saviors that won't create new problems is the height of hubris and arrogance.
Given the Talibun's ability to hide in the shadows like roaches and emerge from hiding and take over after we (or anyone else) leaves... we may have created a mess that's impossible to clean up.
That would be horrible, yes, but in my view still preferable to letting them all die because Almighty Prime Directive says so. In that scenario they're at least given a second chance, and how they respond to those changed circumstances is up to them - in the no interference scenario they have no chance at all and they don't even get to prepare for their coming death since they don't know they are (and their entire culture is) about to die.
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Let's circle back to this. The major flaw in this scenario of "non interference" is what happens after the rescued survivors wake up in a strange, new location with similar but completely different flora, fauna, terrain, geology, geography, weather patterns, etc...
You cannot hide the fact they are no longer on their home world. Wouldn't that interfere with their social development?
I much prefer Picard being maybe too absolutist about the Prime Directive to Kirk being so cavalier about it. If Kirk did have that attitude he should have a few times when his interference ends up backfiring, going wrong, or at very least a few of the opponents of interfering think, and have a reasonable case, that they're still right.
Most assuredly, yes. But consider the other two choices:
1. Beam them up en masse without hiding, resulting in not only cultural contamination, but their awareness of the Federation's existence.
2. Allow their utter annihilation without lifting a finger to help.
I presented the action that I regarded as the least of three evils. Obviously, if there was a fourth option, such as do a science thingy to the atmosphere and cause it to stop dissipating, that would be an even better choice. I was assuming that the calamity itself couldn't be stopped.
There's another angle to the prime directive (and that whole "letting civilisations die") that is never mentioned:
Self-preservation.
That's actually a big point in the 3rd "Hitchhiker's guide to the universe book" ("Live, the universe and everything"), where the remote, peaceful civilization of Krikkit suddenly is made aware of the outside universe by a crashed spaceship, managed to reverse-engineer it, and then started a galaxy spanning conquest of genocide against all non-Krikkit lifeforms.
In Trek lore, being able to create a warp engine is a "cultural milestone", which shows that a species is able to hinds itself back from completely annihilating itself if given the chance.
After that, non-interference is still the logical choice, with the exception of they seek contact (e.g. wanting to joint the Federation) themselves.
As this seems to be a (Quadrant? Galaxy?)-wide agreement to which even non -Federation members adhere (we very rarely see aliens occupied occupied by other races in Trek), it makes sense these rules are pretty broad - who wants to be responsible for the next Krikkits? Maybe their WW3 was necessary for them to come together as a planet? If your save one doomed species by interfering, does that mean it's okay for the Klingons to enslave another civilization that would otherwise be likely wiped out by a super volcano?
Self-preservation.
That's actually a big point in the 3rd "Hitchhiker's guide to the universe book" ("Live, the universe and everything"), where the remote, peaceful civilization of Krikkit suddenly is made aware of the outside universe by a crashed spaceship, managed to reverse-engineer it, and then started a galaxy spanning conquest of genocide against all non-Krikkit lifeforms.
In Trek lore, being able to create a warp engine is a "cultural milestone", which shows that a species is able to hinds itself back from completely annihilating itself if given the chance.
After that, non-interference is still the logical choice, with the exception of they seek contact (e.g. wanting to joint the Federation) themselves.
As this seems to be a (Quadrant? Galaxy?)-wide agreement to which even non -Federation members adhere (we very rarely see aliens occupied occupied by other races in Trek), it makes sense these rules are pretty broad - who wants to be responsible for the next Krikkits? Maybe their WW3 was necessary for them to come together as a planet? If your save one doomed species by interfering, does that mean it's okay for the Klingons to enslave another civilization that would otherwise be likely wiped out by a super volcano?
I personally don't think of the prime directive as the perfect policy. I think of it as the space UN charter of sentient rights - the bare minimum political consensus that all players can agree to (and some who only pay lip service to it). Which in the end is still widely preferable to not having it.
It's quite common, particularly in large organisations, for a rule or instruction to start out pretty simple; just laying out the spirit of the rule and assuming that everyone's got enough common sense to apply the rule as it is intended. Then it turns out that common sense is distinctly lacking/people have different ideas about the intent whatever and before you know where you are, the rule's been amended very slightly but there's an accompanying 200 page manual which tells you how to interpret it.
That what I see as happening to the PD. It starts off as a laudable attempt to avoid the kind of destruction of cultures that had been seen in Earth history but ends up as a very complex set of rules. If you aren't a First Contact specialist, you have no hope of being able to recall every single nuance when you are suddenly tipped into an unexpected situation (and there's no time to get advice from the FC specialist unit at Star Fleet HQ) so there's probably some rule-of-thumb that most people use. Trouble is with rules-of-thumb is that they wo'n't always be "right" in terms of the actual rules (and then yet another page gets added to the manual. Kirk must have been responsible for a fair few pages)
Another problem when rules get complex is that misunderstandings creep in. I can see someone remembering that you aren't allowed to intervene when one group on a planet is slaughtering another (because that's cultural interference) but then wrongly thinking that "you can't intervene when people are being wiped out" is the rule and it applies in situations where there's a natural disaster like an asteroid heading for the planet.
That what I see as happening to the PD. It starts off as a laudable attempt to avoid the kind of destruction of cultures that had been seen in Earth history but ends up as a very complex set of rules. If you aren't a First Contact specialist, you have no hope of being able to recall every single nuance when you are suddenly tipped into an unexpected situation (and there's no time to get advice from the FC specialist unit at Star Fleet HQ) so there's probably some rule-of-thumb that most people use. Trouble is with rules-of-thumb is that they wo'n't always be "right" in terms of the actual rules (and then yet another page gets added to the manual. Kirk must have been responsible for a fair few pages)
Another problem when rules get complex is that misunderstandings creep in. I can see someone remembering that you aren't allowed to intervene when one group on a planet is slaughtering another (because that's cultural interference) but then wrongly thinking that "you can't intervene when people are being wiped out" is the rule and it applies in situations where there's a natural disaster like an asteroid heading for the planet.
Oh, I don't think the Prime Directive is necessarily 'the perfect policy'. But it may be a good general guideline for the Federation, which consists of most relatively 'young' species, with not that much experience - most species only have a few centuries' worth of spaceflight and contact with other species under their belt. ('If you don't know exactly what you're doing, better don't do it')
Perhaps a much older species - tens, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of years old and much more experienced in dealing with other cultures- needs no longer to abide to such a policy because they've learned when to interfere and when not.
Perhaps a much older species - tens, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of years old and much more experienced in dealing with other cultures- needs no longer to abide to such a policy because they've learned when to interfere and when not.
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TOS definitely had it at the most balanced and thoughtful, even if Kirk readily disregarded it because it was all about appeasing his ego (e.g. "The apple").
TNG... oh sheesh. From "Justice", as filmed, exploring the ludicrous extremes of it, to "Code of Honor" where Picard flagrantly disregards it and for reasons even Kirk would be embarrassed about... then comes "Pen Pals", which is surprisingly thoughtful - but, as with a lot of season 2, introduces concepts that become too much a crutch later on. Not to mention season 5's almost completely cringeworthy "The Masterpiece Society", which feels like a rebuttal to "Pen Pals", only this time they slather on the maudlin shit and how this colony, whose structure is asinine to begin with, is now said to have been better off destroyed than via their holier-than-all interference. Ugh. At least it had a great Geordi scene making up for it, in the most unsung of ironies once you think about it. So it's not as much "cringeworthy" but "highly contrived" in setting up the story for one specific mindset, which is rather typical of season 5's soapbox mentality, even if - soapbox or not - it still gets audiences to think - in one direction or another. All I know is, "Pen Pals" still feels more entertaining as a whole story, and "Masterpiece" doesn't hold up much beyond a couple set piece scenes.. YMMV.
VOY flip flops on the issue more times than a bunch of fish that are on the floor thanks to Mittens the kitten knocking over the tank with an impressive amount of strength that very few kittens can manage to muster.
DS9 was set next door to a wormhole and a tidy little war, which turned the whole idea into beautiful grayscale since, as with everything else, no simple plot button could end the story as neatly as any given episode of "The Brady Bunch", though that episode where Greg's friend puts his ciggies into Greg's pocket and Greg is all like "I'm going to prove myself" and the kid who put the ciggies there confesses and all is well right at the episode's end, and the actor playing the ciggie kid also is the lead kid in season 3's all-time classic "And The Children Shall Lead"... Craig Huxley did a decent job with what he was given, in both shows, and he did invent a musical instrument that was instrumental to Jerry Goldsmith in "Star Trek The Motion Picture" that's rather quite good and scaled well to the threat of V'Ger...
Yeah, the Prime DIrective is just there like plot fodder. Like that light fixture store that's full of cool switches you can turn on and off. Have enough rows and columns of lights and you can configure the array to say a dirty word, since a whole sentence requires more fixtures than would ever begin to be on display... silly 8x8 grids and all...
TNG... oh sheesh. From "Justice", as filmed, exploring the ludicrous extremes of it, to "Code of Honor" where Picard flagrantly disregards it and for reasons even Kirk would be embarrassed about... then comes "Pen Pals", which is surprisingly thoughtful - but, as with a lot of season 2, introduces concepts that become too much a crutch later on. Not to mention season 5's almost completely cringeworthy "The Masterpiece Society", which feels like a rebuttal to "Pen Pals", only this time they slather on the maudlin shit and how this colony, whose structure is asinine to begin with, is now said to have been better off destroyed than via their holier-than-all interference. Ugh. At least it had a great Geordi scene making up for it, in the most unsung of ironies once you think about it. So it's not as much "cringeworthy" but "highly contrived" in setting up the story for one specific mindset, which is rather typical of season 5's soapbox mentality, even if - soapbox or not - it still gets audiences to think - in one direction or another. All I know is, "Pen Pals" still feels more entertaining as a whole story, and "Masterpiece" doesn't hold up much beyond a couple set piece scenes.. YMMV.
VOY flip flops on the issue more times than a bunch of fish that are on the floor thanks to Mittens the kitten knocking over the tank with an impressive amount of strength that very few kittens can manage to muster.
DS9 was set next door to a wormhole and a tidy little war, which turned the whole idea into beautiful grayscale since, as with everything else, no simple plot button could end the story as neatly as any given episode of "The Brady Bunch", though that episode where Greg's friend puts his ciggies into Greg's pocket and Greg is all like "I'm going to prove myself" and the kid who put the ciggies there confesses and all is well right at the episode's end, and the actor playing the ciggie kid also is the lead kid in season 3's all-time classic "And The Children Shall Lead"... Craig Huxley did a decent job with what he was given, in both shows, and he did invent a musical instrument that was instrumental to Jerry Goldsmith in "Star Trek The Motion Picture" that's rather quite good and scaled well to the threat of V'Ger...
Yeah, the Prime DIrective is just there like plot fodder. Like that light fixture store that's full of cool switches you can turn on and off. Have enough rows and columns of lights and you can configure the array to say a dirty word, since a whole sentence requires more fixtures than would ever begin to be on display... silly 8x8 grids and all...
So Picard acknowledges they did the right thing in interfering. It's not a 'we shouldn't have interfered' speech. He just expresses sorrow that their interference- which was necessary- still could have a very damaging effect.
Other than that, of course the Prime Directive is ultimately just a plot tool that can - and will- be reinterpreted as the needs of the story dictate
The Prime Directive is often framed as protecting the younger culture, which it is, but it also protects the Federation from responsibility. Which is necessary because even the Federation doesn't have the resources to parent every pre-warp planet they find. Its a bit of a trolley problem. The Prime Directive says, don't pull the lever, then your conscience is clean to whatever happens. Ignoring the prime directive is like pulling the lever, you have to take responsibility for the results, good or bad.
Something must had happened, either after Kirk but before Picard in TNG, to make the PD more strict, or at least, that Picard and his crew hold a stricter application of it. Which would be amazing to see on its own.
We know that Warp Travel doesn't stop bellicose polities from not being bellicose, eg they can get warp and go on a rampage. Klingons and Romulans and many smaller species come to mind. It's not a lithmus that 'this species survived! Yey!', it's 'Well, they can visit you and you can visit them so the gig is up'.
How this works when, say, you might have a pre-warp interstellar civilization (if say, Humans got to Alpha Centauri and have a colony there, or other pre-warp but transtellar species) is unknown. Maybe warp drives act as a sort of cover to 'real space' sensors - you can't see the ship at warp, so pre-warp societies probably wave it off as subspace or gravimetric oddities and hopefully can't trace or track them enough to realize they're a pattern and the PD is just 'don't pop up in front of them'?
The Klingons also seem to violate the prime directive, and Q alone knows how many species both of them, or the Cardassians, Breen, Tholians, whoever, have rolled over - the only limiter being, to them, probably being 'Will the Federation know about it/care enough to make it a crisis'.
We know that Warp Travel doesn't stop bellicose polities from not being bellicose, eg they can get warp and go on a rampage. Klingons and Romulans and many smaller species come to mind. It's not a lithmus that 'this species survived! Yey!', it's 'Well, they can visit you and you can visit them so the gig is up'.
How this works when, say, you might have a pre-warp interstellar civilization (if say, Humans got to Alpha Centauri and have a colony there, or other pre-warp but transtellar species) is unknown. Maybe warp drives act as a sort of cover to 'real space' sensors - you can't see the ship at warp, so pre-warp societies probably wave it off as subspace or gravimetric oddities and hopefully can't trace or track them enough to realize they're a pattern and the PD is just 'don't pop up in front of them'?
The Klingons also seem to violate the prime directive, and Q alone knows how many species both of them, or the Cardassians, Breen, Tholians, whoever, have rolled over - the only limiter being, to them, probably being 'Will the Federation know about it/care enough to make it a crisis'.
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