It’s about that time when I actually write down how awful the Prime Directive is generally written in trek (I’m going to call it PD from here on out in this post), but first I should lay down what the PD is, it’s reasons for existing, and some of my thoughts on it.

The PD out of universe largely exists because of two things. The writers becoming aware that the lives they live were built upon the suffering of others, in this case more about becoming aware of the horrors of colonialism. The next reason being largely a reaction to the Korean and Vietnam wars, though mostly the latter, in a sense of don’t stick your nose in other people’s business. This is all looking very reasonable so far, like yes we should rules and guidelines to exploring and interacting with other civilizations. The problem is that the writers more often than not have no clue what the PD actually entails, and use it more as a literary device more often than not.

In TOS the PD is largely used as something for Kirk to brazenly violate to show how much of a man he is, and it always working out in his favor, which further proves how much of a man he is. From TNG onwards the PD starts becoming warped and distorted, the most egregious case (besides like all of VOY) of this was the TNG episode where the Enterprise accidentally does a first contact with pre-warp civilization when responding to a distress signal, finds that the two civilizations are in a supremely fucked up situation (one is abusing the other), and Picard decides that the best course of action was to take his ball and fuck off. This was so bad that Lower Decks lampshaded how fucked it was. Then from there on out, it gets dragged out to have our main characters have debates in the important meeting room on whether or not stopping a natural disaster from wiping out a civilization is “playing god” or not, which the answer almost always ends up becoming “The consequences of preventing their civilization from being wiped out, must be on some level better than just letting them die”. Partly because I highly doubt any of us would walk away knowing we could’ve and had the means to do something, and didn’t. Also partly because the audience would likely not forgive the characters for not doing anything as well.

The other part of the PD is the ‘don’t stick your nose in other people’s business’, and this regularly violated in trek as well. In TOS there’s a episode where the Kirk and company are in a system where two civilizations are having a simulated war with each other, and as part of it the simulated casualties of said sim war have to… it’s pretty obvious what they’re supposed to do. This goes on until the away team that includes Kirk, Spock, and some others are declared as casualties, so of course Kirk goes fuck this shit, this is all stupid and forces the two civilizations to actually have peace talks about what to do now. And the enterprise leaves with it being said/implied that the federation sent out someone to help them and mediate the talks. Which at the end of it I don’t think anyone could knock Kirk for violating the PD in this case.

The flipside of this in TNG is the episode where the enterprise and crew is helping a civilization avert a natural disaster, and it’s part of their culture that the inhabitants willingly euthanizing themselves after a certain age. This comes to provide the drama for the episode when one of the key people literally gets to that age, and is expected to do the thing while the crisis is still going. Like the I recall the civilization going out of their way to delete said guys work, and pretend he never existed in the first place if he didn’t go through with it, he ends up going through with it and the civilization is saved, and nobody learned a damn thing from this. Great job writers, you made a civilization that’s so stupid that they’ll shoot themselves in the foot rather than survive, that’s all I have to say on that.

Now what about the Klingon Civil War, yeah technically that’s like it’s whole own list of PD violations. I think K’mpec said it best about that whole thing, in TNG: Reunion he pretty much told Picard to his face “Look I know you’ve got your federation ideals to hold yourself to, but both of us know the federation is absolutely interested, regardless of the ideals they espouse, in the matter of who becomes the next Chancellor of the high council. Not for diplomatic reasons, but to not have a potential war with the Klingon Empire, and that’s why I picked you to be the arbiter for picking the next Chancellor.”

Now for ENT: Dear Doctor, fuck this episode, fuck Phlox for condemning a Valakians to extinction for the crime of allegedly keeping the Menk in ‘evolution hell’ (serious, that’s the fucking reason), and fuck the writers for making this piece of fucking garbage the PD origin episode.

Alright, is the living situation between the Valakians and the Menk good. Fuck no, absolutely not, that much I know we can all agree on. The premise of the episode is that the Valakians have a genetic problem that is making them evolve into extinction. I’m sorry, but what? What the fuck is this shit, I’m pretty fucking sure it doesn’t quite work like that. So questionable science aside, the Valakians have a problem, then throughout the episode Phlox finds a cure for it, and decides that it would be unethical to give the cure to the Valakians. Because he believes that the Menk are on the cusp of a evolutionary jump, a jump that can only done if the Valakians die out. Then due to exec meddling, he manipulates (he doesn’t, but like fuck this episode) Archer into not giving the cure to the Valakians, originally it was supposed to be Phlox keeping the knowledge of the cure to himself. Then the NX-01 leaves, and we’re supposed to cheer on the doc and Archer for being enlightened…

Where the hell do we even start with this episode, like legitimately where? Like we’re mirroring the ‘Picard takes his ball and fucks off’ episode in TNG, except significantly worse because of the entire implied extinction of the Valakians, not to mention the strange leaps of logic, and the science that sounds very suspect. All that makes for episode that is not only bad to me, it’s just flat out offensive on the moral plane.