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.
This is why the culture is strictly superior
They still make some pretty fucked decisions. Their philosophy is the exact opposite of the PD which is interfere at all levels all the time
Yeah, “oh shit their gods were real!” was a pretty large fuckup on their part. As is “let’s hire hyperhitler”
Let’s hire hyperhitler is a common play.
You could say they "Use"d him… as a “Weapon”
In their defence the gods being real is not something you could plan for
In The Culture you absolutely can. Subliming is a common civilizational end state, you sometimes have to deal with sublimed entities and they’re deeply scary, and it’s very very rare but non unknown for a partial sublime to take place. They just thought a lower tech involved couldn’t do it
It was absolutely rare enough to not be predicable to have a sublimed civilization smurfing like that. That’s why it was such a thing as to be worthy of writing a book a out it.
The anti-prime directive… Directive 12 (the least prime of numbers)
Yoooooo I’ve been reading these books recently (just got through The Player of Games) and they rule. I hadn’t heard people talk about them at all before. Let me join the culture and change my gender with a virus on a yearly basis pleaseeeee
i think the whole letting the cardassians do a war of extermination on the bajorans thing is probably the most damning example of why it’s awful.
That had nothing to do with the prime directive, and everything to do with not wanting to start a massive galactic war that would devastate dozens of planets, the Cardassians weren’t presented as pushovers, they were a massive fascist interstellar empire with enough military assets to give Starfleet a bloody nose
It was the Federation’s version of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Picard says to a bajoran in TNG that it was because of the prime directive though. comparing it to molotov ribbentrop is pretty generous to the federation’s role i think
The other thing here is that the conflict between the federation and the cardassians is generally portrayed as a relatively minor border conflict from the federation’s perspective, and a full on war from the cardassian’s perspective.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that when writing this, that is much worse than the example I cited from TNG. I was mostly writing this because I wanted to rant about Dear Doctor.
understandable lol. i haven’t watched ENT yet so didn’t have a comment on that. this is just the example i always point at for why prime directive is evil
Anytime I think about watching ENT, I usually make it a point to skip straight to season 3 if I do, as so many of ENT’s problems imo are concentrated in the first two seasons.
Seriously think Dear Doctor was a terrible way to lay the foundations for the prime directive. Like, it actively did a poor job of justifying something like the prime directive, to the point where you feel it’s actually a rebuke of the whole concept.
As you correctly identified the premise is quite inhumane (Valakians have a right to life no matter how long they’ve been around) and in the end the Enterprise crew both intervened (provided Valakians with a temporary treatment) and avoided the conflict. So the Enterprise crew did not act in accordance to the not-yet-created prime directive, nor did they act in spite of it. They just kinda were there.
Archer’s speech at the end wraps it up, because it’s just stupid on the face of it, not for any deeper reason. “Hmm, yes, my people will surely come up with some kind of…doctrine? policy? perhaps a directive? on what to do here today…but until we do…umm…bye.”
I’m one of enterprise’s 12 fans btw so it’s not even like I hate the show. that was just a completely bungled plot.
The thing that really grinds my gears about it is the reason why Phlox doesn’t want to give the Valakians the cure, that the Menk are on the cusp of evolutionary jump that can only be done when the Valakians die out. That’s his reason out of any number of reasons he could’ve given instead, a lot of which being related to the living conditions of both species. The Valakians living in seeming luxury, while the Menk are effectively the underclass of the society. It’d be a reason that’d actually have something resembling defensible, and it’d be heavily stretching the definition of defensible, yet still sitting pretty firmly in morally offensive. As there would be so many much better ways to resolve the conflict here, but none of those resolutions can really be compacted into a 40 min episode.
edit: Actually, Phlox is right, but not for the fucking reason he thinks he is. The reason why the Menk would have that ‘jump’ Phlox says they’ll have is after the Valakians die out then they’d have to start learning how to do all the shit that the Valakians did to upkeep, or in reality relearn all the shit that the Valakians had learned all over again.
I imagine part of the Prime Directive is a sort of cultural reflex towards non-intervention. Star Trek shows a sort of non-revolutionary communism that doesn’t export itself in the same way as the Soviet Union (or, indeed, many revolutionary movements). My memory of when it comes up is the PD is that its a thing to be worked around, and the discussion around it is extremely mid.
In my very loose head canon (from not really being a star trek fan) is that the prime directive is an old rule that came from early ship captains encountering new civilisations without much supervision, and is more of a “default choice” than something that needs to be enforced or strictly adhered to (strictly as in letting a whole civilisation get pancaked by a meteor because that’s their “natural course”). It makes more sense to me given our history of colonialism. Like, one would hope that the sort of person Christopher Columbus was wouldn’t be making starfleet captain but maybe it did happen a bunch of times.
I always thought of it as being the bureaucratic solution to making sure captains really consider before they mess up some tribe or something. If it’s not a law it’ll be ignored, so you make it a rule so that captains always really consider what to do before breaking the rule.
Even then, you have the potential for serious fuckups, Like The Culture in Look to Windward, where they attempted to break up a (to them) backward and horribly cruel religiously enforced caste system, only to realise that a portion of the civilisation had ascended and could absolutely enforce those divine punishments.
I am just gonna say that petty gods are so far removed from the possibly charts that it is an outlier that doesn’t count
Hey remember when an “ENT” era ship came through an area and Every. Single. Time you end up with Gangster World or Nazi World because some asshole 1-shotted the natives with a replicator and a copy of Mein Kampf that they had for some inexplicable reason, like someone carrying around a pamphlet today explaining why the Holy Roman Emperor should control Investiture of Bishops.
The culture always was a more interesting version of what the federation could be without the prime directive
not killing alien Hitler because of your prime directive
The Lumati in Babylon 5 are considered by a lot of fans as being a stand-in for the Prime Directive obsessed Federation, cranked up to an almost comedic level.
Only white people hate the prime-directive, as far as I’m concerned it’s a reasonable policy of anti-colonialism to avoid starting a world war on every pre-warp civilization the Federation comes across
I’m not white and the prime directive sucks ass
If it is within your power to save many, many lives with little effort, you should do it
If it is within your power to save many, many lives with little effort, you should do it
That’s easy to say when it’s a matter of contrived plots that made violating the prime directive an acceptable outcome
But what about the scenarios that involve picking a side, advancing technologies overnight and risking planetary civil and world wars due to the unknowns of intervention?
Star Trek was at its best when it took concepts like the Prime Directive seriously and built on its implications, rather than simply using it as an antagonistic obstacle to overcome, so the (very American middle-class coded) crew could play god
Nah.
I will not elaborate.
GIVE ME YOUR TAKE AAAAAAHHH
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
literally
Nah, that’s non-dialectical ass hell. If your are objectively correct and can spread falgsc is to a planet you are morally obligated to do so.
Does that include military force? How will you guarantee the technology you give to your favorite faction won’t be stolen by the anti-falgsc factions and weaponized? How will you deal with terrorism against the “alien interlopers”? How much resources and personnel are you willing to commit to just a single planet, if the resistance on the planet increases?
Shoot them in the head. Of course a generation or so is required to adjust but they aren’t monsters. They are people. If you offer them falgsc they will figure it out and the nice people will be nice people will be nice to each other. Everyone will need mental health support. Luckally you have infinite resources so it is fine. Just do it. If some people can’t just stop being space fascist cut their brains out throw them in a jar and have them in a matrix untill they die on learn not to be terrible. You have infinite robots to do this with so it isn’t a big deal.
The alternative is to sit on your infinite resources and let people suffer and die for no reason at all when you could stop it.
So just trigger countless planetary world wars and hope people will get over it after millions, maybe even billions die in the transition, assuming of course the local pro-falgsc faction even wins the war and then don’t immediately turn on you once they’ve reverse-engineered your tech and weaponized it to kick the warmongering aliens off the planet, what then? You now have a “fellow” falgsc civilization waging a war of planetary liberation against you
If some people can’t just stop being space fascist cut their brains out throw them in a jar and have them in a matrix untill they die on learn not to be terrible
“Did you hear the aliens are now cutting our brains out and sticking them into artificial hells, I heard 10 million more recruits have joined the global resistance army since the news broke”
The alternative is to sit on your infinite resources and let people suffer and die for no reason at all when you could stop it.
The alternative is to become an exemplar and example of development, not a bubbling imperialist power imposing artificial conditions on alien species that may not even be biologically compatible with human-centric falgsc
Why would two falgsc societies fight? That is silly? What are they fighting over resources? Space is infinite. Your point is completely devoid of any historical materialism.
Space fox news is a problem. Luckally any falgsc revolutionary guard can just use a small ammount for infinite resources to just fix it.
You are gonna look at a little alien crying over their dead child and say, " while I could have stopped that, it’s better if I play supertek video games untill the people that did this to you get bored of oppressing you"
Nah, workers of all worlds unite.
Why would two falgsc societies fight?
You just invaded their planet and your invasive tech cost them their livelihoods, now that they’ve reverse engineered your tech, they’re gonna make sure you never have the capability to interfere again, whoopies
You are gonna look at a little alien crying over their dead child and say, " while I could have stopped that, it better if I play supertek video games untill the people that did this to you get bored of oppressing you"
That alien lost their child because you dropped a tungsten rod from orbit on a supposed “fascist compound” across the street, turns out it was just a meeting hall for unemployed workers who lost their jobs after the planet’s mining industries were automated because of your tech, the bad info came from an alien interpreter of yours who belonged to a local faction hostile to those worker’s ethnic group, whoopies
Nah, workers of all worlds unite.
Except you’re not uniting, you’re imposing
They have space porn. If they are mad about losing their car dealerships after getting a 4d Z-job you re-educate them or shoot them in the head. Dealers choice. I think matrix them is the ethical option. If they are somehow so fundamentally unable to be pro-social than just scop them into a jar to be safely cared for untill an ethical time so do something different.
The falgsac revolutionary guard has infiniate resources. There would be asteroids worth of cloud drones to prevent just this. Protecting them from making poor choices is an expected part of the job.
Again. Infinite resouces. if it came to it, there would be one of the trillion trillion cloud drones would just disassemble the peopel at the molecular level. There is no reason to damage anyone or anything. If they were matrixed accidentally. Just make them a new body and smooth over the mix up. No harm no foul.
Their culture is imposed on them by their bourgeois. Imposing an objectively correct and ethical culture is an improvement in every way. If they don’t like it that’s fine. They can live their lives as normal so long as they don’t hurt anyone else.
