Star Trek Lore : Dogmatically, Pious Prime Directive

In this, we discuss the Dogmatically Pious Prime Directive - or my thoughts on it.

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[bsmnt]

in some ways the PD is in fact directly IMmoral. It imposes the judgment of "unworthy to survive" on any given pre-warp civilization on the brink of annihilation. The ongoing theme of Star Trek is that it's easy to be an angel while living in Paradise.

[bug]

SF Debris Janway.
Instead of having an angel and demon on her shoulders; she just has a talking spider wearing a cowboy hat.
It keeps telling her to kill and eat Harry.

[InfamousArmstrong]

Something to consider: Picard may have broken the Prime Directive a lot, but he was never significantly reprimanded for it, which would suggest that Starfleet views it as one of those rules that it's important to know when to break, like most of the engineering guidelines.

[nategraham]

"Let nature take it's course, " bold words coming from a doctor, who's job is to stop "nature from taking it's course" via medicine.

[Nostripe]

I prefered Stargate's approach to this. They would freely trade with anyone they came in contact with except weapons and military aid. They also agreed not to step into other cultures and conflict unless not doing so would lead to a worse situation than if they did anything.

[lynngreen]

"Come on, Shran, that's ridiculous. No one would ever be so twisted as to think it made sense to let a whole species die in order to avoid harming them!" - Admiral Archer to Admiral Shran when the latter suggests that the Next Generation of officers would forget the intentions of the Noninterference Directive. (ST:ENT:RotF:Patterns of Interference - Christopher L. Bennett)

[BioGoji-zmph]

One of the biggest differences in how the Prime Directive is applied by characters in TOS and later shows is that not once does Kirk ever consider letting societies go extinct in order to avoid violating the directive. He certainly swears to uphold it with his life, but he NEVER swears to put entire civilizations on the line to uphold, only to put his own life on the line to do so. If he were to find himself in the same situations as Picard and Janeway, Kirk would IMMEDIATELY look for a way to help without violating the Directive, and if no solution were available that didn't violate it... he'd just go ahead and violate the Prime Directive because in his mind, there would be no other choice.

Remember, James Kirk survived the incident on Tarsus IV in his youth (the incident where Kodos used his own eugenics ideas to decide who lived and who died), and so for Kirk, the idea of letting entire groups of people die for the sake of some law or for someone else's interpretation of a law would never sit well with him (until he got older and Klingons killed his son, but that's a story for another time). In his mind, using the Prime Directive as a reason to decide who lives and who dies just because they do or don't fit a certain criteria would be on the same level as what Kodos had done.

And this is why Kirk will always be a better captain than Picard and Janeway, because he never once considered allowing entire species or civilizations to suffer or go extinct in order to uphold the Prime Directive, not even for a moment. He never needed any persuading from anyone on his crew, unlike Picard (as seen in Pen Pals), or Janeway (too many examples to count). Kirk knew when to abide by the Prime Directive, and when to ignore it... at least when it came to situations where extinction could occur.

[wdcain]

I hate how later Trek applied the PD and let whole worlds/species die even though they could prevent it. It just reminds me of that quote by Lincoln: _"To know the true character of a man, give him power."_ I'd love a story that flipped the PD. A starship sees a planet with sentient life about to die and proudly let it happen but it turns out it was a test by the Q or someone and so they will not save the Federation from a cataclysmic event since they failed to act to save lesser beings.

[obsidianorder]

I love the opening plate; "you ever hear of the emancipation proclamation?" "I'm sorry son, I don't listen to Hip Hop".

[rowbi]

Lore I like the the episode of Babylon 5 Acts of Sacrifice (Season 2 Episode 12). The Lumati were created as a commentary of the Federations Noninterference Doctrine by J Michael Straczynsky. The Lumati are actually impressed when they mistakenly conclude the homeless area in the Downbelow Section of B5 was an intentional creation. The Lumati take noninterference to insane levels even within their own society. Lumati Interpreter talks about how if he saw a sick child he would neither help nor hinder it he would simply observe and let nature take its course.

[questaoolavo]

Phlox and archer was before the directives and the federation, they have to make decisions without experience and plans, they make a hell of a job with what they have

[joshuas.]

As SFDebris put it, Janeway knows there's a God, and its her.

[TentaclePentacle]

The philosophy behind the prime directive is that "we don't want to take responsibility, so let's not act". It's the whole concept of not playing god and let things take it's course as if we are not here to stop it. That way when things go bad, it's not federation's fault. It's cowardly, it comes from a place where they don't want any responsibility for your actions. Picard will make long speeches about the prime directive but he will break it when it suits him.

[notoriouswhitemoth]

@4:20 ironically, that is *literally* the same argument Picard used when a time-traveling pirate came on the Enterprise D using the ruse that a routine humanitarian mission they were on was some monumental historical event.

[joshuas.]

Its not merely a religion. It seems to be the official state religion of Starfleet.

[leondillon]

In "Drumhead", the JAG admiral was in civilian clothes, so was she Star Fleet or a civilian?

[disappointedoptimist]

When Picard became god of that primitive culture he’s like “holy shit I’ve got to fix this” then Sisko is like “I’ll just become space jesus”

[TheMarcHicks]

Always great to see another SFDebris fan ☺

[ldl]

Don't the writers intentionally hamstring the Federation? If the UFP acted in a more rational manner, a lot of problems our hero's need to solve wouldn't exist.
A lot of your moral quandaries simply go away if you accept "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
The whole Dominion war? Not a problem if Starfleet had a few "reserve" fleets of warships.

Section 31 ends up looking like the good guys because everyone else is so horrified of making a small mistake, that instead they make a much bigger mistake.

Also, really nice video.

[liberumastrum]

"I can keep giving those log speeches about the sanctury of the prime directive as soon as worf finishes picking those alien bits out of the grill"