S04- The Prime Directive

In today's episode of Does That Make Sense, we're taking a look at a big one, The Prime Directive! And a POLL will shortly follow this video's release under the community tab... So be sure to chime in!

Please Note: This new series is simply to discuss oddities in Trek, and it's all in good fun. If you can't handle discussing things in adult manner, then this video is NOT for you! :)

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[Quirll]

That's what I believe. Culturally, don't interfere, but try and save them from natural disasters, like in the Paradise Syndrome where they go to deflect an asteroid that is on a collision course to a populated planet.

[stevangucu]

As captain Barbosa would say: "The code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules" :D

[ericmadsen]

I like this new segment on this channel.

[TailsTheFoxy]

The idea behind it may be a good one, but in practice it basically dooms many worlds to certain death and to be an easy prey to non-federation forces, who mostly don't care about things like that. Also in how it's handled it seems very classist to me.

[Justice]

Kirk usually violates the prime directive due to a third party or by accident. Rather than minimize the damage, he proceeds forward with whatever action has the best outcome for everyone. 23rd century Starfleet was probably laxed on distributing punishment on their renown commanders due to very real threats between the Romulans and Klingons. That, and they were probably still hashing out how the directive is supposed to work in practice. Kirk was also very accomplished and had connections with a lot of the higher ups. Whatever the report he gave they could easily believe and dismiss the violation without any repercussions.
Something major must have happened in the 70+ years after Kirk's time to where this directive has a near zealous following. Picard is an active scholar of ancient civilizations so he probably has more devotion to the directive than most. There must be some sort of captain's discretion clause that is reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The directive is to protect the Federation from playing God and avoid getting into conflicts that are not theirs. But if a non-warp society actively is asking for external help that's probably where the captain's discretion clause comes into play.

[daviddyster]

There are times when it works, but there times when the prime directive doesn't.

[ckmbyrnes]

The idea of a phased approach, like that used in the movie Contact, makes much more sense. Send a signal or artifact that can only be understood at a certain level of technology, then continually increase contact until the two species meet. Why is the achievement of warp technology the cutoff point? One day before warp flight, its a no go; one day after, perfectly ok.

[patrickstewart]

I think violating the Prime Directive boils down to who the Captain wants to lecture that week, either “playing god” or “blindly following orders.”

[Canoby]

All irony aside yeah, the Prime Directive is one of those things borne of the best intentions but implemented and enforced in the dumbest of ways

[NeilBlumengarten]

Ah, the Prime Directive, the epitome of, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”


I do think the general intent of it is good, but when it comes to sentencing a planet to death, well, things become a bit more convoluted there. So, overall, I’d be in favor it being flexible, but something the entire command staff needs to discuss, as we saw in “Pen Pals.” It’s too vague and open for interpretation to be a law. As such, it seems to be a burden of the commanding officer to interpret and (a) hope it was the right call, (b) hope it’s something Starfleet/The Federation agrees with, and (c) hope it’s something the commanding officer can live with.


Granted not every situation allows for a full discussion, but it’s not something that seems easily decided by one individual.


The major problem is that in some cases, it seems to say being ready for knowledge of alien life is a determining factor in whether they can be saved or not.
Imagine there’s a solar system with a star about to go supernova. There are two planets in this solar system, one slightly ahead of the other (let’s say ~1 year between them). Planet A just developed warp capability, whereas Planet B is months to a year away from it. If my understanding is correct, Planet A can be contacted by the Federation and an evacuation can be offered, but Planet B cannot be offered the same.


Of course, this opens many arguments, such as, well if Planet B is that close, couldn’t the argument be made that they are ready? Then if Planet A has warp and if it weren’t for the supernova, wouldn’t Planet B be the one they would most likely visit first? The vagueness also rears its head: What if Planet A’s warp was developed by a small group or country and the rest of the planet isn’t that advanced? What if Planet B’s warp is being researched by a major government and its red tape that is holding them back. Couldn’t the argument be made that Plant B is more likely to be ready for First Contact overall?


If you were the starship captain, what would you do? Could you save one planet and not the other? Would your answer be the same if there was a century gap between the two? And does this mean that a civilization with warp technology is more worthy of being saved than one that does not?


There’s also the Baku to consider. They were thought to be primitive, but it was revealed they were just as advanced (perhaps even more so) than the Federation, they just decided to give it up. The Admiral aside, a reasonable starship captain would assume they were non-warp capable, and therefore contacting them would be a violation.


Of course, the Baku and others bring up a seeming blind spot with the Prime Directive, in that Starfleet/the Federation seems perfectly okay with camouflage duck blinds to survey “primitive” cultures, despite the very real risk of being discovered. If the Prime Directive were that firm a law, you’d think it wouldn’t allow for such things due to the risk of being detected.
None of these decisions can be determined without being there and assessing the situation. It will come down to being there and making the call, which again is why it should rest on the entire command staff, not one individual and not some rigid directive that is completely open for interpretation.


In answering this, it does bring up a possibility for a future “Does That Make Sense, ” video, namely, the whole existence of Starfleet and the Federation. At times they are treated as one and the same, for all intents and purposes. Other times it’s made clear there’s a distinction. How exactly does this work? And a close topic is the whole, “Starfleet is not a military institution, ” despite it having a very militaristic structure down to ranks and protocols.

[Peaceforall]

So I am doing a pre watch video of this one because this topic is very touchy for some people. I look forward to your analysis and will report back

[Kmadden]

To paraphrase another famous fictional captain, it’s really more a guideline than a rule.

It works as a primary guiding principle; it allows developing and primitive societies to grow on their own terms and find their own place in the universe, helps avoid naive Starfleet captains from stumbling into the middle of internal conflicts and accidentally siding with oppressors over the oppressed, and acts as a useful check and balance preventing the Federation from descending into policies of colonialism.

But it should come with some kind of ‘context clause’ already baked into the text, in recognition where there may be some circumstances where a captain and their crew will have no choice but to step in and get involved, and in those cases there should be measures and procedures put in place to minimise the cultural contamination (I think the TNG episode ‘First Contact’ did a good job of demonstrating how those measures and procedures could be implemented).

And it would be interesting if a Trek series could do some kind of Rashomon style episode that establishes the idea that, as a matter of procedure, any time a Captain bends or breaks the prime directive they have to submit themselves to a Federation panel for review. Doesn’t need to be a full military trial, or anything, a zoom call with three or four admirals to look over the captain and senior officer’s reports of the incident would probably suffice.

But the problem with the Prime Directive as it’s later presented, especially in Voyager and Enterprise, is that it stopped being a principle and became dogma. It ceased to be a regulation and became a religion unto itself, and then became a justification for doing nothing. It ended up being used an excuse for moral cowardice (usually, from a writing perspective, as a contrivance for cheap drama), and I guess in some ways you could see that as a set up for when we arrive at Picard and Discovery S3 and find a Federation that’s lost its moral compass and lacks a backbone…

[hulmhochberg]

keeping an entire species from extinction should be always prioritized.

[eagerlawncare]

The problem is that no one is qualified to determine what exactly is the "natural evolutionary progression" of a given society is
My rule of thumb is that " it is always right to do right "

[OllamhDrab]

It's a thing that definitely would need a revisit, especially with really inconsistent writing. My real pet peeve is when a law meant to protect 'the natural progression of societies' is somehow taken to mean whole worlds or sentient species, never mind their societies, never getting a future at *all* cause someone didn't help when they could. Call it a slippery slope all you like, but there's a lot of situations where there's clearly no future to protect if someone just gets wiped out. (I'd even argue that the wording of the Prime Directive itself means it doesn't apply when there's no development to *protect.* Never mind 'Hands off, no matter what.' (As so inconsistently-applied when someone needs a particular ethical quandary in the script.) It really seems a lot of Kirk's 'F the Prime Directive' episodes actually had a lot to do with planetary societies being held *still* by some ancient or external force. )

[JJMHigner]

I figure you might tackle the subject at some point. It's an excellent question because it is such a sacred concept. Just exploring space at all in many cases can violate different aspects of civilizations beyond our knowledge. If there's one thing I learned on the task force board that I was on for my town is that there is always an environmental impact no matter what you do. Whether it's putting up an outhouse or building a full-blown mansion. I think the concept of the prime directive is really to keep interference to an absolute minimum. Court-martials could be given to those officers who violate an extreme way either by totally ignoring a situation or by helping too much and basically adopting an entire race. Getting the audience bog down into technical matters probably would slow down the show. We the audience have always depended on their captains to interpret the prime directive with regards to a given situation. It also gives the writers a lot to try to think about. Of course the writers need the freedom to be able to make good stories or to be able to leave doors open for future episodes.. But every writer must know that there are rules that they need to live with if the stories are going to have consistency and competency. The prime directive keeps the Federation competent in the universe.

[ozelhassan]

I wouldn’t like to be the person who made the decisions on who lived and died and who could have this technology and who couldn’t.

[TenShineproductions]

The prime directive definitely could do with a more solid approach. It's always sort of just used as a plot device to throw someone into an awkward moral argument

[cm]

TIL that Paul Sorvino played Word’s brother. I don’t think I ever realized that. It’s been so long since I’ve seen some of these TNG episodes it’s crazy what you notice on rewatch.

[mattsiede]

You made this one extremely difficult!! I could go on and on for the pros and cons of the prime directive. It does make sense that the prime directive exists, but it seems that the captain's, all of them will break it in their career. How to punish the captains for breaking the prime directive is very difficult, if it is a very blatant act and overt... There should be some sort of punishment... However if it is not blatant and overt, leniency should be considered. Thank you for making such a wonderful video! Thank you for all of your content!! I have enjoyed all of your videos overtime!