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"the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one."
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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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I've been thinking about the prime directive recently and it just doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things. You don't involve yourself because "well what if this extinction level event was meant to happen?" Could just as easily be phrased as them being there with the capacity to fix the problem was also meant to happen.
Especially if they can magic the problem away without even exposing knowledge of their existence to the pre-warp civilization. Would people who don't know about starships really notice if a tachyon field was routed through the deflector dish to [science fiction jargon], causing the tectonic activity to stabilize?
It's one thing to not interfere with internal politics, but another entirely to not save a planet from a random space anomaly while you happen to be passing through the system.
If we're having a serious conversation about the PD, it's important to note that it's a blanket "don't interfere" rule that applies to all civilizations, warp-capable or otherwise.
Most of the time, it makes sense, but these edge cases are wild.
The prime directive is a great example of how even a good rule taken to the extreme can end up causing more harm than good.
But beyond that, it's just an easy aid for the writers to add a point of conflict for their stories. The prime directive as a value within the federation seems secondary to me.
The Prime Directive is one of those weird artifacts of the context of the original series. When naked imperialism was starting to be challeneged in pop culture but was still very much considered the status quo in the West, the idea not to interfere in other cultures was a bold stance. However, the idea of a "natural cultural progression" is unfortunately a product of its time and wasn't even something Kirk actually believed when it came down to it. Picard was more by the book but even he couldn't watch innocent people die when his crew pushed back. It's now pretty much universally regarded in canon as a stupid rule.
Yeah it's pretty stupid. If it's a random act of nature that's about to wipe out an entire species, why is warp capability the cut off for helping? Perhaps it was meant to happen even if they have warp technology.
I could see leaving them to destroy themselves if they invented nuclear bombs and hated each other so much they would kill themselves to harm the others, but a supervolcano or meteor or something? Lend a hand dude.
Also I found it very human-centric.
That's an entire planet about to get destroyed. You going to condemn the other hundreds of thousands of species to death because the one intelligent species isn't smart enough?