Given that they all generally seem to get away with it, I wonder if it's actually more of a frequently bent or broken guideline than a strictly enforced law. Do we know if non-protagonist federation starship captains act and get away with similar?
The ~~pirate's code~~ Prime Directive is more what you'd call guidelines, than actual rules.
Yes, Barbossa is my choice of captain in this situation as well.
Would unironically love to see the cast of curse of the black pearl in a ST series.
This feels like a “what happens in the Gamma quadrant, stays in the Gamma quadrant” sort of thing.
Gamma, Delta. Potato, patato.
And that is why Captain Ransom had to ultimately die. He could have snitched on her when they both returned home.
No one immediately comes to mind. Has someone been court martialed and/or stripped of rank? As far as melon scratchers go, that's a honey-doodle.
Edit:
Already an admiral, but it should count.
But he has lots of friends!
Daily Prime Directives:
That's a nice live action adaptation. Where'd last frame come from?
The vastness of the interwebs (I did not make this - my skills especially on a mobile are weak and pathetic at best!:-P)
Your stuff's awesome. Own it.
Tbh your stuff is awesome as well. So is buddy you're replying to, but I recognise your username for always having the perfect trek reaction gifs/jpegs and that's what I appreciates about you Mr.ummthatguy
Many thanks.
That's not the only thing we appreciate about you, but it is one of them yes.:-)
It's the same for her with the Temporal Prime Suggestions
Sending out fully armed and battle ready "science vessels" makes me think the Federation's Prime Directive should be Si vis pacem, para bellum. /s
Vegetius would likely want to cross into the mirror universe.
Instructions unclear; dick stuck in, well, everything.
Infinite Improbability ~~Drive~~ Dick.
The Prime Directive is immoral.
Ehhh not really, it's a good policy to have for most cases, but it IS way too restrictive and there absolutely should be more flexibility.
For example, if a pre-warp civilization about to go extinct because of a giant ass asteroid. Not a whole lot of good protecting their culture is going to do when they're extinct.
But just giving a random pre-warp civilization replicator tech for funsies would be devastating. Just think, what would happen if aliens came and gave replicator tech to our current governments? They'd fucking replicator weapons or some shit.
But what if that alien species you saved from the asteroid becomes the next Space Hitler?
That's on them.
Does the asteroid even count as interference? If the civilization is sufficiently primitive, you can save them from an asteroid without them noticing.
This thought experiment is pretty easy:
if you could alleviate a large amout of suffering and death for a sentient species at little to no cost to yourself, would you?
If you can do that so trivially that it has no negative impact on you, and you do not do it, are you acting ethically?
The answers will be yes and no for most people. To me that makes it clear that neither the Prime Directive nor any kind of all-powerful deity can be moral, at least not humanly moral.
That’s a false premise.
How is this hypothetical a false premise?
ENT s1e13 "Dear Doctor" does a great job exploring the arguments that would result in its formation.
It's been a long ... time .. since I saw ENT, and I couldn't recall that episode, so I went and read a plot summary and still had a hard time recalling it.
The plot summary makes it seem, to me at least, like a very specific and constructed scenario to try to justify it ex-post-facto in canon.
My major issue with the directive is how general and unnuanced it is. Of course there are cases where you would not want to intervene because of some unique issue. To avoid helping for fear of potential futures is cowardly and unjustified, however.
It's not just contrived it's unethical in the episode that's supposed to be justifying it. They're withholding a cure based on "well, fate wants you all to die." And yes, I'm going with fate and not evolution because that's not how evolution works dammit.
Amoral, maybe. I know it's dealt with in the lore, but I'd like to think someone at Starfleet read Roadside Picnic and thought, "well, we don't want that."
Interesting. So District 9, but more bleak.
Was colonialism moral? One of the way european empires justified it was that they were uplifting Africa.
When someone lies about helping, that's not what I am talking about.
This is a thought experiment based on a hyper advanced society capable of easily solving many problems. We don't have that and never have on this planet.
🤷♂️
The problem is that the people doing harm often don't know the difference. I had the "pleasure" of meeting with several people involved in the Portuguese colonial administration in 1960s and 1970s and most of them seem to genuinely believe they were working to better the colonized people's lives.
Missionaries are committing a form of genocide that they believe is for the greater good.
That's the reason that we have prime directive-like protocols regarding uncontacted peoples in most of the places where they still exist.
If we struggle to make ethical first contact with "less advanced" societies from our own species, what chance would we stand with an alien society?
If an "uncontacted" group here on earth suddenly arrived at the nearest "civilized" settlement and asked for help curing a disease ravaging their people, would you advocate we turn away?
What if the disease is something easily cured with modern medicine?
A blanket rule to not "interfere" with civilizations based on an arbitrary criteria (in ST: warp capable) is immoral.
That's a misrepresentation of the Prime Directive. The prime directive has an exception for cases where societies already knows about interstellar civilizations and Starfleet can intervene if it's contacted first. See Saru's case.
The arbitrary criteria I spoke of is slightly different. 🤷♂️
I'm not confident I'm remembering correctly, but didn't she have a line to the effect of "They can courtmarshall me if we make back"
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