Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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Is the prime directive still a thing in Star Trek? It's a pretty genius idea philosophically since any intervention in a planet will have the potential to radically change it, usually unfairly. But it goes against modern """morality""" who champions the idea of 'If you aren't with us you are against us' and 'white men's burden'.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Is the prime directive still a thing in Star Trek? It's a pretty genius idea philosophically since any intervention in a planet will have the potential to radically change it, usually unfairly. But it goes against modern """morality""" who champions the idea of 'If you aren't with us you are against us' and 'white men's burden'.
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I do wonder about the Prime Directive's take on a post-apocalyptic planet. Say they get a signal from a Kyle Reece kind of guy in a planet ravaged by either war or a catalystic disaster. Regardless, these once noble people devolved into untrusting savages. Starfleet could encourage them to rebuild or they may simply not get involved.

Have some guy like a McCoy argue for a "second chance". On the other hand, a Spock dude would coldly explain that they are incapable of utilizing a warp drive and therefore, "primitive". However, they discover in the ruins that they were trying to build a warp drive, just prior to the Judgement Day of that planet. At that point, they wonder if they really should give them a second chance.
 
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The Great Chandler said:
I do wonder about the Prime Directive's take on a post-apocalyptic planet. Say they get a signal from a Kyle Reece kind of guy in a planet ravaged by either war or a catalystic disaster. Regardless, these once noble people devolved into untrusting savages. Starfleet could encourage them to rebuild or they may simply not get involved.

Have some guy like a McCoy argue for a "second chance". On the other hand, a Spock dude would coldly explain that they are incapable of utilizing a warp drive and therefore, "primitive". However, they discover in the ruins that they were trying to build a warp drive, just prior to the Judgement Day of that planet. At that point, they wonder if they really should give them a second chance.
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Fuckin' nuke their asses, bro.

Yum yum.

That's a great concept for an episode.
 
The Great Chandler said:
I do wonder about the Prime Directive's take on a post-apocalyptic planet. Say they get a signal from a Kyle Reece kind of guy in a planet ravaged by either war or a catalystic disaster. Regardless, these once noble people devolved into untrusting savages. Starfleet could encourage them to rebuild or they may simply not get involved.

Have some guy like a McCoy argue for a "second chance". On the other hand, a Spock dude would coldly explain that they are incapable of utilizing a warp drive and therefore, "primitive". However, they discover in the ruins that they were trying to build a warp drive, just prior to the Judgement Day of that planet. At that point, they wonder if they really should give them a second chance.
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if they know how to contact starfleet they're are usually advanced enough (or were at some point) to fall outside the prime directive. iirc it's only for developing planets to not fuck with their "normal" progress, but some episodes applied it for space-faring civilizations too, so who the fuck knows. there are probably more prime directive episodes that contradict each other than the ones that make sense.
 
ZMOT said:
if they know how to contact starfleet they're are usually advanced enough (or were at some point) to fall outside the prime directive. iirc it's only for developing planets to not fuck with their "normal" progress, but some episodes applied it for space-faring civilizations too, so who the fuck knows. there are probably more prime directive episodes that contradict each other than the ones that make sense.
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I think the general rule was if it was Kirk and it was the Prime Directive, he'd say fuck that shit, usually after fucking one of the alien chicks. The others usually at least paid lip service to it.
 
I'm picking up Orville again, and in one of the episodes they did something that went against the prime directive without bringing it up at all. It caught me off guard for a moment and I had to recall that it's a different show where that's not a thing.
Really enjoying watching Orville again. Still recommend it to anyone who hasn't already watched it.
 
AnOminous said:
I think the general rule was if it was Kirk and it was the Prime Directive, he'd say fuck that shit, usually after fucking one of the alien chicks. The others usually at least paid lip service to it.
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Picard - "We can't break it! Unless they have some bitchin' dune buggy tracks."
Sisko - "I'm not going to break it unless those aliens get between me and my punching."
Janeway - *Goes on a holy jihad massacring millions to spread the PD gospel.*
 
The Great Chandler said:
I do wonder about the Prime Directive's take on a post-apocalyptic planet. Say they get a signal from a Kyle Reece kind of guy in a planet ravaged by either war or a catalystic disaster. Regardless, these once noble people devolved into untrusting savages. Starfleet could encourage them to rebuild or they may simply not get involved.

Have some guy like a McCoy argue for a "second chance". On the other hand, a Spock dude would coldly explain that they are incapable of utilizing a warp drive and therefore, "primitive". However, they discover in the ruins that they were trying to build a warp drive, just prior to the Judgement Day of that planet. At that point, they wonder if they really should give them a second chance.
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The Original Series episode "Miri" was like this.

Planet wiped out by disease except for a handful of children. Kirk and crew had to get involved due to needing to cure the disease since they get infected. Episode ends with a line of dialogue mentioning Federation is sending in support for the remaining kids.

Of course, this was an early episode so any thoughts on the Prime Directive were probably embryonic at best.
 
Invisible Crane said:
Oh kickoff with Doomcock. Another toxic manbaby with a habit of spreading uninformed rumours as fact
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Am I the only one here who took a drink when he saw "toxic manbaby"?

This site has ruined my ability to tell the line between sarcasm and sincerity.
 
The Prime Directive only works for an infinitely sprawling universe packed with life where every planet evolves in the same way toward warp technology. It's obscenely optimistic which makes for good television but it's antithetical to how humans behave.

Imagine 1600s Europeans refusing to trade or interact with native americans until they too had ships that could reach Europe. They'd be waiting for millennia.
 
ditto said:
The Prime Directive only works for an infinitely sprawling universe packed with life where every planet evolves in the same way toward warp technology. It's obscenely optimistic which makes for good television but it's antithetical to how humans behave.

Imagine 1600s Europeans refusing to trade or interact with native americans until they too had ships that could reach Europe. They'd be waiting for millennia.
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It would make sense for the federation which is at a "trading is a luxury" stage. (Yes I know. Stop laughing, it's part of the universe.)

It's all the other empires in the quadrant that it becomes a question. The Borg would probably leave alone because primitives offer them nothing. Klingons would either leave them alone or become the Predator just looking for a good fight.

Romulans? Oh now THOSE bastards are going to be doing some shady shit on worlds. (Russians helped Trump? Wrong "R" my friend.) And the Ferengi? Now there you go. I'm actually surprised they weren't a sprawling competition to the Federation since they would probably be hopping to every inhabited world they could find. "Hey guys! Want to get to the stars? For a low subscription fee and annual maintenance costs, we'll sell you this starship, complete with warp drive..."

Though I'll admit that such an idea would be mind breaking to try and write as you'd have to keep a huge chart of which alien species belonged to which government, and more.
 
Maybe there was, but due to the Great Monetary Collapse they had to scale back quite a lot?
Also, it seems like the Ferengi care most about trade and profit. Not sure why they'd be a competition to the Federation, they care about quite different things.
 
Meriasek said:
Maybe there was, but due to the Great Monetary Collapse they had to scale back quite a lot?
Also, it seems like the Ferengi care most about trade and profit. Not sure why they'd be a competition to the Federation, they care about quite different things.
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Dude, play it out in your head like a game.

The Feds preserve primitive worlds inside their borders, the Ferengi attempt to "exploit" them. (trade, whatever, we won't debate the philosophy here)

So if you have a world land on the wrong side of the Fed boarder, that's one less planet of customers for the Ferengi. Given space's size, it would be super easy for them to slip inside the barrier, and barter with that world. Meaning they now have a foothold in Fed territory.

Think of how Alaska & the USA are only imagine Canada is a lot more belligerent and competitive to the USA.

Then you just have the plain competition. If a world is coming onto the galactic stage, it can join the Federation, and get free shit - at which point the Ferengi lose customers. So it would be in their interest to go and try to get said world to join their trade union first so they could have all those new customers.

Yes this is more of a POV from the hypothetical alt world of Trek, but the show did briefly touch on this idea in a TNG episode.
 
True. On the other hand, are there really that many species around that are at the right stage of development for that, pre-warp, but industrialized enough to be a profitable partner?
Although some "The High Crusade"-like situation where a bunch of medieval-level people somehow acquire spaceships from the Ferengi would be funny.
 
Meriasek said:
True. On the other hand, are there really that many species around that are at the right stage of development for that, pre-warp, but industrialized enough to be a profitable partner?
Although some "The High Crusade"-like situation where a bunch of medieval-level people somehow acquire spaceships from the Ferengi would be funny.
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Love the high crusade. Points to you for the reference.

You could probably get an entire season worth of episodes out exploring what the ferengi do. Do they need life at a certain level? Do they look for useful resources? Even just training up and keeping a race with useful traits indebted to you for generations could be useful. I wouldn't sell short the Ferengi ability to find some profitable use for any world. (Pun intended.)
 
If anyone could make trading with a planet of cavemen profitable, it'd be the Ferengi.
Reminds me of a german SciFi novel from the 80s, The Last Day of Creation by Wolfgang Jeschke. America develops time travel and uses it to go back in time about 5 million years to build a pipeline from the Middle East through the (then dry) Mediterranean Sea to steal their oil. Things don't turn out as expected, and there's basically war in the distant. The american side has befriended and trained tribes of Anthropopitheci/Homo Erecti to help them. I'd say the Ferengi would do something similar, although they're also staunchly against slavery, so it might be a fine line for them.
Might also be that the Ferengi would trade with cavemen for fun. "Because they're there".
 
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