"Captain, informing these people they are on a ship may be a violation of the prime directive of Starfleet Command." "Well the people of Yonada may be changed by the knowledge, but it's better than exterminating them." "Logical, captain."
It's logical, but at the same time it's what Spock didn't touch on or debate - because his concern is whether it's logical, not the emotional or moral implications. But I wind up agreeing with Chuck more often than not. The Prime Directive is flawed, and needs to be examined thoroughly on a case-by-case basis instead of just held up as inflexible rules. (But then, I prefer all rules to be allowed to have flexibility to deal with situations nobody saw coming when they made the rules.)
@@kereminde Kirk's "logic" is morality, a comparison of harm and against harm. Spock can only say it's logical because his own morals line up with Kirk's here: Better the people learn other people are out there than the people die.
@@merepseu Or you can take an alternative stance on it like a friend did: "Spock's just used to Kirk's bullshit at this point and figures it's better to go along than try to argue. After all, it's more fun to tweak McCoy with that than Kirk."
@@kereminde hell it's built on a faulty premise. colonalism always helps everyone involved in the long run, even if there's some... temporary pain. any evil committed DURING colonizing was 100% optional and hardly an integral part. You could do all of that same cruelty to people you _weren't_ conquering.
@@KairuHakubi Tell that to the Arabs who were promised their own unified land on the peninsula only to be forced to manage multiple nations split between the British and the French. Much of the political instability happening in the Arabian Peninsula now is rooted in colonialism from over 100 years ago.
I love Chuck's rant at the end about the prime directive. The prime directive should have always been "we do not interfere unless asked to, and then we only involve ourselves enough to reduce harm and suffering as best we can." The way it currently exists in the canon is shallow and reductive. On that note, I got a small giggle when I imagined Chuck giving his rant to the Starfleet Counsel after a particularly egregious loss of life due to inactivity on the part of Starfleet.
Seriously, it always pisses me off when the PD is used to justify watching people die. Especially in cases like in Pen Pals where they can save them without even revealing themselves. (Yes I know they DO save the people in that ep, but they had to be basically guilt tripped into it. Same with the ep with Worf's adoptive brother.)
"We don't interfere unless asked, but we do make contact and offer help if needed." A better Prime Directive. (Also that part about reducing harm should probably be in there, that would be good.)
@@theuncalledfor agreed. And if they can covertly help a less-advanced society from a society-threatening danger, I believe they should do so and that should be considered the highest example of Federation values of compassion and mercy.
@@Lans32485that girl was also asking for help, too. When even a single member of a society is asking for help from "anyone out there" that's when they should introduce themselves.
My absolute favorite part of the pilot for Strange New Worlds is Pike full-on giving the Prime Directive the double bird and saving an entire planet from the horror a worse-than-nuclear world war.
Don't hold back Chuck. Tell us how you really feel. I think it's why even as a non TNG fan I found the nee Picard series infuriating. They had the perfecr setup for a piece on the unspoken flaws in the ideals of the federation, and blew it for F bombs, shock deaths and something about synthetic life.
While I agree with you on how Picard blew it, I honestly shudder at the thought of the PD being thoroughly discussed or disscted in today’s Internet and fandom. Gonna be on fugly hell of a mess across the social medias, internet news sites, forums, and RUclips videos.
Paused the moment Prime Directive came up, and battened down the hatches before continuing. The PD with Chuck’s show is almost never good news. And I haven’t seen Chuck this wrathful towards the PD since Dear Doctor.
Picard's absurd lament at the end was a telling sign that non-DS9 Star Trek was really embracing the Prime Directive dogma, which was worse in Homeward, got highlighted in Voyager, and reached its dreadful culmination in Dear Doctor.
DS9 didn't have the luxury of *leaving* after going "welp we can't help you, rules you know". They have to SIT there and watch. It's really hard to maintain the same attitude when you get to see the fallout and know you could have stopped it.
@@kereminde Picard was Roddenberry's Idealized Man the absolute pinnacle of what he believed man should be. Sisko on the other hand is far more human, instead of making Shakespearean speeches at all powerful entities he punches one when it gets too annoying and tries to keep things together
@@cyberninjazero5659 That's because DS9 happened without Roddenberry being involved, so I believe. Even so it took Sisko some time to really... shear away from the sanctimonious early TNG Federation officers. ... I mean it took him a whole few days before he twisted Quark's arm into staying on the station...
Deep Space 9 feels a lot more like a science fiction setting that could actually exist and is a large part of what makes Star Trek not one-dimensional IMO.
I loved the debate by Admiral Archer on instituting a Non-Interference Directive, and Admiral Shran opposing it. Archer could not conceive of anyone enshrining a philosophy of do no harm as holy writ and citing it to not save those in need.
My response to the Prime Directive argument: "Oh dear, a bus full of your family members is going to drive off a cliff. No, you're not allowed to help them. You don't know if one of them might be a future Hitler!"
I think about this episode when I read sci-fi stories about perfect societies that isolated themselves hundreds of years ago, but their technology is super advanced. Isolation leads to stagnation.
Since they are all products of genetic engineering they will be having big shock coming to find out the society promising them all this opportunity immediately unpersons them from most of those opportunities.
"The society is so fragile, it can't survive being SAVED!" I LOVE your rant at the end! Newsflash Picard: cultural contamination can be recovered from. The core fragment? Nope!
16:14 And yet there are Filipinos who rather like the American period, as there is still a small movement of Filipinos who support the idea of the Philippines returning to being part of the United States as a new state within the union. 19:19 Chuck's rant at this point reminds me of Q's rant to Picard, about how dangerous and wonderful the universe is.
@@Nostripe361 They genuinely were better off under British rule. Shame Nixon gave Big China legitimacy, because Hong Kong would've been fine under Little China's rule
Yeah this is the first I've heard that anything bad came of the Phillippines coming under new management Like yeah, it still sucks ass to live there, but i cannot imagine it was one bit better beforehand. Ditto Puerto Rico, Hawaii, ... basically everywhere.
“ keeping a culture live is an ideal. Keeping people alive is a moral responsibility!” Hands-down, the best criticism I’ve ever heard the hands-off, let-them-die interpretation of the prime directive.
Something that I'm really disappointed in with TNG is that there is never an episode that challenges the dogmatic view of the prime directive. We never get to see Starfleet interact with an alien civilization they left to die but miraculously survived, I want Picard to have to look a member of such a race in the eye and say helping them survive would have been wrong, to show the devastating effects following the prime directive has on a pre-warp civilization that suffered a horrible catastrophe while the federation stood by and do nothing. Hell, maybe I should write a fan fic about it.
I could see this being a thing where a race was peaceful but nearly dies out as the Federation does nothing only for them to turn into a fascist society to survive, go into space, and now be a direct threat to the Federation
I think the closest they've come to that was the Lower Decks season 1 finale with the line about how starfleet is "good at investigating, but bad at following up", noting how stafleets information about certain "known species" is outdated and incorrect yet still being sent out as if those species stay in a static point of view or develop how starfleet hopes they do. with regards to the live action series this could have been the whole plot of Voyager Season 7's "Frienship one", except they used the loop hole of the friendship-one probe being a pre-federation probe and therefore not bound by the prime directive... yet despite that voyager the show which banged on about the prime directive as if it were gospal (in its penultimate story no less) had the opportunity to explore this kind of story - the horror story of why certain starfleet officers cling to tightly to the prime directive, but highlighting the problem of "leaving the repocussions to the other guy years down the line". I mean there are a few TOS episodes which could have follow-ups like "A piece of the action" (where mccoy leaves his communicator on the gangster planet) or "A private little war" where the klingons intorduced flint locks to a bronze age society (and i think the federation did at the end as well, so as to even out the cultural contamination) - i mean, i think a follow-up of "piece of the action" would make a fun lower decks episode as that was a comedic TOS episode, but a follow up of "private little war", seeing how klingon and federation interfearance has affected "paradise" a century and a half on, that I would like to see in live action (as tonally the episode was more serious than that the other TOS episode mentioned).
The thing is, the advantage of the Prime Directive is that it's morally neutral. You personally are not obligated to run into a burning building to save people. You are not personally obligated to confront a bank robber. You are not personally obligated to feed every starving African children in the world. So if a starving African child confronted you, it's not going to mean much because you didn't own them anything. If a pre-warp civilization lashes out against all of creation for not personally helping them, it's going to be petty and it's not going to have a moral leg to stand on. If you want a modern example, Haiti isn't doing to well right now, but are you personally obligated in helping Haiti? What would you say if a Haitian said you stood by while thousands suffered from the earthquake and did nothing? It's like Nero blaming Spock for not helping the Romulans hard enough over a Romulan problem, it's petty and pathetic.
ehh the show takes the side of 'bend the rule when your heart tells you to, but temper it by listening to your brain' at least a half dozen times. Picard gets hassled by bureaucrats for the massive number of times he violates the PD, and we're clearly meant to side with him. every time the prime directive comes up and they seem to grapple with it, it seems to be more "this is just the rule, this is the way it is, and we can't change that fact" assertion. Just like rules about due process and various rights like that, that can tie a cop's hands when he sees a crime right in front of him. In the end you have to use your own judgment, but you can't ever change the rule because it has to be that way... the rule is essentially there because of an assumption of corruption by default.
That's interesting, Chuck. Your argument about the dogmatic application of the PD is eerily similar to my argument against the moral high ground. Nice video, thank you.
@@MabusParodies2nd I’d love to hear his take on consciousness, free will, and the building of a new society as presented in the film. Just because, I think he’s got an interesting take on most things.
Same here. Unfortunately that seems unlikely to happen as every indication is that the current writers don't fully grasp or embrace the underlying philosophy. Even the vastly improved Season 3 of Discovery illustrates only a superficial understanding (but it _is_ an improvement). We're given to infer Picard gave a speech much like this one to the Federation Council regarding the Romulan/Synth conflict that led to his retirement. Sadly, we were not witness to it, instead we see Admiral Pottymouth give Picard a dressing down for the "sheer hubris" of suggesting Starfleet take his request seriously to help save individual lives.
That is another reason why I personally prefer the original series and Kirk over TNG and Picard. Kirk also follows the Prime Directive but he knew that rules and philosophies sometimes run into walls and obstacles that they can´t clear and that it is then up to the individual to do what they think is right. You can´t expect to actually interact with people without leaving an impression on them in some way.
The Prime Directive is an idea that I've had more than my fair share of issues with over the years. So consider me satisfied to hear people's reverence of it taken down a peg 😊
I appreciate that Chuck's rant here is about how it could be better, and how it's abused, instead of the lazy way out that I see often in "hot takes" that "The Prime Directive is Bad, Actually" usually made by cherry-picking and missing the point. They're making the same mistake Picard made here but in reverse. There's so much more meat in talking about what works about it and what doesn't, while acknowledging that it has a very real intent behind it and dogmatic application doesn't negate the crucial role it plays when executed correctly.
I am impressed that the fine, apparently precarious balance of the society demanded a leader to handle the essentially zero emergencies that the society could even permit to happen. What was he even there for that it demanded an entire human to do it?
That rant at the end about the Prime Directive reminds me of the structure of Lumati society from Babylon 5. The Lumati abstain from interacting with "inferior" races, to the point that they do not render aid because it interferes with the natural evolution.
After this review and his rant about the Prime Directive, I REALLY want to see SFDebris do a review of "Homeward." IMHO, that episode was the absolute WORST abuse/bastardization of the Prime Directive ever made in TNG, having the crew of the Enterprise stand idly by and actually watching an entire planet and its civilization die when they could have helped them. Worf's brother was a hero, and Starfleet would have axed him for what he did. The utter hypocrisy was utterly disgusting from the day I saw that episode. Even I knew that the PD wasn't about noninterference to the point of letting civilizations die if it was in our power to help them with minimal effect to the civilization. So PLZPLZPLZ, SFDEBRIS, MAKE A REVIEW OF "HOMEWARD"!
For real. I think the dogmatic view of the PD is one of the reasons early Picard often comes across as arrogant/cold, which you think the writers figured out by season 3 only for that side of him to return with a vengeance with an episode like that. That episode made Worf look terrible too. Any rule/standard like the PD that not only allows you to stand by during a preventable collapse of civilization/people, but having the gull to lecture heroes like Worf's brother who was actually trying to help provide humanitarian aid is some insane dogma I can't comprehend. For all of Picard's speeches about humanity moving past the shackles of superstition/mysticism he sure loves his dogma when it comes to the PD.
I was shocked to learn this was a season 5 episode...feels more like an early season 2 or late season 1. All the smugness and moral preening without a shred of common sense. At least Picard didn't act like the aloof jerk he was in season 1. If Picard's reasoning is correct, they should have never gotten involved in the episode "The Ensigns of Command" (S3, E2). They were destroying that civilization by relocating them to another planet in order to save the people from being killed. How dare they!
God, I wish we'd get an episode where a crew doing stupid PD stuff blows up in their faces. Just have a ship return to the planet from Symbiosis or Dear Doctor and see how the captain's decision has made things worse for the Federation.
While I am someone who would say I think the loss of a culture is as bad as the loss of people, I'd also argue that it's because you can't lose a culture WITHOUT losing people. In this case, the culture has certainly undergone change. But unless the people are forced to not work together or spend time together, unless the federation starts gathering them up and then forcibly disseminating them, then that's all it is, a change. Cultures change all the time. The suicide of Nero and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius both made massive CHANGES to Rome's culture. Some of those changes are still felt today, when Christians quote biblical passages written at the time and about the events. Indeed, the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the empire made a huge CHANGE to Rome's culture. But it didn't destroy Roman culture. It just morphed it, and eventually, that culture was morphed so much that we couldn't really call it the 'same' culture, so a new one was needed. But who was the last Roman to speak Latin? Better question, what language do they speak in Rome? Italian? Okay, so, who was the first person to speak Italian instead of Latin? Who was the first person we can look at and say "Well, his dad spoke Latin but he doesn't?" I have a cousin who, without speaking a word of Italian, was able to make himself at least understood in Italy with a combination of vulgar Latin and a Mario impresion. And that was the more formal Italian. There are places in Italy and areas around it today which historical linguists would argue wouldn't only be able to understand a man on a street in 75 AD, but even hold a comprehensible - If highly accented and occasionally needing a bit of straightening out - Conversation with him. And that's why the whole 'We can't alter their culture' thing in a case like this can be so ridiculous. If all the people die, the culture dies with them. If all the people LIVE, the culture survives. And if all the people live and disperse, the culture dies, but if it does so by the choice of the people in it, then YOU haven't imposed anything.
you can certainly lose a culture without losing people by just moving them apart. they can't continue the culture by themselves. and they can also just be drowned out by outsiders and be unable to continue being how they used to be, with nobody dying.
@@KairuHakubi I'm sorry, but I believe you are mistaken. The term 'culture' does not mean 'current set of cultural practices.' I'm an American. My great-grandfather was an American. The fact that American culture is so different in 2021 from how it was in 1921 doesn't mean one of us isn't American, even if we would hardly recognize each-other's practices, beliefs, and ideas. What you are talking about are diaspora, and assimilation. Diaspora has a major impact on a culture. Sometimes, it leads to the DESCENDANTS of the people who engage in the diaspora adopting a new culture. For example, there were no 'African-Americans' prior to the slave trade, Africans had their own cultures. But for that culture to vanish, you need to have the current members of the culture die, first. Assimilation is another possibility, although it's pretty much never a result of outsiders coming in, as that typically leads to a cultural hybridization instead of a complete replacement (see: Various post-Alexandrian hellenic cultures, Greco-Roman culture, etc) but if assimilation occurs, then the previous culture doesn't die until people stop seeing themselves as part of it. If they are unable to engage in their traditional practices, that is a change their culture undergoes - Someone has forbidden them engaging in their practice - But it's not until the people who were part of the culture are gone and their descendants cease to identify with it that the culture ceases to be. But as long as people FROM the culture are alive, that culture is alive. That's just how the term 'culture' works. If Picard were a simple random person on the street, or Star Trek didn't attempt to take itself seriously, I wouldn't mind. I can understand why someone might colloquially use the term 'culture' to mean a specific set of present cultural practices. But that's a colloquial use, and the Prime Directive needs to be concerned about more than just 'Will this change people.' After all, EVERYTHING changes people.
Chuck's discussion of the Prime Directive hit the nail on the head for me. I was nodding in agreement. The Prime Directive is Picard's religion. He uses it to play it safe and judge others when he is too chicken sh*t to DO SOMETHING
Except he did still do something, he just wanted to wring his hands after doing so. When they could have tried deflecting the core fragment without contacting the planet, and spent that much more time doing so. That would have potentially fulfilled the "protect the planet" remit, without contacting them, or involving yourself in the debate of if they should change.
@@FFKonoko Yeah it's not fair to say picard is a prime directive worshipper, rather he's someone who was raised in this religion and constantly grapples with it because he does not REMOTELY think it's worth tossing out. Merely bending or feeling guilty about.
Yup. Well said. This is why I feel like the problem with the world is not just organized religion, but the type of rationale that leads someone, even if they're otherwise normally secular/scientific like Picard, to think in narrow dogmatic terms about an issue.
When it comes to the Prime Directive, Picard has to be the most rigid inflexible stuffed-shirt in the UFP. Take Homeward or Pen Pals as a example. He really doesn't understand the meaning of the PD. The Masterpiece Society reminds me of a home full of expensive items that are beautiful, but you cannot live in.
As a kid seeing this episode, 12yo or whatever, the notion of a society creating technology to help the blind see but that incidentally created tech that would help us survive and thrive.. that was Star Trek to me
There is a tension between the purpose of society being to serve the needs of the individuals within it and to what extent the individuals within that society have an obligation to maintain the society.
I thought it was an excellent episode that gives good arguments for both sides. Overcoming problems and challenges are what allows innovation to occur. Gattaca does a great job of exploring these ideas even further.
You did mention the need for menial tasks to be completed. I would assume a society that could figure out how to build this enormous self contained habitat…could figure out how to automate a self cleaning toilet…
PD is good at the idea of not imposing your values on other people by force. However episode like this becomes an ultra-conservative preserve the culture no matter the cost. Culture is fluidic and it change and is not static. It change when individual questions societal belief. Federation like to present it’s own values as utopian but that values doesn’t mean jack if you aren’t able to spread it either through speech or by example in a free exchange of ideas allowing other people to scrutinise their values and ourself scrutinising other society values. Picard himself saw that the values of this society is flawed and antithetical to the values of his society and when the population inspired by the values of Federation decided to reject that value and join the Federation. That should have been a celebration of how their people are a role model for societal change for a good rather than some concern about destruction of a society based on a bad idea
For me, the main problem with this episode was not that it was 'boring' it was that it felt a 'paint by numbers' episode. Agreed regard the society itself, it was too stuck in its ways, too fragile to deal with any shocks. It's tech was old, I had the impression they could not create anything new, so sooner or later something important would break and the society would die all the same. Enterprise just brought change a little faster and gave some of the people a chance at new lives.
I thought the prime directive only applied to cultures that didn't have space travel anyway, so it shouldn't have applied in the first place since this is a colony created by space faring humans.
"Who Watches the Watchers" is the best TNG prime directive episode IMO. Instead of debating if they should leave others to die (as was often the case), Picard is willing to die to help clear up their inadvertent interference.
Yes. Lord knows there are no examples of religions being actually fueled by the martyrdom of their central figure or suggested that it's divine figure could die and then resurrect itself. If a religion like that existed, then Picard would just be doing something idiotic.
But it’s not a Prime Directive episode at all. And dilemma is non-existent. 3 minutes into the episode it’s already too late and all parties agree the PD has been irrevocably violated on this planet and nothing can change that. Then it becomes an absurd debate between *how to continue violating the PD* with one guest scientist making the absurd proposal that Picard should violate it by masquerading as a god and Picard making the obvious choice of continue violating it by telling the truth to the aliens. No one brings up the PD because it is dead and buried and everyone admits it and the dilemma is non-existent because one side is obviously right. This episode sucks actually.
I kinda liked this, but it didn't land so well, it really could've punched up with the premise Picard's smug bloviating about the prime directive brought it down 4/10 is fine
Came for the review. Stayed for the well deserved Prime Directive beat down. Homeward is still my absolutely most hated episode in the whole franchise.
I've always wanted to see a story where the Prime Directive is followed and then bring up negative consequences later. After all, one of the common defenses of the PD has been "you dont know what the consequences will be," so it would be interesting to flip the script on that. A bit like Prime Factors on Voyager
There is a quote from Final Fantasy XIV that I think is particularly suited here, regarding the Prime Directive. "To ignore the plight of those one might conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence."
That ending remark was fierce. And true. Prime Directive in real life or fiction is often a shield that justifies cowardice I don't know if it accurately applies to the situation in Afghanistan but it seems sloganeering by American political selfserving parties condemned many Afghanies to death and horrors.
What makes you think that it would’ve been different pulling out 20 years from now? A country doesn’t get over run that fast unless one side completely gives up. It’s not like no one knew the US was leaving. This just proves that going into any country to “fix things” is a complete waste of time. You go in kill Al Queda and leave, trying to build a democracy will always fail because their society isn’t built for it. There are three types of Middle East militaries, Dictatorial enforcers, Fanatical terrorists and Western trained Pussies. Which ever group can control the country and keep order you do business with.
@@gargoyles9999 the US left without saying a word leaving catch of resources and weapons. don't forget the Taliban are American funded terrorists. This is not a conspiracy theory. The US and Russia used other countries and armed groups to fight proxy wars.
@@gargoyles9999 helping the Taliban is disgraceful and shameful we have no business destabilizing and imperializing all over the middle east. We are the evil empire. If you think it's ok to brutalize the non-white world just because we can than congrats you're the Cardassians and should be ashamed of yourself.
5:24 I tend to think society is an emergent system of interactions created by humans to allow them to thrive (meet their physical, social, intellectual and emotional needs) in a greater number of environments than they could alone. Although, that itself may be derived from my political perspective, which tends to be to a large extent built on harm reduction, the mitigation of human suffering.
That's essentially the defense the Second Doctor made of his own activities... a rebuke of Gallifrey's own non-interference which the Time Lords enacted after their arrogant attempt at culture uplifting caused the self-destruction of the planet Minyas, so their resolution was to do nothing. Later Doctors would elaborate further on this, but essentially the Doctor's argument is that it is cowardly and irresponsible to hold back when you can be a positive force against the bad shit that would otherwise claim innocent life. It should be noted that while the Time Lords did essentially agree, they still punished him by execution and forced exile. It's a credit to the series that occasionally the Doctor does screw up and finds themselves having to clean up after their own mistakes... such as when the Fourth Doctor programmed a Landru-like computer to carry on after he left.
15:14 and thereafter: AMEN! What infuriates us about the PD is 1) it’s dystopian in a universe that’s supposed to be utopian; 2) the creators look like they agree with it which makes us doubt their talent… At least Trek creators are by and large more modest and admit to errors contrary to other more insufferable authors. Sometimes giving aid looks like it made things worse but at least you tried and a few lives were saved. Because at least they’re still alive and can try again. If there is life there is hope. My head-canon is that it was the Vulcans who imposed the PD upon the Fed, because Humans were just too nosy and bleeding hearted and meddling.
I didn’t even remember this episode, but now, what gets me... how does the Prime Directive even apply in this case. This isn’t some pre-Warp society, like Archer condemned to death. This isn’t some alien society like Janeway had to worry about. Don’t get me wrong, the PD (or reference to it, but they weren’t even pretending to be coy about) was still horrific at best, and stupid at worst. But fine, those are alien cultures. This is a human colony! Humans who, based on the time frame given, must have left after warp drive became available. And they must have either left under the auspices of the Federation, or the pre-Federation Unified Earth government. So this isn’t the Enterprise interfering with some separate society. This is, to use a real world example, the police rescuing a bunch of people a cult had held captive after the fire department responded to a call that their apartment building was on fire!
I really wish that Chuck could have been there in the writers room when some of these stinkers were written or proposed. Especially the prime directive episodes. While he may not posses the Shakespearean stage presence of Patrick Stewart, that eloquent rant at the end can stand right up there with some of Picard's greatest monologues.
"A philosophy that we will not impose our values upon others means we're willing to let others die for the sake of our values" The perfect description of this interpretation of the Prime Directive
@@Lans32485 Yeah, but that's basically what the thinking behind that act is: it's better we don't get involved and contaminate their culture, even if it means they'll otherwise die. Which is incredibly stupid
I'm not sure it was meant to be taken as 'they assign you a job and program you to like it' so much as 'we have figured out what makes you enjoy / be good at things (HOPEFULLY those are the same) and we're going to make sure different people have different ones' it's funny because it's clearly eugenic in nature, but in real life eugenics tends to get pushed into 'only one way for everyone' thinking, which sucks because we still really should be paying attention to breeding, to get a good and healthy populace _with variety._ and come to think of it i'm great at a lot of stuff I hate doing, like math. so there goes that first assumption. But still, I think it's only fair to acknowledge that there ARE people who naturally enjoy doing "menial" or "lesser" or "unexciting" jobs.. and they're the ones who should be doing those jobs. they're perfectly happy doing 'em, until and unless people shame them for it. the REAL heavy hit of this episode and what makes it crummy writing is the writer was quoted heavily endorsing abortion and acting like it would be unthinkable to do otherwise, _terrified_ that people would misinterpret this episode's "it's not super cool to kill all the blind babies" message. I guess it's only okay to kill your baby for being unwanted, but not for disability. Contrast with the "Picard and co. callously kill their clones because their DNA was stolen" episode which was _explicitly_ endorsing the idea that you own anything made from your body and can kill it purely out of spite for the new life being made without your consent. I don't feel like I'd get along well with a lot of these writers..
Nothing wrong with abortion. I understand it's the ending of a biological life but it's a non-sentient life. Up to half of all pregnancies end in miscarriages The body loves to kill babies... er fetuses. Science doesn't yet know why. Yikes how DO you conservative chuds find your way on ST?????
I will agree that I didn't love that story choice in that S2 ep either. Neither the killing of the clones or them being so inflexible towards the idea of DNA donation. Considering the settlement needed the DNA or they would die, it didn't seem to me too much to ask. But they wanted the comic relief of putting them together with the rubes so ...
A point the episode avoids or ignores. These people's ancestors either fled the Earth alongside their leader, Khan. Or, they managed to avoid being executed by the UN's drugged soldiers until they could build their own sleeper or generation ship.
Considering there have been multiple cases in Star Trek where entire civilisations have been wiped out as a result of Earth sending out probes to explore the galaxy, I'm not sure that should actually be considered a viable alternative...
The colony had a chief ideolog, like the Soviet Union. And, I think the Enterprise should have told their Suslov, that if he wants the people in the colony to all die, it was all right with the Enterprise. And tell the people who wanted to leave, tough. The ideolog wants them to die, rather than leave.
@@lynngreen7978 I think that line of eugenicists would've bred an expansionary/militaristic people that would try to concur the stars, I could almost see the society in this episode as a counter/response built to make a passive and peaceful people. Maybe it could've been/was made by the scientists that still believed in bettering humanity through gene-editing but heavily feared another Khan
Not exactly the same thing, if anything this is exploring a very opposite form of eugenics, where it's.... _everything-supremacy._ they are so insistent that they need the WHOLE gene pool, with all of its diversity, that they're paranoid to let even one person leave... or enter. or let disabled people be born. which is where it kinda horseshoes around again.
Honestly, i think the Prime Directive is there specifically to prevent the Federation from using all its resources to save everyone. As an example, and this is extreme, let's turn to Mass Effect. In ME1(Back when they gave a damn), one of the planets had a description about how the moon was falling towards it, and it would collide with it in the next few decades/centuries(it's been a while), but, with enough Eezo engines, they could in fact, save the planet. It would be a trying process, however, and require basically a full war fleet to pull it off, but the life here is extremely unique, as in they haven't found anything even similar anywhere else. In Mass Effect, that planet is going to die, the best conservation efforts are doing is preserving a few species, and that's being hampered by Bureaucracy as they are Xeno-Contaminants, despite the fact that they'll be wiped out otherwise. In the Star Trek, because it's non-sapient life, they'd have already built the engine specifically to move the moon back into its orbit, and wasted dozens of ships worth of resources that could have gone to other crisis. Now imagine every time an intelligent race they encounter is on the brink, and they were allowed to save it. The Federation would waste all their time doing so, every time. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Section 13 itself that started this whole thing, General Order 1 sounds like the sort of thing they'd put in, to protect the Federation from itself, and when Kirk and Company defied it on numerous occasions, they strengthened it, specifically to prevent it. That said, no, this is the sort of dilemma the Prime Directive is supposed to prevent. After all, they're only involved now due to circumstance, and a request for aid, but now their presence is literally going to tear this designed society apart. Of course, like with the Qunari from Dragon Age, they deserve to be torn apart. I've yet to see a designed society that is able to grow and change naturally, as by their very nature they have to be stagnant.
I almost wonder if it was intended to be a poorly expressed trolley problem moral quandary. Where yes, they would have been destroyed either way, but one of those involves direct action and involvement and thus taking on the moral responsibility for the destruction. The obvious problem being, this isn't the same as switching tracks and choosing which people die, choosing to involve yourself in the act. It's the same people either way and I'd say the moment they discovered the people were in the way of the thing they were tracking and that they wouldn't survive, they had the moral responsibility to either help or to contact and warn them. And then, if they truly wanted to follow the prime directive and not interfere with the society? They should have just worked on a way to deflect the solar fragment before even contacting them, or otherwise found a way to protect the people without them noticing. The act of allowing a planets life to continue to live should not be viewed the same as interfering with or accelerating a planets development.
Hell you bring up the track-switching metaphor, but I've always felt that sucker is useless. It relies on you knowing with 100% certainty the outcome of your actions, making it a poor fit for any real life situations . The (bad episodes' versions of) Prime Directive implicitly and sometimes explicitly says that everything's going to go to shit no matter how you interfere, and that's just patently false. It flies so hard in the face of... _autonomy_ to say that no matter what your motivations, you will always make things worse by interference. like some kind of.. bizarre quantum morality where you ruined everything by acting but everything's acceptable as long as you didn't act. IN FACT the poor logic of that gets used in other parts of star trek.. I'm reminded of the time they were caught in a time loop, and decided not to reverse course, because "that might be what got us into this loop in the first place." fucking.. no? The only thing you do know is that you never reversed course the first time, _because you're now choosing to do it in response to the knowledge that you're in a time loop._ Maybe the PD got them in that fatalistic 'doing nothing is better than doing something' mindset.
The colony may die, but _the people_ will survive. The colony is just a bunch of houses and an idea. The people are what matter, they are who needed saving.
Wow...so well said. I've hated the Prime Directive 'religion' since the beginning of Star Trek. I'd have loved an episode (or even an arc) where sensible, sane individuals finally challenged and eventually had that stupid rule rewritten to reflect exactly what you said in this rant. I suppose there are circumstances where it was valid...but the mindless kowtowing to it in every damn case was sickening, hypocritical and infuriating! "All Hail The Prime Directive!"
The Prime Directive is not a stupid rule. We have real life examples such as the New Sentilese aborigines. The only thing that's really bad about the Prime Directive are the stories written about it.
Their society was going to be changed no matter what happened. Even if most of them survived the fragment without the Enterprise help, it would radically change their society's framework, with fewer people there to do needed roles. People would have to do tasks they were not programmed to do, going against their society. Just like how it might have to at the end of the episode. Except that they are all be alive instead of some dying to the fragment. Disasters also have a habit of changing societies. 9/11 did that, so did the outbreak in 2020. Their world was going to change no matter what happened because of the fragment passing by.
The counter to that is that sometimes a series of gradual changes, each of them good, can still result in an overall decrease of quality of life. For example if someone helps you with a difficult move in a chess game. Then helps you again. Each time they tell you a move it immediately benefits you, but in the end you're left stagnant and ignorant. I recommend Industrial Society and Its Future, and the sequel Technological Slavery if you want to explore this topic.
fuck you there's no way that happened. and if it did, the people whining about our presence there for decades are not allowed to whine about us finally leaving.
Yes, given that we were already there, we should not have left at that time and certainly not in that way but Pompeo already struck a deal with the Taliban in 2019 to let them take back over in exchange for being totally fine with the US taking all Afg minerals. DC got 5000 talibs released from Pakistan and the game was on. Next thing you know - bye bye Kabul. So f6ck you Afghanis - after 20 years of occupation and drone strikes here's your old nemesis. Brought to you by Uncle Sam. Not like the female half of the population needed their rights or anything. And then Biden took the 9B that was in Afg central bank apparently. He got hold of it someway, this has been confirmed. Now half the country is food insecure or starving but oh well. Brown lives don't matter to Washington. Never has.
@@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999 you can't have it both ways. either it was bad to go there and free them, or it was bad to leave them when they needed help most. I wonder what kind of paradise you think afghanistan is that murdering them all wouldn't be a mercy. nevermind we're going there and actually helping STOP them from murdering each other (and others. and us)
I have come back to the final few minutes so many times. I was just watching TNG’s Pen Pals and found myself angry that Picard was willing to let a whole civilization, represented in a little girl, die because it meant upholding the Prime Directive. “That is the very irony… a philosophy that we will not impose our values on others, means we will let others die for the sake of our values.”
Counterpoint: Picard is restrained but in the hands of Starfleet mad admiral of the week, many societies would be "corrected" to fit in with Federation standards or demand help. It's one of the reasons I believe General Order Number One (PD) is not only necessary but a necessity to prevent starfleet captain's from going too far. Like a Spaceborne Salvation Army changing people in return for aid or tech
I know I'm only echoing what everyone else has already been commenting, but I love that entire speech on the prime directive. "Keeping a culture alive is an ideal. Keeping _people_ alive is a moral responsibility." This is very well said, and it'll stick with me for quite a while.
Wow, this is one of the few PD episodes involving Earth-originating humans. The only other one I can think of is that S2(?) Discovery episode. Normally when they find Earthers who've been long isolated from Federation society (e.g. "Up the Long Ladder") the PD doesn't even come up. (TOS "The Paradise Syndrome" is a weird edge case of a relocated pre-spacefaring human society.) I'm kind of soured on the PD as a concept art this point. It probably felt right in an era of global post-colonial struggles. But it's so damn paternalistic: a civilization hasn't developed a single advanced technology and they're shut out of the galactic community entirely no matter what else they need or have accomplished. But launch a single warp-driven vehicle from the ashes of a divided war-torn world and suddenly you're part of the club of interstellar empires who are centuries ahead of you. Imagine if 5 minutes after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk some aliens showed up and gifted the Earth with iPhones, artificial hearts, vaccines for everything, Borlaug's Green Revolution, the internet, supersonic jets and atomic bombs.
The prime directive is there to ensure we do not cause harm. For example, giving warp technology to a prewarp culture that is not ready for it. And to ensure Starfleet isn’t playing God. Such as interfering in evolution/development… or to interfere in politics, such as staying out of the Klingon civil war. I don’t agree that it’s a philosophy, but it’s also not a straight jacket. If we can offer aid when requested, without doing harm, i feel that shouldn’t be a violation of the directive.
I'd love to see this monologue about the Prime Directive actually be used in Star Trek in a court-martial.
Hah, court martial in Star Trek. If only the current writers had the brain power to write something like that.
Janeway makes a statement in later seasons about how the Prime Directive is a directive and not a mandate
@@drockjr Maybe so, but, given _Voyager,_ it's a safe bet that she does something appalling because 'Prime Directive' before the season ended.
@@boobah5643 yeah, Janeway liked to pick and choose
Actually, human society from Earth, the Prime Directive doesn't apply.
"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make" ~Jean-Luc Farquaad
"And they will cry out "Save Us!" and I will look down and whisper "No"..."
@@weldonwin: - Captain Shaw
"Captain, informing these people they are on a ship may be a violation of the prime directive of Starfleet Command."
"Well the people of Yonada may be changed by the knowledge, but it's better than exterminating them."
"Logical, captain."
It's logical, but at the same time it's what Spock didn't touch on or debate - because his concern is whether it's logical, not the emotional or moral implications.
But I wind up agreeing with Chuck more often than not. The Prime Directive is flawed, and needs to be examined thoroughly on a case-by-case basis instead of just held up as inflexible rules. (But then, I prefer all rules to be allowed to have flexibility to deal with situations nobody saw coming when they made the rules.)
@@kereminde Kirk's "logic" is morality, a comparison of harm and against harm. Spock can only say it's logical because his own morals line up with Kirk's here: Better the people learn other people are out there than the people die.
@@merepseu Or you can take an alternative stance on it like a friend did:
"Spock's just used to Kirk's bullshit at this point and figures it's better to go along than try to argue. After all, it's more fun to tweak McCoy with that than Kirk."
@@kereminde hell it's built on a faulty premise. colonalism always helps everyone involved in the long run, even if there's some... temporary pain. any evil committed DURING colonizing was 100% optional and hardly an integral part. You could do all of that same cruelty to people you _weren't_ conquering.
@@KairuHakubi Tell that to the Arabs who were promised their own unified land on the peninsula only to be forced to manage multiple nations split between the British and the French. Much of the political instability happening in the Arabian Peninsula now is rooted in colonialism from over 100 years ago.
I love Chuck's rant at the end about the prime directive. The prime directive should have always been "we do not interfere unless asked to, and then we only involve ourselves enough to reduce harm and suffering as best we can." The way it currently exists in the canon is shallow and reductive. On that note, I got a small giggle when I imagined Chuck giving his rant to the Starfleet Counsel after a particularly egregious loss of life due to inactivity on the part of Starfleet.
Especially if Chuck was the one trying to save those people and Starfleet stopped him
Seriously, it always pisses me off when the PD is used to justify watching people die. Especially in cases like in Pen Pals where they can save them without even revealing themselves. (Yes I know they DO save the people in that ep, but they had to be basically guilt tripped into it. Same with the ep with Worf's adoptive brother.)
"We don't interfere unless asked, but we do make contact and offer help if needed." A better Prime Directive. (Also that part about reducing harm should probably be in there, that would be good.)
@@theuncalledfor agreed. And if they can covertly help a less-advanced society from a society-threatening danger, I believe they should do so and that should be considered the highest example of Federation values of compassion and mercy.
@@Lans32485that girl was also asking for help, too. When even a single member of a society is asking for help from "anyone out there" that's when they should introduce themselves.
My absolute favorite part of the pilot for Strange New Worlds is Pike full-on giving the Prime Directive the double bird and saving an entire planet from the horror a worse-than-nuclear world war.
Don't hold back Chuck. Tell us how you really feel.
I think it's why even as a non TNG fan I found the nee Picard series infuriating. They had the perfecr setup for a piece on the unspoken flaws in the ideals of the federation, and blew it for F bombs, shock deaths and something about synthetic life.
While I agree with you on how Picard blew it, I honestly shudder at the thought of the PD being thoroughly discussed or disscted in today’s Internet and fandom. Gonna be on fugly hell of a mess across the social medias, internet news sites, forums, and RUclips videos.
@@myriadmediamusings To be fair, the PD has always been a fugly mess when its the topic of a debate. Just the poop throwing will have a more mean aim.
Don't forget the character destruction
@@Mate397 But I really want to foget that.
@@chrisw207 Don't we all?
And that's why Captain SIsko is the greatest Star Trek captain. He didn't use the Prime Directive as a crutch to avoid messy circumstances.
Paused the moment Prime Directive came up, and battened down the hatches before continuing. The PD with Chuck’s show is almost never good news. And I haven’t seen Chuck this wrathful towards the PD since Dear Doctor.
Almost felt like he was going to go at anti-vaxxers for a moment with how he worded it.
Picard's absurd lament at the end was a telling sign that non-DS9 Star Trek was really embracing the Prime Directive dogma, which was worse in Homeward, got highlighted in Voyager, and reached its dreadful culmination in Dear Doctor.
DS9 didn't have the luxury of *leaving* after going "welp we can't help you, rules you know". They have to SIT there and watch. It's really hard to maintain the same attitude when you get to see the fallout and know you could have stopped it.
@@kereminde Picard was Roddenberry's Idealized Man the absolute pinnacle of what he believed man should be. Sisko on the other hand is far more human, instead of making Shakespearean speeches at all powerful entities he punches one when it gets too annoying and tries to keep things together
@@cyberninjazero5659 That's because DS9 happened without Roddenberry being involved, so I believe. Even so it took Sisko some time to really... shear away from the sanctimonious early TNG Federation officers.
... I mean it took him a whole few days before he twisted Quark's arm into staying on the station...
Deep Space 9 feels a lot more like a science fiction setting that could actually exist and is a large part of what makes Star Trek not one-dimensional IMO.
@@planescaped That aspect of Deep Space Nine is why the new shows feel like such a giant, painful leap backward.
Love the content. Go support on Patreon so we can keep the Chimney’s of Surprise at a minimum!
Hail, to another 'Chuck rants about the misuse of the Prime Directive' moment! Break out the cider!
I loved the debate by Admiral Archer on instituting a Non-Interference Directive, and Admiral Shran opposing it. Archer could not conceive of anyone enshrining a philosophy of do no harm as holy writ and citing it to not save those in need.
Absolutely love everything you said about the Prime Directive! I could not have said it better!
My response to the Prime Directive argument: "Oh dear, a bus full of your family members is going to drive off a cliff. No, you're not allowed to help them. You don't know if one of them might be a future Hitler!"
Really enjoying this episode!
wow! that rant reminded me of why I fell in love with SFDebris in the first place. I've not seen chuck do this in quite a while, and I love it!
I think about this episode when I read sci-fi stories about perfect societies that isolated themselves hundreds of years ago, but their technology is super advanced. Isolation leads to stagnation.
Boy, Chuck, if you're mad now, just wait until we get to the Homeward review...
Since they are all products of genetic engineering they will be having big shock coming to find out the society promising them all this opportunity immediately unpersons them from most of those opportunities.
Selective Breeding =/= Genetic Engineering, though the principle is basically the same until the incest factor starts destroying one of them.
*"We Live in a Society..."* 😏
Miss Ellis?
Loved the Prime Directive monologue.
"The society is so fragile, it can't survive being SAVED!"
I LOVE your rant at the end! Newsflash Picard: cultural contamination can be recovered from. The core fragment? Nope!
In the face of imminent destruction or extinction every alternative is preferable.
16:14
And yet there are Filipinos who rather like the American period, as there is still a small movement of Filipinos who support the idea of the Philippines returning to being part of the United States as a new state within the union.
19:19 Chuck's rant at this point reminds me of Q's rant to Picard, about how dangerous and wonderful the universe is.
Considering what a shit show the history of the Philippines has been, honestly cant blame them.
Considering, last I checked(It's been a bit though), their president was a dictator and a lunatic
Reminds me how some in Hong Kong didn’t want the British to leave
@@Nostripe361 They genuinely were better off under British rule. Shame Nixon gave Big China legitimacy, because Hong Kong would've been fine under Little China's rule
Yeah this is the first I've heard that anything bad came of the Phillippines coming under new management
Like yeah, it still sucks ass to live there, but i cannot imagine it was one bit better beforehand. Ditto Puerto Rico, Hawaii, ... basically everywhere.
“ keeping a culture live is an ideal. Keeping people alive is a moral responsibility!” Hands-down, the best criticism I’ve ever heard the hands-off, let-them-die interpretation of the prime directive.
Something that I'm really disappointed in with TNG is that there is never an episode that challenges the dogmatic view of the prime directive. We never get to see Starfleet interact with an alien civilization they left to die but miraculously survived, I want Picard to have to look a member of such a race in the eye and say helping them survive would have been wrong, to show the devastating effects following the prime directive has on a pre-warp civilization that suffered a horrible catastrophe while the federation stood by and do nothing. Hell, maybe I should write a fan fic about it.
I could see this being a thing where a race was peaceful but nearly dies out as the Federation does nothing only for them to turn into a fascist society to survive, go into space, and now be a direct threat to the Federation
I think the closest they've come to that was the Lower Decks season 1 finale with the line about how starfleet is "good at investigating, but bad at following up", noting how stafleets information about certain "known species" is outdated and incorrect yet still being sent out as if those species stay in a static point of view or develop how starfleet hopes they do.
with regards to the live action series this could have been the whole plot of Voyager Season 7's "Frienship one", except they used the loop hole of the friendship-one probe being a pre-federation probe and therefore not bound by the prime directive... yet despite that voyager the show which banged on about the prime directive as if it were gospal (in its penultimate story no less) had the opportunity to explore this kind of story - the horror story of why certain starfleet officers cling to tightly to the prime directive, but highlighting the problem of "leaving the repocussions to the other guy years down the line". I mean there are a few TOS episodes which could have follow-ups like "A piece of the action" (where mccoy leaves his communicator on the gangster planet) or "A private little war" where the klingons intorduced flint locks to a bronze age society (and i think the federation did at the end as well, so as to even out the cultural contamination) - i mean, i think a follow-up of "piece of the action" would make a fun lower decks episode as that was a comedic TOS episode, but a follow up of "private little war", seeing how klingon and federation interfearance has affected "paradise" a century and a half on, that I would like to see in live action (as tonally the episode was more serious than that the other TOS episode mentioned).
The thing is, the advantage of the Prime Directive is that it's morally neutral. You personally are not obligated to run into a burning building to save people. You are not personally obligated to confront a bank robber. You are not personally obligated to feed every starving African children in the world. So if a starving African child confronted you, it's not going to mean much because you didn't own them anything. If a pre-warp civilization lashes out against all of creation for not personally helping them, it's going to be petty and it's not going to have a moral leg to stand on. If you want a modern example, Haiti isn't doing to well right now, but are you personally obligated in helping Haiti? What would you say if a Haitian said you stood by while thousands suffered from the earthquake and did nothing? It's like Nero blaming Spock for not helping the Romulans hard enough over a Romulan problem, it's petty and pathetic.
ehh the show takes the side of 'bend the rule when your heart tells you to, but temper it by listening to your brain' at least a half dozen times. Picard gets hassled by bureaucrats for the massive number of times he violates the PD, and we're clearly meant to side with him.
every time the prime directive comes up and they seem to grapple with it, it seems to be more "this is just the rule, this is the way it is, and we can't change that fact" assertion. Just like rules about due process and various rights like that, that can tie a cop's hands when he sees a crime right in front of him. In the end you have to use your own judgment, but you can't ever change the rule because it has to be that way... the rule is essentially there because of an assumption of corruption by default.
This is why I love his fan theories about the Breen and Pakleds. The Pakleds would be doubly hilarious given their appearances in Lower Decks.
This is a refreshing opinion on the prime directive. Great video.
That's interesting, Chuck. Your argument about the dogmatic application of the PD is eerily similar to my argument against the moral high ground.
Nice video, thank you.
I can’t wait for Chuck’s review of Free Guy.
How so?
@@MabusParodies2nd I’d love to hear his take on consciousness, free will, and the building of a new society as presented in the film. Just because, I think he’s got an interesting take on most things.
@@kathleenjackson3258 Ah
It's worth pointing out that, technically, the Prime Directive doesn't apply here.
Damn, man. I'd love to see the final rant used in an actual Star Trek show ;)
Same here. Unfortunately that seems unlikely to happen as every indication is that the current writers don't fully grasp or embrace the underlying philosophy. Even the vastly improved Season 3 of Discovery illustrates only a superficial understanding (but it _is_ an improvement).
We're given to infer Picard gave a speech much like this one to the Federation Council regarding the Romulan/Synth conflict that led to his retirement. Sadly, we were not witness to it, instead we see Admiral Pottymouth give Picard a dressing down for the "sheer hubris" of suggesting Starfleet take his request seriously to help save individual lives.
That is another reason why I personally prefer the original series and Kirk over TNG and Picard. Kirk also follows the Prime Directive but he knew that rules and philosophies sometimes run into walls and obstacles that they can´t clear and that it is then up to the individual to do what they think is right. You can´t expect to actually interact with people without leaving an impression on them in some way.
The Prime Directive is an idea that I've had more than my fair share of issues with over the years. So consider me satisfied to hear people's reverence of it taken down a peg 😊
I appreciate that Chuck's rant here is about how it could be better, and how it's abused, instead of the lazy way out that I see often in "hot takes" that "The Prime Directive is Bad, Actually" usually made by cherry-picking and missing the point. They're making the same mistake Picard made here but in reverse.
There's so much more meat in talking about what works about it and what doesn't, while acknowledging that it has a very real intent behind it and dogmatic application doesn't negate the crucial role it plays when executed correctly.
I am impressed that the fine, apparently precarious balance of the society demanded a leader to handle the essentially zero emergencies that the society could even permit to happen. What was he even there for that it demanded an entire human to do it?
They're eugenicists. Of course they bred a tortured, unnecessary heirarchy into their very society. That's the end goal of all eugenicists.
Lol good point. In such an ordered society what exactly is there to manage, lol?
Some people might say this feels like a season 1 episode but to me this feels exactly like an episode of Voyager.
Thank you Chuck. Nailed it.
Chuck, I love your videos, & your final, justified rant is one of the reasons I keep coming back! 🙂
That rant at the end about the Prime Directive reminds me of the structure of Lumati society from Babylon 5. The Lumati abstain from interacting with "inferior" races, to the point that they do not render aid because it interferes with the natural evolution.
After this review and his rant about the Prime Directive, I REALLY want to see SFDebris do a review of "Homeward." IMHO, that episode was the absolute WORST abuse/bastardization of the Prime Directive ever made in TNG, having the crew of the Enterprise stand idly by and actually watching an entire planet and its civilization die when they could have helped them. Worf's brother was a hero, and Starfleet would have axed him for what he did. The utter hypocrisy was utterly disgusting from the day I saw that episode. Even I knew that the PD wasn't about noninterference to the point of letting civilizations die if it was in our power to help them with minimal effect to the civilization.
So PLZPLZPLZ, SFDEBRIS, MAKE A REVIEW OF "HOMEWARD"!
For real. I think the dogmatic view of the PD is one of the reasons early Picard often comes across as arrogant/cold, which you think the writers figured out by season 3 only for that side of him to return with a vengeance with an episode like that. That episode made Worf look terrible too. Any rule/standard like the PD that not only allows you to stand by during a preventable collapse of civilization/people, but having the gull to lecture heroes like Worf's brother who was actually trying to help provide humanitarian aid is some insane dogma I can't comprehend. For all of Picard's speeches about humanity moving past the shackles of superstition/mysticism he sure loves his dogma when it comes to the PD.
I don't find this episode boring, it's just that the titular society is dull... and that's the point, within the story.
They may be in a wrong job, they maybe writing bad poetry, or worse yet, reviewing TV shows on RUclips. :D
I was shocked to learn this was a season 5 episode...feels more like an early season 2 or late season 1. All the smugness and moral preening without a shred of common sense. At least Picard didn't act like the aloof jerk he was in season 1.
If Picard's reasoning is correct, they should have never gotten involved in the episode "The Ensigns of Command" (S3, E2). They were destroying that civilization by relocating them to another planet in order to save the people from being killed. How dare they!
God, I wish we'd get an episode where a crew doing stupid PD stuff blows up in their faces. Just have a ship return to the planet from Symbiosis or Dear Doctor and see how the captain's decision has made things worse for the Federation.
It's easy to see why the PD was scaled back in later incarnations of Trek...mostly (I'm looking at you, Doctor Phlox!)
While I am someone who would say I think the loss of a culture is as bad as the loss of people, I'd also argue that it's because you can't lose a culture WITHOUT losing people.
In this case, the culture has certainly undergone change. But unless the people are forced to not work together or spend time together, unless the federation starts gathering them up and then forcibly disseminating them, then that's all it is, a change. Cultures change all the time. The suicide of Nero and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius both made massive CHANGES to Rome's culture. Some of those changes are still felt today, when Christians quote biblical passages written at the time and about the events.
Indeed, the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the empire made a huge CHANGE to Rome's culture. But it didn't destroy Roman culture. It just morphed it, and eventually, that culture was morphed so much that we couldn't really call it the 'same' culture, so a new one was needed. But who was the last Roman to speak Latin? Better question, what language do they speak in Rome? Italian? Okay, so, who was the first person to speak Italian instead of Latin? Who was the first person we can look at and say "Well, his dad spoke Latin but he doesn't?" I have a cousin who, without speaking a word of Italian, was able to make himself at least understood in Italy with a combination of vulgar Latin and a Mario impresion. And that was the more formal Italian. There are places in Italy and areas around it today which historical linguists would argue wouldn't only be able to understand a man on a street in 75 AD, but even hold a comprehensible - If highly accented and occasionally needing a bit of straightening out - Conversation with him.
And that's why the whole 'We can't alter their culture' thing in a case like this can be so ridiculous. If all the people die, the culture dies with them. If all the people LIVE, the culture survives. And if all the people live and disperse, the culture dies, but if it does so by the choice of the people in it, then YOU haven't imposed anything.
you can certainly lose a culture without losing people by just moving them apart. they can't continue the culture by themselves. and they can also just be drowned out by outsiders and be unable to continue being how they used to be, with nobody dying.
@@KairuHakubi I'm sorry, but I believe you are mistaken.
The term 'culture' does not mean 'current set of cultural practices.' I'm an American. My great-grandfather was an American. The fact that American culture is so different in 2021 from how it was in 1921 doesn't mean one of us isn't American, even if we would hardly recognize each-other's practices, beliefs, and ideas.
What you are talking about are diaspora, and assimilation. Diaspora has a major impact on a culture. Sometimes, it leads to the DESCENDANTS of the people who engage in the diaspora adopting a new culture. For example, there were no 'African-Americans' prior to the slave trade, Africans had their own cultures. But for that culture to vanish, you need to have the current members of the culture die, first.
Assimilation is another possibility, although it's pretty much never a result of outsiders coming in, as that typically leads to a cultural hybridization instead of a complete replacement (see: Various post-Alexandrian hellenic cultures, Greco-Roman culture, etc) but if assimilation occurs, then the previous culture doesn't die until people stop seeing themselves as part of it. If they are unable to engage in their traditional practices, that is a change their culture undergoes - Someone has forbidden them engaging in their practice - But it's not until the people who were part of the culture are gone and their descendants cease to identify with it that the culture ceases to be.
But as long as people FROM the culture are alive, that culture is alive. That's just how the term 'culture' works. If Picard were a simple random person on the street, or Star Trek didn't attempt to take itself seriously, I wouldn't mind. I can understand why someone might colloquially use the term 'culture' to mean a specific set of present cultural practices. But that's a colloquial use, and the Prime Directive needs to be concerned about more than just 'Will this change people.' After all, EVERYTHING changes people.
@@HyenaDandy uhh no, the colloquial use is the only use.
I love it when logic and sense win the day.
Yes it was a poor use of the PD in this episode
Well said. I really agree with everything you said here.
Standing applause. Awesome .
Chuck's discussion of the Prime Directive hit the nail on the head for me. I was nodding in agreement. The Prime Directive is Picard's religion. He uses it to play it safe and judge others when he is too chicken sh*t to DO SOMETHING
Except he did still do something, he just wanted to wring his hands after doing so.
When they could have tried deflecting the core fragment without contacting the planet, and spent that much more time doing so.
That would have potentially fulfilled the "protect the planet" remit, without contacting them, or involving yourself in the debate of if they should change.
@@FFKonoko Yeah it's not fair to say picard is a prime directive worshipper, rather he's someone who was raised in this religion and constantly grapples with it because he does not REMOTELY think it's worth tossing out. Merely bending or feeling guilty about.
@@FFKonoko it would have to be almost impossible to divert the core fragment with the enterprise alone. So I don't understand your argument.
Yup. Well said. This is why I feel like the problem with the world is not just organized religion, but the type of rationale that leads someone, even if they're otherwise normally secular/scientific like Picard, to think in narrow dogmatic terms about an issue.
When it comes to the Prime Directive, Picard has to be the most rigid inflexible stuffed-shirt in the UFP. Take Homeward or Pen Pals as a example. He really doesn't understand the meaning of the PD. The Masterpiece Society reminds me of a home full of expensive items that are beautiful, but you cannot live in.
As a kid seeing this episode, 12yo or whatever, the notion of a society creating technology to help the blind see but that incidentally created tech that would help us survive and thrive.. that was Star Trek to me
You know, looking back he makes a good point about the Prime Directive.
They put society above humanity. Everything served society, even the people.
There is a tension between the purpose of society being to serve the needs of the individuals within it and to what extent the individuals within that society have an obligation to maintain the society.
Rarely do I go from being smirkingly entertained to having my rabble thoroughly roused in a mere twenty minutes. Much appreciated, sir.
I thought it was an excellent episode that gives good arguments for both sides. Overcoming problems and challenges are what allows innovation to occur. Gattaca does a great job of exploring these ideas even further.
Very good and thoughtful comments on the Prime Directive
You did mention the need for menial tasks to be completed. I would assume a society that could figure out how to build this enormous self contained habitat…could figure out how to automate a self cleaning toilet…
PD is good at the idea of not imposing your values on other people by force. However episode like this becomes an ultra-conservative preserve the culture no matter the cost. Culture is fluidic and it change and is not static. It change when individual questions societal belief. Federation like to present it’s own values as utopian but that values doesn’t mean jack if you aren’t able to spread it either through speech or by example in a free exchange of ideas allowing other people to scrutinise their values and ourself scrutinising other society values. Picard himself saw that the values of this society is flawed and antithetical to the values of his society and when the population inspired by the values of Federation decided to reject that value and join the Federation. That should have been a celebration of how their people are a role model for societal change for a good rather than some concern about destruction of a society based on a bad idea
I would tend to agree
For me, the main problem with this episode was not that it was 'boring' it was that it felt a 'paint by numbers' episode. Agreed regard the society itself, it was too stuck in its ways, too fragile to deal with any shocks. It's tech was old, I had the impression they could not create anything new, so sooner or later something important would break and the society would die all the same. Enterprise just brought change a little faster and gave some of the people a chance at new lives.
I thought the prime directive only applied to cultures that didn't have space travel anyway, so it shouldn't have applied in the first place since this is a colony created by space faring humans.
"Who Watches the Watchers" is the best TNG prime directive episode IMO. Instead of debating if they should leave others to die (as was often the case), Picard is willing to die to help clear up their inadvertent interference.
Yes. Lord knows there are no examples of religions being actually fueled by the martyrdom of their central figure or suggested that it's divine figure could die and then resurrect itself. If a religion like that existed, then Picard would just be doing something idiotic.
Well he knew he could be revived so...
But it’s not a Prime Directive episode at all. And dilemma is non-existent. 3 minutes into the episode it’s already too late and all parties agree the PD has been irrevocably violated on this planet and nothing can change that.
Then it becomes an absurd debate between *how to continue violating the PD* with one guest scientist making the absurd proposal that Picard should violate it by masquerading as a god and Picard making the obvious choice of continue violating it by telling the truth to the aliens.
No one brings up the PD because it is dead and buried and everyone admits it and the dilemma is non-existent because one side is obviously right.
This episode sucks actually.
I kinda liked this, but it didn't land so well, it really could've punched up with the premise
Picard's smug bloviating about the prime directive brought it down
4/10 is fine
Came for the review. Stayed for the well deserved Prime Directive beat down.
Homeward is still my absolutely most hated episode in the whole franchise.
I think it poignantly showed the foolishness of extending the PD too far. I give Homeward 10/10
I've always wanted to see a story where the Prime Directive is followed and then bring up negative consequences later. After all, one of the common defenses of the PD has been "you dont know what the consequences will be," so it would be interesting to flip the script on that. A bit like Prime Factors on Voyager
Preach it brother.
There is a quote from Final Fantasy XIV that I think is particularly suited here, regarding the Prime Directive. "To ignore the plight of those one might conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence."
Gotta love a Chuck prime directive rant.
I came for the review, I stayed for the Prime Directive Rant.
Come for the quips
Stay for the rants 😃
That ending remark was fierce. And true. Prime Directive in real life or fiction is often a shield that justifies cowardice
I don't know if it accurately applies to the situation in Afghanistan but it seems sloganeering by American political selfserving parties condemned many Afghanies to death and horrors.
What makes you think that it would’ve been different pulling out 20 years from now? A country doesn’t get over run that fast unless one side completely gives up. It’s not like no one knew the US was leaving. This just proves that going into any country to “fix things” is a complete waste of time. You go in kill Al Queda and leave, trying to build a democracy will always fail because their society isn’t built for it. There are three types of Middle East militaries, Dictatorial enforcers, Fanatical terrorists and Western trained Pussies. Which ever group can control the country and keep order you do business with.
@@gargoyles9999 the US left without saying a word leaving catch of resources and weapons. don't forget the Taliban are American funded terrorists. This is not a conspiracy theory. The US and Russia used other countries and armed groups to fight proxy wars.
@@gargoyles9999 helping the Taliban is disgraceful and shameful we have no business destabilizing and imperializing all over the middle east.
We are the evil empire. If you think it's ok to brutalize the non-white world just because we can than congrats you're the Cardassians and should be ashamed of yourself.
The point of a socity is to have a means to regulate and manage all of the concepts you present, how we do this varies from society to society.
someone has triggered a 9.5 on the scale of chuck-rants
👏
Why does no one in Starfleet know that……. CULTURES CHANGE OVER TIME!!!
Wow, the borderline rant of yours after 15:00 about the prime directive is both strong and thought provoking. Fantastic work.
5:24 I tend to think society is an emergent system of interactions created by humans to allow them to thrive (meet their physical, social, intellectual and emotional needs) in a greater number of environments than they could alone. Although, that itself may be derived from my political perspective, which tends to be to a large extent built on harm reduction, the mitigation of human suffering.
Love the PD rants. I hate what they turned the PD into.
The Enterprise vs that stellar fragment is like an ant pushing a tricycle.
That's essentially the defense the Second Doctor made of his own activities... a rebuke of Gallifrey's own non-interference which the Time Lords enacted after their arrogant attempt at culture uplifting caused the self-destruction of the planet Minyas, so their resolution was to do nothing. Later Doctors would elaborate further on this, but essentially the Doctor's argument is that it is cowardly and irresponsible to hold back when you can be a positive force against the bad shit that would otherwise claim innocent life.
It should be noted that while the Time Lords did essentially agree, they still punished him by execution and forced exile.
It's a credit to the series that occasionally the Doctor does screw up and finds themselves having to clean up after their own mistakes... such as when the Fourth Doctor programmed a Landru-like computer to carry on after he left.
15:14 and thereafter: AMEN!
What infuriates us about the PD is 1) it’s dystopian in a universe that’s supposed to be utopian; 2) the creators look like they agree with it which makes us doubt their talent…
At least Trek creators are by and large more modest and admit to errors contrary to other more insufferable authors.
Sometimes giving aid looks like it made things worse but at least you tried and a few lives were saved.
Because at least they’re still alive and can try again. If there is life there is hope.
My head-canon is that it was the Vulcans who imposed the PD upon the Fed, because Humans were just too nosy and bleeding hearted and meddling.
I didn’t even remember this episode, but now, what gets me... how does the Prime Directive even apply in this case. This isn’t some pre-Warp society, like Archer condemned to death. This isn’t some alien society like Janeway had to worry about. Don’t get me wrong, the PD (or reference to it, but they weren’t even pretending to be coy about) was still horrific at best, and stupid at worst. But fine, those are alien cultures.
This is a human colony! Humans who, based on the time frame given, must have left after warp drive became available. And they must have either left under the auspices of the Federation, or the pre-Federation Unified Earth government. So this isn’t the Enterprise interfering with some separate society. This is, to use a real world example, the police rescuing a bunch of people a cult had held captive after the fire department responded to a call that their apartment building was on fire!
I really wish that Chuck could have been there in the writers room when some of these stinkers were written or proposed. Especially the prime directive episodes. While he may not posses the Shakespearean stage presence of Patrick Stewart, that eloquent rant at the end can stand right up there with some of Picard's greatest monologues.
Picard was holding up the society as being as important as the people in it.
Well said, Chuck.
Why do I feel like I just got scolded by my mom? lol
"A philosophy that we will not impose our values upon others means we're willing to let others die for the sake of our values"
The perfect description of this interpretation of the Prime Directive
Really cause usually it's interpreted as "They don't have warp drive or an equivalent, so we have to stand back and watch them die."
@@Lans32485 Yeah, but that's basically what the thinking behind that act is: it's better we don't get involved and contaminate their culture, even if it means they'll otherwise die. Which is incredibly stupid
I'm not sure it was meant to be taken as 'they assign you a job and program you to like it' so much as 'we have figured out what makes you enjoy / be good at things (HOPEFULLY those are the same) and we're going to make sure different people have different ones' it's funny because it's clearly eugenic in nature, but in real life eugenics tends to get pushed into 'only one way for everyone' thinking, which sucks because we still really should be paying attention to breeding, to get a good and healthy populace _with variety._
and come to think of it i'm great at a lot of stuff I hate doing, like math. so there goes that first assumption. But still, I think it's only fair to acknowledge that there ARE people who naturally enjoy doing "menial" or "lesser" or "unexciting" jobs.. and they're the ones who should be doing those jobs. they're perfectly happy doing 'em, until and unless people shame them for it.
the REAL heavy hit of this episode and what makes it crummy writing is the writer was quoted heavily endorsing abortion and acting like it would be unthinkable to do otherwise, _terrified_ that people would misinterpret this episode's "it's not super cool to kill all the blind babies" message. I guess it's only okay to kill your baby for being unwanted, but not for disability. Contrast with the "Picard and co. callously kill their clones because their DNA was stolen" episode which was _explicitly_ endorsing the idea that you own anything made from your body and can kill it purely out of spite for the new life being made without your consent. I don't feel like I'd get along well with a lot of these writers..
Nothing wrong with abortion.
I understand it's the ending of a biological life but it's a non-sentient life.
Up to half of all pregnancies end in miscarriages
The body loves to kill babies... er fetuses. Science doesn't yet know why.
Yikes how DO you conservative chuds find your way on ST?????
I will agree that I didn't love that story choice in that S2 ep either. Neither the killing of the clones or them being so inflexible towards the idea of DNA donation.
Considering the settlement needed the DNA or they would die, it didn't seem to me too much to ask.
But they wanted the comic relief of putting them together with the rubes so ...
A point the episode avoids or ignores. These people's ancestors either fled the Earth alongside their leader, Khan. Or, they managed to avoid being executed by the UN's drugged soldiers until they could build their own sleeper or generation ship.
Yeah I wondered about that too. Their timeframe of their founding puts them early 21st century right?
As Aaron and Martin are heading to the beam down point, of Riker, Troi and Geordi, don't they pass Hannah Bates, leaning against a wall?
Considering there have been multiple cases in Star Trek where entire civilisations have been wiped out as a result of Earth sending out probes to explore the galaxy, I'm not sure that should actually be considered a viable alternative...
The colony had a chief ideolog, like the Soviet Union. And, I think the Enterprise should have told their Suslov, that if he wants the people in the colony to all die, it was all right with the Enterprise. And tell the people who wanted to leave, tough. The ideolog wants them to die, rather than leave.
They were too chicken to call this episode The Masterrace Society, I guess.
I was curious where the 10 meter tall marble statue of Khan Noonien Singh was.
@@lynngreen7978 That would absolutely fit in this episode, I think.
@@WDC_OSA Eugenicists that left Earth within a generation of the end of the Eugenics War? I don't know why the writers didn't make the connection.
@@lynngreen7978 I think that line of eugenicists would've bred an expansionary/militaristic people that would try to concur the stars, I could almost see the society in this episode as a counter/response built to make a passive and peaceful people. Maybe it could've been/was made by the scientists that still believed in bettering humanity through gene-editing but heavily feared another Khan
Not exactly the same thing, if anything this is exploring a very opposite form of eugenics, where it's.... _everything-supremacy._ they are so insistent that they need the WHOLE gene pool, with all of its diversity, that they're paranoid to let even one person leave... or enter. or let disabled people be born. which is where it kinda horseshoes around again.
Honestly, i think the Prime Directive is there specifically to prevent the Federation from using all its resources to save everyone.
As an example, and this is extreme, let's turn to Mass Effect. In ME1(Back when they gave a damn), one of the planets had a description about how the moon was falling towards it, and it would collide with it in the next few decades/centuries(it's been a while), but, with enough Eezo engines, they could in fact, save the planet. It would be a trying process, however, and require basically a full war fleet to pull it off, but the life here is extremely unique, as in they haven't found anything even similar anywhere else.
In Mass Effect, that planet is going to die, the best conservation efforts are doing is preserving a few species, and that's being hampered by Bureaucracy as they are Xeno-Contaminants, despite the fact that they'll be wiped out otherwise.
In the Star Trek, because it's non-sapient life, they'd have already built the engine specifically to move the moon back into its orbit, and wasted dozens of ships worth of resources that could have gone to other crisis.
Now imagine every time an intelligent race they encounter is on the brink, and they were allowed to save it. The Federation would waste all their time doing so, every time. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Section 13 itself that started this whole thing, General Order 1 sounds like the sort of thing they'd put in, to protect the Federation from itself, and when Kirk and Company defied it on numerous occasions, they strengthened it, specifically to prevent it.
That said, no, this is the sort of dilemma the Prime Directive is supposed to prevent. After all, they're only involved now due to circumstance, and a request for aid, but now their presence is literally going to tear this designed society apart. Of course, like with the Qunari from Dragon Age, they deserve to be torn apart. I've yet to see a designed society that is able to grow and change naturally, as by their very nature they have to be stagnant.
Wonderful rant. Perfect parable to what Europe is doing with refugees right now.
I almost wonder if it was intended to be a poorly expressed trolley problem moral quandary. Where yes, they would have been destroyed either way, but one of those involves direct action and involvement and thus taking on the moral responsibility for the destruction.
The obvious problem being, this isn't the same as switching tracks and choosing which people die, choosing to involve yourself in the act. It's the same people either way and I'd say the moment they discovered the people were in the way of the thing they were tracking and that they wouldn't survive, they had the moral responsibility to either help or to contact and warn them.
And then, if they truly wanted to follow the prime directive and not interfere with the society? They should have just worked on a way to deflect the solar fragment before even contacting them, or otherwise found a way to protect the people without them noticing.
The act of allowing a planets life to continue to live should not be viewed the same as interfering with or accelerating a planets development.
Hell you bring up the track-switching metaphor, but I've always felt that sucker is useless. It relies on you knowing with 100% certainty the outcome of your actions, making it a poor fit for any real life situations . The (bad episodes' versions of) Prime Directive implicitly and sometimes explicitly says that everything's going to go to shit no matter how you interfere, and that's just patently false. It flies so hard in the face of... _autonomy_ to say that no matter what your motivations, you will always make things worse by interference. like some kind of.. bizarre quantum morality where you ruined everything by acting but everything's acceptable as long as you didn't act.
IN FACT the poor logic of that gets used in other parts of star trek.. I'm reminded of the time they were caught in a time loop, and decided not to reverse course, because "that might be what got us into this loop in the first place." fucking.. no? The only thing you do know is that you never reversed course the first time, _because you're now choosing to do it in response to the knowledge that you're in a time loop._ Maybe the PD got them in that fatalistic 'doing nothing is better than doing something' mindset.
The colony may die, but _the people_ will survive. The colony is just a bunch of houses and an idea. The people are what matter, they are who needed saving.
Wow...so well said. I've hated the Prime Directive 'religion' since the beginning of Star Trek. I'd have loved an episode (or even an arc) where sensible, sane individuals finally challenged and eventually had that stupid rule rewritten to reflect exactly what you said in this rant. I suppose there are circumstances where it was valid...but the mindless kowtowing to it in every damn case was sickening, hypocritical and infuriating! "All Hail The Prime Directive!"
The Prime Directive is not a stupid rule. We have real life examples such as the New Sentilese aborigines. The only thing that's really bad about the Prime Directive are the stories written about it.
As I said, "I suppose there are circumstances where it was valid"
Their society was going to be changed no matter what happened. Even if most of them survived the fragment without the Enterprise help, it would radically change their society's framework, with fewer people there to do needed roles. People would have to do tasks they were not programmed to do, going against their society. Just like how it might have to at the end of the episode. Except that they are all be alive instead of some dying to the fragment.
Disasters also have a habit of changing societies. 9/11 did that, so did the outbreak in 2020. Their world was going to change no matter what happened because of the fragment passing by.
The counter to that is that sometimes a series of gradual changes, each of them good, can still result in an overall decrease of quality of life. For example if someone helps you with a difficult move in a chess game. Then helps you again. Each time they tell you a move it immediately benefits you, but in the end you're left stagnant and ignorant. I recommend Industrial Society and Its Future, and the sequel Technological Slavery if you want to explore this topic.
Nice rant. Totally applicable in the case of the US leaving Afganistan just when they need help the most.
fuck you there's no way that happened. and if it did, the people whining about our presence there for decades are not allowed to whine about us finally leaving.
@@KairuHakubi ok that's totally wrong
@@KairuHakubi imagine being unhappy living under the chaos and harm a US occupation brings hiw dare they
Yes, given that we were already there, we should not have left at that time and certainly not in that way but Pompeo already struck a deal with the Taliban in 2019 to let them take back over in exchange for being totally fine with the US taking all Afg minerals. DC got 5000 talibs released from Pakistan and the game was on. Next thing you know - bye bye Kabul.
So f6ck you Afghanis - after 20 years of occupation and drone strikes here's your old nemesis. Brought to you by Uncle Sam. Not like the female half of the population needed their rights or anything.
And then Biden took the 9B that was in Afg central bank apparently. He got hold of it someway, this has been confirmed. Now half the country is food insecure or starving but oh well. Brown lives don't matter to Washington. Never has.
@@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999 you can't have it both ways. either it was bad to go there and free them, or it was bad to leave them when they needed help most.
I wonder what kind of paradise you think afghanistan is that murdering them all wouldn't be a mercy. nevermind we're going there and actually helping STOP them from murdering each other (and others. and us)
I have come back to the final few minutes so many times. I was just watching TNG’s Pen Pals and found myself angry that Picard was willing to let a whole civilization, represented in a little girl, die because it meant upholding the Prime Directive. “That is the very irony… a philosophy that we will not impose our values on others, means we will let others die for the sake of our values.”
Counterpoint: Picard is restrained but in the hands of Starfleet mad admiral of the week, many societies would be "corrected" to fit in with Federation standards or demand help.
It's one of the reasons I believe General Order Number One (PD) is not only necessary but a necessity to prevent starfleet captain's from going too far.
Like a Spaceborne Salvation Army changing people in return for aid or tech
This colony seems to be built along similar lines to the one described in Brave New World.
I know I'm only echoing what everyone else has already been commenting, but I love that entire speech on the prime directive.
"Keeping a culture alive is an ideal. Keeping _people_ alive is a moral responsibility." This is very well said, and it'll stick with me for quite a while.
Wow, this is one of the few PD episodes involving Earth-originating humans. The only other one I can think of is that S2(?) Discovery episode. Normally when they find Earthers who've been long isolated from Federation society (e.g. "Up the Long Ladder") the PD doesn't even come up. (TOS "The Paradise Syndrome" is a weird edge case of a relocated pre-spacefaring human society.)
I'm kind of soured on the PD as a concept art this point. It probably felt right in an era of global post-colonial struggles. But it's so damn paternalistic: a civilization hasn't developed a single advanced technology and they're shut out of the galactic community entirely no matter what else they need or have accomplished. But launch a single warp-driven vehicle from the ashes of a divided war-torn world and suddenly you're part of the club of interstellar empires who are centuries ahead of you. Imagine if 5 minutes after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk some aliens showed up and gifted the Earth with iPhones, artificial hearts, vaccines for everything, Borlaug's Green Revolution, the internet, supersonic jets and atomic bombs.
The prime directive is there to ensure we do not cause harm. For example, giving warp technology to a prewarp culture that is not ready for it. And to ensure Starfleet isn’t playing God. Such as interfering in evolution/development… or to interfere in politics, such as staying out of the Klingon civil war. I don’t agree that it’s a philosophy, but it’s also not a straight jacket. If we can offer aid when requested, without doing harm, i feel that shouldn’t be a violation of the directive.