Remake the Prime Directive(RAR)

[bilateralrope]

So yes it might take years

Taking years is still a problem. I doubt the Federation has the capability to spend years uplifting every single civilization within its borders.

As for outside it's borders, how many days does an exploration ship usually get in each system ?

[Panashe]

... they wouldn't have the comprehension abilities to understand what aliens were.

First generation might (or not) have a problem, their kids would regard it all as standard.

Unless you are referring to a species that is so far down the evolutionary scale that they would actually be lacking "comprehension abilities," in which case you wouldn't want to help them because they're animals.

I think it'd be a lot like that TNG episode Who Watches the Watchers or any number of SG1 episodes.

In Who Watches the Watchers, Picard fixed the whole God thing by simply talking to the one individual who mistook Picard for one. A little honest conversation.

Taking years is still a problem. I doubt the Federation has the capability to spend years uplifting every single civilization within its borders.

Technological missionaries, people who would basically live on the low tech world for years and decades.

Set up an educational system. Work within the existing system if one exists, as mentioned previously alway show respect.

And no, doing this on every world might not be a option, not a logistical option, help the people you can.
It doesn't have to be "all or nothing."

[bilateralrope]

Technological missionaries, people who would basically live on the low tech world for years and decades.

We are talking planetary populations here. Often ones who are so low tech that their civilizations can't communicate with each other (eg Rome and China around 0AD).

Set up an educational system. Work within the existing system if one exists, as mentioned previously alway show respect.

How much respect do you expect Federation citizens to show to things like human sacrifice ?

Any mass education problem is going to run into problems when the science you want to teach them conflicts with their religion. By educating them faster, you make the problem worse. So you have to protect your missionaries from violent extremists. Then, after your missionaries demonstrate how well the technology does against violence, you have to protect the technology from someone who saw how effective it was and decides that he wants it to help him in warfare.

How many people do you think the Federation would need to send to properly uplift a planet like Earth around 0AD ?

Given how often the TOS and TNG Enterprises were the only ships in the area, Starfleet doesn't have enough ships to spare any for the uplifting. Even without a war on. So the missionaries will have to do without one, upping the minimum number of people required.

I'm thinking hundreds, maybe thousands of people are required. Where would Starfleet get that many volunteers ?
How would they transport them to the planet ?

And no, doing this on every world might not be a option, not a logistical option, help the people you can.
It doesn't have to be "all or nothing."

I don't think Starfleet has the resources to uplift even one planet.

Uplifting simply isn't an option for a single Starfleet ship to do. Their choices are limited to not interfering or quick interference that is very likely to go wrong except in very specific circumstances like a planet killing asteroid.

Maybe the Prime Directive started as rules about when a captain was allowed to interfere. One which became more and more restrictive as captains made the wrong call because of factors they couldn't have any knowledge of. Maybe someone even decided that letting a planet die to a planet killer is worth it to prevent multiple planets get screwed up by well meaning attempts at help. Leading to a total ban on interference, maybe with the hope that captains would be moral enough to break the rule when necessary.

[Deathstalker]

Maybe the Prime Directive started as rules about when a captain was allowed to interfere. One which became more and more restrictive as captains made the wrong call because of factors they couldn't have any knowledge of. Maybe someone even decided that letting a planet die to a planet killer is worth it to prevent multiple planets get screwed up by well meaning attempts at help. Leading to a total ban on interference, maybe with the hope that captains would be moral enough to break the rule when necessary.

One problem I've always had is that "First Contact" and "Prime Directive" decisions are left up to a ship captain. The show would have been pretty boring if Kirk or Picard were just bus drivers, but really that's what they should be. There should be a whole team on board who handle Prime Directive and First Contact matters. Things could then be handled on a case by case basis.

Asteroid heading to wipe out a planet? Let's give it a nudge and no one would be the wiser.

Nations blasting each other with nukes? Depending on the circumstances, maybe they can be helped, maybe they can't

Another problem is that if the PD was followed very strictly, the Federation could never colonize any planet with any form of life on it. Federation colonists would be interfering with the evolution of the biosphere of a planet. It may take a few million years for civilization to develop but interfering is interfering.

Has the Romulan version of the PD ever been mentioned?

The Klingons might have had to change their PD stance post TOS era but I don't recall if their PD was ever mentioned.

[Borgholio]

I don't think the Klingons and the Romlulans have a Prime Directive. They have conquered many worlds in the expansion of their empires, and a PD would probably interfere with that.

[Elheru Aran]

I don't think the Klingons and the Romlulans have a Prime Directive. They have conquered many worlds in the expansion of their empires, and a PD would probably interfere with that.

Actually, I would surmise that they probably do have a central directive or two to their missions. They just aren't as... humanitarian as the Federation. Something along the lines of, "The best interests of the Klingon Empire must always be served in the execution of each mission" or whatever. It's more of a personal mission statement than a guideline for dealing with new alien races, but it could be interpreted as such. For example, it might be considered more beneficial to ally with a first-contact race and provide them with technology in exchange for soldiers than to simply conquer them outright.

Now I'm picturing a global broadcast of a Klingon version of the Old Spice commercial... "I'm holding a bat'leth. Now I'm riding a Bird of Prey starship. Now I've got a handful of credits. Join the Klingon Empire, and you can be me. I've got awesome dreadlocks."

[Borgholio]

Actually, I would surmise that they probably do have a central directive or two to their missions. They just aren't as... humanitarian as the Federation.

Oh yeah they probably have mission objectives, but I doubt they care about meddling with younger civilizations...which is what the Federation cares about most.

[Prometheus Unbound]

How much respect do you expect Federation citizens to show to things like human sacrifice ?

Any mass education problem is going to run into problems when the science you want to teach them conflicts with their religion. By educating them faster, you make the problem worse. So you have to protect your missionaries from violent extremists. Then, after your missionaries demonstrate how well the technology does against violence, you have to protect the technology from someone who saw how effective it was and decides that he wants it to help him in warfare.

How many people do you think the Federation would need to send to properly uplift a planet like Earth around 0AD ?

Given how often the TOS and TNG Enterprises were the only ships in the area, Starfleet doesn't have enough ships to spare any for the uplifting. Even without a war on. So the missionaries will have to do without one, upping the minimum number of people required.

I snipped the rest

But I have to agree with this. We're not talking about having a necessarily rational discussion here. You're talking about throwing their entire belief systems into chaos. Those gods ? Not real. That chariot? Ball of plasma.

Hell, I repeatedly hear Dawkins and co saying something like 30-40% of Americans belief the Earth is less than 7000 years old. Certainly a billion muslims claim to. We're talking a large portion of the planet in the 21st century that still believe in angels despite stuff like the apollo landings and LHC.

You wanna try that with ancient egyptians or any other society in the iron / bronze age?

Humans are great, humans are wonderful, but we're also morons, especially in big groups.

I can't see who I was originally replying to (apologies, the new post screen doesn't show previous posts and I'm lazy) but it took human civilisation another eight thousand years to figure out gravity and the fact that the solar system... is. Where we are in science, now, is just the stuff we can explain in the "real world" - you start introducing transporter beams, replicators, shields and phasers.... /o\

It'd be generations and generations of extremely rational, curious and intelligent humans, of any era. Ancient Greece / Egypt? These people built 400 metre high mountains of stone because the gods told them.

Think of the wars fought with this technology?? These people practiced human sacrifice. you imagine WW1 with phasers or even nukes. WW2? That's less than a hundred years ago. We have not grown out of this need to kill the tribe that is different to us. These people do not have the social aspects of evolution to fall back on that we do and Unit-731, Auschwitz, the Killing Fields... neither have we.

[Prometheus Unbound]

**I edited my post but the timer ran out so I'm posting a new reply... sorry!**


Damaged and flawed and invoked in stupid situations as it is, the idea behind the Prime Directive, I think, is to prevent exactly that; giving technology or knowledge to someone who is not ready for it.

Why it later goes on to mean entire planets can be destroyed because "that's the natural course of history" or whatever bullshit we see in later series, even when they're broadcasting an intra-galactic SOS to anyone in range (!!!!?!!!!) ... that escapes me and I can't begin to rationalise it. It makes no sense whatsoever and is totally dependent on the writer and episode. One week it's ok to give weapons to stone age people to "level the playing field" (TOS episode I can't remember the name of), the next a space-capable and subspace-radio using species (Sarajenka) can't be contacted because it will DESTROY THEM even though their planet is about to blow up.

Or it's ok to assist a government with capturing a fugitive and enemy of the state (Rogar Denar) but not ok to assist a government with capturing a fugitive and enemy of the state (Duras).

Sometimes it's applied well; Voyager's episode with the water planet - the planet is going to eventually fizzle out, the space-faring, warp capable race who live there know, Voyager gives them the specifics, they choose not to because they're like republicans at a global warming convention - but Voyager can't force them to act. It's their choice.

That's a good example of it.

TNG's "First Contact" (not the movie) was another good example.

That makes sense to me.

But then you get retarded shit like Caretaker, Time and Again, the Sarajenka episode and so on. to say nothing of Enterprise's fuck-ups which I don't care to remember so please don't even bring them up.


that's not to say the Federation is necessarily hypocritcal in its overall policy. TNG's Home Soil ("ugly bags of mostly water" episode) had terraforming of a planet halt (and it was policy to do so, the drama being that one of the scientists hid it because of ego / hubris) because of microscopic organisms living there.

Star Trek II had the line "There can't be so much as a microbe or the show's off!" with regard to Genesis being detonated on a planet that may have a DNA strand on it

It seems in some cases, even when it hurts the interests of the Federation itself, at the expense of a bacteria, they wont touch it.


It's very, very confusing.

[Batman]

Um-in TWOK the concern wasn't the well-being of the bacteria and what they might become 5 billion years down the line, it was that they would fuck up the Genesis effect.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Um-in TWOK the concern wasn't the well-being of the bacteria and what they might become 5 billion years down the line, it was that they would fuck up the Genesis effect.

Why do you say that? That's never what I took from it. I don't think they make it clear in the film? In ST3 yes that was a bit of a plot point with the microbes from the torpedo surface, but in ST2, that wasn't a known thing. You could be right - may well be, if you take ST3 into account, but I thought it was because they didn't want to change any planets with life.

Neither position would be out of character - that was what I meant where in one film/episode it's ok but in another it's a total violation.

[Eternal_Freedom]

They clearly weren't worrying about screwing up the possible development of the life, since even Carol MArcus considered simply transplanting it was a possibility.

[Batman]

Um-they discuss moving it. Moving an organism offplanet is a pretty damned big interference with its 'natural' evolution. You can take the fact that they wanted to 'move' it rather than just phasering it out of existence as an indicator they try to preserve indigenious life whenever they can but that's about it.
Besides, at the 'nothing but plants and animals' level, they change the 'natural' evolution of a lot of species on every damned planet they colonize. Where they get jittery is the 'existing kinda-sorta-human culture' level.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. The fact that they discuss moving it rather than finding anouther planet show that the lifeless planet was important to the experiment, not that they wanted to avoid interfering in an ecosystem at any cost.

[Batman]

That was my point too, I was responding to Prometheus Unbound.

[Eternal_Freedom]

And I was agreeing with you.

[Borgholio]

So there.

[Prometheus Unbound]

It wasn't Marcus who suggested it. It was Tyrel. She didn't seem to keen on the idea, to me.

Tyrel: Maybe it's something we can transplant?
Chekov: You know vot she'll say.
[cut to next scene]

Marcus: Let me get this straight; Something you can transplant??
Chevok: Yes doctor.
Marcus: Something you can transplant?! I don't know...
Tyrel: It may only be a particle of pre-animate matter
Marcus: Then again it may not. You boys have to be clear on this; there can't be so much as a microbe, or the show's off. [beat] Why don't you take a look, but if it is something that can be moved I want...
Tyrel: You bet, Doctor, we're on our way.

[FaxModem1]

I always took that scene that regular terraforming didn't really matter if there was pre-existing NON-sentient life or not, but for this experiment, they needed tabula rasa to determine if Genesis worked or was just enhancing the life already on a planet.

[Borgholio]

It could go either way in ST-2. They don't explicitly say that the must avoid harming microbial life, but they wouldn't even consider transplanting it if they didn't care. I think it could be a bit of both...desire to avoid killing native life and having a clean testbed for Genesis. Obviously simply terraforming a world will kill a lot more than simple microbes so it does seem rather odd they'd care about something that may take billions of years to develop a brain (if ever).

[Prometheus Unbound]

Yeah could go either way I guess.

TNG's Home Soil had a similar theme going and they weren't meant to terraform if there was any life at all. I'll see if I can dig up the quotes later if you like.

My point was, though, that sometimes it appears that it's not allowed, but on other times (who watches the watchers for example), they're walking around, spreading their own microbes like it aint no thing.

The Prime Directive is almost quantum-like in its existence. You wont know whether it's allowed until it happens or not

[Crazedwraith]

For ST 2. I'd made the connection between McCoy's horror and questions about its use of as a WMD, and Marcus' insistence they'd be no life watsoever on the target planet. I'd thought she was trying really really not set the precedent that genesis can be used the wipe things out. But the other theories seem equally plausibile.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It wasn't Marcus who suggested it. It was Tyrel. She didn't seem to keen on the idea, to me.

Tyrel: Maybe it's something we can transplant?
Chekov: You know vot she'll say.
[cut to next scene]

Marcus: Let me get this straight; Something you can transplant??
Chevok: Yes doctor.
Marcus: Something you can transplant?! I don't know...
Tyrel: It may only be a particle of pre-animate matter
Marcus: Then again it may not. You boys have to be clear on this; there can't be so much as a microbe, or the show's off. [beat] Why don't you take a look, but if it is something that can be moved I want...
Tyrel: You bet, Doctor, we're on our way.

She may not have been keen on it, but she clearly considered it a possibility at least, rather than a flat-out "no chance, keep looking for a dead planet."

[Prometheus Unbound]

She may not have been keen on it, but she clearly considered it a possibility at least, rather than a flat-out "no chance, keep looking for a dead planet."

And Picard wasn't keen on it in Haven but he considered it a possibility.

ST2's example I gave has, I admit, multiple interpretations, some I hadn't even considered before. It's not important, though; it was just one in many examples in which I was saying the prime directive can't really be rationalised. There are episodes that flat out contradict each other that you can't reconcile. Not in any sensible way.

If not ST2, then Home Soil - in that episode it's made very clear that microbes on the planet itself mean you can't terraform it due to the Prime Directive:

ANDL: What do you mean a life form?! What life form?! A Federation recon expedition certified Velara Three lifeless.
PICARD: Understandable, given this particular life form's novel nature.
MANDL: What is that nature?
PICARD: Doctor Crusher is still making her determination. Mister Mandl, you know the Prime Directive.
MANDL: Are you saying that I knowingly defied it?
PICARD: That's what I have to find out. You're a man obsessed with what you do. Who knows what an obsessed man will do to keep going? Kill, perhaps?
MANDL: I create life. I don't take it.
(Mandl storms out, insulted)

[Ted C]

Um-in TWOK the concern wasn't the well-being of the bacteria and what they might become 5 billion years down the line, it was that they would fuck up the Genesis effect.

Why do you say that? That's never what I took from it. I don't think they make it clear in the film? In ST3 yes that was a bit of a plot point with the microbes from the torpedo surface, but in ST2, that wasn't a known thing. You could be right - may well be, if you take ST3 into account, but I thought it was because they didn't want to change any planets with life.

As I understood the situation, it was Dr. Marcus and her team who were dead set against testing the Genesis device on a planet with any sort of life. I'm not sure if Starfleet was that obsessed.