In the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the episode “Symbiosis,”
the Enterprise answers a distress call and finds itself entangled in the affairs of two
neighboring planets.
Eventually it’s revealed that the inhabitants of one planet are severely addicted to a drug
produced by the inhabitants of the other planet.
Captain Picard decides that he cannot intervene to correct this obviously exploitative relationship
because to do so would violate the Prime Directive.
At the end of the episode, as Picard is preparing to leave the solar system, he and Doctor Crusher
have a scene in the turbolift that goes something like this:
[Crusher:] Seems like we should have done something to help that planet full of suffering
drug addicts we just left.
[Picard:] Nope, you’re wrong and I’ll tell you why.
Halt turbolift!
[Crusher:] Oh, here we go . . .
[Picard:] The Prime Directive is more than a rule we’re supposed to follow.
It’s a philosophy, and a good one.
History shows that whenever an advanced civilization interferes with a less advanced civilization,
no matter how good their intentions are, it always goes horribly wrong and ruins everything.
[Crusher:] What about the Vulcans guiding the development of Earth following first contact?
[Picard:] That’s not canon yet!
Look, the Prime Directive is there for a reason.
Did I mention what history shows us, because I can go over it again.
[Crusher:] Dude, I’m a doctor and a commander in Starfleet – I know about the Prime Directive.
Why are you lecturing me like I’ve only just heard of it?
I just think it sucks that we’re leaving all those people to deal with the pain of
their addiction and withdrawal.
[Picard:] Yeah, well, we’re leaving now and we’re never coming back, so it’s whatever.
Resume turbolift!
[Crusher:] Oh, tell me you did not just “resume turbolift” your way out of a conversation
with me!
I think Picard is actually less condescending in my version.
[shrugs] He was a prick in the first season.
His odd decision to respond to Crusher’s compassion for a suffering people with a condescending
little speech notwithstanding, in that scene Picard gives a good summary of what the Prime
Directive is and why it exists.
Unfortunately, the producers of Star Trek aren’t always so clear and consistent when
it came to their depiction of Starfleet’s General Order Number One.
That’s why, despite how reasonable Picard makes it sound, I sometimes find myself questioning
whether the Prime Directive is such a great thing after all.
It’s a question I’ll explore a bit further in this video, which I’m calling
Why the Prime Directive Might Actually Be a Terrible Rule
The concept of the Prime Directive was introduced in the Classic Star Trek episode “Return
of the Archons,” where, in a sign of things to come, Captain Kirk violates it a few minutes
after Spock mentions it for the first time.
But Kirk had a good reason to violate the Prime Directive, or at least he thought he
did.
And that’s really the only reason the rule is there: to force the captain to make a choice
– to follow the rules, or to do what he knows in his heart is right.
But it’s not automatically a bad rule just because the captains broke it a lot.
In fact, as originally conceived it’s not a bad rule at all, at least in theory.
In “Return of the Archons” Spock makes reference to the “Prime Directive of noninterference.”
And usually when a Star Trek character cites the Prime Directive, that’s what they’re
talking about, the general order that forbids Starfleet personnel from interfering in the
internal affairs of other civilizations.
That’s a good rule, for the reason Picard cites in “Symbiosis”: meddling in the
affairs of another society, no matter how well intentioned, almost always produces disastrous
results.
This was more than an intellectual abstraction.
Remember that the original Star Trek was being produced during some of the bloodiest years
of the Vietnam War, a period when more and more Americans were starting to feel strongly
that it was not their country’s place to dictate the destinies of other countries.
The original Star Trek referenced Vietnam multiple times during its three-year run.
It’s reasonable to assume there were at least a few writers and producers working
on the show who wished the United States had a Prime Directive of its own, and followed
it.
Unfortunately, the more we learn about Starfleet and how it operates, the more complicated
and ethically dubious its commitment to the Prime Directive starts to seem.
These complications really start to pile up in the Next Generation era, but they have
their beginnings in Classic Trek.
At some point one of the writers or producers must have noticed that pledging to uphold
a non-interference principle is kind of an odd thing for people to do when their primary
mission is to seek out new life and new civilizations . . . and you know the rest.
So the meaning and application of the Prime Directive was tweaked a little to allow the
crew of the Enterprise to do the thing that was the entire basis for the show.
In the second season episode “Bread and Circuses” Kirk and McCoy summarize the Prime
Directive as demanding “no identification of self or mission; no interference with the
social development of said planet; no references to space or the fact that there are other
worlds or more advanced civilizations.”
There ya go!
Visits are okay, just try not to let ‘em see you, don’t tell ‘em who you are if
they do see you, don’t mess with their society, and keep your trap shut about outer space
and aliens and stuff.
How hard is that?!?
In Star Trek: The Next Generation the “observe but don’t be observed” interpretation
was cited as justification for the Federation’s use of holographically concealed duck blinds
to do anthropological research on pre-warp civilizations.
Every time we see one of these duck blinds something goes horribly wrong.
But that’s not the point – we’re talking about an action-adventure show where something
going wrong was the catalyst for the plot of almost every episode.
“The crew of the Enterprise visits a remote outpost where scientists are secretly observing
a primitive society, and everything goes pretty much as planned!
Don’t miss the next exciting episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation!”
The point is, studying less advanced civilizations in secret so as to avoid influencing the development
of their society seems scientifically sound.
The civilization being studied is allowed to develop without outside interference, and
researchers are able to learn more about how societies grow and evolve.
It’s win-win!
But is it ethically sound?
The ethical issues don’t become apparent as long as the society being studied isn’t
in any danger.
But what if a natural disaster threatens to destroy it – a disaster Starfleet can mitigate
or even prevent?
Does following the Prime Directive mean allowing a society in such a predicament to suffer
the disaster and possibly be destroyed?
Apparently it does.
In the TNG episode “Homeward,” Captain Picard allows the Boraalan civilization to
die when its planet’s atmosphere goes bye-bye.
A small group of Boraalans are saved thanks to Worf’s brother Nikolai Rozhenko, but
Nikolai acts in defiance of Captain Picard’s orders and is clearly presented as having
violated the Prime Directive.
Pretty much everyone else on the ship is super annoyed at Nikolai, even Worf, who’s like
“I can’t believe you broke the Prime Directive and neglected your duties as a scientist.”
And Nikolai’s like, “Oh, the universal translator must be malfunctioning, because
that’s a really strange way of telling me I’m a hero for saving all those lives.”
And the thing is, by the end of that episode, Worf has come around to Nikolai’s side of
things.
He’s still a stickler for the rules, but he also admits that in this case Nikolai did
the right thing by rescuing some of the Boraalans.
And that’s not just Worf being led by his heart rather than his head.
There’s something terribly cold blooded about choosing to become involved in a society
– even if it’s just as an unseen observer – then standing by and doing nothing while
that society is wiped out of existence.
Of course, the Boraalans aren’t the best example to use, since their entire planet
was rendered uninhabitable due to an event that even the advanced technology of the Federation
couldn’t prevent, and it wasn’t logistically feasible to relocate the entire Boraalan population
to another planet.
Plus, the Boraalans who were relocated only survived because they just so happened to
be in the group that Nikolai had grown attached to.
All the other Boraalans on the planet died.
That doesn’t seem fair.
A better example is what Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise do in the opening
sequence of Star Trek Into Darkness.
They intervene to prevent a volcano from erupting and destroying a pre-warp civilization living
on the planet Nibiru.
Eventually Kirk is forced to reveal their presence to the indigenous people in order
to rescue Spock, but the plan going in was to kill the volcano in secret and leave without
the Nibirans ever knowing they’d been there.
However, when the Enterprise returns to Earth, Admiral Pike scolds Spock for trying to get
around the Prime Directive on a technicality.
Apparently, even if the mission had gone according to plan, stopping the volcano from killing
the Nibirans would have violated the intended spirit, if not the exact letter, of the Prime
Directive.
But wouldn’t allowing an entire civilization to die a preventable death violate the spirit
of the Prime Directive, too?
The rule was established to discourage Starfleet from contaminating less advanced cultures,
but isn’t utter destruction worse than contamination?
[Off Pissed-as-Hell Pike on the monitor:] Don’t make that face at me, Pike!
I’m just asking questions!
And let’s not forget, the “no identification of self or mission” portion of the Prime
Directive doesn’t apply to all non-Federation societies, just the ones that haven’t developed
warp drive technology yet.
Which on one hand makes sense – once a society learns to travel through space faster than
light, it would be silly for all the other warp capable species to hide.
But on the other hand, the development of warp drive seems like an arbitrary line to
draw.
Dude, seriously, calm down.
Stressing out like that’ll put you in an early grave.
As we know from Star Trek: First Contact, the Vulcans revealed themselves to the people
of Earth like a few minutes after Earth’s first-ever warp-speed flight!
And as we know from Enterprise, which begins about a hundred years after first contact,
the Vulcans took a very active role in guiding the development of Earth.
And despite some understandable and possibly justified resentment on the part of some humans,
it seems like that worked out pretty well for Earth.
Yes, the Vulcan involvement with Earth occurred before the Prime Directive was established,
but the Vulcans themselves seemed to have some kind of an equivalent rule – it’s
explained that they chose to visit Earth after learning humans had invented warp drive.
I should also mention that the Prime Directive doesn’t stop the Federation government from
meddling in the internal affairs of planets that fall under its jurisdiction.
Remember the conflict with the Maquis?
That rebellion of colonists along the border between Federation and Cardassian space that
began because the Federation gave their planets away to the Cardassians?
Let’s just review a little bit of what you’re signing up for when you enlist in Starfleet:
you have to let all these people [Nibirans] die when a volcano fries their planet, because
hey, it’s wrong to interfere in the internal affairs of other societies.
But if the Federation council decides it’s a good idea, you also have to kick these people
[Native American colonists from “Journey’s End”] off their land.
Do either of those things seem right?
The complexities, legally and morally, that govern when to intervene in the affairs of
another society and when to sit back and watch them all go extinct, are briefly touched on
in several Star Trek episodes, but never really explored in depth.
And that’s because the Prime Directive wasn’t invented in order to allow Star Trek’s writers
to interrogate the values of the Federation.
It was invented to give the heroes a rule that they had to decide either to follow or
to break.
Like many elements of the franchise, the Prime Directive started out as something relatively
simple, and grew into something almost incomprehensibly complicated due to the fact that people have
been making Star Trek for over fifty years, and every writer has their own ideas about
how tropes like the Prime Directive ought to be used in order to craft the best possible
story.
That’s why in some episodes the Prime Directive is a rule that prevents the heroes from doing
the right thing which should obviously be broken, and in other episodes it’s a rule
that reminds them that sometimes doing their duty means not being able to follow their
hearts.
And sometimes it means letting millions of people die from a disease you have the cure
for because hey, we’re not out here to play God, isn’t that right, Jonathan?!
I know, I know, technically the Prime Directive doesn’t exist yet when that story takes
place.
Hey, maybe “Dear Doctor” isn’t so much the origin story for the Prime Directive,
but the explanation for why the Prime Directive is so weird and inconsistent!
Hey!
Yeah, that must be it!
Ha ha!
I guess it all boils down to this.
Why might the Prime Directive actually be a terrible rule?
Because it’s vague, and it’s contradictory, and it invites conflicting interpretations.
The “don’t interfere in the internal affairs of a society” bit is good, though it would
be better if it applied equally all around, to warp-capable and pre-warp, Federation and
non-Federation societies.
The “stand by and let entire civilizations perish from something you could prevent, even
if you’ve been secretly observing that civilization for years” bit?
Not so much.
This concludes my presentation.
[Graphics - Crusher and Picard having breakfast]
[Crusher:] So, how many times have you broken the Prime Directive since we hung that planet
full of drug addicts out to dry?
Eight?
Nine?
[Picard:] Can we not do this first thing in the morning?
[Crusher:] What?
I’m just wondering . . .
[Picard:] Fine.
You sit over there and wonder.
I’ll be over here eating my breakfast, assuming I can figure out how I’m supposed to eat
this bizarre, alien culinary monstrosity you made for me.
[Crusher:] Jean-Luc, that’s a waffle.
Hey there, Trek Actuallarians?
Can that be a thing?
Never mind.
Hope you liked this one.
I just wanted to drop in here at the end to let you know that the subject of the next
Trek, Actually video will be one of my favorite characters, and perhaps one of yours as well,
the one and only Lieutenant Barclay!
Look for that one coming up in a few weeks, and thanks for watching!