Violations of the Prime Directive by Kirk and Picard

[TheDarkling]

Why would Starfleet have such a law anyway, if the Federation didn't also follow it?

Who knows but apparently civilians don't have to follow the Prime Directive.

DATA
Mister Ramsey is correct,
Counselor. The Odin was not a
starship, which means its crew
is not bound by the Prime
Directive. If he and the other
survivors wish to stay here, there
is absolutely nothing we can do.

Of course this interferes with other examples so my guess would be that the Prime Directive doesn't apply to civilians for societies which have already been introduced to the idea of other species.

[Skylon]

I'm not sure it was 'fannish insanity' that resulted in this. Men like Ronald Moore watched and loved TOS, and generally his Trek episodes were solid. But men like Braga were quite proud to say they never watched a single episode of TOS. I can only imagine most of the writers being in the Braga/Berman camp.

Yeah, but Moore wrote "Redemption" which featured the "fuck the Klingons...it's internal" view of the Prime Directive.

Could the PD be very vaugely written into Federation law? Allowing for two interpretations:

1) You only can't interfere with pre-warp civilizations (unless you have a damn good reason/there has already been interference).

2) You can't interfere with any civilizations internal affairs.

Honestly, by the latter logic, the UFP just should have said " fuck off" to the Klingons and let their homeworld die when Praxis blew up in ST VI.

[ShadowSonic]

Well, for the Praxis thing:

It blew up because the Klingons overmined it for energy, which they needed for their enormous military budget, which was enormous due to the cold war situation with the Federation. Thus Praxis' destruction wasn't entirely an internal issue, it was due to the relations between two powers, the Federation being one of said powers.

The Klingon thing in Redemption, well it would've been one hell of a short civil war if the full force of the Federation was brought in to support Gowron, so they needed the Feds out for plot reasons.

Though they could've just had Gowron deny Fed aid, saying he would lose his soldier's respect if he went to the Feds for help.

As for the difference in not saving a planet from a coment vs Troi playing a romulan: Troi was kidnapped and surgically altered against her will, it wasn't a Fed operation it was the Romulan underground doing all of this without her consent. I'm sure she had more pressing concerns than whining about the PD violation at the time.

As for comparing TOS writing era to TNG + era, the TOS TV era consisted of 78 or so episodes, whereas TNG+ is something like 650 episodes. I think they get a little bit of slack for running into inconsistencies eventually.

Let's not forget the TOS movies also involve the magical Genesis device, Kirk never bothering to check on Khan even though you'd think McGiver's family would demand someone check up on her, Whales somehow communicating across thousands of light years with their calls alone, "The Final Frontier" and the "let's work together with Klingons so that we won't have to work together with Klingons" conspiracy of ST6. So the writing there wasn't exactly more solid than TNG+.

[Batman]

Well, for the Praxis thing:
It blew up because the Klingons overmined it for energy, which they needed for their enormous military budget, which was enormous due to the cold war situation with the Federation. Thus Praxis' destruction wasn't entirely an internal issue, it was due to the relations between two powers, the Federation being one of said powers.

As that happened during TOS where the PD actually made sense this is relevant how?

The Klingon thing in Redemption, well it would've been one hell of a short civil war if the full force of the Federation was brought in to support Gowron, so they needed the Feds out for plot reasons.

Out Of Universe. Try again.

Though they could've just had Gowron deny Fed aid, saying he would lose his soldier's respect if he went to the Feds for help.

That would, for a change, have made sense. Too bad it didn't happen that way.

As for comparing TOS writing era to TNG + era, the TOS TV era consisted of 78 or so episodes, whereas TNG+ is something like 650 episodes. I think they get a little bit of slack for running into inconsistencies eventually.

And I think they don't. All of TOS was already there for them to look at, yet they didn't bother to find our what the PD actually is in the first place. And sorry, having more material to me means MORE need to pay attention to consistency, not less. Not that TNG paid any attention whatsoever where the PD is concerned, Picard just applied it as his whims stroke him.

Let's not forget the TOS movies also involve the magical Genesis device,

So?

Kirk never bothering to check on Khan even though you'd think McGiver's family would demand someone check up on her,

Why should Kirk bother in the first place, and once McGiver is declared 'MIA the family is going to do-what,exactly?'

Whales somehow communicating across thousands of light years with their calls alone,

Which never actually happened,

"The Final Frontier"

Which, other than being a shitty movie, is a problem because of?

and the "let's work together with Klingons so that we won't have to work together with Klingons" conspiracy of ST6.

Yeah, because radicals on one side working together with radicals on the other side never happened in real life. Oh wait.

[ShadowSonic]

I was pointing out that TOS had inconsistencies/nonsensical things on par with all the other stuff in TNG+ people harp on. Hell, I still have a hard time accepting that General Order that gives a Starship Captain the right to destroy an entire planet/entire civilization on his own authority without contacting Starfleet Command over it.

As for the PD, is it really so hard to think that the Feds (and the writers) decided to deepen the extent/meaning of the PD to the point that you're not to tamper with another culture, instead of automatically assuming it must be because they're bad writers? Roddenberry himself was in charge of the TNG series bible, so it came from him.

[Patrick Degan]

TOS at least has the excuse that it was the first, and the writers were literally making up the universe as they went along. TNG does not.

[ShadowSonic]

It does have the excuse of being set 100 years after the first series, during which they could've changed some of the rules/laws of starfleet and the Federation, and indeed they did. And that Roddenberry wanted to change a few things himself.

Besides, it's not like they fundamentally changed the laws of physics or anything within Trek, just extended the limits of the PD and stuff, and that seems like a logical evolution if anything. The Feds stopped interfering with non-warp cultures, supplying weapons to primitve cultures and cleaned up their act after incidents like the thing with Captain Tracy, Tyree's world, messing with cultures like in "The Apple", "Spock's Brain", "Return of the Archons", etc.

[RThurmont]

This argument is pointless, IMO, for the simple reason that we've already established that TNG's society is bizarre and diseased. There is no need for any "excuses" as to why the TNG's prime directive made no sense, or had no logical cohesive framework, because the TNG-era federation was clearly (and canonically) governed by a bunch of sociopathic communist retards with severe short-term memory problems (hence the uneven interpretation of the PD from episode to episode).

[ShadowSonic]

...Wow, I must've missed that profound revelation...

[Batman]

I was pointing out that TOS had inconsistencies/nonsensical things on par with all the other stuff in TNG+ people harp on. Hell, I still have a hard time accepting that General Order that gives a Starship Captain the right to destroy an entire planet/entire civilization on his own authority without contacting Starfleet Command over it.

You mean General Order 24? Which was never confirmed to actually exist in the first place, assuming for the moment that Starfleet actually had the ability to carry it out (which it never had)?

As for the PD, is it really so hard to think that the Feds (and the writers) decided to deepen the extent/meaning of the PD to the point that you're not to tamper with another culture, instead of automatically assuming it must be because they're bad writers?

Hello? That would be a valid point if they CONSISTENTLY applied the new PD They DIDN'T. The PD was whatever Picard needed it to be in whatever episode. Yes, that's bad writing.

Roddenberry himself was in charge of the TNG series bible, so it came from him.

Your point being?

[ShadowSonic]

You know, I always assumed that General Order 24 was just a bluff on Kirk and Scotty's part, but then I kept running into other posters who use it as "solid proof" of the TOS Federation's power, attitude, etc, so I didn't know whether it was real or not...

Yeah, I understand what you meant by it being inconsistent, what with Picard visiting the Edo in season one even though they had no warp, then later on going on about the PD later, I was just saying that there reasons for why it may have changed in the first place, not how it was applied later. though how it was applied in TNG (don't intervene with any culture's internal affairs) seems to be consistent, even if Picard wasn't.

[Batman]

Yeah, I understand what you meant by it being inconsistent, what with Picard visiting the Edo in season one even though they had no warp, then later on going on about the PD later, I was just saying that there reasons for why it may have changed in the first place, not how it was applied later. though how it was applied in TNG (don't intervene with any culture's internal affairs) seems to be consistent, even if Picard wasn't.

It's not only Picard. The very EXISTENCE of DS9 requires the UFP to ignore the PD as you put it.. As does Insurrection, BTW.

[Aaron]

It's not only Picard. The very EXISTENCE of DS9 requires the UFP to ignore the PD as you put it.. As does Insurrection, BTW.

Wasn't the Federation at Bajor at the request of the Bajorans and in the process for membership though? Seems kind of a gray area where the PD is concerned.

[ShadowSonic]

Yeah, wouldn't that mean they couldn't admit any new members after the extension of the PD?

[Batman]

The TNG version of the PD is a bit on the 'never really defined in the first place' side.

[Patrick Degan]

It does have the excuse of being set 100 years after the first series, during which they could've changed some of the rules/laws of starfleet and the Federation, and indeed they did. And that Roddenberry wanted to change a few things himself.

What sort of horseshit non-sequiter argument is that?! The only rules that really apply are what the writers are supposed to be following, and the argument is whether or not they knew what the fuck they were doing or could be bothered to actually pay attention to what the previous episodes said.

Besides, it's not like they fundamentally changed the laws of physics or anything within Trek, just extended the limits of the PD and stuff, and that seems like a logical evolution if anything. The Feds stopped interfering with non-warp cultures, supplying weapons to primitve cultures and cleaned up their act after incidents like the thing with Captain Tracy, Tyree's world, messing with cultures like in "The Apple", "Spock's Brain", "Return of the Archons", etc.

No, the writers supplanted the TOS Prime Directive with their own ill thought-out absolutist version which led to dopey scenes like Picard and crew actually standing by to "honour" the people they're simply allowing to die on a planet which is losing its atmosphere —and then expecting the viewers to understand the Federation viewpoint as the correct one.

[ShadowSonic]

It's been a while since I saw "Homeward", was the atmosphere thing something Picard and co could prevent, or was Nikolai just begging them to save the populace?

If it's the second, then what the hell was Picard supposed to do, summon several ships, have the entire race beamed up and exposed to this advanced alien civilization, then find a new planet for them and set them back down, and just leave them to try and make sense of it all and set up a new life for themselves like nothing happened?

As for the new PD, that would've been an edict from Gene himself that the writers got saddled with, not something they just "made up".

[ShadowSonic]

[quote="Patrick Degan"]
What sort of horseshit non-sequiter argument is that?! The only rules that really apply are what the writers are supposed to be following, and the argument is whether or not they knew what the fuck they were doing or could be bothered to actually pay attention to what the previous episodes said.
quote]

The argument is that Roddenberry wanted some things changed from how they were in TOS, and used the 100 year gap between series as the in-universe explanation for why some things are different from the way they were in TOS. Thus the changes were intentional, and not just "they didn't know what the fuck they were doing".

[Patrick Degan]

What sort of horseshit non-sequiter argument is that?! The only rules that really apply are what the writers are supposed to be following, and the argument is whether or not they knew what the fuck they were doing or could be bothered to actually pay attention to what the previous episodes said.

The argument is that Roddenberry wanted some things changed from how they were in TOS, and used the 100 year gap between series as the in-universe explanation for why some things are different from the way they were in TOS. Thus the changes were intentional, and not just "they didn't know what the fuck they were doing".

That's the excuse and a poor one at that —Gene Roddenberry effectively had lost day-to-day control over the Franchise almost from the middle of season one and by season three had handed everything off to his successor, Rick Berman. And even if we go with the "Gene Wanted It" argument, it still doesn't disprove that the previous material was simply being ignored wholesale, nor the argument that what resulted was very ill thought-out.

[Stofsk]

I was pointing out that TOS had inconsistencies/nonsensical things on par with all the other stuff in TNG+ people harp on. Hell, I still have a hard time accepting that General Order that gives a Starship Captain the right to destroy an entire planet/entire civilization on his own authority without contacting Starfleet Command over it.

You mean General Order 24? Which was never confirmed to actually exist in the first place, assuming for the moment that Starfleet actually had the ability to carry it out (which it never had)?

Both of you don't seem to get what was said in that episode. First of all, GO 24 doesn't give 'death star' level firepower to starships. Get this though: if you drop antimatter bombs onto a planet, aiming for population centres and installations, what do you suppose might happen?

'Never confirmed to exist' - right, that's why Scotty followed the order. In terms of plot, if General Order 24 never existed then what precisely was Scotty doing? He and Kirk didn't have time to work out some kind of code before the latter beamed down.

'Never had the ability to carry out' - that's if you assume 'destroy a planet/civilisation' means Death Star or ISD level firepower. Who says it does? If WW3 had happened we wouldn't have used antimatter or turbolasers, but civilisation would have still taken a fall. The Enterprise may not have hundred-gigaton-per-shot turbolasers, but it has antimatter torpedos.

As far as why they would have an order like that, ShadowSonic, TOS depicted an age of sail motif for the show. My understanding is that sea captains in that era had wide-ranging authority and powers, because the lag in communications necessitated individual autonomy when no way of updating orders could reach personnel in the field. Episodes like "Balance of Terror" point this out quite clearly. And the Romulan Neutral Zone is fairly close to Earth as well.

[Uraniun235]

It's very questionable indeed how much direct influence Roddenberry really retained on TNG, considering that Andrew Probert described a very drastic change of environment when Rick Berman began his reign.

Gene was a funny guy. Some people disliked him while others feared him. Most of us, however, liked him.........a lot. He was very approachable and, if he wasn't in a meeting with someone, you could almost always drop in on him. I found him easy to talk to and he ALWAYS seemed open to other people's ideas. He would then run them through his "Gene-filter" to see if they worked with his vision of the Trek universe. Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn't but I always had the feeling that he gave my ideas serious consideration. That was nice because the few times that he turned me down flat, I knew he had a good & logical reason. Usually, he would come back at me, though, with a variation of one of my suggestions which somehow would work for the both of us. On the script writing side, I've heard things were different, but on the design side, he was good at delegating work and then stepping back to see what you could do. If it didn't work for him, he would always work with you to get it right. When he saw my initial ideas on what I'd hoped the Next Generation's Enterprise might look like, he really liked them and, as I developed the ship's look, his only two changes were that I place the ship's bridge back on top of the saucer, (I had it buried in the middle) and that I make the ship's engines a little longer (my design was stylishly shorter). What a compliment! Everything else went through as designed. I couldn't have asked for anything better. Then Rick Berman was placed in charge about halfway through the first season. Suddenly we couldn't see Gene any more unless we went through Berman first. I don't know what happened but I do know that this was Hollywood rearing its head once again and things went downhill from there. That was my final "straw" and I moved away from the film business after Trek's first season ended production.

(source)

[Uraniun235]

This argument is pointless, IMO, for the simple reason that we've already established that TNG's society is bizarre and diseased. There is no need for any "excuses" as to why the TNG's prime directive made no sense, or had no logical cohesive framework, because the TNG-era federation was clearly (and canonically) governed by a bunch of sociopathic communist retards with severe short-term memory problems (hence the uneven interpretation of the PD from episode to episode).

You know, I've been wondering when we'll finally get to the point where we just throw up our hands and say that for suspension of disbelief to continue to work, everyone must either be mentally retarded, psychotic, or on drugs.

(edit: this applies only to TNG+)

[Patrick Degan]

I was pointing out that TOS had inconsistencies/nonsensical things on par with all the other stuff in TNG+ people harp on. Hell, I still have a hard time accepting that General Order that gives a Starship Captain the right to destroy an entire planet/entire civilization on his own authority without contacting Starfleet Command over it.

You mean General Order 24? Which was never confirmed to actually exist in the first place, assuming for the moment that Starfleet actually had the ability to carry it out (which it never had)?

Um, ahem:

This is the commander of the USS Enterprise. All cities and ground installations on Eminiar 7 have been located, identified, and fed into our fire control computers. In one hour and forty minutes, the inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed. You have that long to surrender your hostages.

and

If all goes well, you can start beaming up in ten minutes. If not... Carry out General Order 24 on schedule.

The order definitely does exist: "A Taste Of Armageddon" states it directly. As for "not being capable of carrying out the order", it is assumed in this episode and implied in others that the Enterprise does have the requisite firepower to do the job. Maybe not a BDZ-level destruction but then that is not really necessary to bomb a world back into the stone age.

[RThurmont]

You know, I've been wondering when we'll finally get to the point where we just throw up our hands and say that for suspension of disbelief to continue to work, everyone must either be mentally retarded, psychotic, or on drugs.

Well, that's why I don't really do suspension of disbelief. My philosophy when it comes to Star Trek is to sit down, shut up, and enjoy, because any attempts to read any cohesive thread between the different parts of it are doomed to failure. It (with the exception of TOS) is basically a low-calibre form of SF entertainment, something to enjoy on Spike TV in the middle afternoon if you're bored. TNG, for all its faults, remains highly watchable, and occasionally you catch a glimmer of the really interesting and unusual ideas that Gene Roddenberry injected into it in his efforts to mold his personal utopia, although its enjoyable more in the manner as someone might enjoy Cordwainer Smith, than say, Thomas More.