It’s an interesting space version of non-interventionism. In the real world, intervention is a very complex issue to navigate. Particularly since most forms of national intervention have monetary drivers that make the choice much more about how it benefits the intervening country rather than the intervened.
I think DS9 is the only series to really address Statfleet’s long term effects of intruding onto other cultures and forcing them to change.
I went to a panel on the problems with the Prime Directive at Chicon 8. There was a lawyer there who actually works with international aid organizations on how they intervene. His biggest problem with the Prime Directive is that it’s too simple. They have stacks of rules about how exactly they go about this. There are places where they’re not allowed to go because somebody fucked this up bad at some point in the past, and those people don’t owe them access just because they promise to be better now.
IIRC, there is a throwaway line somewhere (from Data, I think) that says the Prime Directive is followed up by a hundred little rules defining out the specifics, but it’s never treated that way.
I’ve always assumed the Prime Directive was Rodenberry’s attempt to explain why we aren’t being obviously contacted by more advanced aliens attempting to fix all our problems for us, and his awareness how we would likely react to such intervention at the height of the Cold War.
I like that McFarlane just said “fuck that” in The Orville. He kept the gist — leave developing civilizations alone — but doesn’t even consider allowing them to go extinct for stupid reasons.
And they even had an episode that explained why the Union had a “Prime Directive” and what happened when they tried to introduce new technology to a planet that wasn’t ready for it.
Isn’t that also part of the ST lore? Or did I mix up The Orville and Star Trek canon… :/
Really early on, too. It was one of the things that made me go “oh wait this isn’t just fart jokes in space”.
Though to be fair, the reality is that no matter how advanced we get there’s still gonna be fart jokes in space. That scene in the cafeteria where everyone’s getting Bortus to eat random things seems like a far more realistic vision of a space-faring post-scarcity future.
The Orville is Star Trek if the federation actually had to recruit real people.
Though to be fair, the reality is that no matter how advanced we get there’s still gonna be fart jokes in space. That scene in the cafeteria where everyone’s getting Bortus to eat random things seems like a far more realistic vision of a space-faring post-scarcity future.
This is exactly why I love lower decks, it’s so much closer to how we would probably act in the 24th century vs the heroized live action stuff lmao
The Enterprise bridge crew are the best of the best. Lower Decks is a story about the mediocre of the mediocre
Ehh. Mighta been born that way (even that’s debatable) but definitely not anymore. Tendi is the ass-kicking heir to a pirate dynasty, Rutherford is an insanely talented and obsessive engineer, Beckett seems borderline unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat and explicitly dodges promotions, and Boimler is Boimler.
Im hoping they figure out how to rotate fresh characters into the cast as the originals fade away (ie Tendi), and let the cycle repeat until canceled
That’s Star Trek as hell
The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.
Mariner became an ass kicker at Starfleet. Rutherford turned his genius into something caring and kind. Tendi learned to feel accepted for every part of herself and to use her two halves together. Boimler got bold.
A positive environment for people to learn and grow can transform the mediocre of the mediocre into the best of the best. It drew out the hidden talents within them and turned them into badasses
They save them in tos as well.
Yeah, but in TOS we also see what happens if you forget a book about the chicago mob of the 1920s on a developing planet.
So the question the Prime Directive poses is: what aspects of the Great Filter do we leave in place?
Do we save a developing civilization from an asteroid they have zero way of stopping?
Do we defuse a political situation that will end in nuclear war and destruction of their civilization?
Well, the second one is a direct result of their own and controllable actions. The first is entirely out of their control and just got dealt a bad hand lol
Great filters are strictly hypothetical anyway.
