Enterprise 04-30-03

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The Prime Directive is often also used to explain why Startrek Officers do not interfere with politics of other worlds.
They are extremely careful with pre-warp culltures, because even seeing an alien would mean changing their evolution - at this time, they are not expected to see aliens.

At least that what I figured out about it.

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Umbran]

JC, I'm not gonna get into a big Prime Directive legality debate, but I'll make a comment or two and let it lie.

You can read the "Such intereference includes..." to have an implicit, "but is not limited to" attached to it. But if you do, that should logically drive Starfleet to be xenophobic in the extreme. Sufice to say, it is impossible to have normal social contact with another people without "interfering with the development of culture".

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Though, oddly enough, the Prime Directive would not apply. The PD only applies to pre-warp civilizations. Cultures that have warp capability are assumed to be able to handle themselves.

The PD applies to anything internal to a race. During STNG the Federation did not participate directly in the Klingon Civil War because of the Prime Directive.

 

[John Crichton]

JC, I'm not gonna get into a big Prime Directive legality debate, but I'll make a comment or two and let it lie.

Fair enough.

You can read the "Such intereference includes..." to have an implicit, "but is not limited to" attached to it. But if you do, that should logically drive Starfleet to be xenophobic in the extreme. Sufice to say, it is impossible to have normal social contact with another people without "interfering with the development of culture".

I'm actually not reading the "but is not limited to" into it. I'm just going off the inference of the "healthy development of alien life and culture" part of the PD. That would seem to include all cultures. But Starfleet doesn't have to be xenophobic to carry out it's PD. They just have to be careful. For example, I think Trip violated the PD with his actions involving the Congenitor. He did not respect the culture that was tampering with. Now if he was given a decent amount of time to study and get to know more about the alien culture simply by observation, that (to me) would not have interfered with their continuing development. That seems to be the way Starfleet's PD wants to work. Observe and interact without impressing vastly different views - that kind of thing.

I'm not trying to start a debate, I'm just rationalizing my interpretation of the PD. I'm totally cool with anyone's disagreement because I believe the wording to be slightly vague and open to multiple interpretations.

 

[Orius]

Gotta agree with DanMcS. Trip didn't break any written rules of Starfleet. It will be one of the events that leads to the creation of the Prime Directive. That's good to see and I'm glad that it happened in a believable way. I actually had a very strong feeling that the episdoe would end in this way. I liked the feel of it and was, as others have said, relieved that there was no need for an action sequence to make the plot interesting.

Yeah, I definitely agree this is leading to PD here. In fact I believe Archer will probably be responsible for creating it.

Although we see at the beginning of the series that he resents what he percieves as Vulcans holding humanity back, he's learning from actual experience why they do things the way they do. We've seen this in several episodes already -- he judges things from a human perspective, but he's also beginning to realize that a human perspective is limited by the fact that humanity is still new to the interstellar community.

I think what will happen is other Starfleet captain will get out into space, and start interfereing wherever they please, which will cause all sort of problems. That's where the PD comes into play. I think it will probably happen after the run of Enterprise though.
and Picard's time.

 

[Staffan]

Ahh... found him. He played Commander Tomalak in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Commander, Schmommander. The role as G'kar in five seasons of Babylon 5 beats out a few quest appearances on TNG.

 

[Mark]

Just about to watch Enterprise (they rerun it in Chicago on Sunday evening)

Anyone who wishes to join me to discuss it (even if you aren't watching currently) please feel free to join me in the #CMG chat channel on the Psionics.net server

Details (both IRC and java interface) for how to get there are also located here-

http://www.creativemountaingames.com/dmingchat.asp

*edit* OK. Just saw it (missed it last Wednesday due to work exhaustion getting the Plexus - Potent Portals out ). I'll have to let it gel a bit before posting my thoughts on it. First impression...

They went a long way to set me up with the line, "What was that at the end? A Guilt Tripp?"