Ugh, everything about that is just so... overwrought. Fate of the galaxy! Cryptic mystic interstellar mysteries that will surely require several dedicated episodes to explore! Spock has space visions because we need a direct personal link with other Trek for some reason!
They would have to actually expend major effort to make that look any less appealing to me. It's like they sucked all the wonder out of the franchise to replace it with hyperdrama.
The Spock family connection is the single worst aspect of the show, IMO. It undermines the main character, it undermines any pretense of Discovery standing on its own, it makes the universe feel really small... It's just a terrible decision all around. Spock already had a surprise half-brother we knew nothing about, now he has a surprise adopted human sister. Which is hilarious to me given TOS Sarek's disdain for both Starfleet and humans (seriously, rewatch IV's ending... Sarek admits he was wrong about Kirk and Co., but when Spock says "They are my friends," Sarek responds with a resigned "...of course" then quickly changes the subject).
And, as a TOS fan, all of these things tying back to Spock makes Kirk's stunned reaction to learning that Spock is Sarek's son in "Journey to Babel" feel out of place, which annoys me. Given what happened in season 1, Michael and her story should be well known by everyone in Starfleet. Which would mean her background and upbringing would be well known. Which would make Spock even more of a celebrity (not only is he the first Vulcan in Starfleet, his adopted human sister was the Traitor). Which would make his background and upbringing well known as well.
Ugh.
They could've simply created some new Vulcan to be her dad. The story wouldn't have lost anything. Shit, they still could've had Sarek for what little use of an ambassador he was in season 1, but made her Vulcan dad a scientist or something. Maybe introduce a rivalry with Spock if they're so damn determined to have any connection with him.
I'm also not happy about Pike commandeering the Discovery. A series of rotating captains is annoying. After decades of getting hammered with the notion that a captain's command of a ship is a precious thing, Discovery simply chews through them. I get it - it's to heighten the drama, but Pike would make the fifth commanding officer we've seen:
Prime Georgiou on the Shenzhou
Mirror Lorca
Saru for like a day
Mirror Georgiou
Saru again
Now Pike
Ugh, everything about that is just so... overwrought. Fate of the galaxy! Cryptic mystic interstellar mysteries that will surely require several dedicated episodes to explore! Spock has space visions because we need a direct personal link with other Trek for some reason!
They would have to actually expend major effort to make that look any less appealing to me. It's like they sucked all the wonder out of the franchise to replace it with hyperdrama.
The Spock family connection is the single worst aspect of the show, IMO. It undermines the main character, it undermines any pretense of Discovery standing on its own, it makes the universe feel really small... It's just a terrible decision all around. Spock already had a surprise half-brother we knew nothing about, now he has a surprise adopted human sister. Which is hilarious to me given TOS Sarek's disdain for both Starfleet and humans (seriously, rewatch IV's ending... Sarek admits he was wrong about Kirk and Co., but when Spock says "They are my friends," Sarek responds with a resigned "...of course" then quickly changes the subject).
And, as a TOS fan, all of these things tying back to Spock makes Kirk's stunned reaction to learning that Spock is Sarek's son in "Journey to Babel" feel out of place, which annoys me. Given what happened in season 1, Michael and her story should be well known by everyone in Starfleet. Which would mean her background and upbringing would be well known. Which would make Spock even more of a celebrity (not only is he the first Vulcan in Starfleet, his adopted human sister was the Traitor). Which would make his background and upbringing well known as well.
Ugh.
They could've simply created some new Vulcan to be her dad. The story wouldn't have lost anything. Shit, they still could've had Sarek for what little use of an ambassador he was in season 1, but made her Vulcan dad a scientist or something. Maybe introduce a rivalry with Spock if they're so damn determined to have any connection with him.
I'm also not happy about Pike commandeering the Discovery. A series of rotating captains is annoying. After decades of getting hammered with the notion that a captain's command of a ship is a precious thing, Discovery simply chews through them. I get it - it's to heighten the drama, but Pike would make the fifth commanding officer we've seen:
Prime Georgiou on the Shenzhou
Mirror Lorca
Saru for like a day
Mirror Georgiou
Saru again
Now Pike
That dramatic well is beyond dry.
They should have just left it as Saru because when the fuck has a Trek show ever had an alien as the primary captain of the show's main vessel? That'd have been actually interesting and the dynamics of Saru problem solving through the lens of his culture and traditions as opposed to the bog standard human captains we always get would have been super interesting, but that'll never happen as long as Alex "I Ruin Everything I Touch" Kurtzman is in charge of this.
So after watching a lot od DS9 over and over again, I really suspect the Breen are human augments.
Have you seen Enterprise? Chuck Sonnenberg (the SF Debris guy) has a compelling theory they're the Valakians, from the episode "Dear Doctor".
Is the theory in his "Dear Doctor" review, or somewhere else?
A society that got fucked by a captain's interpretation of the Prime Directive, pulled themselves out of the fire, then united around the mission to pay the Federation back for their dead would be a great Star Trek villain.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
So after watching a lot od DS9 over and over again, I really suspect the Breen are human augments.
Have you seen Enterprise? Chuck Sonnenberg (the SF Debris guy) has a compelling theory they're the Valakians, from the episode "Dear Doctor".
Is the theory in his "Dear Doctor" review, or somewhere else?
A society that got fucked by a captain's interpretation of the Prime Directive, pulled themselves out of the fire, then united around the mission to pay the Federation back for their dead would be a great Star Trek villain.
A collection of such planets who take an extremely interventionist approach to non-warp capable worlds would make a great Federation enemy.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
The main thing that sticks with me is that every time Kirk or other captain breaks it or the Federation decides that playing Cold War with the Klingons is more important and gets away with it shows that it is pretty much an arbitrarily and sporadically enforced rule, which means that every time Picard sadly let some planet get hit by an asteroid he was choosing to do so on principle to show how much better he was than all those captains who are loosey, goosey with it.
So, you get billions dead for a rule that gets broken all the time, sometimes on a whim, with no consequences by other captains. That’s deeply fucked up.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
Hey, that's not fair, you're a lawyer.
I went to the Beverly Crusher Captain, there are people down there! school of law
+7
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The Prime Directive isn't a terrible idea, but it really should be more of the "Prime Guideline".
If there's a species which is biologically incapable of recognizing other beings and lives in a constant wave of genocide and repopulation as an overriding imperative, probably not a good idea to let warp tech drop into their hands, sure. If it's a mobster planet about to get clobbered by a garbage ball and the only way to save them means them seeing a warp vessel, how is not saving them less disruptive than letting them all die?
Because yeah, they might turn out to be pretty bad when they get to warp tech but if "it might be bad" was the driving factor in Federation decision-making, there wouldn't be a Federation because nobody could ever know if what they do would have horrible, unseen consequences two hundred or two thousand or twenty thousand years down the road. There's plenty of horrible shit floating around out there that the Federation never touched, some civilizations advancing a bit faster that they might otherwise is no big deal.
Aside from that, the Prime Directive is important as a narrative device, since it makes sure the galaxy has plenty of undeveloped worlds to crash into instead of every planet in Federation space being able to dial up the nearest starship.
I'm normally all for helping alien species, but there are definitely a few that make me want to bring down Exterminatus on some xenos. (see: Pakleds)
Now that's a very different kind of story you've got bouncing around in my head.
"Our ship is the Mondor. We look for things."
"These things you seek. Are they properly blessed and sealed in the ways of the Mechanicum, or are they ...of the Warp?"
"...we ...we look for things?"
"HE DOES NOT DENY IT, BROTHERS! CLEANSE THEM WITH FIRE!" TNG theme plays over montage of an Exterminatus campaign against the Pakled home system
Is there ever a time when Picard actually manages to condemn a bunch of people to die because of the Prime Directive? In Homeward he tries to but then Worf’s brother manages to save them, right?
So after watching a lot od DS9 over and over again, I really suspect the Breen are human augments.
Have you seen Enterprise? Chuck Sonnenberg (the SF Debris guy) has a compelling theory they're the Valakians, from the episode "Dear Doctor".
Is the theory in his "Dear Doctor" review, or somewhere else?
A society that got fucked by a captain's interpretation of the Prime Directive, pulled themselves out of the fire, then united around the mission to pay the Federation back for their dead would be a great Star Trek villain.
A collection of such planets who take an extremely interventionist approach to non-warp capable worlds would make a great Federation enemy.
I liked the general Dominion concept as an anti-Federation meant to be a multispecies society that basically held the opposite ideals to the UFP.
Something with a similar multiplanet diversity in its setup that wasn't The Bad Guys or an existential menace as much as just ... a competitor with different, still-effective viewpoints on some of the fundamentals would be really interesting, at least if they could pull it off without just barfing grimdark or all-is-gray all over the setting.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
Post TOS PD is garbo.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The Prime Directive isn't a terrible idea, but it really should be more of the "Prime Guideline".
If there's a species which is biologically incapable of recognizing other beings and lives in a constant wave of genocide and repopulation as an overriding imperative, probably not a good idea to let warp tech drop into their hands, sure. If it's a mobster planet about to get clobbered by a garbage ball and the only way to save them means them seeing a warp vessel, how is not saving them less disruptive than letting them all die?
Because yeah, they might turn out to be pretty bad when they get to warp tech but if "it might be bad" was the driving factor in Federation decision-making, there wouldn't be a Federation because nobody could ever know if what they do would have horrible, unseen consequences two hundred or two thousand or twenty thousand years down the road. There's plenty of horrible shit floating around out there that the Federation never touched, some civilizations advancing a bit faster that they might otherwise is no big deal.
Aside from that, the Prime Directive is important as a narrative device, since it makes sure the galaxy has plenty of undeveloped worlds to crash into instead of every planet in Federation space being able to dial up the nearest starship.
Now I want Geoffrey Rush Barbossa to go up against Captain Picard.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
Post TOS PD is garbo.
Post TOS PD is basically there to make sure there's a plot.
If there's a problem that could be solved in five minutes with known technology that you can't convince the viewer to forget about? Prime Directive says no.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
the original version of the Prime Directive from TOS is totally fine. it's just "don't start Space Vietnam, don't use your advanced technology to manipulate less advanced societies for political aims" which is 100% reasonable to me.
the modern writers discarded that for some reason and left us with a dumb legacy of stories about whether you should let an asteroid kill millions of people because "evolution," which is basically indefensible
The idea of the Prime Directive I like best is that it's less of a hard-and-fast rule and more of a reality check on a person's actions. Like, we see Kirk and Picard "break" it a bunch of times to apparently no consequence - but of course, we the viewers know that they had good reasons? The planet was ruled by a killer computer, or blowing up the asteroid was obviously the right thing to do, or whatever; clearly the people in charge of interpreting the Prime Directive aren't dummies or else Picard would be serving hot dogs somewhere. So in my head it's basically just "if you mess with a less advanced society for any reason it goes straight to a review board and it's treated super seriously and you need to have a good reason and be able to argue your case well", which explains why officers are very reluctant to break it but then suffer no apparent ill effects when they do.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
the original version of the Prime Directive from TOS is totally fine. it's just "don't start Space Vietnam, don't use your advanced technology to manipulate less advanced societies for political aims" which is 100% reasonable to me.
the modern writers discarded that for some reason and left us with a dumb legacy of stories about whether you should let an asteroid kill millions of people because "evolution," which is basically indefensible
The idea of the Prime Directive I like best is that it's less of a hard-and-fast rule and more of a reality check on a person's actions. Like, we see Kirk and Picard "break" it a bunch of times to apparently no consequence - but of course, we the viewers know that they had good reasons? The planet was ruled by a killer computer, or blowing up the asteroid was obviously the right thing to do, or whatever; clearly the people in charge of interpreting the Prime Directive aren't dummies or else Picard would be serving hot dogs somewhere. So in my head it's basically just "if you mess with a less advanced society for any reason it goes straight to a review board and it's treated super seriously and you need to have a good reason and be able to argue your case well", which explains why officers are very reluctant to break it but then suffer no apparent ill effects when they do.
Yeah, there's this whole idea among some viewers about how the Prime Directive is some sort of insane straight-jacket but actually watching the show it's a thing that comes up and then they think about it and then unless you are Archer, they do the "right thing" basically every time.
I love the Prime Directive and arguing about it with my spouse. He stands for it, I point out all the inconsistencies in application and the immorality of letting civilizations die. He usually comes around to my point.
the original version of the Prime Directive from TOS is totally fine. it's just "don't start Space Vietnam, don't use your advanced technology to manipulate less advanced societies for political aims" which is 100% reasonable to me.
the modern writers discarded that for some reason and left us with a dumb legacy of stories about whether you should let an asteroid kill millions of people because "evolution," which is basically indefensible
The idea of the Prime Directive I like best is that it's less of a hard-and-fast rule and more of a reality check on a person's actions. Like, we see Kirk and Picard "break" it a bunch of times to apparently no consequence - but of course, we the viewers know that they had good reasons? The planet was ruled by a killer computer, or blowing up the asteroid was obviously the right thing to do, or whatever; clearly the people in charge of interpreting the Prime Directive aren't dummies or else Picard would be serving hot dogs somewhere. So in my head it's basically just "if you mess with a less advanced society for any reason it goes straight to a review board and it's treated super seriously and you need to have a good reason and be able to argue your case well", which explains why officers are very reluctant to break it but then suffer no apparent ill effects when they do.
yeah I've always felt that the Prime Directive exists to force Starfleet officers to seriously consider thoughtfully their actions regarding less developed civilisations, and to indicate that those actions will always be subject to intense review by your peers and, more often than not, those of higher rank than you.
Whenever there's some story that makes it out to be some sort of immovable, unbreakable rule I just kinda sigh gently and steel myself for some dumb shit
It's my biggest beef with Picard; he tends to treat it as a religion a lot of the time, including very kindly and patronisingly telling the person begging for help that he can'twon't help them from a disaster.
Then someone comes from the future and won't use their knowledge to help him save some people from a disaster, and he gets very upset.
I wish that guy had been on the level just so Picard might have gotten a lasting taste of how it feels to be on the other side of arbitrary rules.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
+3
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I really want to know how the prime directive applies to primitive civilizations that have already made galactic contact. We see in TOS and early TNG more than a few planets that we are told are pre-warp but interact with the galactic community regularly. Specifically I'm thinking about Space Nubia from S01 of TNG. The one where Yar has that fight to the death.
The one which makes Yar fight to the death isn't particularly primitive. They have teleporters, I think, and they're holding the cure for a plague. They're not Federation level, and their entire society is kind of a dumb racist stereotype, but fighting to the death pops up in all sorts of space faring races in Star Trek.
Vulcans hitting each other with giant bladed cotton buds when they get too randy for rational thought, etc.
I think with societies like that one from TNG they have contact but use their judgement about what to trade and how much tech to give them. Here, have the anti-virals you need, but probably not the orbital mass driver.
I want to see what ever happened to gangster planet they went to.
I bet Picard would love it.
Or planet Rome. I'd be fun to see what happened 100 years later. Given Picards predilection for Shakespeare, I'm sure he'd love that place too.
It's definitely not the show we're going to get w/ Picard, but I'd kind of enjoy some sort of in-Federation tourism adventure. Just let a bunch of set, model, and CGI guys get paid while your actors solve Space Mysteries or something.
I want to see what ever happened to gangster planet they went to.
I bet Picard would love it.
Or planet Rome. I'd be fun to see what happened 100 years later. Given Picards predilection for Shakespeare, I'm sure he'd love that place too.
you can just make a travel show where Q sends Picard, O'Brien and Wesley to all the weird worlds from TOS and TNG to find out what ever happened to them and drink a lot of alcohol. I call it Top Warp.
I want to see what ever happened to gangster planet they went to.
I bet Picard would love it.
Or planet Rome. I'd be fun to see what happened 100 years later. Given Picards predilection for Shakespeare, I'm sure he'd love that place too.
you can just make a travel show where Q sends Picard, O'Brien and Wesley to all the weird worlds from TOS and TNG to find out what ever happened to them and drink a lot of alcohol. I call it Top Warp.
Why is this not a thing. I want it to be a thing. I want someone not named Orci or Kurtzman to make this a thing.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I want to see what ever happened to gangster planet they went to.
I bet Picard would love it.
Or planet Rome. I'd be fun to see what happened 100 years later. Given Picards predilection for Shakespeare, I'm sure he'd love that place too.
you can just make a travel show where Q sends Picard, O'Brien and Wesley to all the weird worlds from TOS and TNG to find out what ever happened to them and drink a lot of alcohol. I call it Top Warp.
Why is this not a thing. I want it to be a thing. I want someone not named Orci or Kurtzman to make this a thing.
I want Bashir to be part of the world-tour crew and just totally out of his depth and excited about stupid things the entire time.
It's my biggest beef with Picard; he tends to treat it as a religion a lot of the time, including very kindly and patronisingly telling the person begging for help that he can'twon't help them from a disaster.
Then someone comes from the future and won't use their knowledge to help him save some people from a disaster, and he gets very upset.
I wish that guy had been on the level just so Picard might have gotten a lasting taste of how it feels to be on the other side of arbitrary rules.
That was a fun episode!
Also yes this is one of Picard's flaws
Luckily hero Beverly Crusher is usually there to yell at him to do the right thing
Posts
It's Star Trek - it's basically scientifically incapable of it being anything other than this.
The Spock family connection is the single worst aspect of the show, IMO. It undermines the main character, it undermines any pretense of Discovery standing on its own, it makes the universe feel really small... It's just a terrible decision all around. Spock already had a surprise half-brother we knew nothing about, now he has a surprise adopted human sister. Which is hilarious to me given TOS Sarek's disdain for both Starfleet and humans (seriously, rewatch IV's ending... Sarek admits he was wrong about Kirk and Co., but when Spock says "They are my friends," Sarek responds with a resigned "...of course" then quickly changes the subject).
And, as a TOS fan, all of these things tying back to Spock makes Kirk's stunned reaction to learning that Spock is Sarek's son in "Journey to Babel" feel out of place, which annoys me. Given what happened in season 1, Michael and her story should be well known by everyone in Starfleet. Which would mean her background and upbringing would be well known. Which would make Spock even more of a celebrity (not only is he the first Vulcan in Starfleet, his adopted human sister was the Traitor). Which would make his background and upbringing well known as well.
Ugh.
They could've simply created some new Vulcan to be her dad. The story wouldn't have lost anything. Shit, they still could've had Sarek for what little use of an ambassador he was in season 1, but made her Vulcan dad a scientist or something. Maybe introduce a rivalry with Spock if they're so damn determined to have any connection with him.
I'm also not happy about Pike commandeering the Discovery. A series of rotating captains is annoying. After decades of getting hammered with the notion that a captain's command of a ship is a precious thing, Discovery simply chews through them. I get it - it's to heighten the drama, but Pike would make the fifth commanding officer we've seen:
Mirror Lorca
Saru for like a day
Mirror Georgiou
Saru again
Now Pike
That dramatic well is beyond dry.
They should have just left it as Saru because when the fuck has a Trek show ever had an alien as the primary captain of the show's main vessel? That'd have been actually interesting and the dynamics of Saru problem solving through the lens of his culture and traditions as opposed to the bog standard human captains we always get would have been super interesting, but that'll never happen as long as Alex "I Ruin Everything I Touch" Kurtzman is in charge of this.
It's been a long journey but my conclusion is:
This show still rules
Have you seen Enterprise? Chuck Sonnenberg (the SF Debris guy) has a compelling theory they're the Valakians, from the episode "Dear Doctor".
Is the theory in his "Dear Doctor" review, or somewhere else?
It is in his "Dear Doctor" review, 12 minutes in.
A society that got fucked by a captain's interpretation of the Prime Directive, pulled themselves out of the fire, then united around the mission to pay the Federation back for their dead would be a great Star Trek villain.
A collection of such planets who take an extremely interventionist approach to non-warp capable worlds would make a great Federation enemy.
The main thing that sticks with me is that every time Kirk or other captain breaks it or the Federation decides that playing Cold War with the Klingons is more important and gets away with it shows that it is pretty much an arbitrarily and sporadically enforced rule, which means that every time Picard sadly let some planet get hit by an asteroid he was choosing to do so on principle to show how much better he was than all those captains who are loosey, goosey with it.
So, you get billions dead for a rule that gets broken all the time, sometimes on a whim, with no consequences by other captains. That’s deeply fucked up.
Hey, that's not fair, you're a lawyer.
I went to the Beverly Crusher Captain, there are people down there! school of law
If there's a species which is biologically incapable of recognizing other beings and lives in a constant wave of genocide and repopulation as an overriding imperative, probably not a good idea to let warp tech drop into their hands, sure. If it's a mobster planet about to get clobbered by a garbage ball and the only way to save them means them seeing a warp vessel, how is not saving them less disruptive than letting them all die?
Because yeah, they might turn out to be pretty bad when they get to warp tech but if "it might be bad" was the driving factor in Federation decision-making, there wouldn't be a Federation because nobody could ever know if what they do would have horrible, unseen consequences two hundred or two thousand or twenty thousand years down the road. There's plenty of horrible shit floating around out there that the Federation never touched, some civilizations advancing a bit faster that they might otherwise is no big deal.
Aside from that, the Prime Directive is important as a narrative device, since it makes sure the galaxy has plenty of undeveloped worlds to crash into instead of every planet in Federation space being able to dial up the nearest starship.
Now that's a very different kind of story you've got bouncing around in my head.
"Our ship is the Mondor. We look for things."
"These things you seek. Are they properly blessed and sealed in the ways of the Mechanicum, or are they ...of the Warp?"
"...we ...we look for things?"
"HE DOES NOT DENY IT, BROTHERS! CLEANSE THEM WITH FIRE!"
TNG theme plays over montage of an Exterminatus campaign against the Pakled home system
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
I liked the general Dominion concept as an anti-Federation meant to be a multispecies society that basically held the opposite ideals to the UFP.
Something with a similar multiplanet diversity in its setup that wasn't The Bad Guys or an existential menace as much as just ... a competitor with different, still-effective viewpoints on some of the fundamentals would be really interesting, at least if they could pull it off without just barfing grimdark or all-is-gray all over the setting.
Post TOS PD is garbo.
Now I want Geoffrey Rush Barbossa to go up against Captain Picard.
Post TOS PD is basically there to make sure there's a plot.
If there's a problem that could be solved in five minutes with known technology that you can't convince the viewer to forget about? Prime Directive says no.
the original version of the Prime Directive from TOS is totally fine. it's just "don't start Space Vietnam, don't use your advanced technology to manipulate less advanced societies for political aims" which is 100% reasonable to me.
the modern writers discarded that for some reason and left us with a dumb legacy of stories about whether you should let an asteroid kill millions of people because "evolution," which is basically indefensible
The idea of the Prime Directive I like best is that it's less of a hard-and-fast rule and more of a reality check on a person's actions. Like, we see Kirk and Picard "break" it a bunch of times to apparently no consequence - but of course, we the viewers know that they had good reasons? The planet was ruled by a killer computer, or blowing up the asteroid was obviously the right thing to do, or whatever; clearly the people in charge of interpreting the Prime Directive aren't dummies or else Picard would be serving hot dogs somewhere. So in my head it's basically just "if you mess with a less advanced society for any reason it goes straight to a review board and it's treated super seriously and you need to have a good reason and be able to argue your case well", which explains why officers are very reluctant to break it but then suffer no apparent ill effects when they do.
Yeah, there's this whole idea among some viewers about how the Prime Directive is some sort of insane straight-jacket but actually watching the show it's a thing that comes up and then they think about it and then unless you are Archer, they do the "right thing" basically every time.
yeah I've always felt that the Prime Directive exists to force Starfleet officers to seriously consider thoughtfully their actions regarding less developed civilisations, and to indicate that those actions will always be subject to intense review by your peers and, more often than not, those of higher rank than you.
Whenever there's some story that makes it out to be some sort of immovable, unbreakable rule I just kinda sigh gently and steel myself for some dumb shit
Then someone comes from the future and won't use their knowledge to help him save some people from a disaster, and he gets very upset.
I wish that guy had been on the level just so Picard might have gotten a lasting taste of how it feels to be on the other side of arbitrary rules.
Vulcans hitting each other with giant bladed cotton buds when they get too randy for rational thought, etc.
I think with societies like that one from TNG they have contact but use their judgement about what to trade and how much tech to give them. Here, have the anti-virals you need, but probably not the orbital mass driver.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I bet Picard would love it.
Or planet Rome. I'd be fun to see what happened 100 years later. Given Picards predilection for Shakespeare, I'm sure he'd love that place too.
It's definitely not the show we're going to get w/ Picard, but I'd kind of enjoy some sort of in-Federation tourism adventure. Just let a bunch of set, model, and CGI guys get paid while your actors solve Space Mysteries or something.
you can just make a travel show where Q sends Picard, O'Brien and Wesley to all the weird worlds from TOS and TNG to find out what ever happened to them and drink a lot of alcohol. I call it Top Warp.
Why is this not a thing. I want it to be a thing. I want someone not named Orci or Kurtzman to make this a thing.
I want Bashir to be part of the world-tour crew and just totally out of his depth and excited about stupid things the entire time.
That was a fun episode!
Also yes this is one of Picard's flaws
Luckily hero Beverly Crusher is usually there to yell at him to do the right thing