Skip to main content

star trek - Who is bound to the Prime Directive?


In the galaxy there are a fair number of pre-warp societies. A Federation ship is not to contact them. But what about other, non-Federation species?


If for example a Ferengi ship passes by a pre-warp planet, would they be allowed to contact it? What would a Federation ship observing this contact have to do? Are they obliged to intervene? Are they allowed to? Or were they merely allowed to "strongly discourage" the attempt of the Ferengi?


If it is legal to use force to stop the Ferengi, than in essence the Ferengi were bound to the Prime Directive too. And if so: does this go for all Federation territory? Is this confined to the Federation territory? If Janeway observes such an incident, what are her rights to intervene? Or does she have the duty to do so?




Answer



Looking at the high-level summary of the Prime Directive from Bread and Circuses:



no identification of self or mission; no interference with the social development of said planet; no references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations.



So it tells Starfleet personnel to refrain from interfering themselves in the development of other species. It doesn’t tell them to prevent interference by others — and, as @Selezen points out, preventing such interference could be thought of as interference in itself. (Starfleet might not exist if the Klingons had had a pro-active version of the Prime Directive and stopped the Vulcans from popping down to Earth for a cup of tea with Zefram Cochrane).


I believe the intention of the Directive is to stop Starfleet from playing god:



I'm going to have to remind myself every day that we didn't come out here to play God.


Captain Jonathan Archer (ENT: "Dear Doctor")




As such, it’s ultimately intended to protect Starfleet from behaving like Q (toying with less-developed beings to satisfy its own curiosity), more than it is to protect lesser-developed civilisations from any interference. Starfleet therefore does not generally attempt to enforce it on other species, or even non-Starfleet Federation citizens.


(Note that the Federation is an interstellar federal government, whilst Starfleet, to whom the Prime Directive applies, is its military/exploration body.)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more