Lets say you have been made the Almighty master of the Star Trek universe. Top of your agenda, reform.
How would you go about it? My own suggestion would be to add a proviso to the whole shall not interfere business and state that the directive may be broken if in is the best interests of the other culture to do so (you know save a dying world) or is in the interests of the ships crew (thus saving us from the travesty that is Voyager).
Presume the era is circa the end of the Next Generation Series
I think I’m going to have to disagree with your proviso. When we start venturing into the universe, we’re going to start evaluating what would be best for the universe as a whole. We can’t protect every culture out there and if we get in the habit of protecting weaker cultures, then they won’t develop on their own and will be dependent on stronger cultures. I think non-interference is best. Let them fail or succeed on their own merits until they reach (or fail to reach) the level of other space-faring cultures.
Didn’t Picard invoke the Prime Directive as justification for Star Fleet not interfering in the Klingon Civil War? If so, change it back to non-interference with pre-warp civilizations at least.
Pretty simple. Not interfering means not interfering. Study a culture from afar, maybe send down some disguised probes, but don’t pretend that the revelation of a bunch of star traveling cultures won’t affect a world. What if a bunch of aliens visited us, told us something about themselves, and then said “go about your business as if we never showed up.”
Would wipe out 90% of the stories in the Trek universe, true.
I think in general the prime directive is a good idea as is. Non interference with pre-warp civilizations, and non interference with the internal political matters of post warp civilizations.
The only problem I ever had with it was the dumb ass Worf’s brother episode where Starfleet was willing to let a civilization be completely obliterated by a natural disaster before they developed the tech to have any chance to overcome it.
I think abstaining from being involved politically or socially is wise, but secretly saving pre warp civilizations from impossible disasters doesn’t faze me. When a meteor happens to want to strike a planet has nothing to do with natural development. Earth could just as easily have lost meteor roulette. As long as the civilization isn’t aware that a ‘higher power’ has intervened, there’s only positive benefit.
They won’t develop on their own if their star goes supernova or they all die of the plague, either. Which is why the TNG-and-later Prime Directive was so morally abhorrent - you had a bunch of assholes patting each other on the back about how leaving innocent people to die makes them morally superior.
If the Prime Directive is going to exist, I’d ensure it has the following points:
Saving a civilisation from assured extinction does not violate the Prime Directive.
Reason: The purpose of the Prime Directive is to protect pre-warp cultures from exploitation or other harm. Leaving them all to die does not serve that purpose.
1a. This defense does not apply if the cause of extinction is another sentient (or presumably sentient) race or civilisation.
Reason: Just because you are losing does not mean you are the good guys. We don’t want anyone swooping in to save Nazi Germany from the Allies.
Actions taken to protect the lives of Starfleet personnel will only be held to violate the Prime Directive if they are likely to cause harm through negligence or a callous disregard for the rights of members of the pre-warp society.
Reason: As long as reasonable care is taken to protect innocent bystanders, a Starfleet captain should not be punished for protecting the lives of their crew.
I say chuck the whole things in the trash. Cultures don’t “develop naturally” - even if you accept this sort of deterministic bullshit, history shows us that for better or for wost, cultures develop by interacting with other cultures, and that the interaction goes both ways. Don’t assume that if a world doesn’t have space travel it has nothing to offer the Federation.
Besides, treating civilizations like specimens to be observed is patronizing. I’d hope that if some alien civilization ever discovered us, it would respect us enough to talk to us.
First, if a culture is trying to contact other species (like sending out signals and probes basically saying ‘hi’), then you are free to contact them.
Second, civilization threatening events mean that you can intervene even if you reveal themselves; any damage you do in the process of stopping their utter destruction is going to be small by comparison.
Third, careful supervised covert intervention in pre-warp cultures is permitted, as long as it is in aid of something they themselves are trying to achieve. Such as arranging for a cure for cancer to be “discovered” on Earth.
Fourth, in the case of #3, proper supervision must be imposed to keep it from getting out of hand, and preparations must be made to deal with the consequences of error. This is to prevent some lone captain from deciding to intervene as his own personal project, and then having it go to hell without being able to fix his mistake. So, for example, no screwing with a nuclear armed planet before a stealthy network of antimissile satellites is set up.
Also if it furthers the military interests of the Federation or further the interests of the Federation while not adversely affecting the interests of the pre warp civilization.
So there is a planet located in a Strategic location during a conflict; go ahead and occupy it. Restore the Planet to self governance at the end of the war, assist them in all the ways you can, but please don’t chop of your own arm and hurt your own people.
This is exactly the sort of thing the Prime Directive should protect against. You shouldn’t go annexing neutral planets and making them legitimate military targets for your enemies. It’s like setting up a command post in a hospital.
I also think that having warp tech is a lousy prerequisite for contact, because it assumes all cultures develop the same way. Say you have an ancient, peaceful, fantastically civilized race of artists, poets and philosophers who never advanced beyond Iron Age technology and never really wanted to. Would you deny them the universe just because they aren’t very good engineers?
I think all that really needs to happen is that it is demoted, and can be argued with rather than treating it like a religion.
There’s this Star Trek reviewer on YouTube I listen to often, and he has an entire episode about the subject, and that’s not his usual way of doing things. It came after a review of “Doctor Doctor,” an Enterprise episode where the doctor figured out a cure for a genetic disease of a species, but decided to let them all die because another species on the planet were treated badly by them. Oh, and the second species were “on the verge of evolving”: a concept that makes absolutely no sense.
If its a strategic location it will be targeted by your enemies regardless of what you do. Its less a base in a hospital, more occupation of a major pass or hilltop.
That last one was not just general interference. The entire colony was going to die if they didn’t do something, and the only way they could actually do something was to realize that their God was a computer. If anything, they helped the original designers of the ship achieve their intended purpose, by adding a few humans who could do maintenance on the computer (or at least ask for help from someone who could).
A more general interference would be from “A Taste of Armageddon,” and even that started out as self-preservation.
Actually I expect it has more to do with the fact that once they develop warp tech, they can come to you, so passively refusing to contact them won’t work.
…If you get the chance (and you haven’t already) you must read Prime Directive, by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Not wanting to spoil the book but this issue is addressed: and the book is simply brilliant, my favourite Trek novel.