This was my pet peeve about the show … the last minute tie up of loose ends, usually by a message from Starfleet, received 60 seconds before the end credits.
Star Trek plots.
The Federation Council/Starfleet Command has determined that contact with Talos IV is a VERY BAD THING, therefore, passed a law forbidding contact.
Why?
Cuz THEY SEZ SO!
They know better than you, so you will obey without question, citizen.
They got the Ponn Farr wrong, however you spell it. 
Dang, I phrased that poorly… “then why did Starfleet let Pike, Spock and the other landing party members walk in the first place?” Reading that, it looks like I’m saying they were allowed to “walk in” to Talos IV. Rather, I meant “walk” in the sense of “escape the consequences of Starfleet policy afterward.”
So, to rephrase and augment: why did Starfleet, having received Pike’s report, and having concluded from said report that any human contact with Talos IV might cause the Federation to collapse like a Denebian Collapsing Beast, not immediately thereafter take steps to permanently isolate all contaminated humans (Pike, half of Spock, etc.) inside a pressurized dome beneath the toxic atmosphere of planet Guantanamo Ceti III?
Perhaps the Federation, like the USA, prohibits ex post facto laws?
A better question is “Why does a visit to Talos IV warrant the death penalty?”
Obviously, the Talosians are powerful (their telepathy can reach all the way to Starbase 11), but they are dying, and they seem pretty benign. Also, if you landed on Talos IV, you would probably be captured, but that hardly seems to rate a death penalty.
Another oft-repeated bit of dialogue that annoyed me every time I heard it (I’ve ranted about this in earlier ST threads):
LaForge (or whoever): “Captain, please report to Main Engineering.”
Captain: “What is it?”
LaForge: “Well… I think you’d better just come down here.”
Captain: “Okeley-dokeley!”
No, no, no. What the captain should say is, “Mr. LaForge, I’m a very busy man. You are a graduate of Starfleet Academy and a senior officer on the finest ship in the Fleet. I’m sure you can describe, in a sentence or two, what vitally-important thing you want to show me, and then I’ll decide if it’s worth my time. Would that be all right with you, or would you prefer a transfer to the USS Career Killer so that I can get myself a more articulate Chief Engineer?”
“I don’t pretend to understand Brannigan’s Law…”
I think that was one of those character development situations where the writers were trying to express a certain relationship between Captain and Engineer. As if to say that the Captain trusted his Chief Engineer to really, really mean it when he said that the Captain should come down personally.
After all, he was right every time, wasn’t he? I can’t think of an instance where that happened that would be easily summarized by an intercom message such as “Captain, a crappy mid-nineties CGI life form has just evolved in the cargo bay.” It’s the sort of situation that defies verbal communication; he really should come down and see it for himself.
The Talosians figured that they couldn’t use humans, so would most likely fool any ship approaching into turning about or passing by, making the death penalty a moot issue. Only for Federation citizens who are human of course, no telling what they’d do if they found an Andorian or Tellerite passing by.
The fact that the Talosians showed that they could project illusions all the way to the starbase made the quarantine moot – if they wanted to cause trouble for humans (or anybody else in the Federation), the quarantine wouldn’t stop them. That’s what I read between the lines of the final message about “thought transmissions” received at starbase and the higher-ups deciding to drop charges against Spock; there was no point in punishing him to enforce a useless regulation. (Before this demonstration that Talosians could project their illusions across interstellar space, they had every reason to assume that the quarantine was at least potentially effective.)
Oh, God, you guys are killing me. I’m literally crying, I’m laughing so hard.
Ahem.
Prime Directive.
Did anyone ever notice that for such a Top Priority in Federation Law, it got broken fairly regularly with no consequences?
And how many times has doing this put the Captain into life threatening jeapardy?
Sheesh, none of these ships have fucking security cameras anywhere? Just point one at the thing and tell the Captain to have a look at Security Cam E1-103.
Then stop fucking around. Kill the bloody thing. New life form? Tough shit. Shouldn’t be attempting to reproduce/grow/whatever the hell it thinks its doing in our engine room. That’s a threat to the ship and potentially a threat to the Federation.
Then put every crew member who came into contact with it in quarantine and have them checked out by a telepath. If the Chief Engineer was trying to get the Captain to abandon his post and come look at it, then he might be under some kind of alien control and have been trying to get the Captain under similar control.
Take no chances.
To hell with that complex crap - just blow EVERYONE out of an airlock. You can never be too safe (besides, the ship only needs one person to give it orders to fly somewhere, you can live without a crew).
I’d hold on to at least 7 of 9, you know, for research, but yeah, out the airlock.
I hate the “better take a look for yourself”
Considering teh number of times some alien bugaboo has taken control of the minds of our intrepid crews you’d think an explaination would be better.
I’m sure Picard wouldn’t want to storm into engineering without some idea what he is walking into especially if the Romulans have recajiggered Jordies Glod hairclip visor to make him flood engineering with killer blue smoke.
And really if it is something so odd or possibly dangerous do you want to wait the ten to fifteen minutes it will take your Commanding officer to get off the space toilet get into the turbo lift and waddle to engineering before you did anything.
Hell, in that time you could compose your thoughts enough to describe the fact that an 11 foot Evil Lincoln made of blue cheese and the remains of two red shirts has materialized in engineering demanding The south surrenders or dies. Better yet, stand in front of said weirdity so that the magical camera, that beams your picture to com systems no matter where you are on the ship, will show everyone else what you are too stunned or stupid to describe in words or hand gestures.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in one of the Enterprise threads, but it never ceases to amaze me how our courageous crew will bring some strange vessel or pod or other hollow object into their landing bay, then immediately crack the hatch and stick in their heads without any kind of containment. You’d think they’d have some kind of remotely operated camera drone or something, or at the very least put on an airtight suit. It’s a wonder their brains haven’t melted from some new variety of space tuberculosis.
Although, now that I think about it, perhaps a partial brain melt would explain a lot of this thread’s observations.
I don’t know Star Trek Canon, but that episode appeared during one of Hollywood’s writers strikes. Several decent episodes came out during that time, IIRC.
Oooooh ooooh oooooh - can’t believe it’s taken me this long to remember it, but:
What the hell is up with all the half-Klingon, half Betazoid, one-quarter human etc etc individuals? A species is by definition: “the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species.”
If we can’t cross breed two animals that originated on earth then it stands that you couldn’t breed two creatures that have evolved ON DIFFERENT PLANETS. Even worse they throw in this concept of species characteristics that differ depending on how close to fully whatever you are i.e. the guy that was one quarter Betazoid so couldn’t telepath but could sense emotions, Deanna Troi who is half Betazoid who can empath but only telepath with other Betazoids.
And then of course there are all these diseases that indiscriminately affect different species in the same way at the same time, even though pan-species diseases that affect said species the same way are extremely rare (and in most cases are as a result of a mutation over time).
So not only did the creators of Star Trek not pass chemistry 101 and understand what makes up different elements (see my previous grip) they didn’t pass biology 101 either.
Ah, yes, but their evolution was guided. 