After reviewing Memory Alpha on the subject, I may have overstated my case. I should have said that I felt that any culture that is aware of other space-faring cultures, even if the culture-of-the-first-part doesn’t have actual FTL drive, is not subject to the PD. This means than Eminiar is exempt, and possibly Yonada as well. There just might not have been as many examples of supposed violations that weren’t as I remembered,
Even so, The Paradise Syndrome is clearly a violation. It was the natural course of that civilization to die from an asteroid impact. I just don’t see any way around that one.
Interesting in Bread and Circuses, the Procouncil doesn’t really understand the words coming out of his own mouth. He accurately describes the Federation’s policy as “you’d rather die than violate your oath”, but then, when Kirk refuses to acquiesce, seems amazed that Kirk and co are willing to go off and be killed rather than beam down the crew. I mean, you just SAID that! It shouldn’t be a shock.
You could argue that, no, it wasn’t “the natural course of that civilization”: it was some spacefaring culture, which apparently had faster-than-light capabilities, that scooped those people up and put them there, in the path of destruction, right?
Well, he figured Kirk would be like the last Federation ship captain he met.
But that’s the point. Who is to say what is the right thing. To “John Gill” the Prime Directive, what if, due to Kirk’s interference, Miri and her planet survived where they wouldn’t have before, and then she started a planetary revolution that lead to her planet going on a wave of conquest that put the entire galaxy under her very, very old thumb for all eternity? Billions died that wouldn’t have died without Kirk’s interference.
Or, due to Kirk removing Vaal, one of his people dies that would have lived before, and had he lived, he would have overthrown Vaal, and went on a wave of conquest that would have put the galaxy under his thumb for all eternity.
That’s what the PD is for. We can’t tell what’s going to happen, so we shouldn’t interfere.
I have said this before but I think Voyager would have been so much better if Janeway and crew (along with the captured Maquis) had actually been able to return to Earth in the very first episode… only to find out as the series progressed that their actions weren’t heroic at all and they have now turned the Kazon into a threat to the entire galaxy (assuming Voyager left a time bomb behind with the Caretaker and the Kazon were able to disarm it and repurpose it).
Nah. The contamination had already happened, before the Prime Directive (or, “non-interference directive” as in the show) was established. That’s always been an exception–you can try to fix the contamination you caused. Same with the Temporal Prime Directive (though more literally, as you may be able to entirely erase the contamination).
No one has to say it is the right thing. It merely is. Killing innocent people is wrong. Letting someone die when you could have saved them with little to no cost of your own is morally equivalent. Ergo it is wrong to allow innocent people to die when you can stop it.
Put it in more familiar terms. You see a kid who is drowning in a tub. You can easily reach in and save him. Do you avoid saving him because he might be the next Hitler?
The only way a Prime Directive can exist in a supposed utopian world is if it has exceptions for these types of situations. That’s why people get really upset in episodes when the Prime Directive is used as an argument against those things.
IIRC the prime directive was supposed to pertain to pre-warp societies natural development. Most, if not all, of Kirk’s “violations” were civs that were being controlled by a supercomputer and no longer developing naturally. In TNG they changed the definition.
Oddly, most of the episodes cited were some of the crappier ones and I really have to wrack my brain to remember them. Mirror Mirror and maybe Miri are the exceptions.
According to the final scene, Kirk’s plan was that “our cut” would be locally invested, nudging the Iotians away from warlordism and toward cooperation since they’d need to manage the money for the “big boss” while not letting any of the others gain an undue advantage from it. Whether it would work is another question, of course.
I recall a bit from the 80s DC Star Trek comics, where Oxmyx was brought in as a witness to an (arguably long-overdue) inquiry into Kirk’s disrespect for the Prime Directive. His “boys” had brought briefcases full of money containing the “personal cut” he assumed Kirk was expecting. At the end of that scene, somebody asked Kirk what to do with the cash; he told them to “burn it”. :o
