15-21 year old me wasn’t complaining. Really though, it was more the form-fitting part of her uniforms that caught the eye after the pilot, instead of any particular skimpiness. Sort of like 7-of-9 except not quite so blatant.
She was pretty damned hot dressed up in '40s style in the Dixon Hill simulation too. :o
And i got the impression if it hadnt been the son of his Chief Medical Officer (Whose husband he may have gotten killed)…he might have let said person die.
A good definitive PD ep with real moral choices still hasn’t been written. Though that ep with Worf’s brother came close…of course plot AS ALWAYS made sure we knew that violating the PD could never be easy.
Fucking Enterprise…they could have done an ep about preventing a nuclear war…and they give us “evolutionary dead ends and violating hippocratic oath”*
*And the funny thing is, I got the impression the species that would eventually supplant the dominant species were THEIR SLAVES!! Now THATS an ep i want to see:
The supposed open-minded Federation encounter an advanced society who is as nice as you could imagine but they keep slaves. And when called on it, the nice aliens don’t even get all hot and bothered about it…man, people would flip out about an ep like that now that I think about it.
Can we please stop drooling over attractive actresses, here? It’s unbecoming.
Back on topic, has there ever been any instance, in any of the Star Trek shows, of the Prime Directive being followed? Or at least any instance of anyone being punished for violating it?
The very first PD ep (was it??) Bread and Circuses (not counting causing a 15 second blackout)
Omega Glory …after Kirk smashes the PD to pieces*…Captain Tracey is hauled off to be punished.
*“I was just telling them the true meaning of their historical papers” Well who the fuck told you to do that Kirk??
The first one was “The Apple,” with the feeders of Vaal.* In that episode, Kirk had to destroy the false god in order to save his ship. He justified it by asserting the natives existed only to service a machine, even though they lived in a virtual paradise.
In “The Omega Glory,” he could have left the natives to their own devices, meaning the Yangs would probably have slaughtered all of the Kohms they could get their hands on. But hey, isn’t that what the PD requires? (I suspect this version is closer to the original story than the one that was aired, but I really can’t see it ever being approved.)
*Whether this was the first one *filmed *or the first one aired, I’m not sure. I’d have to check Memory Alpha for that information.
According to TMoST, it was the first one aired, preceding “A Piece of the Action,” “A Private Little War,” “Patterns of Force,” “The Omega Glory,” “Bread and Circuses,” and “Assignment Earth” in the second season.
I half wish Roddenberry hadn’t thought up the Prime Directive. Even from the beginning, it was a massive, constant temptation to the writers, since it affords so many opportunities for exploring rule-following vs. the right thing to do, fixing one’s mistakes, unintended consequences, and so forth. It is like their own tar baby that they can’t pull loose from.
I’d much rather see an episode of one of the shows where cold open has the captain seeing a non-warp drive planet launching ICBMS and is like “Huh. Nuclear war- sucks for them. Since they haven’t developed warp drive, so it’s none of our business. Set course for <somewhere else> at Warp six.” And then go on with the actual episode, but explore the ramifications of his decision and its effects on the officers and crew as the secondary plot of the next several episodes, and bring it up periodically over the rest of the run.
Yeah, too often all that the PD does is add pathos to the eventual decision the Captain is forced to make (Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Archer, doesn’t matter). I did kind of like the episodes in Enterprise where the background of the PD is explored. But it would have been great to see them actually follow the thing, and someone from the crew dies, or has to remain behind, or a planet’s civilization falls, or something.
There’s tons of potential there.
The notion that a spacecraft would just sit there while billions of innocent people die, a 20,000 year civilization is wiped out because a handful of power-mad individuals cant get along is reprehensible.
Would you let a toddler wander into traffic and say “Sorry. Cant play God. That child might grow up to be Hitler.”
A Star Trek novel called (of all things) “Prime Directive” delved into this issue more deeply than the series could. I liked it.
“Patterns of Force” comes close. Kirk is sent to clean up a mess someone else had made by violating the PD.
He wasn’t sent to “clean up the mess,” he was merely investigating the disappearance of cultural observer John Gill, with whom the Federation had lost contact. It wasn’t until the *Enterprise *neared Ekos and was attacked that they knew something was seriously wrong (Gill had established a neo-Nazi regime on the planet).
Cleaning up the mess caused by interfering in a planet’s culture was the theme in a number of episodes: “Patterns of Force,” “A Private Little War” (the Klingons were the interferers in this one), “A Piece of the Action,” “The Omega Glory,” “Assignment Earth” (though this one was more about *preventing *interference), and “The City on the Edge of Forever” (where it was Earth’s history that needed to be straightened out). In each case, Kirk took it upon himself to set things right because the natural order of things had been upset, usually by Earthers.
It was harder to justify in episodes like “The Apple,” “Return of the Archons,” and “A Taste of Armageddon.” Most of the time, Kirk was put into a position where he had to interfere in order to save his ship or members of his crew.
And Gill wasn’t taken away to be punished, like Captain Tracey was in “Omega Glory.” He was shot and killed by one of his disciples turned traitor.
Taste of Armageddon probably doesn’t count - Kirk was there to deliver an ambassador, suggesting that the Federation thought that this society was advanced enough for contact.
I remember that camera shot cited as an example in something I read explaining the concept of the Male Gaze.
Kirk was still forced to interfere in their culture in order to save his ship.
Take out making Tracey a murderer and the crap about Fountain of Youth (and Constitution natch) and you’ve got a great PD ep.
“You’re not just going to let them kill you are you Kirk? If i put a phaser in your hand, you’ll fight!”…you notice Kirk doesn’t answer.
Not even that. Kirk does it out of a bit of spite and cause he’s repulsed by the idea of people committing suicide to keep a real war from breaking out.
His ship was safe and the whole lot of them could have beamed up after establishing control of the situation. ALSO…Christ, how did Ambassador Fox keep his job?
Edit: Not to mention Kirk and Scotty were prepared to destroy the entire planet.
Can’t leave out the Fountain of Youth, since that was Tracey’s main motivation. That and protecting the Kohms against what he saw as aggression from the primitive Yangs.
Zapping the wounded Redshirt was, however, a bit extreme, yes.
He felt revulsion at their “war,” but there’s no evidence he even considered interfering until the *Enterprise *was declared destroyed. The situation then could not have been brought under control, nor could they simply have sailed away, since the Eminiarans were hell-bent on claiming their casualties. They faked a message from the Captain and, when no one beamed down, they opened fire on the ship.
Kirk and Scott threatened them with total destruction because that was the only weapon they had at their disposal. We don’t know they would have gone through with it if Kirk hadn’t destroyed the computers controlling the war.