Speaking of stupid TNG “Prime Directive” episodes, I give you “Symbiosis” (Season 1, episode 22).
I think maybe the Brekkians and the Ornarans have interplanetary travel, but not warp travel. Anyway, the “Prime Directive” doesn’t prevent the Enterprise from assisting an Ornaran vessel in distress, and even offering to help with repairs. But, when it turns out that the “medical supplies” the Ornarans are taking home from neighboring planet Brekka are really some kind of addictive Space Dope (Kids! Captain Picard Says “Just Say No to Drugs!”) then all of a sudden the Prime Directive kicks in, to the point that Picard and the gang can’t even mention to the Ornarans that their Brekkian interplanetary neighbors are not selfless medical benefactors, but are in reality interplanetary drug pushers. Not, beam down landing parties to eradicate the Space Poppy fields, or phaser all the Space Coca plants to ashes from orbit, or set up some kind of Federation blockade between Brekka and Ornara to interdict the supply of Evil Space Drugs. Just saying “Oh, hey, guys, FYI, my Chief Medical Officer has been analyzing the situation, and she says…”
If the noninterference required by the “Prime Directive” is really that complete, then what they hell were they doing trying to rescue the crew of that freighter in the first place? Shouldn’t they have just let them all die in the name of “not interfering in this system’s natural development”?
It’s a tradition of the sea carried on into space: If someone’s having a hard time and likely to perish, you make an effort to save them from a hostile environment even if it’s their own damn fault.
Although ultimately unsuccessful, the search for Malaysian flight 370 involved an awful lot of countries most of which had no strategic or economic reason to do so. Even countries at war will rescue enemy sailors, mission and safety considerations permitting.
I agree it’s a bad episode that rebounds from preachy extreme to preachy extreme, but I gathered the Brekkorns were aware that more technologically advanced species existed, since they don’t seem at all surprised when the Enterprise shows up. I kind of got the impression that the more advanced of the two planets (I forget which one it was) had been even more so in the past but their addiction had caused them to regress to where they could barely maintain the interplanetary shuttles they had, let alone the interstellar ships they might have once had and which could have justified an earlier Federation contact.
The thing that bothered me about Worfs brother is the way he sprang into existence from nowhere. The only brother Worf had previously was unknown to him until the airing of the episode, so I give the writers a pass on that. But Nikolai, who Worf knew from childhood, just appeared out of the aether.
And wouldn’t it be fun to watch all of Worfs family get together.
I really hate the prime directive because of how it is pathologically selfish wrapped in a veneer of ‘caring’ about other cultures. Other cultures would welcome the invasion much of the time.
And again, once the federation actually wants something, the prime directive is ignored. When the federation finds the omega particle the prime directive doesn’t count. When they wanted the anti-aging effects from the planet in star trek insurrection it was ignored.
Its idiotic. It’d be like if westerners pretended to be moral by refusing to give farming advice, penicillin and vaccines to a tribe in Africa. But if that tribe was sitting on top of a diamond mine we send in the bulldozers. The prime directive is so god damn stupid.
But I guess the true purpose of it is to explain why aliens could exist and nobody sees them.
So what does the Prime Directive say about damaged starships crashing into major metropolitan areas of steam-power era worlds? Or fighting a major fleet action with the Borg within sight of a planet with 21-century astronomy capabilities? Just pretend like nothing happened?
I would guess if said planet starts sending out probes and interplanetary craft…they would come clean to keep said planets from getting hands on tech they wern’t ready for, or getting themselves infected by nanoprobes (cough ST:ENTERPRISE…that was actually one of the better eps.)*
*Hell, I’ve been reconsidering Enterprise a lot lately.
Various things happen in episodes where they abridge the prime directive accidentally, but it usually seems to focus on trying to minimize contamination.
There’s also an episode where, when a society got close to warp travel, they put undercover operatives on the planet. And there are situations where non-spacefaring races know that aliens exist.
There was one episode of Voyager where Voyager was trapped near a planet where they could in fact see it with telescopes. This world, however, was in a place where time moved faster for them, and they eventually had a space race to try and reach Voyager. Once again, they sent an undercover operator down to learn about them.
But mostly it just seems they avoid such situations. Space is vast, and even Borg cubes are tiny and don’t put out much light. There’s little reason to fly anywhere near a planet most of the time, and crashes tend to only happen when somewhat planned–they intentionally go to the nearest planet where they can crash without being seen.
Where are all the protesters in the Federation? Just today, you’ve got tons of people demanding the US intervene in Venezuela. Are all the people who would demand Starfleet intervene on Bajor…mollified by holograph and transporter technology??
Though we DO see the kind of activities you would expect to happen all the time with The Marquis.