It’d be interesting to a) see how the religious of our world deals with the fact that we’re not alone. and b) see how religious E.T.'s cope. I’m sure our anthropologists would have plenty of work to do too.
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Oh well then what’s the point? Would you send Columbus on a voyage to the orient only to observe and report? If we met a culture, even in prewarp, I’m sure there are ideas that they could present us that would be fascinating and vice versa. Even if the ideas they present are IDENTICAL to our own, there will be something to be gained from knowing that fact alone.
The PD is a good idea but was too often honored only in the breach - referred to and then pretty much ignored. Not good, either as policy or as drama. Human history is littered with examples of societies of vastly different technological and social development coming together; the outcome for the less-developed society was almost always bad in the short term, sometimes genocidally so.
As Picard said, the PD is intended under normal circumstances to protect the Federation as much as it is the non-starfaring society. Even our best intentions can have enormously bad consequences, and then we’d have to live with that. Better to keep hands off until a society shows itself at least capable of starflight. That’s a workable and bright line for determining when a culture is ready to undergo first contact.
That’s pretty much how I’d play it.
“Zoltar Frtyzl to President Kennedy. If you and your buddy Nikita lay waste to your planet and end your race’s existence, I swear I will never talk to you again.”
Instead of thinking about them as competitors, think about them as allies. In Star Trek, the humans and Vulcans were two of the closest races because of how their first contact was made. Any species we save from destruction or disease is going to be eternally grateful.
In fact, if I found out after my race joined the Federation that hundreds of years ago, they could have helped us with a worldwide pandemic but didn’t, I’d be pretty pissed off.
Maybe they’ll turn out to be Vulcans. Maybe they’ll be Klingons.
Saving a species from utter destruction, maybe. Stepping in to avert a plague or earthquakes, I don’t think that’s going to gain you eternal thanks.
Not if they are anything like humans, at least.
Yes, but the other 50% of the populace will be posting theories on the outerweb about how *convenient *it was that the Outsiders just happened to have a cure for that mysterious plague. Could they have planted it here so they could come in like big damn heroes? Just Asking Questions, you know.
How long have they been planting plagues, anyway? Decades? Centuries? Do they instigate wars as well?
Who are these mysterious strangers who say they want to be our friends?
And you just know they are lying about what really happened to Atlantis. With all their knowledge and long-term observations, you can’t believe their denials.
If I were Spanish, great idea. If I were a Carib Indian, I’d probably prefer him to stay home.
As for the thing you were confused about - most of the people here were born in India or China, went to college here, went to the US for grad school, and never returned to their birthplaces.
You fail at economics and logic. Why would discovering money is going to become useless make you hoard money? And what kind of idiot goes without a computer because there’s going to be a better one in a few decades time? We already knew that’s going to happen, unless you can’t tell that the latest i7 is a more capable machine than a basic DOS computer from the early 90s.
Oh, God, not that ridiculous “Nobody in the Federation has any wants or needs, and Starfleet is just a little club of people who like to dress up in primary colors and zoom around the universe as a hobby” argument again.
Mudd trafficked in the interplanetary sex worker trade. The whole mirror universe episode of TOS dealt with a planet that had stuff the Federation felt they needed. And wasn’t the Horta episode on a mining colony? (or are we to believe that miners are just people with a pickaxe and hard hat fetish?)
Clearly, the Federation is not, in fact, a needless society. It’s needs are probably much different than ours, but they certainly exist, and it’s likely that trade between the Federation and a more primitive planet would end up looking like the Manhattan purchase.
He’s not the only one confused, Chimera. I don’t really understand your narrative either. The fact that we’ve been gifted an alien supercomputer will somehow lead to the collapse of the personal computing machine… how?
Secondly, well… yes. The western inventions like the steam engine, automobile, aircraft has been sent to nations that have not discovered it. There was no prime directive for cars. There is one for nuclear weapons though but that doesn’t preclude the US from sharing nuclear power with them.
Japan has 55 nuclear plants and not a single weapon. South Korea 20 and weaponless. Canada 18, Germany 17, and Taiwan 6 - all weaponless yet bending the nuclear prime directive for their benefit.
It’s hubris to think aliens from across the galaxy will even know the right thing to do once they start to interfere, despite the best intentions.
“Worry not. We will see that you die with dignity.”
“But I just stubbed my toe!”
“DIE WITH DIGNITY!”
It’s rarely looked at how the Prime Directive could be a good thing form the Federation viewpoint.
The idea is interstellar travel puts you in the big boys club. There are all kinds of technological hurdles to overcome to do that.
Even without giving them the technology, if you go down to a planet and tell them we got there by building silicon chips using binary logic, developed anti-matter and warp fields, then those are the technologies they will pursue. Never mind that they had unexpected ideas in the works like micro-diamond circuits based on their peculiar brain anatomy, and vacuum energy slip-streaming. Developing those technologies will look like a waste of time now that they have a sure path to success.
Without the PD every emerging race will look pretty much the same.
With it, there’s a chance for more diversity.
An asteroid about to destroy an undeveloped planet was the plot to an episode. They put themselves at considerable risk to save them.
For all their technology the Enterprise didn’t have a planetary glitch detector.
Never mind WWIII, which we know nothing about. However, we had a WWII that was pretty well documented.
What if Martians, with no prime directive, interfered in WWII?
Let’s say they stop the war. Great, lots of people don’t have to die.
What do they do then?
Do they have to stay here so it doesn’t just start back up as soon as they turn their backs?
Or are they going to get rid of the bad German government altogether? If they are going to start setting up governments to suit their own liking, are they going to stop there? Stalin wasn’t such a nice guy, it would be nice to see him go too. But the United States was in the process of building devastating nuclear weapons, so maybe they will have a makeover in mind for us too.
Or maybe Hitler got confined to Germany under their watch. By now they may be on their fourth Fuhrer. I can’t imagine the German Jews being happy about living there. The Martians are looking to be helpful, so maybe they offer to relocate them to Rigel 4, but as we know there is a nice bit of Mediterranean property the Jews had their eye on. So, unless they are dictatorial about where the Jews go they will have assumed the responsibility for creating an inevitable Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Once you start interfering you can really get stuck.