Y’know, there gonna call us geeks for debating this, but screw em if they ain’t got anything better to do. I like Star Trek. I don’t get fanatacal about it, but I enjoy watching the shows. I think the prime directive was actually a good idea. As I see it, it was put in place to protect less advanced cultures from being overwealmed by more advanced ones, a la what happened to the American Indians in the 19th century. This is a wonderful idea. What bothers me is how it’s become a cop out for poor writers.
If you are traveling in a starship, and you meet another race that has a problem, help them. They are not gonna see their values et al crumble beause a more advanced race helped them, that’s just stupid. If we(humans) made contact with another species, I don’t believe that our society would crumble, we understand technology and could acept that others might have a better grasp of it than we do. The fact that they have mastered space travel or whatever would not cause us to view human culture as inferior, we would adapt. While the PD is valid in the case of a primitive culture coming in contact with an advanced one, it’s ludicrius when you’re considering an advanced culture interacting with a more advanced one. What we have in the Star Trek world is a series of situations where the PD is used as a plot device. " Let’s see how the heroes get around it this week." It makes for bad TV, and bad storytelling. It’s not logical. Any commets?
Weirddave, if this is a new OP, it’s pretty much just a minor variant of the Prime Directive thread you just posted (now residing in IMHO). If you meant to post this in your recent Prime Directive thread and posted a new thread by accident, you can find the proper thread in IMHO at Anyone wanna debate a Star Trek/Prime Directive question?.
Is it right for third world nations to have first world weapons of mass destruction (or even conventional first world weapons)?
In developing better technologies, better understanding and respect is gained for that tech. Globalization allows some countries to by-pass the learning curve. Power without wisdom is dangerous.
Yes…but I don’t think you’re taking the thought far enough. I always thought the Prime Directive was pretty silly, in the sense that I couldn’t see the Federation actually making such a thing law. (Of course, the Federation apparently negotiated itself out of cloaking technology for a time, while putting up with the Klingons and Romulans having it, so it’s possible to conclude that the Federation government isn’t composed of the brightest bulbs in the store.)
In my opinion (which isn’t humble at all, so GD is a great place for it) the PD was alwaysa plot device, meant to give a semi-plausible reason the crew of the Enterprisecould interact with less-advanced cultures and get into trouble. Otherwise Captain Kirk just sends his marines down, they phaser everybody who pisses them off, and the plot goes completely to hell.
Then, having created this plot device, they’ve been exploring the ramifications ever since. (And pretty much violating it at will, but I suppose that’s another topic.)
Well, one has to understand that the Federation needs to be portrayed in as Utopian a light as possible. The Prime Directive basically says, “We’re not going to manipulate less-advanced people.” Of course, it could also say, “Let the poor bastards build their own warp-drive,” depending on how you look at it.
Many sillinesses are undertaken for the sake of making the Federation seem perfect (the spotless, smooth, and “artistic” look of their vessels, for example), such as the aforementioned “we won’t use cloaking devices” crap. Cloaking devices supposedly give an “unfair advantage” to the Fed ships, or some nonsense.
Anyway, Dave, the PD is a very silly plot gimmick, especially since it’s smashed to pieces every other episode. Give me a good ol’ Star Destroyer any day.
Star Trek just isn’t all that good. Don’t get me wrong sometimes they have some really good episodes. But the most alien creatures in Star Trek were the human beings. I especially love the time when Captain Picard said “Starfleet is not a military organization.” What kind of blatant denial is this? They hold military type ranks and when the Federation declares war they send Starfleet to fight. That sounds like a military to me.