Turns out that Captain Pike is so hot for the Prime Directive, he will literally jump on a phaser and die rather than interfere with a culture’s natural development. Except when it comes to giving out space batteries. Space batteries are fine. The point is, on some level Pike’s actions in the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery — “New Eden”—might scan as hypocritical. But, that’s not exactly Pike’s fault. Maybe General Order One, better known as the Prime Directive, is inherently hypocritical.
Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery season 2, episode 2, “New Eden.”
For diehard Trekkies, the Discovery episode “New Eden,” was a classic Trek premise insofar as it presented a classic ethical dilemma, with an interesting twist. Members of Starfleet aren’t supposed to interfere with the natural development of pre-warp cultures, but what if those cultures aren’t indigenous to the planet they live on? In “New Eden,” Pike twice explains that because the humans on Terralysium don’t have warp drive technology that makes them “subject to General Order One.”
In Trek lore, General Order One is better known as the Prime Directive, though it seems like at this point in Trek history (2257) no one actually calls it by that highfalutin moniker yet. In fact, it’s very likely that in the 2250s, General Order One is somewhat new. According to writers Erika Lippoldt and Be Yeon Kim, the events of the Short Treks episode “Brightest Star” takes place sometime in the 2230s, and at the time that Georgiou rescues Saru from his pre-warp home planet. They also explained that at that time “the Prime Directive was not so well-defined, or at the very least not as strictly enforced.”
So, from the time Lt. Georgiou picks up Saru in the 2230s, to the 2250s of “The Cage” and Discovery, General Order One becomes a little more ironclad. Or does it? Pike’s interpretation of General Order One seems pretty hardcore at first, but the ending of the episode suggests that Pike, and maybe the rule itself, is too confusing to enforce all the time.
In the film Star Trek: Insurrection (directed by Jonathan Frakes, who also directed “New Eden”) Picard accuses Admiral Dougherty of violating the Prime Directive by interfering with the peaceful Ba’Ku. The shifty, amoral Dougherty tells Picard, “The Prime Directive doesn’t apply. These people are not indigenous to this planet.” Now, although Dougherty’s motivations are unethical in this case (he just wants to take over the planet) he seems to be…right? Picard doesn’t come back and say “No, I’m right because as long as they’re pre-warp, the General Order One applies.” Instead Picard just throws this in Dougherty’s face: “Who the hell are we to determine the next course of evolution for these people?”
It’s a good question, and it’s central to all these Prime Directive/General Order One morality plays.
In a practical sense, the very existence of the Federation (and its star trekking ships) drives the need for the Prime Directive in the first place, as a consequence of exploring space. In the Discovery episode “Choose Your Pain,” Harry Mudd characterizes Starfleet as reckless: “Have you ever bothered to look out of your spaceships down at the little guys below? If you had, you’d realize that there’s a lot more of us down there than there are you up here.”
The thing is, Starfleet does “look down at the little guys” all the time, that’s the problem. The only real way for any of these starships to strictly enforce the Prime Directive is to fly by unexplored planets, and literally not do anything. No beaming down, no orbiting too long to freak out curious stargazers. Nothing. If everyone on Star Trek followed General Order One to the letter, there would almost never be any interesting stories. Here’s how every Star Trek episode would play out with captains who follow the Prime Directive to the letter:
Crew member: Oh hey, check out that cool planet. Want to beam down?
Captain: Hmm. Maybe. Are there people down there?
Crew member: Yep. They seem awesome, too.
Captain: Can they travel faster than light?
Crew member: Nope.
Captain: Okay. Fuck it. Let’s keep going. It’s going to be too hard if we go there.
Crew member: Good call. I love my job.
Captain: Me too. Hit it!
There’s a big difference between saying Don’t Interfere With the Natural Development of a Culture and Don’t Interfere With People Who are Pre-Warp. The people in “New Eden” didn’t evolve naturally: they were fucking abducted by aliens! (Weirdly, this makes “New Eden” more like the western episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, “North Star,” but I digress.)
The Prime Directive is a trap, and even a by-the-book, buttoned-up guy like Pike knows this. When I spoke to Pike actor Anson Mount ahead of the premiere of season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery, he told me that “Pike views himself as an extension of Starfleet code.” In some ways, almost everything Pike does in this episode reinforces that idea. He really believes that if General Order One applies, that he and the crew can’t mess with the basic beliefs of the humans on Terralysium. But Pike can work around General Order One’s apparently narrow definition around “pre-warp” technology; the battery he gives Jacob to fix the church lights has nothing to do with warp drive tech and Jacob already knew about the existence of warp drives, so Pike figures he’s in the clear. Plus he has orders from Starfleet to find out anything he can about the Red Signals, which may carry higher priority than General Order One.
So, how does this all shake out in Star Trek’s future? At this early point in the timeline, General Order One seems overly specific, to the point of not being useful. The focus on “pre-warp” creates all sorts of weird loopholes, hence the plot of this episode. It’s possible—and perhaps likely—that Pike’s mission on the Discovery to the planet Terralysium actually changed the way Starfleet enforced – and defined—General Order One. The events of Star Trek: Insurrection occur in 2375, 118 years after this episode of Discovery. Was Admiral Dougherty’s argument sound, after all? Could he have said, “Listen, Jean-Luc, you used to be right. Back in the 2250s, that’s how we did General Order One, but then Pike found this fucked-up planet full of pre-warp humans from 2053, so you know, that shit doesn’t apply anymore.”
And when you look at it that way, not only did Captain Pike not violate the Prime Directive, he may have actually helped to invent it.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read, an editor at Fatherly, and a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
isn’t dealing with the ethical and moral questions raised by the prime directive like, at least 50% of star trek plots? as much as picard may have felt it was a good idea (particularly when he accidentally became a god), he was also a master at finding loop-holes.
Voyager Episode ” The 37’s “
Janeway encounters same exact situation in the Gamma quafquad instead of the Beta.
STD is raping Trek canon & lore.
Starfleet General Order 1 was part of United Earth Starfleet policy as early as 2152, but did not become official until 2168. Order 1 has been in place as an official order for nearly a hundred years by the time of the Discovery episode ‘New Eden.’ It wouldn’t have been anything new by the 2250’s.
If anyone invented the Prime Directive it would have to be Captain Jonathan Archer.
And regardless of if a planet’s inhabitants are native to it or not: a society that is pre-warp cannot be interfered with. Regardless if they were abducted a hundred years ago or not. A growing society has been made there.
@2: Comical Transporter Chief said:
”STD is raping Trek canon & lore.”
Oh, for heavens sake, can we please have a dialogue that doesn’t go that far into hyperbole-ville? You don’t like the show? Fine. But to use a term like “rape” to describe storytelling and creative decision-making is needlessly nasty. The people writing and producing this show aren’t doing it to deliberately harm you. They might actually be seeking to entertain and make us think a little
twels @4- The people writing and producing this show are doing it to make money.
If someone is going to take a pre-existing property upon which to base another show/ book/ whatever because they want an existing audience and/ or because they lack creativity, they need to know what history the property has. Otherwise they go for cheap drama at the expense of prior stories and make choices like having the thoroughly amoral Harry Mudd, who cared not a whit for anyone else, make obvious and pithy remarks like the one quoted in this post.
#5
There’s been some sloppy writing, but that’s nothing unusual, even in Star Trek. They’re writing for a particular audience in mind – one that places and action, thrills and edginess over everything else. Which is more of a problem in the industry than this one particular show.
And if money is their only interest, then there are far better (and steadier) paths to wealth than writing and producing in Hollywood. Because no one ever wrote a book titled “Get Rich by Writing and Producing for a Streaming Service that’s Late to the Streaming Game and is Owned by Your Grandma’s Favorite Network.”
I think the Prime Directive has always been pretty fluidly interpreted throughout the history of Star Trek. Kirk was pretty free about disregarding the letter of the law when it seemed that a society would benefit from, say, having its giant papier-mâché (literal) godhead blown up so said society could advance beyond just feeding the god. Picard was a slave to the directive, violating it only to save Wesley Crusher. Even In The pre-directive Star Trek: Enterprise, the struggle over whether to interfere was well-dramatized. The Prime Directive’s Prime purpose in most stories is to serve as an obstacle more than any type of enlightened reasoning. Captain Whomever is either going to be forced to intervene because it’s the right thing to do, or suffer from a decision not to intervene because he/she is following a higher principle that requires him/her to allow others to suffer.
I liked this particular version of “Prime Directive Theater,” but others’ mileage seems to have varied.
I have always thought that the purpose of the Prime Directive was to prevent ‘any culture that encounters a significantly more advanced culture will be assimilated to the detriment of the less advanced culture’ type mishaps from occurring. Pre-warp civilizations are less likely to have contact with sentient life not native to their world, and the inhabitants of Terralysium were transplanted a few years before Cochrane broke the light barrier. Pike didn’t know this at first, but even though this isn’t the first instance of finding humans on other worlds across the galaxy, it’s clear that Pike was motivated by a desire to preserve the worldview of the inhabitants. I thought it was a really moving thing that he did, when he revealed himself to Jacob, who already knew what was going on. It reminded me of Mirasta Yale, from TNG, and all of us can relate. It stands to reason that fans of science fiction would approach the idea of First Contact with something like compassionate curiosity, and not paranoia, and I love how Pike was able to play his part in having the work of several generations of Jacob’s family come to fruition.
The Prime Directive has been notoriously inconsistent. I don’t think it’s ever been a case of “It only applies to pre-warp civilisations”, but it does seem to be a part of it that pre-warp civilisations shouldn’t be made aware of the existence of other worlds. (Also, the Prime Directive was categorically not in place by 2152, when Archer’s crew weren’t bound by it but acted as though they were anyway because of lack of imagination on the part of the writing staff. All we know is that it was in place after 2168: It may be decades after. It was certainly in place by Kirk’s time, and now definitely by Pike’s time, but it could have been new then.) However, it is extremely debatable whether it applies to people who are already aware of the existence of aliens: The already-mentioned “North Star” and “The 37s” include Starfleet captains taking the opposite approach and being open and honest with abducted humans, including ones who’ve been in stasis since the 20th century. (See also “The Neutral Zone”.)
So I would say Pike is being over-zealous here. Kirk was a lot looser with it, Janeway too frankly, Picard was a bit of a stickler and may well have made the same choice. The basic principle of the Prime Directive seems to be that you shouldn’t interfere with another culture. That applies to warp-capable and interstellarly active cultures, meaning they’re not allowed to violate local laws or try and change their customs. The argument between Picard and Dougherty in Star Trek: Insurrection had nothing to do with the Bra’ku’s warp capability (especially since we later learn that the Son’a, a Bra’ku offshoot, are warp capable and possibly were when they left the planet). Picard’s argument was that the Bra’ku had established a civilisation on the planet and the Federation had no right to abduct them from it, Dougherty’s argument was that they weren’t indigenous to the planet (because they came there in a warp-capable ship?) and therefore their natural development had already been disrupted and the point was moot.
I think one of the reasons why Starfleet appears to be so inconsistent with the Prime Directive is because no two alien cultures are exactly the same. It’s meant to apply until a species is warp capable. It seems a reasonable line of demarcation, because it’s likely that certain sociological conditions have to be met before a culture can safely develop warp drive, or something like it. There are always exceptions, but the most gross violations seem to happen when captains go nuts, like Tracey, or Garth of Izar, or even Mark Jameson. Priorities would inevitably shift if everyone found out that there were people flying around their world who seemed to have the solution to all of their problems, and at some point, something disastrous must have happened to birth the idea of non-interference. Contact with an alien intelligence would fundamentally change the worldview of people who aren’t necessarily ready for it. Going back to some earlier examples, Burnham and Georgiou did violate G.O.1 in “The Vulcan Hello,” they averted a natural disaster and disappeared before they got caught. All Pike knew when he invoked G.O.1 was that there were humans on the surface, 55K LY out into Beta Quadrant, and that they didn’t even have electricity.
Imagine what would happen if someone showed up and gave us technology for transporters, replicators, and holodecks: we would use the transporters for espionage, the replicators would make more stuff to eff up the planet, like fossil fuels and bombs, and the holodecks would be for porn or for screwing with people’s heads.
They don’t ever share weapons technology with non-aligned worlds, but Starfleet has been known to sneak into threatened systems to avert natural disasters. I think a good bit of G.O.1 might have come out of how many people felt about ‘being held back’ by their close contact with Vulcan during the 22nd century. There are, of course, parallels with what’s going on in the world today. It’s supposed to be frustrating, from a dramatic standpoint.
I really wonder if this Red Angel is going to end up being the reason why there is a barrier around the galaxy’s perimeter by the beginning of TOS, but apparently the Valiant ran into it earlier. Who knows. It’s too early to tell, but I am already hooked.
5. sps49 Two things can be true at the same time. Yes, they want to make money, and they are doing it by trying to entertain us. If people are not entertained, no one watches and the show goes away. Since its still going strong and they are adding to their stable of Trek shows, its safe to say sufficient people are watching. No Trek show has fully aligned with another and expecting DSC to do so is unrealistic.
10. UnicornSushi If I remember correctly, Burnham said in ‘Vulcan Hello’ that the drought on the planet was caused by something that Starfleet did in the sector, so they were correcting something they did, thus were not in violation of GO1.
Clearly, the early Captains had a bit more leeway in interpreting GO1, which is why you’ve got Pike the strict adherent and Kirk the cowboy. Honestly, they probably ruined it for everyone else which is why Picard was so precise in his interpretation.
Good point. Also, I remember Janeway saying that Kirk’s era was a different time. One of Picard’s formative experiences was losing the Stargazer due to a disastrous first contact, and he also has a whole lot of precedent to inform his decisions. I think part of what the Prime Directive represents is a counterpoint to manifest destiny and colonialism, and the ideal is probably meant to prevent a situation like ‘saving goldfish from drowning by pulling them out of the bowl’ and learned helplessness. It’s also a moral grey area. Intervention usually occurs in the wake of interference in the first place, and the effects of the PD being blatantly disregarded are pretty horrifying. John Gill and the Ekos/Zion debacle. Ron Tracey and Omega IV. It also stands to reason that some of these ideas may explain why the universe seems silent to us, not because we don’t know how to listen, but because we are not all quite ready to hear what sentient life out there might be saying. One day we will be in the position of seeing a world from orbit that reminds us of our own turbulent history, and we will have to pass by until the time is right. There will always be that pull to communicate with people who seem so like us, until they are confronted with the reality of finding their entire worldview, that of being at the center of the universe, completely snatched out from under them. I’d like to think that when first contact happens for us, it will be a joyful experience, but it is a bittersweet truth that we just aren’t all on the same page. I think what I loved so much about this episode was the way that Captain Pike was able to do right by the many and the one, and I really like what you said about how two differing ideas can both be right. Well said, and thank you.
This is a well written piece, and there’s only one thing I feel compelled to add to it. I view Pike’s actions in this episode as revealing how some of the applied interpretations of the Prime Directive were working not only in his era, but how they continued to be applied even into the Nemesis/Voyager era.
The Prime Directive in broad terms prohibits interference with the natural development of cultures. Right off the bat, there’s something to unpack there, and Pike illustrates this. The Directive is not species-specific, meaning that just because the crew of the Discovery is staffed of primarily humans, this does not mean that interference is permitted with other non-Federation human cultures. Same would apply for Vulcans, Andorians, etc. Pike points this out in response to Burnham, saying that because the humans of New Eden arrived before the development of warp drive and continued to evolve from that starting point, they are not just humans waiting to come back into the Federation’s embrace; they are a unique culture by that point. I thought that was great.
The second aspect of the Prime Directive that this episode did less to reveal than others in the franchise is the use of warp drive as a marker. Pike uses it to clearly delineate that no interference is permitted. That makes sense, for the reasons mentioned in the article. But warp drive doesn’t end the applicability of the Directive. We saw from later episodes, TNG’s “Redemption” being an example, that even though a culture has warp drive, if they are not members of the Federation, the Directive still prohibits interference with that culture’s internal affairs. I usually see this being something that doesn’t get discussed much about the Prime Directive, but it’s still out there.
Lastly, Pike’s application of the Prime Directive could also show how the Federation uses time as a benchmark for how strictly to apply the rule. Pike notes that the humans of New Eden have been there for 200 years, which not only predates warp drive on Earth, but also shows that there was enough time for those people to sufficiently develop their own unique cultural identity. Yes, they were transplanted there by dint of Red Angel, but from then on they became something else. The Ba’ku from Insurrection was mentioned, and Admiral Evil does have bad motives for disregarding the Directive in that movie anyway. But he did say he was acting on orders of the Federation, and since he mentioned the Ba’ku weren’t native, I suspect the thinking of the Federation Council was: the Ba’ku weren’t originally from the planet and they only came to the planet some short time ago, making them less of a unique culture and more of an accident. If the New Eden-ites had been there for say 10 years or 20 years, I don’t know if Pike would have interpreted the Directive as strictly as he did.
Anyway, just something to consider, and again, good work on the article.