In Star Trek: Discovery, Anson Mount’s Captain Pike is probably the most by-the-book Star Trek captain since Captain Picard, insofar as he’s a dude who really, really doesn’t want to violate the Prime Directive, but ends up being forced to anyway. But while the most noticeable difference between the captains might be the pacing of their storylines—Pike never even stops for a tea break!—the biggest divide comes down to the idea that the Prime Directive isn’t really the Prime Directive during the era of Discovery. In fact, it seems the second season of Discovery is all about demonstrating how the Federation’s General Order One evolves into the more strict version of the Prime Directive seen in later series.
Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery, season 2, episode 6, “The Sound of Thunder.”
Debating about the Prime Directive is pretty much the best go-to storyline of several iterations of Trek. But lately, fans and pundits have been debating about the definition of the Prime Directive in real life. In Star Trek: Discovery, no one actually calls it “the Prime Directive.” And if a casual fan wants to know why there’s a Quora page that attempts to answer exactly that. But, just like Captain Pike can’t believe everything he sees on Talos IV, you can’t believe everything you read online. Here’s the real deal: people in Star Trek: Discovery don’t call General Order One “the Prime Directive,” because Trek history demonstrates the exact definition of the Prime Directive doesn’t actually exist until toward the middle of the Original Series, in 2268, specifically, in “The Omega Glory” when Kirk actually says the words “the Prime Directive.” Discovery is currently set 11 years before that, in 2257.
So, the easy answer to the semantic question of “Prime Directive” versus “General Order One” is connected to the time period of Discovery and the wonkiness of how many qualifiers this non-interference directive really has. In “The Sound of Thunder,” Saru’s home planet of Kaminar suddenly is on the knife’s edge of General Order One for a variety of crazy reasons. For one thing, we learn that the Ba’ul became capable of warp drive twenty years prior to the episode. We’re also told this is the exact same time Saru became an asylum seeker and was rescued by Georgiou (as seen in “The Brightest Star”).
The writers of both “The Sound of Thunder” and “The Brightest Star” are Erika Lippoldt and Bo Yeon Kim, and they know exactly what they’re doing here. Back when “The Brightest Star” aired, Lippoldt suggested that the specifics of the Prime Directive aren’t as clear when Georgiou meets Sarua—somewhere in the 2230s—as they will be in Picard’s time, over a century later. “These events took place at a point in time when the Prime Directive was not so well-defined, or at the very least not as strictly enforced, compared to The Next Generation,” Lippoldt explained. “Therefore, more leeway was given for Starfleet’s commanding officers to use their discretion as to how they enforce it.”
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With “The Sound of Thunder,” Lippoldt and Kim doubled down on this idea that General Order One will evolve into the Prime Directive we see in the 24th century. Speaking to TrekMovie they said, “We did find ourselves bringing up the Cardassian occupation of Bajor quite a bit, both in terms of the oppression of one species by another, and with regards to General Order One.” This is super-interesting because the situations are nearly parallel. The Federation didn’t interfere in the Cardassian invasion of Bajor in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, presumably because of sticky politics, but used the Prime Directive/General Order One as the philosophical rationalization for inaction. In other words, Starfleet doesn’t mess with the Ba’ul pre-Discovery or the Cardassians pre-DS9 because they honestly just don’t want to start a war. The Prime Directive is just the rule that justifies it.
All of this tracks with what we know about Trek history at this point, but it’s relevant to note that contact with pre-warp species happens all the time in the original Star Trek, most notably in “A Private Little War,” another episode about Starfleet trying to avoid a war, and invoking the idea of the Prime Directive. Kirk and Bones don’t say the words “Prime Directive” in that episode, but Kirk does bring it up in “The Omega Glory.” Both that episode and “A Private Little War” will happen about a decade in Discovery’s future, as will the rest of Star Trek canon (other than Enterprise). Why mention this somewhat obvious fact?
Well, because it’s important to remember that, for better or for worse, Star Trek: Discovery is still a prequel—a de facto origin story for a chunk of Trek mythology. The idea that one culture with advanced technology is enslaving another culture without that tech makes General Order One/The Prime Directive a lot trickier to justify in “The Sound of Thunder” than it was in “New Eden.” Pike’s desire to preserve General Order One in “New Eden,” made a little more sense because it was clearly more possible—a pocket of pre-warp human society could conceivably be left to itself, but the centuries-long conflict between the Ba’ul and the Kelpiens has resulted in forced eugenics and slavery. In “The Sound of Thunder,” Burnham even says that all this General Order One stuff is kind of Pike’s call, implying they’re in a huge grey area (and remember: Burnham is a xenoanthropologist, and thus, presumably, familiar with the ins-and-outs of General Order One). At this point in Trek history (2257) General Order One is actually too vague to be effective. Or, too broad to be interpreted in a meaningful way. There’s nothing “prime” about this directive, because General Order One, is just too damn general. And, if the end goal of General Order One/the Prime Directive is just to keep the Federation out of crazy space wars, it makes sense the hardcore version of this rule would be born in the post-war era of Discovery.
A huge portion of this season of Star Trek: Discovery is all about meddling. Pike is meddling with the command structure of Discovery. Section 31 is meddling with regular Starfleet business. The crew is meddling with “lesser-developed” cultures on random planets. Stamets has been unwittingly meddling with the indigenous lifeforms that live in the mycelium network. And, to top it all of, the Red Angel is seemingly meddling with history itself. In the 24th century versions of Star Trek—The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine—characters mention the “Temporal Prime Directive,” nearly as much as the regular one. This implies that inference via time travel is just as big of a deal to Starfleet as messing with pre-warp species in real time. In fact, you could argue that nearly everything that is going wrong in all of Star Trek: Discovery is because General Order One hasn’t been drafted well. Think of it like the Articles of Confederation and the Prime Directive like the Constitution. Maybe everything we’re seeing in Discovery explains why Picard and everyone is so worried about the Prime Directive in the future.
Because, sure, the Red Angel might be messing up the timeline, but it’s the vagueness of General Order One that allows Pike and company to mess up all the time.
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and an editor at Fatherly. He is a longtime contributor to Tor.com
Oh my God, I am so glad you are back writing about Star Trek. I agree completely, they are clearing setting up for a Prime Directive creation thing.
Starfleet not intervening in the Cardassian occupation of Bajor has to be the greatest moral failure in the organization’s history. I always thought they just didn’t know Bajor even existed until the end of the Occupation; but if they knew and did nothing, that’s inexcusable. Especially since they ended up in two hot wars and a cold war with the Cardassians anyway.
Sorry, but your premise is erroneous and your research is lacking. First off, the term “Prime Directive” was first spoken in “The Return of the Archons,” the 22nd episode of the series, more than a year before “The Omega Glory” (episode 54). And it’s a huge fallacy to assume that something didn’t exist in-universe before then just because it wasn’t mentioned onscreen until then. The Federation itself wasn’t mentioned until episode 19 (“Arena”), but it certainly existed for more than a century before then.
Second, the term “General Order Number One” was not invented by Discovery, but comes from the 1967 edition of the Star Trek writers’ bible, and is simply an alternate, interchangeable term for the Prime Directive, the official name of the rule that “Prime Directive” is more of a nickname for. It was not used onscreen during TOS, but it was used in the animated episode “The Magicks of Megas-tu,” which takes place during the TOS 5-year mission.
Also, we know from “A Private Little War” that Kirk’s survey mission to Tyree’s planet 13 years before the episode — which would’ve been 2255 — recommended that the planet should be subject to the non-interference regulation, though the term “Prime Directive” wasn’t used.
It is true that the Directive did “evolve” somewhat between TOS and TNG, but only in the sense of becoming more rigid and legalistic at the expense of its intended purpose. The idea behind the Prime Directive was to respect other cultures’ superior knowledge of their own societies and needs and their right to choose their path for themselves — which included an obligation to intervene to negate other sources of interference in their free development, such as Klingon agents or ancient computer overlords. But TNG took more of an extreme hands-off approach, not interfering no matter what — leading to the insanely contradictory notion established in “Pen Pals” and “Homeward” that it’s better to let a species go extinct than risk harming them with contact. Which is just the opposite of respecting their right to choose for themselves. (And which Captain Kirk directly contradicted in “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” — “The people of Yonada may be changed by the knowledge, but it’s better than exterminating them.”)
Yeah, some people forget this is a prequel, and don’t even take into consideration that the words “Primer Directive” aren’t uttered until the middle of TOS.
@2 – Robb: I don’t think it’s that simple. If the Federation (not Starfleet, because Starfleet obeys the laws of the Federation) intervened in Bajor, where do they stop? What if they don’t like the Bajoran faction that ends up in power afterwards? Should they liberate all the member planets of the Romulan and Klingon Empires? Stick their noses in conflicts everywhere outside their borders? Be the galactic police?
I understand we feel the plight of the Bajoran people, and the show stars are supposed to be heroes; but politics (international or intergalactic) aren’t as simple as that.
@2 & 4: Earth history has shown that when one superpower tries to “liberate” a smaller country from another superpower, the result is usually a prolonged war that does that country far more harm than good. Trying to intervene on Bajor would’ve just escalated the conflict between the Federation and Cardassia into a bigger, hotter war, and Bajor would’ve been caught in the middle, which probably would’ve been far more devastating than the Occupation was.
Seems like people need to go back and watch Star Trek Enterprise. It takes place about 90 years earlier and references General Order One a number of times
@5:”@2 & 4: Earth history has shown that when one superpower tries to “liberate” a smaller country from another superpower, the result is usually a prolonged war that does that country far more harm than good.”
Interesting point for debate.After all, there are so many examples.Was the USSR’s liberation of countries in Eastern Europe from Nazi rule a good thing or a bad thing? Bit of both? Was North Korea’s attempt to liberate the South in 1950-53 a good thing or a bad thing? Bit of both? Was Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere a good thing or a bad thing? Bit of both?
@5 – Chris: That’s what I’m talking about.
@6/Stryfe: No, Enterprise never referenced General Order One or the Prime Directive. It did reference a Vulcan non-interference policy that was implicitly the forerunner of the Prime Directive, but it wasn’t a Starfleet rule at the time.
We also know from TOS: “A Piece of the Action” that the Prime Directive was established less than 100 years before the episode, so it was introduced sometime after 2168, while Enterprise spanned 2151-55.
lm a long time Star Trek fan,, but this show sucks so much it’s only a matter of time till it get cancelled
they should call it the Mike And Tully show and Pike , well he has to show more balls
One thing that was made clear in “New Eden” was that it was clearly Starfleet policy that General Order One can be superceded at a captain’s discretion at least in the TOS/Discovery era. It feels like Picard didn’t have that discretion on a regular basis
General Order Two is known as the Secondary Directive.
@11/twels: One thing a lot of people don’t get about Kirk is that it was part of his job as a captain to interpret the letter of the rule book and decide how to apply the Prime Directive. In the 23rd century (at least TOS’s version), a ship on the far frontier could be weeks away from contact with Starfleet, so a captain couldn’t just call up Earth for orders from above; a captain was often the ultimate available arbiter of Federation law and Starfleet regulations in a given situation, so it was Kirk’s right to make those calls. What people today see as Kirk “breaking” the Prime Directive was usually intended at the time to be Kirk upholding the Directive by opposing other entities that disrupted or prevented a society’s natural development. As I said, the TNG version is far stricter and more legalistic than the TOS version, in part because communications are more advanced and the Federation’s reach is wider, so captains don’t have the same autonomy.
Anyway, according to the TOS series bible, a captain could choose to suspend the Prime Directive if they deemed vital Federation interests to be at stake, though they’d have to defend that decision to Command. Interestingly, the first-draft TNG bible added that it could be suspended if the safety of the ship and crew was at stake, though TNG ended up taking a much stricter stance on the PD later on.
@9 The closest thing we got on ENT was Archer, after committing genocide on the Valakians in “Dear Doctor”, mused that he needed Starfleet to come up with a directive to control his actions. Sadly, as evidenced by literally the worst TNG episode “Homeward” it seems that they went with the whole genocide is fine option. Although it definitely wasn’t in “For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” in TOS, where Spock specifically mentions the PD for consideration, Kirk considers and rejects it on grounds changing the Yonadans is better than seeing them all go to their deaths.
The Prime Directive is a mess, in other words, never treated consistently, and it has been taken far too literally in universe and out; and I wish it would go on the list of things Star Trek should never do again (a list including Time Travel, The Borg, and the Mirror Universe). I don’t think STD has done the Borg, yet, though.
Also, @@.-@, the Federation can’t just arbitrarily go to war with every civilisation that does something it doesn’t like or act boneheadedly. They could station a dozen starships over every planet, and still not have enough resources to do that job, the Federation is vast and has enormous resources and personnel, but not infinite amounts. Plus, the word for a civilisation that enforces their own standard of behaviour on every other is a “tyranny”. Even a benign tyrant is still a resented tyrant to be struck back at.
@13: I do understand what you’re talking about regarding Kirk and his “violations” of the Prime Directive. What I am saying is that “New Eden” is the first time since TOS that it’s been understood that a Captain has room to budge with the Prime Directive in that way. Burnham tells Pike that a violation of General Order One “requires a Captain.” It’s clear that in the future, Picard doesn’t have the same authority. One wonders if things like Ronald Tracey messing around with the Yangs and Kohms and Kirk seeing what went on with the Iotians after one book got left behind might be responsible for forming up enforcement of the Directive.
Then again, the Directive really isn’t ever an affirmative force in the kind of stories Star Trek typically tells. Usually it’s a matter of something horrible about to happen if our crew DOESN’T step in. The only times we see it as being a good thing is when our crew has to interfere to fix a problem someone else caused through their interference.
@15/twels: Actually, despite the TNG-era Prime Directive nominally being more strict, Picard bent or circumvented it on numerous occasions, because it’s in the gray areas where the interesting stories lie. People forget that the very episode that established the “let them die before contacting them” interpretation, “Pen Pals,” also ended with the crew choosing to ignore that stricture and save the planet anyway. And it was actually a plot point in “The Drumhead” that Picard had violated the letter of the Prime Directive nine times over the previous four seasons, which is competitive with Kirk’s record.
(Oh, and by the way, to address the main article, that same scene in “The Drumhead” also established explicitly that the Prime Directive is also called General Order Number One. Voyager: “Prime Factors” did so as well.)
“One wonders if things like Ronald Tracey messing around with the Yangs and Kohms and Kirk seeing what went on with the Iotians after one book got left behind might be responsible for forming up enforcement of the Directive.”
Actually, both those episodes established that the Directive was solidly in place by the time they happened. “A Piece of the Action” was specifically about the attempt to repair the damage caused by the Horizon‘s pre-Directive interference and help the Iotians find a path back to functional self-rule. And “The Omega Glory” offered an interpretation of the Directive so strict that it said captains swore a solemn oath to sacrifice their lives and those of their entire crews before violating it.
I have to say, speaking as someone who’s been a Trek fan since the 1970s, it’s startling to see how badly some modern viewers misunderstand or misremember the evolution of the franchise. You guys are talking about concepts firmly established in TOS as if they weren’t invented until the later shows.
I think, if anything was responsible for the ultra strict version of the PD that we saw in TNG it was Wesley getting in trouble with a planet’s god by stepping in a coldframe John Gill and his decision to try and find the good in Nazism in “Patters of Force” and the subsequent global conquest and genocide resulting therefrom. I can be that being the sort of thing which would result in a banhammer “no exceptions” kind of rule. Thank goodness nobody in real life would make that mistake(!).
@17/random22: I don’t think so, because what Gill did was a blatant and drastic violation of the Directive, not just a flexible application of it. If something like that had been done before there was any PD, back in the early Federation era when Starfleet was free to interfere in other cultures, then it could explain why the PD was instituted in the first place. But an outright, obvious violation of the existing law wouldn’t be seen as a reason to crack down on flexible applications of it, I think. It’d have to be a case where a more subtle bending of the rules turned out to be disastrous.
I think the reason for the change, both in-universe for Starfleet and in reality for TV writers, is that over time, people tended to fixate on the letter of the doctrine without thinking about the underlying intent. The intent in TOS was to teach humility — our superior technology doesn’t entitle us to play God, and other cultures are intelligent and self-sufficient and know their own needs best, so we should trust them to figure it out for themselves and only intervene to free them from other interventions that are keeping them from doing so. But the mentality that sunk in by “Pen Pals” and especially “Homeward” was the exact opposite — less advanced cultures are too primitive and childlike to understand our knowledge or make informed decisions about their fate, so we should play God and unilaterally dictate their survival or extinction without giving them a say in the matter. It’s so fixated on the surface concept of non-interference that it forgets that that’s a means to an end rather than the end in itself.
@18. CLB: ” so we should play God and unilaterally dictate their survival or extinction without giving them a say in the matter”
This is exactly what happens in the current episode of Discovery.
@19/Sunspear: I haven’t seen the episode, but Saru is involved in the decision about his own people, isn’t he? And I gather it’s basically about eliminating a different species’ interference, just as often happened in TOS. It wasn’t like in TNG where the interpretation was so strict and legalistic that they wouldn’t even save a species from a natural disaster.
I agree that the Prime Directive and General Order One are the same thing, hence them consisting of words that mean the same thing. (But hey, I’m still that one guy that thinks the “coalition” they were trying to set up on Enterprise was the Federation, not a completely different organisation called “the Coalition” as the novels and Memory Alpha insist.) There is still a Prime Directive that Pike is meant to follow, but like with Kirk and Georgiou, it seems to be interpreted fairly loosely. Describing Kirk’s actions in “A Private Little War” as “trying to stop a war” is extremely generous (“trying to limit the scope of a war” might be a slightly less generous interpretation) but at least there there’s already outside interference. Episodes like “The Return of the Archons” and “A Taste of Armageddon” saw him overturning a situation that had sprung up naturally without outside interference because he deemed it wrong and justifying it in a rather arbitrary way, and it is likely that incidents like that led to the rules being tightened up (perhaps too tightly) by the following century.
As for the Federation interfering in the occupation of Bajor: What, are Starfleet the Quadrant Police now? There’s likely similar situations on dozens of other worlds, what makes the one whose name we know special? The Federation do what any sympathetic neutral power would do in that situation: They help out refugees, and once the Cardassians have gone they basically send in a peacekeeping force to help the Bajoran rebuild. But as we saw in “Pen Pals”, Starfleet officers might argue for saving people from a natural disaster or disease, but no-one responsible is in favour of stopping a war or an oppressive regime, because those are down to the decisions people have made and they don’t have the right to impose their own choice on them. The Federation was actually at war with the Cardassians during the Bajoran Occupation and it seems to have ended in a draw as wars usually do: Not only do they not have the right to intervene, they don’t have the ability either.
I saw another post referencing “Who Watches the Watchers” as a “bad” TNG Prime Directive episode, but while Picard does stick to it a bit too rigidly at first (notably being prepared to let a native die because of the Federation rather than tell people what he saw), it does demonstrate how even in the TNG era it reaches the point where a captain can’t hide behind the Prime Directive and Picard realises that telling the Mintakans the truth is the least damaging option.
@21/cap-mjb: “(But hey, I’m still that one guy that thinks the “coalition” they were trying to set up on Enterprise was the Federation, not a completely different organisation called “the Coalition” as the novels and Memory Alpha insist.)”
Not “completely different” — more like the direct forerunner, the embryo that developed into the Federation. TNG had established that the UFP itself wasn’t founded until 2161, so ENT couldn’t have it happen in the fourth season (2155) and thus had to make it a two-step process, an initial Coalition that grew into the Federation a few years later. Although “These Are the Voyages” botched things by showing what was obviously the Federation founding ceremony in 2161 and giving Deanna a nonsensical line about it just being the founding of the Coalition, or something. But then, most of TATV is best ignored (and the novels directly contradicted its version of events by claiming that the holonovel version of history was a cover-up).
“Episodes like “The Return of the Archons” and “A Taste of Armageddon” saw him overturning a situation that had sprung up naturally without outside interference because he deemed it wrong and justifying it in a rather arbitrary way”
People forget that in both of those cases (and later in “The Apple”), the Enterprise was under direct attack from the planet and in imminent danger of destruction. So both Landru and the Eminians (and Vaal) basically committed acts of war against the Federation by attacking the ship, and that freed Kirk to do what was necessary to neutralize the enemy’s ability to kill his crew. As I mentioned, the TNG bible even said the PD could be waived when the safety of the entire crew was at stake, though “The Omega Glory” said the opposite. But the TOS bible said it could be waived when vital Federation interests were at stake, and that would presumably cover acts of war. After all, the PD never prevented Starfleet from fighting against Klingon conquest, even though conquest is part of the Klingons’ natural cultural development.
So yes, the PD says you have to respect another culture’s autonomy and free choice at all costs — unless what they choose to do is to attack you and your crew. There’s a self-defense exemption, as there is for most laws. Kirk wasn’t arbitrarily overturning other cultures, he was defending his crew against their direct aggression. Granted, the reason the show repeated that formula so many times was to give Kirk an excuse to liberate the entire culture in the process, but it’s still wrong to claim that he did so arbitrarily and purely for the sake of interference.
@10 – Rob: You hate the show, but many fans love it, and it’s doing great. So great, that season three is basically in the works, and the show’s success has made possible the Picard show, the S31 series, and the two animated shows in the works.
@21 – cap-mjb: And the Federation only sent a peacekeeping force to Bajor after the Bajoran Provisional Government asked them to.
22. ChristopherLBennett – “People forget that in both of those cases (and later in “The Apple”), the Enterprise was under direct attack from the planet and in imminent danger of destruction. So both Landru and the Eminians (and Vaal) basically committed acts of war against the Federation by attacking the ship, and that freed Kirk to do what was necessary to neutralize the enemy’s ability to kill his crew. “
And some people forget that the Eminians told the Enterprise to stay out of their system and their wishes were ignored. The Enterprise then found themselves involved in a war and took it upon themselves to interfere. No indication of outside interference there, it was a system that Eminiar and Vendikar had mutually agreed upon.
In the case of Archons and the Apple, the Enterprise landed their people on an inhabited planet without the permission of those that lived there. In the case of Beta III, they even disguised themselves as natives which could be taken as espionage. In both cases, however, there’s no indication that the situation with the society ruling machines was the result of any outside force and thus, was a natural result of the inhabitants actions.
Similarly, the Ba’ul said in the latest episode that the Federation had agreed to stay out of matters on Kanimar. Starfleet then broke their promise to investigate the “red angel” and took it upon themselves to completely upend the status quo. Again, no indication of outside interference. The Ba’ul were almost exterminated by the Kelpians and took action to save themselves. Seeing as were told during the episode that the Ba’u; technology has been shut down and the Kelpians are now all evolved to their old, predator status, it’s quite likely that Starfleet just signed the Ba’ul death warrant.
@20. The other species is also native to the planet. What they did to the Kelpians was a matter of survival as the Kelpians were driving them to extinction. They could argue self-defense. Starfleet would have taken a position against the Kelpians if they’d been witnesses at the earlier stage.
Saru is also acting like a hormonal rage monster, circumventing Captain’s orders. This triggers the rest of the crew to follow suit, when there’s no real urgency. There is a stable status quo. They force the outcome by causing massive trauma to the Kelpians without warning or consent and triggering a genocidal response from the other species. Saru also conveniently disregards the complicity of his people’s own priesthood propping up a fake religion based on “balance.”
All this required diplomacy, not direct interference from Starfleet.
The priesthood does not know the balance is fake.
Why does Saru’s father get upset when he questions the balance? I got the sense from the short that the priests did not want the truth known. Saru’s sister, however, appears to be innocent.
The more I think of it, the more it seems like the entire conceptual basis for the Kelpians is a huge mess. Unless I’m missing something profound, the only reason the Discovery takes Saru’s side is because they already know him. The fallacy of prior relationships. Because the Ba’ul are presented as creepy, we’re automatically supposed to assume they’re the villains, when in the past they were the prey species. Protecting themselves from extinction and overturning the status quo against the predator Kelpians should have been respected. They are not evil.
@27/Sunspear: Enslaving another species is wrong, even if it starts out as self-defense.
28. ChristopherLBennett – So why hasn’t the Federation attacked the Klingons and have even allied with them? There’s obviously other species living in the empire yet they’re never seen.
The situation between the Kelpians and the Ba’ul is a natural result of life on their planet. Was it right for the Kelpians to almost drive the Ba’ul into extinction? They were down to a couple of hundred individuals according to this episode. And the Ba’ul aren’t slaughtering the Kelpians wholesale, just when the get to the pint that they lose their fear and become a threat to the Ba’ul.
@28: So’s abandoning sapients to get devoured, to be honest. Not really trying to defend the Ba’ul here, but Starfleet is still kind of responsible for any deaths resulting from this action, “for the greater good” or not. And by ignoring that, the storytelling comes off as very murderhobo (i.e. it places the characters more as irresponsible adventurers than as part of an organized space navy of explorers and diplomats).
And maybe that’s part of the problem people have with it?
TOS could come off as very murderhobo by the nature of its stories, but frequently tried to reference military rank, stylings, and behavior. TNG and DS9 twisted away from that, dropping a lot of the military behavior, but reinforcing the idea of a rigid governing structure, and at least toying with responsibility for the impact of their actions on the long term (this is part of why the Prime Directive suddenly became such a big deal). VOY and ENT tried to go more for the fast and loose “the ship is an island of the Federation in a sea of unknowns” style, with varying degrees of success.
DSC very much leans towards that latter option — ranging from the first episode, where saving people from drought is more important than worrying about exposure, to this episode, where saving people from slavery is more important than what mass hormone-enhanced freedom rage can do to their captors (and also those formerly enslaved people, and the surrounding infrastructure they could use to live and become part of the Federation, etc, etc).
I’m not really making a judgement call on this one. I prefer rigid, bureaucratic Federation of goal-minded paranoid people, but I’ve been on the side of the murderhobo in the past, and I can understand the desire for expedient, effective resolutions, in storytelling and IRL.
@21: Yeah, I agree. I don’t think there was any way the Federation *could* interfere with the Bajoran Occupation without triggering both serious legal complications, and a massive war with Cardassia. And while Starfleet would win that war (“rocks into replicators” wasn’t a joke), it would involve the exact kind of bloodshed that the Federation tries hard to avoid. Its a tragedy, but not one the Federation could really touch… until they did, once the Cardassians gave up. The Federation can’t legally and morally save you from a fight, but they can build you back up and prep you for round two. That’s what they gave post-occupation Bajor, and that’s what they gave post-Dominion Cardassia.
@30/Rob: “(this is part of why the Prime Directive suddenly became such a big deal)”
As I said before, it’s weird to see people these days assuming that these concepts weren’t established until the later shows. The Prime Directive was absolutely a big deal in TOS. That’s why they called it the Prime Directive! TOS and TNG just differed on how Prime Directive stories were told, and how it was interpreted. TOS’s Prime Directive prioritized the freedom of a culture to develop and grow naturally, and thus allowed removing alien influences or ancient computers that were quashing that freedom — it was more of an activist, Peace Corps sort of doctrine, helping others get to the point where they could help themselves from then on. But TNG took a more conservative and rigid approach — don’t get involved, period, no matter what, and when you do get involved anyway, spend more time angsting over it beforehand.
@22/CLB: “TNG had established that the UFP itself wasn’t founded until 2161, so ENT couldn’t have it happen in the fourth season (2155) and thus had to make it a two-step process, an initial Coalition that grew into the Federation a few years later.”
I guess we’ll never know what would have happened if ENT had got a fifth season but my reading of the two-parter that preceded TATV is that the talks that will lead to the creation of the Federation are at a very early stage (not surprising when most of the participants were on the verge of war just a few months earlier) and it’s going to be years before anything actually comes of them. (Think of how long the Brexit negotiations have gone on!) The Romulan War on the horizon may have stalled talks somewhat as well. So my reading is that the negotiations that led to the Federation started in 2155 and were concluded in 2161, not that something called the Coalition was in place as a tangible alliance mere weeks/months later or whatever fan lore has decided.
“As I mentioned, the TNG bible even said the PD could be waived when the safety of the entire crew was at stake, though “The Omega Glory” said the opposite. But the TOS bible said it could be waived when vital Federation interests were at stake, and that would presumably cover acts of war.”
Whatever the people penning the writers’ guide may have thought, the on screen evidence suggests it should be broken as a last resort and self-survival isn’t a good enough reason. The interpretation from “The Omega Glory” was echoed a few times in TNG, notably in “Who Watches the Watchers”, and the crew are still required to follow it in “Bread and Circuses”, even when the landing party’s lives are in danger and even when there has been prior interference.
We’ve debated the legality and proportion of Kirk’s actions in “A Taste of Armageddon” before and I don’t want to rehash old ground but as pointed out above, the Prime Directive was moved aside before that on the justification that the Federation had lost ships in the area and needed a base there, which seems on a par with deciding that because you’ve lost some ships in the South China Sea you can sail into Malaysian waters and ignore the directives of the local government. Kirk refusing to surrender his crew to an execution that’s legal under local laws seems on a par with Picard’s actions in “Justice”, which is treated as a Prime Directive violation. (Maybe that’s down to laws being tightened up, or scale of the threat, though?)
In “The Return of the Archons”, Spock starts to point out that overthrowing the local ruler is against the Prime Directive only for Kirk to overrule him on the grounds that only applies to living, breathing cultures, which seems less about Federation interests and more about his personal judgement of another culture based on a few hours’ observation.
@23/MaGnUs: Yes, very true, and especially in the early seasons, when the show was more concerned with local politics than threats to the whole Federation, it’s made clear that the Prime Directive is still in force and Starfleet’s right to involve themselves is very fragile. (They can only have a limited influence on the attempted coup at the beginning of the second season, for example.)
@32/cap-mjb: As I’ve been saying, the way the PD was defined in TOS was very different from the way it was defined in TNG, so it’s problematical to blur the two together. The different generations of writers were operating from different assumptions, and the reason so many people today believe that Kirk was “violating” the PD is that they’re trying to judge TOS by the mentality of TNG’s writers. The intent of the writers of TOS was that Kirk was either defending the PD or bending/waiving it for justifiable reasons. And by the same token, we can presume that the different generations in-universe are interpreting the law very differently.
(Keep in mind that the edition of the TNG bible I’m referring to is the original version written by David Gerrold and Gene Roddenberry with input by D.C. Fontana and Bob Justman, so it reflects the mentality of TOS writers more than that of the writers who later took over TNG. It seems that DG & GR wanted to codify in writing the defense-of-the-ship exemption that TOS employed in “Archons,” “Armageddon,” and “Apple.” It was after DG was gone and GR pushed largely to a ceremonial role that the stricter interpretation of the PD came into effect. Note that “Justice” had the crew freely contacting a pre-warp civilization, so even in early TNG there was some flexibility about what the PD meant.)
As for “Armageddon,” I really wish you would stop blaming Kirk for Ambassador Fox’s decision to make contact, which Kirk overtly protested. It’s deeply unfair. And as for “Archons,” calling Landru “the local ruler” is nonsensical. Rather, it was a mindless mechanism created by a ruler who died 6000 years before. There was no living leadership, just people trapped by an ancient program running on automatic. If anything, the resistance to Landru was the closest thing the planet had to actual leadership, because they were the only ones making a choice about how they should live.
@31: By “became a big deal” I kind of meant exactly you’re talking about — less that it wasn’t a thing in TOS (because you’re absolutely right it was), but that it suddenly went from “a rule added to protect the natural growth of the culture” vs “a rule added to protect new cultures from the Federation’s overwhelming influence”. That’s my bad; my argument could have been more clear.
That said, neither TOS nor TNG/DS9 (I’m not counting VOY or ENT here for a lot of reasons) present an entirely flawless execution of the Prime Directive. TNG’s version is rigid and inflexible, and often means the Federation is willing to let new species die rather than disturb their natural growth, but TOS’ peace corps strategy comes from a decidedly pro-Federation viewpoint. Yes, in TOS the crew is careful to only cut out the parts that they believe stem from an outside source, but as the Klingons point out in at least one episode, what counts as an outside influence is often a little self-serving. If the Klingons give one primitive culture weapons, the TOS solution was to arm the other side too.
And while that’s certainly a convenient solution… that’s also effectively a proxy war between two great powers, waged by residents of a poorer nation. People tend to frown on that sort of thing these days.
I mean, heck, in the Omega Glory, Kirk even convinces aliens from an Alien-United States to act with the spirit of the Earth-US (“treat all people equally”, etc).
My argument here is that DSC definitely wants to lean more towards the gung-ho Peace Corps adventurism of TOS… but like the gung-ho Peace Corps of TOS, the planets that got Peace Corp’d weren’t necessarily better off at the end than they were starting out.
@27 The problem with painting the Ba’ul as the victims is that we only have their word to go on that that’s actually what happened. Yes, they may have been mistreated by the Kelpians in the past, or it might just be some post-hoc rationalization for treating another species like cattle, we don’t know the objective truth one way or another. Let’s face it, every single authoritarian society has ultimately painted itself as a victim to order to justify their atrocities; there is always some big scary Other out there threatening to destroy their way of life, civilization is always on a knife’s edge, and no method is too harsh or ruthless if it means keeping the proverbial wolves from your door. Such societies require an enemy, in fact, they cannot sustain or define themselves without being in opposition to some arch-enemy that must always be opposed, even if it’s one of their own creation. The Founders over on DS9 are another good example in Trek; we only have their word they were persecuted by the solids, yet it’s a very convenient justification for them to try and enslave/exterminate/virus-bomb any lifeform that’s not them.
So yeah, taking the Ba’ul at face value just doesn’t work. And even if they were the injured party to begin with, that doesn’t excuse what they’re doing now. I know that victimhood is in vogue at the moment, but simply being a victim of someone else does not automatically justify any action you might take until the heat death of the universe, no matter how monstrous, or free you from having to accept the moral responsibility for your choices. As the late great Edward Said put it, “You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once – there has to be a limit.” Considering the Ba’ul were routinely purging an entire sentient species and keeping them in a state of near-thralldom, their pathetic Freudian excuse really doesn’t cut it.
We already apply the Prime Directive on this planet, as in the cases of Amazonian tribes (though they probably have more traffic with civilisation at large than is generally admitted) and the Sentinalese.
@35: At the same time, is it really fair to potentially doom an entire species to die from their neighbors’ involuntarily-induced-anger-puberty? Even if that species did enslave said neighbors and routinely kill their members?
I agree that we’re only getting the excuses of the oppressors here, and I’m not saying they aren’t lying. I’m just a little leery about the whole “pubertize everyone and see what happens” approach.
@34/Rob: “If the Klingons give one primitive culture weapons, the TOS solution was to arm the other side too.
And while that’s certainly a convenient solution… that’s also effectively a proxy war between two great powers, waged by residents of a poorer nation. People tend to frown on that sort of thing these days.”
They frowned on it at the time too. That was the whole point of the episode. It was supposed to be a morally ambiguous outcome, a necessary evil rather than a clear victory. The whole idea was to engage with the fierce controversy at the time over intervention in Southeast Asia, a situation that seemed to have no clear solution, and to leave the audience with a moral dilemma to ponder. That’s why the episode ended with solemn expressions and sad music and a metaphor about serpents in Eden and “We’re very tired,” rather than the crew laughing at a joke or something.
“I mean, heck, in the Omega Glory, Kirk even convinces aliens from an Alien-United States to act with the spirit of the Earth-US (“treat all people equally”, etc).”
That sentence is self-contradictory. As you say, it was a parallel United States. It had its own Declaration of Independence and Constitution, identical to ours (never mind the nonsensicality of that). Its people had just forgotten what their own ancestors’ words meant; all Kirk did was to remind them, to say “It’s not just ritual sounds, the words actually mean something.”
@33/CLB: Fair enough, but as you say there’s certain inconsistencies even in the TOS era about how flexible the Prime Directive is. Kirk holds Tracey to high standards (but isn’t above giving the natives a lecture about how to run things before he leaves), while in “Bread and Circuses” we are given a very rigid interpretation of the Prime Directive (“No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space, other worlds or advanced civilisations.”) which would definitely seem to make several of the actions in other episodes count as “violations” even by the standards of the time/series. I agree we’re meant to be on Kirk’s side, and for the most part it is hard to fault his motives or the outcome. (Well, except in “A Private Little War”: Least said about that mess the better.) But as in the “Archons” example, there are times when he’s challenged by crew about his interpretation of the Prime Directive. He manages to justify it but there may be others out there who don’t agree with him.
As for “Armageddon”, as I said, Kirk’s acting under orders. But he still chooses to carry out those orders with only token objections, not throw Ambassador Fox in the brig for ordering a violation of the Prime Directive. The Nuremberg Defence only gets you so far, and it’s in contrast to Picard being told in Insurrection that his superiors have decided the Prime Directive doesn’t apply in this case and following his own conscience rather than what those up the chain of command have decided is in Federation interests.
As has been mentioned, we have to look at this within the whole Star Trek mythology, and the result does seem to be reactionary elements clamping down on this loose attitude to the Prime Directive (Janeway notes in “Flashback” that “They were a little slower to invoke the Prime Directive…the whole bunch of them would be booted out of Starfleet today”) and going way too far in the other direction.
35. Devin Smith – Actually, there’s also the evidence of the Sphere of All Knowledge. That’s where Tilly and Burnham discovered just how close the Ba’ul came to extinction, something that they Ba’ul have not done to the Kelpians. Yes, they’re culling them but only once they become dangerous. And now with a planet full of Kelpians back in their preadtor phase and the Ba’ul’s technological edge neutralized, the Ba’ul are once again facing extinction, this time thanks to the Federation.
Peter David did a sequel comic to A Taste of Armageddon where Fox failed in his mediation and war broke out, leaving Vendikar obliterated and one third of Eminiar VII uninhabitable. Sure, Fox gave the order to ignore the code 710 but Kirk has shown that he’s willing to ignore orders he considers illegal. “I was just following orders” didn’t work at Nuremberg.
@39/cap-mjb: What you say is more or less true, but incomplete. Yes, part of the varying application of the Prime Directive in TOS was that they were making it up as they went, but part of it was that it was supposed to be a complicated question with a lot of moral ambiguity to it, an issue to be debated by the characters and resolved differently depending on the specific situation. The PD was an ideal, but reality was messier and sometimes circumstances compelled exceptions.
And as I’ve said, TNG and the later shows often used the PD in the same way, as a rule that circumstances required bending, e.g. in “Pen Pals” or “Who Watches the Watchers.” As with the eternal Kirk vs. Picard debate, if you really look beneath the differences in style, the substance isn’t that different.
Anyway, you’re wrong to say that the Prime Directive applies to Ambassador Fox’s decision to ignore the keep-away warning. Eminiar VII was clearly a post-contact society, since it knew galactic warning codes, so just making contact was not a Prime Directive issue. It was more like trespassing. Even the Eminians didn’t see the Enterprise‘s approach to their planet as interference in their culture; as Anan said, they warned the ship off for its own safety, so that it wouldn’t become a casualty of war.
Captain James T. Kirk : Code 710 means that under no circumstances are we to approach that planet – no circumstances whatsoever.
Starfleet has the biggest guns so they can throw their weight around, at least until someone bigger shows up to teach them a lesson. Then, next week, they’re back to gunboat diplomacy.
@41/CLB: Possibly it’s a stretch to place it under the Prime Directive banner. I’m not saying that making contact was a violation of the Prime Directive in itself, but if a part of the Prime Directive is respecting other cultures’ laws and right to self-determination, then you could argue that ignoring the wishes of the local government is going against it. As it turned out, their very presence escalated things to the point that they ended up interfering more than anticipated. But maybe that’s a case of applying later Prime Directive standards.
The Prime Directive (by whatever name) is a dramatic motivator, a reason for the protagonists to contemplate and agonize. Since Star Trek is a cerebral show (sometimes), the shape of the conflict should be an allegory, something to make the audience think and consider parallel situations in real life. (For example, every time the U.S. Constitution collides with a scenario not explicitly considered by the Framers.) The legal basis of the regulation, in-universe, is hence subordinate to the demands of a particular episode.
If Starfleet’s non-interference principle seems inconsistent, then we can conclude either (a) the writers are inconsistent, or (b) the application of the principle is inherently contingent — and (b) is the more interesting stance. It depends on the situation, the people, and the current particulars of the regulation. We’re seeing only isolated slices of it — how human-dominated crews in three different centuries have chosen to apply the principle. We’re not seeing the courts martial after the fact, or the accretion of Talmudic commentaries in Starfleet Academy, or the public comment period on the parallel Federation legislation.
(Actually, we do — in the novel Prime Directive (Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, 1990), where for once the Enterprise’s well-meaning interference does not end happily. Spoiler: eventually it does, but during the novel’s middle everybody’s in disgrace.)
@43/cap-mjb: The Prime Directive is not a catchall for any and every legal violation. Ignoring a No Trespassing sign is not what the Prime Directive is about.
And yes, strictly speaking, shutting down the Eminians’ war was not in compliance with the Prime Directive. That’s not in dispute. But as I said, there is an exemption for self-defense against an act of war or a direct attack on one’s ship. Kirk only shut down their war because it was necessary to save his ship. If the Enterprise hadn’t been under attack, he wouldn’t have done it. Too many people ignore that fact.
@44/phillip_thorne: Exactly. The PD needs to be applied flexibly because every situation is different. Part of a captain’s job is to choose how to interpret the law in a particular situation, especially in the TOS era when the captain was the only available Federation authority. Kirk wasn’t being a renegade or a rule-breaker in those situations; it was an actual part of his responsibilities as a captain to make those judgment calls for himself rather than just blindly following the letter of the law. That’s what leadership is — making those decisions.
@35. Devin: “The problem with painting the Ba’ul as the victims is that we only have their word to go on …”
@kkozoriz already responded to this: that the information comes from the independent observation of the dying Sphere our crew met in the previous episode. Discovery is mining that database for knowledge. (Btw, excellent use of Airiam in that scene. Finally more action for bridge crew.) I don’t think we’re meant to question it or to conclude that the Ba’ul near extinction was a subjective event.
45. ChristopherLBennett – “Kirk only shut down their war because it was necessary to save his ship. If the Enterprise hadn’t been under attack, he wouldn’t have done it. Too many people ignore that fact.”
From The Omega Glory -” A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”
Also, Kirk’s ship wouldn’t have been under attack if he had obeyed the Eminians code 710. People can spin the end result any way they like but you cannot deny that the whole reason for the episode was put in motion when the Federation decided that they were going to establish a “Treaty Port”. And just in case there’s some people who don’t know exactly what that is –
“The treaty ports refers to the port cities in China and Japan that were opened to foreign trade by the “unequal treaties” with the Western powers, as well as cities in Korea opened up in similar fashion by the Japanese Empire.
Treaty Ports – Wikipadia
Essentially, they were ports established by the large, colonial powers at gunpoint, the terms being dictated by primarily one side. Not exactly the sort of behaviour you’d expect from the enlightened Federation. Or, perhaps it is which is why Kirk only put up token resistance. He may not agree with Federation policy but he’s aware that this is how the Federation does things.
@38/ChristopherLBennett: Regarding the proxy war comparison… I’m not saying that they didn’t dislike the action. Honestly, that’s part of what makes that episode a really great TOS episode. They weren’t celebrating what they did, or what the effect was… but they did give the natives those weapons, and that was considered by Kirk and others on that ship what Starfleet required of them to do. And that’s the difference I’m talking about.
TOS told a great story that neatly underlined what interfering in other cultures can actually do to those cultures… but the story itself relied on a version of Starfleet and the Prime Directive that I’d argue TNG and DS9 deliberately skewed away from *because* of the results of TOS-Starfleet’s actions in the name of the Prime Directive (both in-universe and out of universe — views on Cold War era proxy wars had changed rather dramatically for the negative in the US by the 90s).
And Kirk can’t tell the Yangs what their Constitution means — he can only tell the Yangs what he (a post-scarcity Starfleet captain) says it means, based on what the Constitution of the old United States meant. He’s biased, and he can’t not be biased in this case, and while pushing them towards an enlightened attitude is overall a noble goal, he’s still effectively telling a bunch of locals both what their culture means, and how they should live.
I’m not even saying Kirk was wrong to do so. But 24th-century Starfleet might say he was.
I don’t think the writers switched towards a rigid view of the Prime Directive just because of flanderization of the concept; I think a rigid, more thoughtful Prime Directive was supposed to be a direct result of the laissez faire approach of the 23rd century, because that approach most likely led to a lot of people getting killed or getting their culture trampled over on more than one occasion.
I don’t think either one is a perfect approach, but… what I’m really trying to go for here is why some people might find the rigid Prime Directive more appealing and serious than the gung-ho adventurism attitude. And I think that kind of fits with a lot of attitudes towards the show itself; not as a case of edgy versus not edgy, or serious vs not serious, but as a case of “thrilling vs cautious”.
@48/Rob: “but they did give the natives those weapons, and that was considered by Kirk and others on that ship what Starfleet required of them to do. And that’s the difference I’m talking about.”
But that didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in response to the Klingons’ active interference. It wasn’t different because the Prime Directive was different, it was different because the culture was already being aggressively interfered with by the Klingons. The question of preventing interference was no longer on the table, because that line had already been crossed. You can’t talk about preventing a forest fire once the fire is already raging. That’s an unrealistic conversation to have at that point. You can only try to limit the damage it does, to preserve as much as you can, even if it means setting a fire of your own to create a firebreak. Kirk was trying to minimize the damage, to prevent the extermination of Tyree’s culture and prevent the Klingons from successfully conquering the planet.
Keep in mind that Kirk and McCoy also collected evidence of the Klingons’ interference so that they could expose the treaty violation, which presumably would lead them to abandon the effort, since they felt the need to do it in secret. That was the primary way they hoped to solve the problem. But it would take time, and Tyree’s people were in imminent danger of being wiped out by the Klingon-supplied weapons. So the only way Kirk could see to preserve some semblance of the cultural status quo was to maintain an even balance of power between the two cultures. Not because the Prime Directive was looser — I’m sure he would’ve taken a lot of heat for that decision and had to justify it to Command — but because the damage had already been done and prevention was no longer the issue.
“And Kirk can’t tell the Yangs what their Constitution means — he can only tell the Yangs what he (a post-scarcity Starfleet captain) says it means, based on what the Constitution of the old United States meant.”
You’re reading too much into the episode. What Kirk reminded them of was the actual words of the document, which in the conceit of the episode were the exact same, verbatim words in our Constitution. The Yangs had slurred those words into gibberish, “E’ed plebnista” and so forth. All Kirk did was quote the verbatim text, which was theirs as much as ours. The built-in, budget-saving conceit of TOS, which showed up particularly in Roddenberry-scripted episodes like “Bread and Circuses” and “The Omega Glory,” was that many alien worlds were effectively the equivalent of parallel timelines, exact Earth duplicates in every respect aside from some divergence. So the intent of the episode was that Omega IV was essentially the equivalent of an alternate future of our own Earth. The last thing Roddenberry intended to convey was that Kirk was imposing his values on them. The intent was that he was reminding them of their ancestors’ values. Yes, it’s an objectively stupid premise, but that doesn’t mean we get to pretend the story was meant to convey something different than it actually was.
“I think a rigid, more thoughtful Prime Directive was supposed to be a direct result of the laissez faire approach of the 23rd century, because that approach most likely led to a lot of people getting killed or getting their culture trampled over on more than one occasion.”
I agree that it’s plausible that it happened because of the perception that it had been applied too loosely in the 23rd century. But as I’ve said, I don’t agree that it actually was applied more loosely in TOS than in a lot of TNG etc. Sure, there are some TNG etc. episodes where it’s applied very strictly, but others where, as I said, they still end up bending or breaking it just as much as Kirk ever did, but just spend more time angsting over it and debating it with each other before they go ahead and do it anyway.
BTW, season three of Discovery has been confirmed. Oh yeah, it’s doing awful.
49. ChristopherLBennett “The question of preventing interference was no longer on the table, because that line had already been crossed. You can’t talk about preventing a forest fire once the fire is already raging. That’s an unrealistic conversation to have at that point. You can only try to limit the damage it does, to preserve as much as you can, even if it means setting a fire of your own to create a firebreak. “
This would be the same James T, Kirk that ordered Scotty to exterminate the entire population of Eminiar VII. The Eminians were firing their sonic (!?) disruptors at them but the seemed fairly ineffective against the shields. So the ship itself didn’t seem to be in danger, just Kirk & Spock and the rest of the landing party. So, hundreds of millions of deaths versus five Federation casualties. Yeah, that sounds really enlightened. Five Federation casualties that should never have set foot on the planet in the first place. And Starfleet and the Federation are totally on board with this. Don’t forget, Kirk gave Scotty two hours notice before he starts attacking. And what happens if one of the Eminian guards gets a lucky shot and takes out Kirk?
Meanwhile, the ship is no longer in danger.
ANAN: Unless you immediately start transportation of all personnel aboard your ship to the surface, the hostages will be killed. You have thirty minutes. I mean it, Captain.
KIRK: All that it means is that I won’t be around for the destruction. You heard me give General Order Twenty Four. That means in two hours the Enterprise will destroy Eminiar Seven.
ANAN: Planetary defence System, open fire on the Enterprise!
SECURITY [OC]: I’m sorry, Councilman. The target has moved out of range.
@49/CLB: As nice as it would be to believe that Kirk sees the situation in “A Private Little War” as temporary, that’s not how it’s presented on screen. He seems to be anticipating the situation going on for years, with controlled escalation, a balance of power and neither side winning, just casualties increasing with no end in sight. He goes from gathering evidence to acting as drill sergeant-cum-arms smuggler to the opposite side to the one the Klingons are helping. Yes, it’s too late to prevent interference but he doesn’t even seem to be trying to stop interference. It’s tempting to speculate that the evidence isn’t gathered to shame the Klingons but to justify his own actions: When Starfleet Command ask what he was playing at, he can show them the Klingons started it. The ending is downbeat but the message seems to be one of support of real-world policy: No-one’s happy about turning a peaceful people into soldiers but it’s the least worst option when the alternative is letting the Klingons/communists take over. To 21st century eyes, this makes Kirk seems like an imperialist training up natives to fight the Federation’s enemies. It would seem more in keeping with the character and the show for Kirk to destroy or dispose of the Klingon-supplied weapons, put a blockade in place to stop more deliveries and then gather all the natives together to give them a big speech about how they need to work together, but the episode ignores this as an option. It’s telling that, until Jeff Mariotte gave the situation a neat happy ending with the Federation uniting the two factions to get rid of the Klingons (which begs the question why not do that in the first place), modern writers treated the events as Kirk being wrong and it ending in disaster.
These days, the events could be revisited in later episodes, and that’s where DSC has the advantage over TOS: I very much doubt that “The Sound of Thunder” is the last we hear of the Kelpiens (especially with one in the regular cast) and in all probability later episodes will revisit the situation, explore the ramifications of the Discovery crew’s actions and see whether or not they did the right thing. Back in the more episodic TOS, things had to be wrapped up in an hour and I doubt they’d have abandoned a story without giving it an ending. The episode ending as it does suggests that both Kirk and the show thought that giving weapons to the other side was the solution.
@52/cap-mjb: “As nice as it would be to believe that Kirk sees the situation in “A Private Little War” as temporary, that’s not how it’s presented on screen.”
Not at all what I meant to say. I didn’t mean it was temporary, I meant it was too urgent to wait for the proper method of gathering evidence and going through diplomatic channels. That’s what Kirk tried to do, because it was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the Hill People’s extermination if they were left defenseless against the other side’s firearms. The episode made it crystal clear, obviously, that it was not at all a temporary solution, but one that would regrettably change their culture forever — the whole point of the “serpents for the Garden of Eden” metaphor, since of course humanity didn’t get to go back to Paradise once it gained the knowledge of sin. So yes, obviously, it was permanent. The point is that Kirk saw no other choice given the immediate threat.
“To 21st century eyes, this makes Kirk seems like an imperialist training up natives to fight the Federation’s enemies.”
Yes, of course it does, and it did at the time! Why is nobody getting this? The whole point of the story was that Kirk was forced to compromise his principles and do something that he and the audience knew was morally wrong, because the situation left him no other choice. This was the TOS equivalent of “In the Pale Moonlight.” We weren’t supposed to believe that Sisko did something heroic by tricking the Romulans and getting a guy murdered. We were supposed to see him wrestling with his guilt at being forced by wartime circumstances into doing something awful. And “A Private Little War” was always, always meant to be the exact same thing.
I’m bewildered by this condescending assumption that we 21st-century people are smarter about these moral dilemmas than people in the 1960s. Didn’t you study history? This was the height of the Vietnam Era, a time when America was bitterly divided over the morality of our intervention in Southeast Asia. The writers and viewers of TOS were steeped in the debate over that moral ambiguity far more immediately and continuously than we are today. That’s the whole reason “A Private Little War” was written in the first place, to explore that troubling ambiguity and tell an allegory for the real-world situation that seemed to have no good solution. It was supposed to be a controversial and troubling ending that would make viewers think, not a pat, easy answer.
Are we supposed to believe that Section 31, later backed up by the Federation, was OK to infect the Founders with a fatal disease? What about Sarek and Admiral Cornwell planning the death of every living thing on the Klingon homeworld? Kirk threatening the same to Eminiar VII? At least in the first two cases, the Federation was at war. Sarek is held up as this great diplomat, a man of peace. It makes you wonder just how deep the Federation buried that little nugget about him. “You have the right to commit murder?” Sarek said in TSFS in response to the Klingon ambassadors statement “We have the right to preserve our race”. Nice double standard there Sarek.
The Federation has shown on numerous occasions that they do not respect the borders of other races, starting with The Corbomite Maneuver. A Taste of Armageddon. The Tholian Web. Just to name a few from TOS.
Has the Federation never shared technology with a less advanced planet that could be turned into a weapon of war? Kirk himself left behind a communicator that would allow the Iotians to develop Federation level technology, laughing while he did it. Sure, a book is way too dangerous to leave behind but something based on transtator technology, the basis of Federation high tech, is a laughing matter.
What about Errand of Mercy? Kirk basically tells the Organians that they don’t have a choice in the matter, they will fight the Klingons regardless of how they decide to deal with them on their own planet. If the Organians had actually been as they appeared, Kirk would have the blood of thousands of Organians on his hands. He’s the one that decided to call Kor’s bluff. Kor was simply holding them and the Organians agreed to his terms.
@53/CLB: “The writers and viewers of TOS were steeped in the debate over that moral ambiguity far more immediately and continuously than we are today. That’s the whole reason “A Private Little War” was written in the first place, to explore that troubling ambiguity and tell an allegory for the real-world situation that seemed to have no good solution. It was supposed to be a controversial and troubling ending that would make viewers think, not a pat, easy answer.”
I wish I could give the makers of that episode that much credit, but the fact that Kirk ultimately comes down on the same side as the 1960s US government makes it feel a bit too much like toeing the party line. Kirk’s attitude and that of the episode seems far too simplistic. We jump straight into arming the other side without any attempt to explore other options or even acknowledge that there are other options. The only troubling thing about it is that someone actually thought the episode was making a valid point. And for a series that on the whole has an anti-war philosophy, it jars badly.
@55/cap-mjb: Yes, you can disagree with the episode’s conclusions, but that does not mean that it wasn’t supposed to be ambiguous. I don’t like the outcome either, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse to distort the facts and caricature the episode as something it wasn’t. You can disagree with someone’s conclusions yet still respect their good intentions and their basic competence. It is a grotesque mischaracterization of the episode to claim it was presenting an unambiguous outcome that it wanted the audience to approve of without question. You may disagree with the claim that it was a necessary evil, but that doesn’t make it okay to pretend it was simplistically endorsing the outcome or expecting the audience to be mindless sheep about it.
And it’s pure self-aggrandizement to pretend that people today are smarter about the moral ambiguities of the Vietnam era than people in the ’60s were. If anything, it’s the other way around — the current generation has forgotten a lot of the lessons of the past, and we’re now having to re-fight a lot of the ’60s culture wars all over again.
@57/CLB: To be honest, I find it hard to view it any other way because the episode doesn’t present a balanced enough argument to be truly ambiguous. McCoy makes a few objections to Kirk’s decisions on moral grounds but when Kirk challenges him to come up with a better way of doing things, he just flounders and backs off. Kirk’s arguments about a necessary evil and the wisdom of preserving a balance of power are presented as fact, when it seems just as likely that an arms escalation like he predicts will reach First World War levels in a matter of months and both sides will get wiped out. And even though it doesn’t seem to have stopped more recent governments trying the same thing again, often with the same result, the fact that history has shown that the philosophy Kirk espouses didn’t work in Vietnam makes it even harder to accept.
@57/cap-mjb: Again, just because you disagree with the conclusions, that does NOT mean that it was meant to be an unambiguous happy ending. Those are two different issues: what the creators intended to do, and whether you think it succeeded.
@58/CLB: Oh, I agree it wasn’t meant to be a happy ending, the tone was pretty downbeat. But I didn’t see much ambiguity about the decisions made. I think the creators intended us to see that Kirk did the only thing possible in the circumstances. And I don’t think they succeeded!
@59/cap-mjb: I still think you’re giving TOS’s writers too little credit for their respect for the audience. They didn’t want the viewers to blindly agree that Kirk was right. They probably hoped it would make viewers uneasy and leave them uncertain. It’s a huge mistake to assume that a storyteller’s goal is always to give the audience a firm answer. Often, we like to leave the audience with unanswered questions, to create moral dilemmas that they can debate within themselves and with each other. A good debate gets people engaged with a story, makes them think about it and remember it rather than just forgetting it as soon as it ends.
So I will never agree that “A Private Little War” was saying “Kirk made the right call.” I firmly believe that it was asking the audience, “Did Kirk make the right call or not?” and leaving it up to them to examine that question. And I’ve always thought it was a brave episode for daring to let its hero be fallible and do something that might have been the wrong thing.
@60 CLB, I agree. I’m not an American, so I might be missing some context here (not to mention from a country that still, goddammit in the damn 21stC still, praises and glorifies colonialist style interventions) but I always got the opinion from that episode that it was an unsatisfactory ending on purpose. That we were meant to feel uneasy, and to feel the characters’ unease with it all. The question of was this the right thing loomed large over the episode.
Some times you want the audience to learn a lesson, and in Trek they often took a firm moral stance and said “THIS was the way”;and I liked that about old style Trek -particularly TNG- and frankly I wish we could have some more of it in general not just in modern Trek; but it didn’t always do that. Sometimes it shook it up a little, and asked “WAS this the way” instead. APLW was one of those episodes.
We can assume that Kirk made the “right” call, at least as far as Starfleet and the Federation were concerned since we never saw or heard otherwise. I’d imagine that if arming the natives was frowned upon, he’d have been called on the carpet at the very least or removed from the center seat. Same with his use of General Order 24 against Eminiar. Not only does Starfleet have an order in place that permits such an action, the lack of action against Kirk for ordering planetary genocide to save his own skin (The Enterprise had moved out of range of the planet) seems to show that Starfleet agreed with his actions.
Chris Bennett’s decree about superpowers is rather simplistic. If it were up to him, there would be no South Korea. LOL.
@63/Sally Sue Brown: I was describing a general historical pattern, not advocating a personal position. There’s no call to make any of this personal.
Also, how exactly does the Korean conflict not constitute a prolonged war between superpowers? Not to mention that it doesn’t really fit the pattern I’m talking about, because the superpowers didn’t impose their intervention — on the contrary, neither the US nor the USSR was eager to get involved in another war so soon after WWII, when both preferred to focus on rebuilding, but they were reluctantly dragged into the conflict between North and South Korea by their respective treaty obligations. In the case of Bajor, the Federation had no prior treaty with them, and I don’t believe they were even contacted until well after they were a Cardassian subject world. If there had been a prior treaty/alliance, then the Federation would have been obliged to intervene, but there wasn’t, so they couldn’t. It’s totally unlike the Korean situation.
The Federation didn’t have a treaty with Tyree’s planet but they intervened anyway.