“A Taste of Armageddon”
Written by Robert Hammer and Gene L. Coon
Directed by Joseph Pevney
Season 1, Episode 23
Production episode 6149-23
Original air date: February 23, 1967
Captain’s log. The Enterprise has been hailing the people of the Eminiar star system. Ambassador Robert Fox is on board, as the Federation is hoping to open up diplomatic relations, but there’s been no response.
Uhura finally gets an answer: a code 710, which is a message that there is conflict and to stay away or risk being damaged. Fox orders Kirk to disobey the 710 despite the very real risk to the Enterprise, so Kirk sighs and orders yellow alert and goes in. Fox’s orders are to open diplomatic relations with these planets so the Federation can establish a needed port there.
They orbit Eminiar VII, which according to Spock is a spacefaring world that was last known to be at war with their nearest neighbor, Vendikar. Last contact was with the U.S.S. Valiant fifty years ago—the ship never returned from Eminiar.
Kirk, Spock, and a security detail consisting of Galloway, Tamura, and Osborne transport to the surface to scout the planet before allowing Fox to beam down. They are greeted by Mea 3, who brings them to Anan 7 and the rest of the high council. Anan says that opening diplomatic relations is impossible because of the war. This rather surprises Spock, given that his scans showed a well-off peaceful planet with absolutely no signs of warfare. Yet Anan insists that casualties number in the millions per year.
An alarm goes off, indicating an attack by Vendikar with fusion bombs on Eminiar VII. The computer Anan is using shows a hit on the city, yet Kirk hears nothing and Tamura detects nothing with her tricorder.
Spock finally figures it out: the war is being fought by computer. Attacks are simulated by a sophisticated program, and casualties designated. Those people whom the computer indicates are casualties are ordered to report to disintegration chambers. It allows their civilizations to continue while the war goes on—it’s been fought for five centuries now, which would be impossible to maintain with more conventional tactics.
Unfortunately, the Enterprise was deemed a viable target by the computer, and a Vendikar attack “destroyed” it. Anan must ask that all those on board report to disintegration chambers on the surface—and until they do, the landing party will be held hostage.
Mea explains to Kirk that she’s been declared a casualty. She will report to a disintegrator by noon tomorrow. If she refuses, Vendikar will be forced to use real weapons, and then the damage will be far worse.
Anan calls the Enterprise, faking Kirk’s voice, saying that they’ve agreed to relations, and that all personnel should beam down for shore leave—they’ll send Eminians up to staff the stations. Scotty, not being a moron, thinks this is suspicious and analyzes the voice of Kirk, which the computer declares to be fake.
Spock tries to mind-meld with the guard through the wall and succeeds in getting him to open the door long enough for the party to kayo him. They get to observe the disintegrator, a rather ordinary, bloodless process for killing people. Kirk takes Mea hostage before she can report to die, and Spock then takes the guard operating the disintegrator out with a nerve pinch, taking his weapon. He and Kirk destroy the disintegrator, to Mea’s horror. Anan sends security after them, and also sets the long-disused planetary disruptors on the Enterprise.
DePaul picks up the disruptors, but Scotty had shields up. Scotty contemplates ways to fire back, but Fox is firmly against that and orders Scotty to take no offensive measures and tells Uhura to keep a channel open to Eminiar for him.
Spock, Galloway, and Osborne manage to get two security outfits, two more weapons, and an Eminian communicator. They, along with Mea, go back to their cell—the last place they’ll look—to plan a strategy.
Anan is concerned at their falling behind on casualty quotas and their inability to destroy the Enterprise. They respond to Fox’s hail, providing him with a rectal infusion of smoke, saying the attack was a mistake and the landing party is totally safe! Really! They invite Fox down, with the notion that they’ll attack as soon as they lower the shields to beam him down. However, Scotty refuses to lower the shields, as he doesn’t trust the Eminians as far as he can throw them. Violating Fox’s orders is a criminal offense, but Scotty doesn’t care, he’s not risking the ship.
Kirk approaches Anan at gunpoint. Anan is unintimidated, as he’s fighting for his planet. So Kirk reminds Anan that the Enterprise can respond with real weapons. Anan tries to trick Kirk into an ambush, but Kirk doesn’t fall for it—however, he does wind up being subdued by the two guards and taken prisoner.
Somehow, Fox and his aide beam down despite Scotty’s efforts (not clear as to how), and are immediately taken prisoner by Anan as casualties. Fox is, to say the least, gobsmacked.
Spock manages to jimmy the Eminian communicator to talk to Scotty. Once the engineer reports, Spock, Galloway, and Osborne (the latter two disguised as Eminians) go to a disintegration chamber just in time to rescue Fox and his aide and destroy the chamber.
Kirk has been brought to the council chambers where Anan begs him to have his crew report for disintegration, otherwise it will bring a true war to Eminiar and Vendikar, one that will destroy their civilizations. To Anan, that’s worth the lives of 400 people. (He actually says 500, but whatever.) Anan calls the Enterprise, but Kirk manages to give Scotty General Order 24 before Anan can speak. Anan then informs Scotty that the landing party will be killed in half an hour if they don’t report to the surface for disintegration.
General Order 24 is to destroy an entire planet. And to add insult to injury, Scotty has—on Spock’s earlier order—moved the ship out of range of the planetary disruptors. Vendikar also is unhappy that Eminiar isn’t meeting their quota, which is a violation of the treaty.
Anan starts beating his chest over the awfulness of the situation, and Kirk takes advantage of the distraction to subdue the guards and grab a disruptor. Spock then enters with Galloway, Osborne, and Fox (Fox’s aide was killed in a crossfire).
Kirk points out to Anan that they have made war so neat and painless that there is no reason to actually stop it. It’s the horror of war that makes it a thing to be avoided, and they’ve eliminated that, so the war has gone on and on and on for 500 years.
Spock dopes out how it works, including the fact that the computers are linked with their Vendikan counterparts. Once that link is broken, it will abrogate the treaty.
So Kirk blows it up. He’s given them back the horrors of war, and maybe now that they have reason to stop it. Yes, they’re killers by instinct, but what makes them human is that they can say, “I won’t kill today.” Kirk also believes that the Vendikans will be just as appalled as Anan is. Fox offers his services as a mediator, and Anan goes to activate the direct link to the Vendikan high council that hasn’t been used in ages.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Scotty claims that they can’t fire phasers with full screens up, a limitation that only exists in this episode.
Fascinating. Spock can influence someone telepathically without physical contact, a possibility that only exists in this episode.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. McCoy is hugely unhelpful, as he bitches to Scotty that he should do something, and when Scotty asks for suggestions, McCoy says he’s not a command officer, that’s Scotty‘s job. He’s so helpful!
Ahead warp one, aye. No Sulu in this one, with DePaul having moved over from navigation to helm.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty is put in charge and comports himself well, not falling for Anan’s impersonation of Kirk, and standing up to Fox.
Hailing frequencies open. Not much for Uhura to do, though it’s all important, from the code 710 to putting Anan and Fox in touch.
Go put on a red shirt. In Tamura we seem to have our first (only?) female member of security—Kirk says he’s beaming down with a security team, and she certainly acts like she’s part of security (though the miniskirt is far from practical…), including guarding Mea. And all three of them do quite well, including Galloway and Osborne pretending to be leading Spock to the disintegration chamber.
Oh, and Fox’s aide, who is never named nor gets dialogue, is killed by Eminians. Fox takes about half a second to look slightly put out that he’s dead and then promptly forgets all about him.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Holy crap, that outfit Barbara Babcock is wearing is hot…
Channel open. “I had assumed you needed help. I see I’m in error.”
Spock bursting into council chambers to rescue Kirk only to find him having rescued himself all by his lonesome.
Welcome aboard. David Opatoshu plays Anan, Robert Sampson plays Sar, Gene Lyons plays Fox, and the great Barbara Babcock plays Mea (Babcock previously did the voice of Trelane’s Mom in “The Squire of Gothos“).
The Enterprise crew we see includes the second of two appearances by Sean Kenney as DePaul (after “Arena“), the latest iteration of David L. Ross (actually referred to as Galloway for the first time in this episode), Miko Mayama as Tamura, and the usual suspects in DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Nichelle Nichols.
Trivial matters: The term “Federation” was first used in “Arena“—this is the first time the nation’s full name of “the United Federation of Planets” is used.
One of the ships the Enterprise-B rescues from the ribbon in Star Trek Generations is called the S.S. Robert Fox.
Fox will go on to make many appearances in the tie-in fiction, among them the Starfleet Corps of Engineers eBook Where Time Stands Still by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore, the FASA role-playing game module Denial of Destiny, Diane Duane’s “Rihannsu” novels, the novel The Rift by Peter David, and the sixth issue of DC’s first Star Trek monthly comic by Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, & Ricardo Villagran. In addition, descendants of his appear in the 24th-century novels Vulcan’s Soul: Exodus by Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz and David’s Before Dishonor.
Several works of tie-in fiction have indicated that the peace Kirk forced on the planets did not last, including Dwellers in the Crucible by Margaret Wander Bonanno and the “Trial of James T. Kirk” storyline in DC’s second Star Trek monthly comic by David, James Fry, Gordon Purcell, & Arne Starr.
General Order 24 will be referenced again in “Whom Gods Destroy.”
In your humble rewatcher’s novel A Time for War, a Time for Peace, Scotty discusses the events of this episode with La Forge when the latter is considering Riker’s offer to be his first officer on Titan. Scotty considers it one of the most terrifying experiences of his career.
To boldly go. “The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.” On the one hand, I love this episode for the nifty science fictional conceit it uses as its base, and the really important lesson behind it. Anan and Mea’s defense of the clean, bloodless method of pursuing warfare seems very reasonable on the face of it, but Kirk is also absolutely right in that it eliminates the reasons for suing for peace.
The Prime Directive, which was mentioned in passing in “The Return of the Archons,” isn’t even given a token mention here, but the point at issue here is that Kirk is defending his ship and crew. His crew has been targeted for murder, and he’s duty bound to stop it. (Of course, he’s also duty bound to avoid a planet with a code 710, but he’s ordered by Fox to go in anyhow. Yup, that’s right, “maverick” Jim Kirk who goes his own way and breaks all the rules to suit his needs kowtows immediately to Fox’s greater authority because, as I’ve said before, the notion that he’s a rule-breaking maverick is a myth created by the movies and doesn’t actually apply to the Jim Kirk of the TV series even a little bit. Scotty’s the one who disobeys orders here.)
On the other hand, this episode makes me crazy, because the script is a mess. Fox and Scotty get into a huge argument over whether or not the latter will lower shields so the former can beam down, with Scotty standing his ground—which is a good thing, because Anan has ordered one of his people to fire on the Enterprise as soon as they lower shields to beam Fox down.
And then a couple of scenes later, Fox and his aide beam down. Buh? He didn’t do it in secret, because Scotty reports to Spock that Fox beamed down. But how did he do that if Scotty didn’t lower the shields? And if Scotty did lower the shields—or if Fox intimidated some junior engineer to lower the shields for him—why didn’t the Eminians then fire on the Enterprise when they had their metaphorical pants down? Also, how did Spock make his telepathy work through the wall, and why didn’t he ever do that again? And why do the Eminians use the same code numbering as the Federation?
This is a good message episode, with a good science fictional concept, and some heavy philosophical stuff. It would’ve been better if bits of the script held together better, and also if Fox was less of a monotone asshat. Unlike Ferris in “The Galileo Seven,” Fox is completely unlikable and is a little too hidebound and snotty. Ferris, at least, had the strength of his convictions, and was also crawling up Kirk’s ass because he was in charge of medicine for sick people which he (rightly) thought was more important than poking around quasars. But Fox is just a tool, and was unfortunately the template for this most unimaginative of Trek clichés, the hidebound bureaucrat.
But with all that—I love the episode’s message. Of all the Kirk Grand Speeches, the one he gives Anan is one of his best, partly because it’s not as histrionic as some of his other, more parodied speeches are, and partly because it’s quite brilliant. “I won’t kill today” is pretty much what separates intelligent life from animal life, and it’s nicely used here.
Warp factor rating: 6
Next week: “Space Seed”
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest work is the short story “Back in El Paso My Life Will be Worthless” in The X-Files: Trust No One, a new anthology of stories based on the hit TV show of the 1990s edited by Jonathan Maberry. The book is available in stores, as well as online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.
Nice review! Personally, I think I’d go 8 on this one.
Huh. As I watched Spock mind meld through the wall, I thought that he pulled that trick out again in the episode with the Adromedans. Perhaps I’m confusing my captures.
I love this episode, and its message is still resonant today. Kirk is at his finest here.
Did James Blish’s adaptation solve the problem of how Fox got down to the planet without the Enterprise being bothered?
I wonder if there’s any relationship between the telepathic connection through the wall, and the mind meld with the Horta…maybe I’m just grasping at straws.
I’d love there to be more explanation somewhere of how Anan 7 replicates Kirk’s voice nearly perfectly. Even if it’s in beta canon, it would be nice to see that explored.
@3/Cloric: You’re right — “By Any Other Name” specifically references this episode (a rarity in ’60s TV) and has Kirk suggest to Spock that he use the same technique on the Kelvans, though it doesn’t work because of their powerful minds.
Also, Keith, “The Omega Glory” shows Spock telepathically/hypnotically influencing the Yang woman Sirah from a distance. And Spock could communicate with the cloud creature from “One of Our Planets is Missing” without touching it (though the ship was inside its brain at the time, so…). Not to mention the times Vulcan telepathy was shown to work across parsecs, such as “Amok Time,” “The Immunity Syndrome,” and TMP.
Tamura was a yeoman, which suggests she was not a security guard. If she was a security guard, she was the only female one in TOS, but TAS gave us Anne Nored in “The Survivor” and the nameless all-female security team in “The Lorelei Signal.”
@4/BrandonH: In Blish’s version, Fox doesn’t beam down until after Kirk takes over and destroys the computers.
I’m with Keith: The core conceit of this one is an interesting SF idea and a nice allegory on the way populations blindly follow their leaders into pointless wars, but the execution is lackadaisical and has sizeable plot holes. (Could it be that transporter range was greater than the disruptors’ range, thus allowing Scotty to beam Fox down?) On top of all the other problems, how the heck can sonic disruptors affect a starship in the vacuum of space???
Worth noting that the Eminian disruptor pistols would be modified to become the Klingon disruptor pistols in “Errand of Mercy” and afterward. Which makes me wonder if Eminiar VII has had prior contact and trade with the Klingons. They must’ve had some prior contact with the races of the galaxy in order to know interstellar comm protocols like Code 710.
When I was a kid, I believed for years that the title of this episode was “A Taste of Armeggadon” (rhymes with Megalon). I had no idea what “Armeggadon” was, and I didn’t really question it; it was just the title of this episode. Once I finally came upon the Biblical concept of Armageddon in another context, and heard it spoken aloud, I went “Ohhhhhh!!” (Odd, though — my mother was religious, so I heard a lot of Bible stories as a kid. Somehow I missed that one. Maybe she thought Revelation was too scary for a young child.)
Great review. I’ve always loved this episode. The scene where Kirk and Anon 7 share a drink and talk about Kirk being a barbarian.
I was pretty sure Spock used non-touch telepathy in “By Any Other Name” through the rocks. He also used his “powers” in “The Omega Glory” to get one of the Kohms to open the communicator…
I always felt this one would have been more interesting (not that I didn’t enjoy it, despite the flaws KRAD and others mentioned, because I did) if they had had a discussion of the Prime Directive weaved in. Granted, at this point in the development of the series, that probably wasn’t totally set in stone yet, and also granted that the PD would likely not have applied as the two planets were space-faring (well, we know Eminiar was, and even if Vendikar wasn’t, they were certainly aware of extra-vendikarian life), and the concept of the PD applying even to Federation members and allies didn’t evolve until the 24th century. That still would have made an interesting discussion, though.
And I LOVE the reference to an unused hotline–obviously a direct nod to the Moscow-Washington hotline!
Edit/addition: Also, it’s possible that Eminiar didn’t use the same code system as the Federation. If I remember correctly (and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong), Uhura reported the code 710 to Kirk, and she could simply have been translating what the Eminiarians said into Fed-speak, like police dispatchers do. If a California state hoopie gets a call from dispatch and the dispatcher advises him/her there’s a nutcase on the loose using the code “5150 at the corner of Hollywood and Vine” that doesn’t mean the person calling it in used that terminology.
@8/DonRudolphII: As I see it, the reason the Prime Directive didn’t apply is because the Eminians had attacked the Enterprise and declared their intention to kill its crew. Which was basically an act of war against the Federation. Surely the Prime Directive doesn’t forbid Starfleet from defending itself in a wartime scenario, or “Balance of Terror” would’ve played out very differently. (And “Errand of Mercy” a few weeks hence suggests that the PD can be suspended altogether in wartime.) So Kirk’s duty as a Starfleet captain required him to take whatever actions were necessary to neutralize the enemy’s ability to kill his crew.
Unlike Archons, I don’t see a problem with the Prime Directive in this one. They were a spacefaring race with plenty of technology.
I always enjoyed this one. The idea of a bloodless war fought by computers always appealed to me. Nevertheless, you can spot the plot holes a mile away. And what could have been a well developed character (Fox) became yet another perfunctory cliché. To be fair, I always remember this episode because of Scotty’s insistance on maintaining the ship’s defenses. Having Fox beam down without an explanation always messed up this nice bit of characterization. Keith’s right. Kirk wasn’t yet the maverick, but Scotty was well underway.
Obviously any culture that spends 500 years fighting the same war will have long since forgotten the reasons as to why it began in the first place. Regardless, I always wished they delved into the reasons as to why the people of Eminiar were fighting at all. I just don’t buy Anan’s “we’re an aggressive race” excuse. No one is aggressive for aggressiveness’ sake.
#10
No one is aggressive for aggressiveness’ sake.
Oh, I disagree with that. Plenty of people are aggressive because they enjoy it. Conflict is fun, and ever more fun when you don’t have to leave the home or office to do it. Why would these two planets need reasons anymore when they’re playing the most fantastic game of Battleship? Call of Duty? Take your pick.
Anyway, I enjoy this episode quite a bit despite the minor nitpicks one could make. The message is a good one and, considering the new age of automated warfare we’re entering, still a timely one.
@11: Aren’t you confusing aggressiveness with competition?
Conflict is only fun up until the point it ceases to be, when it starts generating unwanted consequences. I think any sentient being feels a degree of repulsion over the use of violence (unless they’re sociopaths), which is why Anan is horrified over Kirk’s actions. We’re not dealing with Klingons in this case. These are people who’ve built an elaborate system in order to avoid having to face the horrors of war. That’s why I don’t buy their excuse of aggressiveness as a motivator for war.
Of course, I wouldn’t want to live on that world for five minutes. Imagine waking up every single day with the most pressing thought on your mind being: “Is this the day I’ll be sent to a desintegration chamber?”
#12
I think competition and aggression walk hand-in-hand in most cases. This episode just takes it to an absurd extreme.
Anan, like a lot of “aliens” in Star Trek, is a tremendous hypocrite. He enjoys every bit of this conflict, perhaps as much as a Klingon. Sure, you can make war as clean and civilized as you like, but it doesn’t stop the glee people have in outwitting and conquering another. Sociopathic? Of course it is. War is a sociopath’s delight. You don’t need historical reasons and great causes for that. It’s conflict. It’s aggression. It’s human nature, a base desire that in itself needs to be conquered. “I won’t kill today.”
Even worse: imagine having to watch your loved ones go to the disintegration chamber, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
“I’m terribly sorry, but your child’s school was declared totally destroyed in today’s attack. Please bring your 8 year old daughter to the nearest disintegration chamber for casualty processing no later than noon tomorrow.”
The concept of “bloodless” war is a cool one, but I can’t imagine the situation as portrayed on this episode lasting for anything near 500 years. The setup may be minimally destructive of physical property, but it’s hardly painless.
Nice photo of Kirk ‘manspreading’!
I really liked this episode, although I would have preferred it if Kirk had solved the problem by informing both planets that the destruction of the Enterprise would have activated its Corbomite device, thus destroying both planets (because fake weapons are as powerful as you bluff them to be). So according to their rules, everybody’s dead and the war can’t continue. And Kirk wouldn’t even have to violate the Prime Directive for that.
Add me to the fans of this episode, despite its plot holes.
I like Tamura both for her quiet competence and for the fact that, unlike most crewmembers, she is Asian and doesn’t have an English name.
I like Kirk’s speech for its humility – if it seems too big to decide never to kill again, it’s enough to decide not to kill today. Beautiful.
What’s the matter with the people who believe that the peace talks weren’t successful? I’m certain that they were.
@10/Eduardo: Except the Prime Directive does apply to spacefaring races. We know from TNG’s “Redemption” that the Prime Directive forbade the Federation from taking sides in what looked like a Klingon civil war, because that would’ve been intervening in an internal political matter and interfering in the Klingons’ right to make their own decisions about the course of their society. The “no contact with prewarp worlds” rule is a means to that end, not an end in itself — the assumption being that the knowledge of other worlds would be too disruptive to the society. The fundamental point is non-interference, and it’s certainly possible to interfere in the affairs of spacegoing cultures.
So if Kirk had just barged in on his own initiative and blown up the Eminians’ computers without the Enterprise having been attacked first, that would have been a Prime Directive violation. It would’ve been an act of cultural imperialism, unilaterally imposing a choice on another culture instead of respecting their right to choose for themselves. But of course, that’s not what Kirk was doing, because his ship was attacked and he was defending it. That is why the Directive didn’t apply.
@12/Eduardo: “Of course, I wouldn’t want to live on that world for five minutes. Imagine waking up every single day with the most pressing thought on your mind being: “Is this the day I’ll be sent to a desintegration chamber?””
Those of us who grew up during the Cold War don’t have to imagine that. We all lived every single day with the fear of nuclear annihilation looming over us. And we got used to it. It just became background noise while we went on with our lives. Heck, insane numbers of people get killed in traffic every day, but we just blithely ignore that constant danger. People can get used to anything.
@17/Jana: “What’s the matter with the people who believe that the peace talks weren’t successful? I’m certain that they were.”
Well, I’m sure a lot of people have opinions on what’s the matter with Peter David… just kidding… but I figure the reason he proposed that the peace talks had failed was because it made for a more interesting story. “The Trial of James T. Kirk” was about, well, Kirk being put on trial for Prime Directive violations, and that entailed giving evidence of cases where his interventions had turned out negatively. Plus, while Peter has a reputation for writing comedy, his fiction actually tends to be pretty dark and cynical, and a lot of the humor in it is black humor.
Scotty taking General Order 24 from Kirk and not batting an eye despite it meaning he has to genocide Eminiar if Kirk does not countermand that order. The man’s got ice water in his veins about things that are not his engines and women he is crushing on.
While Kirk may have been following orders to the letter, I expect his creative solution to the problem may have enhanced reputation as a maverick.
The Eminiians explanation about why they do this only makes sense if preserving the culture and the culture’s honor is the only goal. The war has b no material purpose, they are e not trying to conquer one an another, it is no longer about resources if it ever was. And the actual point of honor is lost as well. Millions of individual people sacrificed to the collective, for not much.
Also, there is a huge difference between going about your day accepting the risk you may be hit by a truck and being told to report to 5th & Main to be hit by a truck.
The Prime Directive can’t apply to a civilization that can threaten the Enterprise. The Eminians and Vendikarans are peers of the Federation, as the intention is to treat with them. The PD makes sense only if the civilization is a “pristine”, undiscovered or undisturbed civilization.
The original Star Trek did handle it pretty much this way; I blame TNG for screwing up by applying PD to very unsuitable situations.
Ms. Tamura may have been “just” a yeoman, but her role implied to me that each member of the crew shared some common core competencies.
Also how do you get two episodes in production order where part of backstory is the last Federation ship to visit the place was mysteriously lost decades ago?
Did the writers room have a glitch in the local matrix?
@19/Crusader75: It wasn’t about honor. It was about fear. If either planet stopped playing by the rules, stopped sending its designated casualties to the disintegrator booths, then that would provoke the other planet to attack them with real weapons and bring even greater devastation. That’s why it had lasted for so long — because both sides were too afraid of the consequences of refusing to play the game. They saw the limited, painless casualties of their computer war as a better alternative than the wholesale destruction and probable extinction that open war would bring.
“Also, there is a huge difference between going about your day accepting the risk you may be hit by a truck and being told to report to 5th & Main to be hit by a truck.”
And yet countless people have been conditioned to be obedient soldiers and willingly go on suicide missions or march into machine-gun fire. Even if the war is pointless, they’re trained to follow orders above their own self-preservation. Eminiar and Vendikar were worlds where the entire population had been conditioned in that way. The episode was an allegory for the way lives are arbitrarily thrown away in unnecessary wars — perhaps a veiled critique of the Vietnam conflict.
@20/sps49: As I already mentioned, it’s simply not true that the Prime Directive is exclusively about isolating prewarp civilizations. TNG: “Redemption” makes it explicit that it also applies to avoiding interference in the internal politics of warp-capable nations. TAS: “The Magicks of Megas-tu” defines it as saying that “No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society” (emphasis added), with no mention of its advancement. It is, after all, the noninterference directive, not the “keep prewarp worlds in the dark” directive.
Indeed, the idea that the PD referred specifically to pre-warp civilizations was an invention of TNG’s “First Contact,” exactly halfway through that series. The idea that warp drive was the critical factor did not exist during TOS. You’re right that TNG screwed up the Prime Directive, but you’re getting it backward about how it did so. It missed the point that the PD is a check on the Federation’s own desire to impose its views on others. The idea is to recognize that the Federation is not superior to other cultures and therefore has no right to make decisions for them. Assuming that it’s entirely about other cultures’ backwardness is completely, fundamentally missing the point.
I forgot to mention that Tamura’s uniform isn’t all that impractical. It is a skort, not a miniskirt.
And I really do like this episode, plot holes aside.
How many ships named Valiant disappeared, anyway? SS Valiant in the 2nd pilot, USS Valiant here….
CLP @22- I did not mention “pre-warp”. I wasn’t responding to a previous post, I was stating my views.
I inferred from context- in the original series only- that the PD was in place to allow civilizations to develop as they would without extrasolar (extrastellar?) influence from the Federation. This was the 60s, after all, where colonization was becoming more widely recognized as very bad for the colonized societies.
A culture on a par with the Federation is already “developed” or “adult”, and this type of interference would be likely ineffective.
I don’t agree the directive was meant to be “a check on the Federation’s own desire to impose its views on others” on Star Trek or Star Trek:TNG, but there are episodes of TNG I have missed. And TNG Prime Directive episodes are bad for my blood pressure.
(Lastly, in the Megas-tu reference, “normal development” is a big loophole.)
Christopher “Those of us who grew up during the Cold War don’t have to imagine that. We all lived every single day with the fear of nuclear annihilation looming over us. And we got used to it. It just became background noise while we went on with our lives.”
I grew up during that era and as scary as it was (particularly in the 1960s with all of the assassinations and such) it would have been scarier had we known people reporting to die every day. It’s not quite the same. Even with nuclear annihilation as a possibility, it was only that, while people on those planets had to live with the daily knowledge of death (however clean) that was happening every day.
* *
Not a bad episode, minus the plot holes. I rather liked it.
And Spock used those mental powers more than once; the first thing that popped into my mind, Keith, was in The Omega Glory.
I think all commenters saying “I don’t believe this would’ve lasted so long” should think about all the people living in war zones around the world right now. In most cases they don’t care about the reasons behind said wars, in many cases the “reasons” have nothing to do with their lives, but have no real choice. With conflicts lasting for decades they just go on with their lives, have their children etc.
So I don’t think the situation in the episode is far-fetched. Especially if it was ingrained in them from earliest age that being ready to go to the desintegrators is a necessary sacrifice for their country. I think both the Cold war and the one in Vietnam have their echo in this episode. And the message is as valid today as it was then.
Also, Tamura is not the only female redshirt in TOS. Again see By Any other Name, in which a female redshirt is killed by the Kelvins.
@26/John C: The officer killed in “By Any Other Name” was Yeoman Leslie Thompson. All the yeomen in TOS wore red, as did Uhura. Red was the operations color, including engineering and ship’s services as well as security. So most of the female personnel who appeared in TOS wore red, except for the occasional medical staffer (and, oddly, Charlene Masters) in blue.
Has anyone examined General Orders 1 to 23? You’re telling us there are 23 other things you can do before you can stoop to genocide? “We are now authorized to use physical force…”
@28/chptrekker1: General Order 1 is the Prime Directive. General Order 6, according to TAS: “Albatross,” is that a ship whose crew was killed off by disease will self-destruct within 24 hours to prevent the disease’s spread (evidently a policy put in place after “The Omega Glory,” or one that the Exeter crew was unable to carry out). General Order 7 is the death-penalty ban on visiting Talos IV. (General Order 4 is allegedly another death-penalty offense according to “Turnabout Intruder,” but this contradicts “The Menagerie” and is often held to be a mistake.) General Order 12, according to TWOK, has something to do with the procedure for the approach of a vessel when communication has not been established, but Saavik was interrupted before she could complete it. General Order 13, according to the 2009 film, is a starship evacuation order. General Order 15, also according to TWOK, is that no flag officer shall beam into a hazardous area without an armed escort.
@27/Christopher: And except for the scientists, e.g. Carolyn Palamas.
@18: Funny you mention Peter David and his sense of humor….
Last week, I started reading Q in Law, a TNG book written by him, which I’ve had sitting on my bookshelf for 20 years unopened until now. Decided to give it a try. It has an hilarious Q introduction scene which has Picard walking in space outside the ship, plus the passing the bad mood torch from character to character in the opening chapters. You make a pretty good point by pointing out his dark/cynical approach to storytelling, plus his dark humor. I just read a chapter where Q shows a rapidly aging Sehra (the bride) to the Kerin character on the holodeck. I could see why Q considers the notion of body aging funny. I was as horrified as Kerin, given the tasteless way Q chose to depict it.
@29 Isn’t that last one the order that Saavik made up to come along to the station? Kirk even says in dialogue, “There’s no such regulation.” He relents for other reasons, but not because she quoted a valid General Order.
@32/BrandonH: That’s a very strange interpretation. Saavik was an ultra-serious, straitlaced officer who was shocked at the idea of Spock lying, even as a necessary tactical maneuver to save the ship. She’s not the sort of person who would “make up” a regulation — never mind the fact that lying to a superior officer in an attempt to defy his orders would be insubordination and would pretty much be career suicide. Kirk, on the other hand, is a renowned bluffer, and it was established in that very film that he had cheated to pass an important Academy test. And an admiral has far less to lose by lying to a lieutenant than a lieutenant has to lose by lying to an admiral. Of the two, Kirk is enormously more likely to be the one making things up.
Here’s how Vonda McIntyre depicts the scene in the novelization:
@23/sps49: Sorry, missed your comments. Still getting the hang of this new conversation tracking.
You misunderstand. My point is that TNG did not portray it that way. In TOS, it was about recognizing the Federation’s own limitations and accepting that other cultures were mature enough to make their own decisions for themselves. The TNG version, as seen in “Pen Pals” and “Homeward,” got it completely backward by assuming it was about prewarp cultures being so primitive and childlike that they couldn’t be entrusted with advanced knowledge and that the Federation was thus entitled to make unilateral decisions about their fate.
In college, I knew a young woman who’d been a child in Vietnam during the war. She told me that she’d seen people die around her on a number of occasions, but had accepted the ubiquity of death and violence as just a fact of everyday life, because she’d never known anything else. We always assume that people would never be able to accept a life that’s different from our own, but the fact is that people will accept whatever reality they’re raised in, because they simply don’t know anything else.
I remember thinking this episode was “A Taste of Armajedon”, having no idea what armageddon was. Like you CLB I just went with it. Of course I grew up and got into politics and saw this title again and thought, ohh, that’s what they meant. Glad it wasn’t just me.
I love this episode, mainly because its so effectively terrifying that people could live on two worlds for five centuries with the reality that they or their loved ones could be declared casualties and have to report to die. And then the Enterprise is declared a casualty and the Eminians very casually tell Kirk, “Well, we have to kill your entire crew now. Please have them report to die.” Heavy. Kirk had no choice but to do what he did here. It’s no surprise that Scotty considered this one of the most terrifying moments of his career.
@27/Christopher:
All the yeomen in TOS wore red
Yeoman 3rd Class Tina Lawton had a blue uniform in Charlie X…
Does anybody feel that General Order 24 may have been a bluff? I have always had that sense, and it seems far more likely that they’d have a bluff in place, like the Corbomite one, than that the Federation would actually have a General Order to destroy an entire planet. It always seems to be taken as legit, but it has always struck me as a bluff.
@23/sps49 – When do we see Tamura is wearing a skort? I missed this.
@29/CLB – I’ve wondered about the connection between General Order 7 and Code 7-10. Perhaps there is a link with the number seven…or I could be headcanoning.
@37/MeredithP: All of the so-called “miniskirt” uniforms in TOS were actually mini-culottes, or mini-skorts (I gather the terms are pretty much interchangeable).
Meredith: I seriously doubt GO24 was a bluff, since Kirk just blurted it out expecting Scotty to know what it was…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@37/MeredithP: I always imagined that it must have been a bluff, because destroying the entire planet seems pretty excessive. But there is no evidence in the episode for that.
@39/krad: But we can imagine that it means something else that makes sense in the given situation, and the bluff consists of Kirk telling Anan that it means the destruction of the planet.
@40/JanaJansen: That can’t be, though. The only thing Kirk gets to say to Scotty before communications are cut off is “Scotty, General Order 24. Two hours. Two hours!” Then, 15 minutes later, without any further contact with Kirk, Scott calls Anan and tells him that all the cities and installations on the planet have been targeted and the entire inhabited surface will be destroyed in an hour and 45 minutes. So Kirk was clearly not lying about that. Scott heard “General Order 24, two hours” and understood it to mean “Target all life on the planet for destruction in two hours.”
So since Scotty was on the same page as Kirk, either General Order 24 means “Destroy all life on the designated planet,” or it means “Threaten to destroy all life on the designated planet in order to bluff them into surrendering their hostages.” Or maybe it’s a real order but can only be authorized by Starfleet Command under the most extreme circumstances (say, if there’s some horrible plague about to be unleashed on the galaxy), and when Scott heard Kirk give the order with an impossible timeframe, he deduced that Kirk was bluffing and played along.
Two of David Mack’s novels have gone with the interpretation that it was real. It was actually carried out in 2265 in Vanguard: Reap the Whirlwind, and TNG: A Time to Kill established an “Eminiar Amendment” to the Federation Charter that prohibited ever destroying a planet.
@41/Christopher: Yes, you’re right, I totally forgot that bit of dialogue. Still, I prefer the interpretation that it wasn’t real, because Kirk couldn’t be certain that he would be able to get the upper hand in the next two hours, so it would be very risky to actually order Scotty to destroy the planet.
Unless he really wanted the planet destroyed if he couldn’t save the landing party. Which wouldn’t be very nice.
CLB @34- ok
And thanks for the different perspective from your college friend.
Jose Tyler @36- A poster with your nym should remind us of Yeoman Colt from “The Cage”, wearing gold.
Plus Yeoman Smith in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Sure, there seemed to be no red uniforms at all, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.
MeredithP @37- I felt it was a pre-planned bluff, too. I can’t see our Starfleet wiping out a planetary population, children and all.
Did Nichelle take up DeForest’s usual role of pronunciation contrarian this episode? While everyone else including Anan 7 pronounced “Eminiar” as “ih-MIN-ee-ar”, Uhura went with “EEE-min-ee-ar” (almost like “E. coli”) during the teaser and again at the end of the episode.
I have always loved the use of a spotlight as a practical effect in the war room to show the Vendikan strikes. It still chills me to see that bright circle of light grow on the map, then fade when the spot is turned off, enhanced by Mea’s involuntary gasp (“A hit, right here in the city”).
This episode also has one of my favorite Scotty lines, “Aye, the haggis is in the fire for sure.” It’s right up there with Scotty weeping over his engines (“Oh, my poor bairns”) from The Paradise Syndrome.
I do find it jarring to hear the demonym Vulcanian instead of Vulcan. I think “Errand of Mercy” is the last episode to use it.
I still think the bluff could have been that General Order 24 doesn’t actually exist, but was pre-determined for use as a bluff. Maybe when Kirk took command, he said “okay guys, any time we have hostages on a planet, General Order 24 means we pretend we’re going to blow it all to hell.” That’s how I mean it – not that it was an on the spot bluff, but rather a pre-arranged one.
@45/MeredithP: That’s what I’ll believe from now on!
The Prime Directive, like all thins ST, is always subject to the needs of the plot. I agree with others that it doesn’t apply here, although after rewatching a TNG episode recently I’m even more confused as to what’s considered “cultural contamination.” (Yes: First Contact is a mess and really stretched the PD in all the wrong ways.)
@ChristopherLBennett: I haven’t seen Redemption in a while, so I’m fuzzy on the details, and I’m super impressed but your knowledge of the General Orders. It brings up a big question for me though: what’s the point of having diplomats and explorers at all if they’re not allowed to have any influence over even a close ally’s politics (esp. in a crisis tilting toward civil war)? I mean, just about anything could be chalked up to interference, and it’s certainly true that Worf, Picard, and the whole crew interfered a lot during Sins of the Father. Arbitrating disputes is interference; firing weapons is interference. As scientists, they should know that the very act of observation changes the object in question (Schrödinger’s cat anyone?)
I don’t disagree that this is what ST is saying, by the way: much as I have a long-standing love for the franchise, consistency is not its strong suit. I just had to say I never heard the PD defined as such, and it brings up all sorts of unfortunate, awkward questions about how practical this kind of order really is. Of course, as we see in most shows, its the captains who ultimately decide how to “enforce” it.
“He’s given them back the horrors of war, and maybe now that they have reason to stop it.”
This decision is really crazy on the face of it. I mean, yes, this long protracted war is terrible. It’s warped a whole culture into tolerating killings as polite necessities of daily life. Absolutely, I think the Federation should offer diplomatic/relief assistance.
But it’s such a huge gamble to say, “Let’s kill the safety switch: kill away!”
Kirk makes an assumption that the opposing side is as potentially reasonable as the one he’s spoken with. I don’t blame him for not having the opportunity: he’s been rather tied up, shall we say, and his focus from the start has been the release of his ship and crew. I just think there are so many ways it could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Instead of bad casualties on a regular basis (which I repeat is bad), you could have massive casualties, or even planetary genocide. Sure, maybe they’re all tired of war.
Maybe they’re telling the truth and this bad system is the only thing keeping their species alive.
It’s a crap shot that Kirk wins by simple nature of the time running out for the episode and the mandate that he usually gamble correctly (it’s a hopeful show, remember?) But I believe he overstepped his authority here. He’s perfectly justified to do everything in his power to save his crew. Ideally, though, once everyone on the away team was free, their first goal should have been to get to the ship and get the ship away from the planet.
Of course, this episode in no way shape or form is Kirk’s worst decision, he comports himself rather well on the whole. I just remember the first time watching it, I thought “Oh dear, there goes the planet.”
@47/Michelle R. Wood: If Kirk had simply gotten the landing party and the ship away from the planet, the Eminians would have run into huge problems with Vendikar because they would have failed to kill the Enterprise crew. The system would have broken down anyway. Staying long enough to initiate peace talks was the only responsible thing to do.
@47/Michelle R. Wood: The point is that influence and interference are not the same thing. It’s one thing to offer your help someone if they want your help. It’s another thing entirely to force them to do things the way you want. As an ally of the Klingons, say, the Federation is allowed to advise and assist them on any matters they wish assistance on; but the Federation is not entitled to, say, decide which candidate they want to win the Chancellorship and take action to ensure that candidate wins. It’s the difference between being helpful and being coercive.
Back in college, I had a friend that I feared might be in an emotionally abusive relationship, because her boyfriend wanted to forbid her from being friends with me. I went to the university’s women’s center to ask for advice about what I could do. And they told me that, as hard as it was, I couldn’t try to impose help on her if she didn’t want it, because that would be just as bad as what I feared her boyfriend was doing. I could write to her and express my concerns, I could let her know that I and others were there to help her if she felt she needed it, but I had to leave it up to her to decide whether to seek help. I had to respect her right to make decisions about her own life, even if I thought she was making the wrong ones. Because it wasn’t my place to decide for her. Sometimes being a good friend means knowing when to do nothing, as hard as it may sometimes be. (She turned out fine, by the way, without any help from me.)
Relations between cultures are much the same way. It’s the difference between being a supportive friend and being a controlling, abusive partner. The former means that you’re there to offer help if it’s requested, but you respect the other person’s right to decide for themselves even if they make decisions you disagree with. The latter means that you force your own opinions onto the other person and compel them to make the decisions you want. That’s the difference in “Redemption.” As long as it seemed the Klingons were having a civil war, as long as it was an internal matter, then the Federation had to let the Klingons decide for themselves rather than attempting to impose the Federation’s desired outcome. But once it became clear that the rebels had Romulan backing, once the legitimate government asked for Federation help against that attempted invasion, then intervention would’ve been allowable.
The reason the pre-warp version of the Prime Directive forbids any interference is because the power imbalance is so great. It’s not impossible to engage in a constructive, open dialogue — see the Capellans in “Friday’s Child,” for example, who maintain a very strong cultural identity even with interstellar contact — but the temptation to play God is very strong, and the risk of damaging the society is considerable. So a zero-tolerance policy was considered the safest path — not because the natives were too primitive, as TNG mistakenly interpreted it, but as a check against the desire to play God on the part of Starfleet officers. As we saw in TOS, there was certainly room for exceptions. At least one novel expressed the idea that the PD may have been intended more to ensure that Starfleet officers questioned their motives and goals carefully before interfering, rather than the absolute, blind, unthinking ban it became in TNG.
I just rewatched Space Seed for the first time in 20 years. I’m seriously looking forward to reading Keith’s take on the episode this next week.
Michelle R. Wood: the x-factor here is the Enterprise being a casualty. Kirk could not let that stand and it needed to be addressed, and as JanaJensen said, the status quo still would have been upended because the crew lived.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think the conceit of Kirk as a maverick has come about due to a certain fighter/beach-volley ball movie changing how we viewed the label maverick. Certainly in my grandfather’s day Kirk would be a maverick officer, because he was bold, decisive, and while followed orders he did so with a certain degree of creativeness.
The idea of a military maverick now is someone who is a “cool” trouble maker who is disrespectful, insubordinate, and just plain lucky. Too busy being cool (my grandfather would have said flamboyant, but that is another word with definition drift) to follow orders is how we end up with the 2009 reboot Kirk. I’m not sure how much the Trek movies reshaped Kirk, in TMP and WOK he was part of the powers that be so would have difficulty either following or disobeying them, in Search for Spock it was very much a heart over head decision but well in-character. Four only had him disobey one order (to stay away from Earth, and he only did that because he thought he had a way to save the planet) and he owned up to his insubordination in the previous movie. Five…there is no five. Six had Spock and Scotty disobey orders, to be sure, but Kirk didn’t I don’t think. He continued to be bold and decisive, but that only made him an old school maverick officer (using the bold and unconventional meaning), not the modern “cool” unprofessional version.
@52/Random22: Except that the word “maverick” originated in the 19th century to mean an unbranded calf, steer, or cow, and by extension came to mean a rebel, renegade, lone wolf, or nonconformist, particularly one who’s daring and risk-taking. To be a maverick in the literal sense is to have no defined allegiance or membership. So if it had come to mean “a bold and creatively obedient member of the military” in the context of your grandfather’s military experience, that was one heck of a change from its more universally accepted meaning. Remember the James Garner show Maverick from 1957? Roy Huggins didn’t give the character that name because he was a decisive authority figure, but because he was a roguish wanderer and antihero who did things his own way. That’s not a modern redefinition, and it sure as hell is not a creation of Top Gun, of all things. Its usage in that sense has been recorded as far back as 1886, exactly a century before that movie.
I always liked this episode for its concept, even if the execution has a few flaws. Does anyone here remember how clear the episode is on how the attacks are determined? Is it at this point the two planet’s computers making the “attacks” on their own, and relying on the target’s computer to calculate the casualties? Because if each side actually willfully makes each “attack”, I’d always wondered why neither planet ever said “We’re launching a pretend attack that will annihilate your planet. You all need to disintegrate yourselves now.” Maybe the computers track how much fake ammunition is used, and how many fake ammunition factories are currently in production. ;)
–Andy
@38/Christopher – I’ve been trying to find reference to the TOS miniskirt having any sort of skort or culottes associated with it, and I just can’t come up with it. Can you provide more information, either in text or visual, that this was the case for Yeoman Tamura or anyone else?
Edit: BTW, culottes are kind of like flowy shorts but clearly two legs; a skort is actually intended to look like a skirt from the front, but have split legs in the back (though these are sometimes hidden as well).
@54/AndyHolman: Well, the whole idea behind the computer war was that they saw it as a clean, sustainable alternative to an open war that would devastate both civilizations. The episode was written during the Cold War, when we feared that the next war would destroy the whole world and were trying to find ways to prevent that. “A Taste of Armageddon” was an allegory for that, showing a situation where two warring cultures had the same fear of mutual annihilation and had found what they believed to be a clean solution, something that would allow them to continue what they believed was a necessary war without the risk of it backfiring and annihilating their own worlds. So naturally there would be clearly defined rules of engagement and for either side to say “I’ve just struck your planet with a simulated asteroid and wiped out all life” would be flat-out cheating, the kind of rules violation that would break the agreement and provoke a real attack in retaliation.
Come to think of it, I suppose the allegory is for the brinksmanship that went on during the Cold War. The US and the USSR both continued their enmity and jockeying for advantage while desperately trying to avoid a direct, open conflict due to their fear of mutual nuclear annihilation, and so they waged their battles through Second and Third World proxies, taking sides in local disputes like Korea and Cuba and Vietnam — turning war into an ongoing game where both nations protected themselves from annihilation but the little guys still ended up dying, sacrificed as pawns in the superpowers’ game. Rather than choosing not to fight at all, they just carried on the fight at a low, controlled level and complimented themselves on how civilized it was, while millions continued to march obediently to their deaths.
@56/CLB: It makes sense that the war would have the type of rules you mention. I guess my thought process is colored by the fact that I first saw this episode as a kid, and was viewing it through the rules of children’s make-believe. It doesn’t take long for a kid to come up with something crazy and world-breaking if everything’s purely imaginary, after all. ;)
Good point about the parallels to the Vietnam War. We’ll see that even more explicitly in “A Private Little War,” of course.
-Andy
I found this to be an excellent episode. It message still resonates today – of course it’s not planned that way, but you can view it as a chilling commentary on the “surgical precision” of the drone war.
I’m not quite sure why the ambassador beaming down is a plot hole – Is it supposed to be impossible to beam down while shields are up? I’ve only watched roughly what the rewatch has covered, so not familiar with other Star Trek rules, and I can’t remember anything of the kind. The ambassador wanted Scotty to lower the shields as a peaceful gesture, but afaik didn’t say anything about him being able to beam down.
And the disruptors being sonic is weird, sure, but it’s not like any other episode doesn’t have some parts that don’t quite add up either.
My personal favourite so far!
@58/Jineapple: Yes, it’s a pretty standard rule that you can’t beam through shields. This was established several episodes earlier in “Arena,” when Sulu told Kirk that the ship was under attack and that he couldn’t beam Kirk’s party up because he’d “just rigged up defensive screens.” Sulu offers to drop the screens to beam up the party, but Kirk orders him to keep the screens up. (The terminology was still in flux; TOS used “screens” as well as “shields.”) After the battle, Sulu says, “Our screens are down. We can beam you up now, sir.” That makes it pretty unambiguous.
Of course, the ideas were still in flux, and maybe the writers who worked on “Armageddon” forgot what had been established in “Arena” (much as “The Alternative Factor” forgot what “The Naked Time” had established about antimatter). But it had been established, so it is a continuity error.
Of course, there are cases later on where the “no beaming through shields” rule is forgotten. One that always stands out for me is in the climactic battle in Voyager‘s pilot, where Voyager is somehow able to beam aboard both their landing party and the crew of Chakotay’s Maquis ship while in a running battle with the Kazon.
An even later mentions shows them to be separate systems.
DECKER
Recommend defensive posture,
Captain: Screens and shields.
KIRK
No…
(pause)
… that could also be misinter-
preted as hostile, Mr. Decker.
Which makes sense. A screen is designed to let some things pass while blocking others. A screen on an exterior door for example, passes air and blocks insects. A shield is designed to block everything.
@60/kkozoriz: Actually, according to behind-the-scenes documents, the dual defense system of the Enterprise in TMP was supposed to be an advance on the old system. In addition to the deflector screens used in the past, which were discrete segments flush against the hull, there was a new force-field system that was a single bubble encasing the whole ship (like the system used in the TNG era). This is referenced in dialogue after the first V’Ger energy bolt attacks the Enterprise, and Sulu says “The new force fields held!” (Not sure if that’s in every edition of the film, though.) So it wasn’t meant to apply retroactively to TOS.
Which can also be intercepted as simply being a newer version of an old system. There’s lots of background information on the movies and TV series that never make it to screen. New engines are faster, new phasers more powerful. Why not new screens (or shields) are simply more powerful as well? Either way, it shows that screens and shields are two separate but related systems. Much like this scene in Wrath of Khan:
KIRK: This is damned peculiar. …Yellow Alert.
SAAVIK: Energise defence fields.
It shows a bubble forming around the ship but also a grid around the bridge portion of the ship. Defence fields may indicate both. No reason to imagine that it’s a brand new system just because we never heard the term “defence fields”: before.
I recall Sulu saying “The new screens (or shield) held. Have to break out my copy and double check. Don’t remember it being force fields at all. Doesn’t sound right. May just be my memory though.
@62/kkozoriz: I researched the background materials of TMP extensively for my novel Ex Machina. To quote from my annotations for the novel:
The memo in question differentiates between the “forcefield screen” that surrounds the whole ship and the “deflector shields” that are single-plane directional defenses like literal shields. Admittedly, it doesn’t actually claim that the two-part system is a new development, but Sulu’s line suggests that the forcefield screen is a new advance. You’re right that Sulu’s line in the script is “The new screens held,” but the memo associates the word “screen” with the forcefield bubble. And Scott’s line immediately after refers to forcefields and deflectors as separate systems.
So, going by what we got on screen (heh…), there are both screens and shields. Presumably, they are collectively referred to as defense fields.
Perhaps Scott’s force field line is in reference to the M/AM reactor, which we see ramp up significantly when the ship is attacked.
Anyway, there’s multiple instances of the use of both screens and shields. There’s also different types of shields as seen in The Outrageous Okona:
PICARD: Lasers can’t even penetrate our navigation shields.
I would submit that what’s called “shelds” refers to multiple, related system as opposed to a single bubble of protection.
As to the actions of the Enterprise, everything is the fault of Kirk, Fox and, by extension, the Federation.
They were warned off in the strongest possible language.
KIRK: Code seven-ten means under no circumstances are we to approach that planet. No circumstances what so ever.
FOX: You will disregard that signal, Captain.
KIRK: Mister Fox, it is their planet.
FOX: Captain, in the past twenty years, thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant. Lives that could have been saved if the Federation had a treaty port here. We mean to have that port and I’m here to get it.
And their reason for doing so is to establish a treaty port, which is a port established by one power over another by threat of force. The port was consider to be extraterritorial, taking power to enforce local laws away from the inhabitans and giving to the occupiers.
Add to that, Kirk’s insistence that Emenian law didn’t apply to him or his crew and it’s no wonder things went so bad so quickly.
Hardly the Federations finest hour.
@65/kkozoriz: Of course Fox is in the wrong. That goes without saying.
Criticising Kirk is more interesting. To abide by Eminian law would mean to kill the whole crew of the Enterprise. Do you say he should have done that?
@64/kkozoriz: “Perhaps Scott’s force field line is in reference to the M/AM reactor, which we see ramp up significantly when the ship is attacked.”
What? No, I’ve explained to you already — according to production memos, the filmmakers’ intent was that the ship itself had two separate defense systems, a forcefield screen and deflector shields. I’ve provided you with the source for that information, the memo reprinted on p. 50 of Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series.
“I would submit that what’s called “shelds” refers to multiple, related system as opposed to a single bubble of protection.”
You would submit? You’re just repeating what I told you in the previous post.
@66/JanaJansen
Yes, I’m criticizing Kirk just like I criticized Picard in “Justice”. The Enterprise had no business being there. And they didn’t even stumble into the situation. Kirk spelled out what a Code 710 was and stated that ignoring it could even lead to war. If Fox was so intent to ignore the wishes of the Emenians, put him in a shuttlecraft and say “Bon Voyage”.
In A Wolf in the Fold, Kirk even states that who;e on Argelius, they are subject to Argelian law. Should he have simply beamed up Scott and hightailed it out of there? Or, since the Federation had a treaty with Argelius, does that mean that local laws only apply if such a treaty is in place?
But the Federation and Kirk in particular are well acquainted with ignoring warnings and going where they’ve been told not to by the inhabitants. Kirk ignored and then destroyed the warning buoy and proceeded deeper into the First Federation. Same thing happened in Spectre of the Gun. In Arena, according to Spock there were indication, or at least rumours that the space wasn’t unoccupied. So, of course, the Federation establishes a base, complete with weapons, moved not just personnel but whole families there (Tried to surrender. We had women and children. ). And then the Federation is Shocked! Shocked I say! When it ends up that they’re intruding on someone else territory.
Here’s a thought. Send in a ship first and check things out. But nope, “We’re the Federation/ We’re good guys so nobody should object to us moving into your space, regardless of your feelings.”
@67/ ChristopherLBennett
Screens aren’t a new system as you’re claiming Christopher. From Arena:
SULU [OC]: We could drop screens.
KIRK: Keep those screens up. Worry about us when the ship is safe.
And
SULU: We returned fire with all phaser banks. Negative against its deflector screen.
Why specifically a “deflector screen”? We already know what they do for the Enterprise. Why specify that it’s a particular type of screen? Because there’s different kinds of screens perhaps? As well as different kinds of shields. And maybe, defines fields are something else as well or just a collective name for the whole system.
Shielding is probably a lot more complex than a simple bubble.
And backstage memos are written all the time and don’t make it to the screen. Even items in the actual scripts are changed or dropped entirely while shooting. Doesn’t mean that they’re part of the narrative. It mens that that, for whatever reason, they were not included in the story. Of course, that doesn’t apply to syndication edits, which are made by people not involved in the original production.
@68/kkozoriz: “Screens aren’t a new system as you’re claiming Christopher. “
That is not at all what I’m claiming, and you should know that. As I pointed out myself in the August 28 post that you replied to yesterday, TOS used the phrases “deflector screen,” “deflector shield,” and just “deflector” interchangeably, because they were making this up as they went and the terminology was in flux. By the second season, “deflector shield” was the more standard usage, though “deflector screen” was used occasionally as late as the animated series. (Source)
When TMP was made over a decade later, Roddenberry and his team decided to give the upgraded ship a two-part defensive system, and at that time — as spelled out in the production memo that I’ve already directed you to twice — they chose to refer to one system as “forcefield screens” and the other as “deflector shields.” Note that “forcefield screen” is not the same thing as “deflector screen.” The memo clearly spelled out that, as far as TMP was concerned, the word “shield” should be used for deflectors because it was a localized, planar system like a physical shield used by a knight or gladiator. Naturally, this is different from the interchangeable usage from TOS, but that was a decade earlier. Roddenberry chose to lock down the usage more clearly, because creators often change their minds or refine their ideas over time.
And yes, of course memos don’t always make it to the screen, but this is one case where they did. In TOS, “screens” and “shields” were both used interchangeably for the deflector system. In the very episode this thread is about, the deflectors were referred to by both terms at different times in the episode. Ditto “The Ultimate Computer” (which mentions “deflector screen four,” proving that there are multiple deflectors regardless of which term is used). But TMP explicitly included an on-camera reference to “screens and shields” as two distinct systems, and the memo provides context to explain why. It is illogical to disregard the memo given that it explains the intention behind the onscreen reference.
But nothing that isn’t on screen is binding in any way. It may be used to give a look at the thoughts that were in place but it’s hardly considered canon.
Intentions aren’t what’s on screen.
Are they deflector shields or deflector screens? The terms have been used both ways. It’s not like Star Trek is consistent in these things.
Can transporters operate through shields? No, except when they can. (see Relics for just one example).
Is a starship crew supposed to obey the laws of the planets they visit? Yes, except when they’re not.
Does the Prime Directive prevent the interference in another governments affairs? Yes, except when it doesn’t.
Personally, I find it easier to imagine that we’ve seen episodes from many of the alternate realities that we saw in Parallels. Similar to each other but not exactly the same. Because of that, it’s easy to simply accept what we’re shown and carry on.
@68/kkozoriz: OK, let’s look at this one at a time.
If I understand you correctly, you don’t claim that Kirk should have helped Anan to kill his crew. You only criticise him for obeying Fox’ orders in the beginning. Right?
I agree that the Federation doesn’t make a good impression either here or in “Spectre of the Gun” – or, rather, it’s Fox who makes a bad impression here.
I’m less sure about Kirk. After all, following orders is part of his job, which he seems to take very seriously, and we don’t know the regulations concerning insubordination in Starfleet. I know that in the German armed forces insubordination goes unpunished when following orders would entail a criminal offence or a breach of international law. Is this a comparable situation? Maybe.
I don’t agree about the other episodes, though. In “The Corbomite Maneuver”, they try to get away from the warning buoy. It doesn’t work. In “Arena”, we don’t know when the rumours “of certain strange signals on subspace channels” got started, and who started them. Maybe it was the people on Cestus Three. Maybe they did send a ship first and check things out, and didn’t find anything. After all, space is big :-)
@70/kkozoriz: I don’t give a fig about “canon.” Canon is an unhealthy obsession of modern fandom that has very little relevance to the creative process. The question was raised about the intent behind the “screens and shields” line in TMP. I explained what the filmmakers’ reasoning was behind that line, and I cited my real-world sources for that explanation. That’s the way it happened in real life, as proven by the evidence. It’s pointless to argue about whether it was “real” in-universe, because that universe does not exist. It’s merely the setting of a story. The story within the film only exists because of the decisions made by the filmmakers. So it’s nonsensical to treat the fiction as a higher standard of reality than the documented evidence of the real-world decisions that shaped the fiction.
Yes, in Corbomite Maneuver they did try and get away from the buoy before destroying it. And then the plunged on ahead anyway. It’s like climbing someone’s fence and being attacked by their dog. You shoot the dog to defend yourself and then proceed further onto the property anyway.
As far as the situation with AToA, “A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”. – James T. Kirk, The Omega Glory
And
No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations. – Bread and Circuses.
So, the Federation, in the form of Fox and Kirk, Ignore a warning that we’re told right off the bat could lead to war, violate the space of Eminiar, and when they’re declared casualties of the very war that they warned about at the beginning, decide to totally upend the societies of two sovereign planets to save their own skins even to the point of being prepared to kill everyone on Eminiar. What would have happened if Kirk hadn’t been able to contact Scotty in time? If Kirk is so willing to follow orders as evidence by allowing himself to follow Fox’s orders, we must assume that he fully intended Scott to follow the order he gave him. And Scotty showed no indication that he wasn’t going to follow it to the letter.
Kirk also played the “I’ll kill you to get what I want” card in Requiem for Methuselah.
FLINT: I know who you are. I have monitored your ship since it entered this system.
KIRK: Then if you know who we are, you know why we’re here, Mister?
FLINT: Flint. You will leave my planet.
SPOCK: Did you say your planet, sir?
FLINT: My retreat from the unpleasantness of life on Earth, and the company of people.
KIRK: Mister Flint, I have a sick crew up there. We can’t possibly reach another planet in time. You can’t refuse us the ryetalyn.
FLINT: You’re trespassing, Captain.
KIRK: We’re in need! We’ll pay for it, work for it, trade for it.
FLINT: You have nothing I want.
KIRK: But you have the ryetalyn that we need! If necessary, we’ll take it.
FLINT: If you do not leave voluntarily, I have the power to force you to leave or kill you where you stand.
KIRK: Kirk to Enterprise. Mister Scott, lock phasers onto our co-ordinates.
SCOTT [OC]: Aye, Captain, all phasers locked on.
And if they had bothered to check the computer before they left the ship.
UHURA [OC]: The planet was purchased thirty years ago by a Mister Brack, a wealthy financier and recluse.
So, trespass on a private planet and threaten to kill the owner if he won’t give you what you want. Can’t get much more interfering with someone than killing them.
@@@@@72/ChristopherLBennett
My point is that the memo is not part of the story. It’s background that was never presented to the viewers. Holding up a memo and saying “It must be this way because a memo said it was” us ridiculous. There’s any number of things that have been written up in memos over the years that have never made it on screen in any way, shape or form. What counts is what’s on the screen. There was a memo that said Spock was half martian and fed through a plate in his stomach. Should that be included in some future story simply because it was in a memo? There’ve been scenes that were scripted and filmed and yet ended up on the cutting room floor. Are they considered part of the narrative? No, because they didn’t make it on screen. Some, like Peter Preston have been included in some alternate versions that were released but many, many others were not.
@73/kkozoriz:
“The Corbomite Maneuver”: They don’t know what the buoy is for. It’s like climbing a fence and being attacked by a dog when you’re from a place without fences or dogs and have no idea what they stand for. (That’s an interesting problem, by the way – how can people mark borders if there’s all those aliens around who have different customs and might not understand the marking? The best approach seems to be to assume that any trespassing was unvoluntary and talk to them first.)
“Bread and Circuses”: Since one item in the list is “no reference to space or the fact that there are other worlds”, this obviously only applies to civilizations that haven’t found out about space and other worlds yet. Some people have taken this to mean that the PD doesn’t apply to spacefaring civilizations like Eminiar, others argue that it does, but the particular set of rules cited here is the one for pre-space civilizations. In either case, these rules apply to the people in “Bread and Circuses” and “The Omega Glory”, but not to the people in this episode.
BTW, the PD is discussed in-depth in comments #8-10, 18, 20, 22-23, 34, 47 and 49 in this thread.
This episode: Yes, the bit about destroying the planet is unsettling. We discussed it above, in comments #37, 39-43, 45 and 46.
“Requiem for Methuselah”: Flint is no alien civilization, so interfering shouldn’t be a problem. Killing him is another matter, but given our guys’ usual behaviour, I assume that it was an empty threat.
Was it? Was it an empty threat against Eminiar? Starfleet has a General Order that allows it. It must come up relatively often of you need it to be covered in the General Orders. After all, the other General Orders are things like Don’t visit Talos IV and If all life aboard a Federation starship had perished, the ship would self-destruct within twenty-four hours to protect other ships from potential hazards within. (TAS: “Albatross“)
It’s a general order, not regarding a specific circumstance. It’s interesting that you need three officers to destroy tour own ship but a single, shouted command can be used to kill everyone on a planet.
On top of that, they had NO right being there in the first place. They were warned off and their reason for doing there was to enforce some gunboat diplomacy by establishing a treaty port whether the Eminians wanted it or not.
Why would interfering with Flint not be a problem? Does the Federation not have any concept of property rights? He bought the planet, as stated clearly by Uhura. It’s his to do with as he likes. Kirk and company didn’t even bother to see if anyone owned it. No check of the computer. Just show up, do a quick scan, beam down and take something that doesn’t belong to them.
And a civilization with a single member is still a civilization. At what point are you required to ask? 10 people? 100? A million? Id that’s the case, why not jut take the dilithium from the Halkans in Mirror, Mirror? After all, the Federation needed it….
Eminiar and Vendikar had a system that worked for them. We may not agree or even understand it but that decision is not for us to make. They’re not a human colony. They’re not a member of the Federation. They’re people that put a sign that says KEEP OUT. THIS MEANS YOU! and our intrepid crew ignored the warning, stuck their nose in where it wasn’t wanted, refused to follow their laws, assaulted people on their own planet and totally disrupted their civilizations.
And they’re supposed to be the good guys?
From The Corbomite Maneuver
SPOCK: I believe it adds up to either one of two possibilities. First, a space buoy of some kind.
KIRK: Second?
SPOCK: Flypaper.
KIRK: And you don’t recommend sticking around.
And
KIRK: Care to speculate on what we’ll find if we go on ahead?
SPOCK: Speculate? No. Logically, we’ll discover the intelligence which sent out the cube.
KIRK: Intelligence different from ours or superior?
SPOCK: Probably both, and if you’re asking the logical decision to make
KIRK: No, I’m not. The mission of the Enterprise is to seek out and contact alien life.
Kirk has a pretty good idea what the buoy is and decides that it’s more important to ignore the wishes of people he contacts because his “mission” is to make contact. Well, they made contact with the First Federation and invaded their space after destroying their buoy. And that’s what it is, invasion. Just like on Eminiar. He’s so proud of talking about how powerful his ship is, talking about how it can destroy a planet. And yet, even with this big gun pointed at someone’s head, he claims that his intentions are peaceful.
The wishes of the Federation override the wishes of people who don’t want anything to do with them. Not in all case but in enough, as we’ve seen numerous times. And that’s just one ship. What’s the rest of the fleet doing? Much the same I’d imagine.
@75/kkozoriz: Yes, the bit about destroying the planet is nasty. I believe I said that.
Concerning Flint: What I said is that Flint is no ALIEN civilization. He’s from Earth. Thus, the PD doesn’t apply. That’s what I meant by “interference shouldn’t be a problem”.
I imagine that the Federation does recognize property rights, but there may be exceptions – e.g. if 430 lifes are at stake, Federation members may be obliged to give up some of their property in return for payment. Or maybe not. Again, we don’t know that. What we do know is that the same does not apply for alien civilizations like the Halkans.
The Corbomite Maneuver: I think the exact scene you quote shows that they have no idea what the buoy is for. “Either a space buoy of some kind or flypaper” is pretty vague. So they go on to find out more. If Balok had asked nicely, they would have turned around. That’s hardly an invasion.
So putting up a “Keep Out” sign isn’t asking nicely? They kept trying to get around it. The buoy blocked their path and didn’t start to become dangerous until they tried getting past it. And them, after destroying someone e;see property, they just sail along on their merry way because “We’re good guy and everyone should like us. If they don’t, they’re evil.”
The Emenians did ask nicely and look where it got them. They even used the Federations own code 710. They were ignored, had a gun put to their head and faced total annihilation. Considering what a crappy job of diplomacy Fox did in the episode, I don’t hold out much hope for his ability to solve the problem that he helped create.
That’s probably why one of the transports in Generations was named after him. He dies in the line of duty in the war between Eminiar VII and Vendikar.
Well, the buoy also prevents them from going back, so things are not all that clear. Then Balok turns up and tells them that it had been a warning, but won’t let them apologize. Later it turns out that Balok is actually looking for a friend and testing candidates by putting stuff in their way, so the lack of clarity was probably intentional.
As to the Eminians, yes, they did ask nicely, and Fox is totally in the wrong. I still think the peace talks will be successful, despite Fox. Because of what Kirk tells Anan – basically, we’re no better than you are, and we’ve still managed to stop fighting each other, so you can manage too. (I don’t always think that the solutions they come up with work. E.g. I’m very sceptical about “Return of the Archons”.)
Re Prime Directive.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
Quote: “This conceptual law applies particularly to civilizations which are below a certain threshold of technological, scientific and cultural development; preventing starship crews from using their superior technology to impose their own values or ideals on them.”
So the prime directive most strongly applies to pre-space flight civilizations. It is much weaker applied to a space faring civilization, and cannot reasonably be construed to forbid self-defence of a federation starship against a military attack by a space faring civilization
@79/montestruc: Wikipedia is wrong. They’re not the people who wrote Star Trek, just people interpreting it after the fact. TNG unfortunately introduced the idea that the Prime Directive is specifically about pre-warp worlds in the episode “First Contact,” and that’s colored how people have perceived it since then, but that’s a retcon. The TOS version of the Prime Directive was never defined in terms of warp capability. Indeed, the animated episode “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” clearly said that the Prime Directive forbids interference in any civilization, regardless of their technological level.
TNG handled the Prime Directive quite badly and thoroughly missed the purpose of the PD as intended by the writers of TOS. The TOS version of the Prime Directive was a counter against cultural imperialism, a recognition that the Federation is not wise enough to impose its ideas of right and wrong on other cultures, and that those other cultures — regardless of technological advancement — have the ability and the right to decide their own fate. Even if they’re less advanced, they still understand their own culture and their own needs better than we do, and any changes in their society need to come from within for their own reasons, because trying to impose change from without will only do harm. It was meant to counteract the paternalistic assumption that we know better than other cultures and are entitled to decide their fate for them.
That’s why TNG got it so monumentally wrong. The TNG interpretation was that other cultures were too primitive and stupid to make decisions for themselves and that the wiser, more advanced Federation was therefore entitled to play God and dictate their fate for them, even if it meant their extermination. It’s the exact same arrogance and condescension, the same infantilization of other cultures based merely on their level of technology, that the original Prime Directive was meant to counteract. The reason for the PD wasn’t supposed to be about alien cultures’ limitations — it was meant to be a reminder of the Federation’s own limitations, something to keep Starfleet officers humble so they wouldn’t assume they were entitled to impose their views on other cultures.
The first made their intentions clear when they tried to go around it. And then the plotted a spiral course, basically moving away but also trying to get around it. They only did the full “Run away!” once the buoy had had enough of their shenanigans.
Of course it all turned out for the best. Our heroes are hardly ever in the wrong. No matter what they do, things turn out for the best because they’re there to teach the aliens a lesson, regardless of their actions.
David Gerrold called it the “cosmic Mary Worth” syndrome.
Seminar knew exactly what they were doing and, regardless to how it looked to us, it worked for them. But here comes the Federation to make everything “right” whether they want it or not.
Kirk was willing to disobey orders when he thought they were wrong. He put up the most mild of protests, basically just telling Fox what a code 710 was and then carried on.
It’s a textbook case of the PD as Christopher noted above. “Indeed, the animated episode “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” clearly said that the Prime Directive forbids interference in any civilization, regardless of their technological level.”
And it’s not just on Fox. The very reason for them being there in the first place was imperialism of the highest order. “We want a port here and we’re willing to do whatever it takes, regardless of what you want.”
Read up on Treaty Ports.
The British established the first treaty ports in China at the conclusion of the First Opium War by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. As well as ceding the island of Hong Kong to the United Kingdom in perpetuity, the treaty also established five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton, Ningpo, Fuchow, and Amoy. The following year the Chinese and British signed the Treaty of the Bogue, which added provisions for extraterritoriality and most favoured nation status for the latter country. Subsequent negotiations with the Americans (1843 Treaty of Wanghia) and the French (1844 Treaty of Whampoa) led to further concessions for these nations on the same terms as the British.
And more on Unequal Treaties:
“An unequal treaty is any of a series of treaties signed with Western powers during the 19th and early 20th centuries by Qing dynasty China and late Tokugawa Japan after suffering military defeat by the foreign powers or when there was a threat of military action by those powers. The term is also applied to treaties imposed during the same time period on late Joseon Korea by the post-Meiji Restoration Empire of Japan.”
Sure, they signed a treaty but they did it while having a gun held to their head. Hmmm, General Order 24 anyone?
80 Chris Bennett – So you are saying that the prime directive forbids a starship crew from defending their starship, which all nonsense aside is a warship, from a military attack by a space fairing people?
Really? Why would starfleet build armed warships with heavy phasers capable of blowing up starships or planetary bombardment, and photon torpedos that have substantially greater distructive power than a similar mass thermonuclear warhead?
What you seem to suggest is absurd. Why would the Enterprise have phasers or photon totpedos at all if the prime directive forbids self-defence?
Now if you want dial that back, and accept that a prime directive lite applies to space faring civilizations to the effect that starfleet does not pick fights with others, but will defend themselves, that I can buy.
Full on prime directive applies to Klingon empire and Romulan empire warships in Fedration space, or even neutral space. Nonsense.
81/kkozoriz: “Our heroes” are quite often in the wrong. In “Arena” when Kirk is certain that the attack is an invasion. In “The Devil in the Dark” when he orders to kill the “monster”. In “Errand of Mercy” when he lectures the Organians on how to treat an invading army. I already agreed with you that the Federation doesn’t make a good impression both in this episode and in “Spectre of the Gun”.
Oh, and Kirk disobeys orders very rarely. He does it in “Amok Time”, and that was about Spock’s life versus some purely ceremonial duty. Do you have any other examples?
@82/montestruc: “So you are saying that the prime directive forbids a starship crew from defending their starship, which all nonsense aside is a warship, from a military attack by a space fairing people?”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaa???? Of course not. Read comment #9, and you’ll see I actually said the exact opposite of that. I have no idea how you could possibly construe my comments in post #80 to have anything whatsoever to do with defense or combat.
The TOS Novel Prime Directive also held that non-interference only applied to pre-warp civilizations. It was published in 1990. The TNG Episode “First Contact” was 1991.
It makes sense to me. Obviously non-interference doesn’t apply to Star Fleet’s dealings with the Klingons or Romulans.
@85/Pete: “Obviously non-interference doesn’t apply to Star Fleet’s dealings with the Klingons or Romulans.”
Actually it does. See TNG: “Redemption.” As long as it was believed that the insurrection against Gowron by the Duras sisters was an internal matter of Klingon politics, then Starfleet was forbidden to intervene. It was only when it was discovered to be a Romulan-backed effort that Starfleet could act in defense of its ally.
See, “interference” doesn’t mean any and all contact, it just means forcing your will on others. Just in general, whether in relations between individuals or entire nations, everyone has the right to self-determination. It’s one thing to be a friend or neighbor and offer your help to someone if they ask for it, but it’s a totally different matter to pressure them into doing what you want.
The makers of TOS were writing in a time when the damage inflicted by cultural imperialism and colonialism was becoming clear in places like Southeast Asia, so the Prime Directive was conceived as an alternative to cultural imperialism, a doctrine of respect for others’ self-determination. The only reason a total ban on contact is applied to pre-spaceflight cultures is because the power imbalance there is so great that the temptation to impose your will and tell the natives how to solve all their problems is too great. It’s not imposed because pre-warp cultures are too primitive and stupid to understand, like TNG’s execrable “Homeward” assumed — it’s imposed because of that temptation to pull a Ron Tracey or John Gill and play god with the natives. It’s imposed because we can’t be trusted with that power imbalance because we’re fallible and imperfect. Warp-capable powers have the means to defend against Federation cultural imperialism, so it’s feasible to interact with them in a way that’s consistent with the principle of respect for their self-determination. The hands-off policy only applies to pre-warp societies, but the non-intereference policy, in the sense of respecting other societies’ right to make their own choices, applies to everyone. Because it’s not about the other society’s limitations — it’s about our own limits and imperfections and our need to guard against them. That’s what TNG forgot.
We have, after all, seen cases where the TOS Federation did make open contact with pre-warp cultures, like the Capellans in “Friday’s Child.” But it was still made explicit by Kirk that the Prime Directive forbade the Federation from depriving the Capellans of their cultural autonomy, their right to make their own choices. It’s not about warp drive. That’s a distraction. It’s about not being imperialistic. It’s about respecting others’ independence. The (usual) hands-off policy to pre-spaceflight worlds is a means to that end, not the end in itself.
But can TNG rally have gotten it “wrong”? After all, they were making it up as they went along as well. There’s been numerous retcons on Trek though all the various series. These are just, how ever badly we may see them, part of the tapestry.
Was it wrong to say Khan was the product of genetic engineering as opposed to eugenics? Nope, it was an evolution and a retcon. TPTB may not do things that we agree with but they’re not wrong. They can’t be. They’re the ones telling the story. They decide what’s right and wrong in the universe that they control.
Even in Friday’s Child, they were interfering.
MCCOY: Captain, careful.
MAAB: You carry a child who would be teer.
ELEEN: I must die.
(Maab raises his knife, and Kirk pulls her away.
KIRK: No!
(There’s a fight. Starfleet loses.)
MAAB: No man may touch the wife of a teer.
KRAS: She was prepared to die, Earthman.
ELEEN: I was proud to obey the laws. Kill him first. He laid hands upon me. It is my right to see him die.
Once again, the law doesn’t seem to apply to Kirk & company. We find it abhorrent. They find it perfectly normal. It’s their planet. Who’s at fault? Got to teach the plain, simple natives the right way to live?
Accept the Prime Directive for what it is, a plot device that’s there primarily to be broken.
What Chris Bennett said in 80 that comes across as no self-defense allowed:
“@79/montestruc: Wikipedia is wrong. They’re not the people who wrote Star Trek, just people interpreting it after the fact. TNG unfortunately introduced the idea that the Prime Directive is specifically about pre-warp worlds in the episode “First Contact,” and that’s colored how people have perceived it since then, but that’s a retcon. The TOS version of the Prime Directive was never defined in terms of warp capability. Indeed, the animated episode “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” clearly said that the Prime Directive forbids interference in anycivilization, regardless of their technological level.”
Any civilization. But as I reread what you wrote you are taking the animated series as being more valid than TNG. That seems really off the wall to me. I agree that cultural imperialism is a bad thing, and that cultures that are much stronger in technology, numbers, or other sophistication can squash a small unsophisticated indigenous culture.
However, on the whole the transfer of ideas and technology do more good than harm historically. Cultures are made up of individuals. Preservation of a culture, at the net expense of the members of that culture, compared to how well they would do in a more sophisticated culture is not in my opinion “good”.
By the prime directive, one should not teach a primitive culture germ theory of disease, or basic concepts of sanitation. Think of all the people dying of cholera, or the like that die to protect the purity of their culture.
@88: “What Chris Bennett said in 80 that comes across as no self-defense allowed:”
No, it doesn’t. I can’t imagine how you could see it that way. What I’m talking about there is meddling in other culture’s society and politics. That’s got nothing to do with self-defense.
“But as I reread what you wrote you are taking the animated series as being more valid than TNG. That seems really off the wall to me.”
That’s because you’re pretending Star Trek is a real, consistent universe. I’m talking about it as a fictional creation — or rather, as a series of different fictional creations that purport to represent a common continuity. I’m talking about the difference between the intention of the television writers who originally created and defined the Prime Directive in the 1960s and 1970s — at a time when they were responding to the real-world harm inflicted by cultural imperialism and wanted to use the science fiction of Star Trek as an allegory to critique such imperialism — and the perception of the Prime Directive by a later generation of television writers who misunderstood what the original set of writers had intended.
And if we do want to approach it in-universe, the same dynamic can be said to apply. What TOS and TAS asserted about the Directive are valid for how it was interpreted and applied by the 23rd-century Starfleet, while what TNG and its contemporaries asserted about it are valid for how it was interpreted and applied by the 24th-century Starfleet. Naturally, cultures and their values can change over time. People forget the reasons behind their laws and traditions and doctrines and begin to apply them more legalistically, sometimes even in direct opposition to the intentions of their original formulators. So yes, both versions are valid for their respective centuries, but it is anachronistic to assume the 24th-century approach to the Directive applied in the 23rd century when we have clear evidence to the contrary from TOS and TAS.
“However, on the whole the transfer of ideas and technology do more good than harm historically.”
Oh, I agree. I think the Prime Directive is too strict. So-called “primitive” cultures have just as much basic intelligence and adaptability as more “advanced” cultures, and the history of cross-cultural interaction shows that most cultures exposed to outside ideas can assimilate them without harm so long as they are given the freedom to control the interaction and decide for themselves what path to take. The problems only come when the more powerful society tries to force the other society to change. This is exactly why I hate the condescending TNG version of the Directive.
But while the TOS version may have been overly strict, that could be justified because, as I said, it’s not about them, it’s about us (“us” being the Federation). It’s about recognizing humanity’s own immaturity and potential to abuse its power, and thus putting strict safeguards in place to prevent such abuse. In theory, yes, cultures of different levels of advancement can interact in a way that’s beneficial for both, but it has to be done right. The original reason for the Prime Directive was that the Federation didn’t trust itself to know the right way to do it, and so it preferred not to take the risk. As I see it, the PD was meant to be a stopgap, a way to keep the Federation from abusing its power until it could learn how to handle such interactions responsibly. Unfortunately, by the 24th century, they’ve forgotten that intention and embraced the rule too rigidly and absolutely.
Comment #90 removed per our moderation policy. Please feel free to restate your opinion in a more civil manner.
@74 – JanaJansen: Threatening to kill Flint is still pretty awful on Kirk’s part. :)
@75 – kkozoriz: No idea how many people are required to consider a community a civilization, but one person is just that, one person.
@92/lordmagnusen: I don’t know. It isn’t good behaviour, but Flint threatened to kill them first, and he had a sick crew who would die in one day (according to McCoy).
They didn’t even bother to check anything about the computer. They were trespassing and Flint was defending his property.
Captain’s log, stardate 5843.7. The Enterprise is in the grip of a raging epidemic. Three crewmen have died and twenty three others have been struck down by Rigelian fever. In order to combat the illness, Doctor McCoy needs large quantities of ryetalyn, which is the only known antidote for the fever. Our sensors have picked up sufficient quantities of pure ryetalyn on a small planet in the Omega system. We are beaming down to secure this urgently needed material.
[Planet surface]
(Compared to the lurid red, purple and vivid blue of the planet from space, the ground is pretty normal)
KIRK: Report.
MCCOY: Jim, there’s a large deposit bearing two seven three, four kilometres away. I’ve got four hours to process that stuff, otherwise the epidemic will be irreversible. Everybody on board the Enterprise will
SPOCK: Strange. Readings indicate a life form in the vicinity, apparently human. Yet ship’s sensors indicated this planet was uninhabited.
KIRK: Let’s get that ryetalyn.
(A strange device comes travelling through the air towards them. A bit like Nomad, but much smaller and with more round bits. It fires an energy beam at the landing party’s feet. They try to fire their phasers.)
KIRK: Inoperative.
(The device fires again, and closes in.)
FLINT: Do not kill.
(The device backs away and a silver-haired man in sort of doublet and hose approaches)
KIRK: I’m Captain James Kirk
FLINT: I know who you are. I have monitored your ship since it entered this system.
KIRK: Then if you know who we are, you know why we’re here, Mister?
FLINT: Flint. You will leave my planet.
SPOCK: Did you say your planet, sir?
FLINT: My retreat from the unpleasantness of life on Earth, and the company of people.
KIRK: Mister Flint, I have a sick crew up there. We can’t possibly reach another planet in time. You can’t refuse us the ryetalyn.
FLINT: You’re trespassing, Captain.
KIRK: We’re in need! We’ll pay for it, work for it, trade for it.
FLINT: You have nothing I want.
KIRK: But you have the ryetalyn that we need! If necessary, we’ll take it.
FLINT: If you do not leave voluntarily, I have the power to force you to leave or kill you where you stand.
KIRK: Kirk to Enterprise. Mister Scott, lock phasers onto our co-ordinates.
SCOTT [OC]: Aye, Captain, all phasers locked on.
KIRK: Mister Flint, if anything happens to us, four deaths and then my crew comes down and takes that ryetalyn.
Flint gave them the choice of leaving. Kirk simply responded by order Scott to lock the phasers on them.
If they had simply checked the computer first, as they did in a later scene, they would have found out that the planet was privately owned.
At the risk of reopening this argument, I’d like to make several points.
Regarding Flint: There are two things kkozoriz seems to forget or to not realize. First, if Flint purchased the planet, from whom did he purchase it? If Uhura has access to the deed record, then it appears to have been a Federation transaction, therefor the PD does not apply. Flint is a citizen even as a hermit. Second, the concept of imminent domain. Kirk, as a government representative with a clear responsibility to others, has the right to seize Flint’s whole planet if necessary, and give him “fair market value” for the property. Contemporary Earth governments do it all the time in circumstances far less dire.
Regarding the Prime Directive in general: Everyone is cherry-picking their favorite or least favorite examples. The truth is, as kkozoriz pointed out in #87, the PD is a plot device to be used and interpreted as needed to increase dramatic tension. It is not applied consistently. Some of my own favorites: In “Pen Pals” Picard articulates the reasoning for the Prime Directive much as CLB has, it is meant to keep Federation representatives from playing god. In fact, that’s exactly what he accuses Nikolai Rozhenko of doing in “Homeward.” Another example, in The Wrath of Khan, when Reliant detects life on Ceti Alpha V (mistaking it for VI) the discussion revolves around the Prime Directive and the consequences of supplanting the existing ecology with the Genesis matrix even if the life is microbial.
Cultural Imperialism may have a major concern for the writers who originated the Prime Directive—frankly, it’s one of many factors in the current turmoil in the Middle East—but it was precisely because folks in south-east Asia and other places were at a technological disadvantage that it was such a danger. No one was worried about American cultural imperialism in Europe, for example. So to say the Prime Directive is not about technological inferior cultures as much a misinterpretation as claiming it only applies to them. The idea that the Federation should not meddle in the internal affairs of cultures with technological parity because of the Prime Directive is as much a product of TNG as the “primitive cultures are stupid” argument (which, frankly, I don’t remember Picard or anyone else actually saying). There are certainly plenty of reasons not to get involved in a Klingon civil war, even if the Romulans are backing one side. The Prime Directive really isn’t one of them, but it certainly sounds Star Trekky.
Lastly, “A Wolf in the Fold” is not like any of these other examples. Scotty, if guilty, would have been in violation of Federation laws as well as those of the Argelians. Also, Argelia II had established a treaty with the Federation, which likely included some sort of status of forces agreement (SOFA), which determined how visiting Starfleet members were subject to local laws. Other situations where Kirk (and Picard) intervened were more likely to be injustices of some sort: the “simulated” casualties of Eminiar, the impending death of Eleen, Wesley’s death sentence for tripping into a flower bed. In all those cases, the captain was protecting one or more crewmen from injustice (yes, as seen from the audience perspective), and there was no treaty or SOFA with the host planet. Not permitting the Argelian to try Scotty would have been a contravention of justice.
@95/rowanblaze: “Cultural Imperialism may have a major concern for the writers who originated the Prime Directive—frankly, it’s one of many factors in the current turmoil in the Middle East—but it was precisely because folks in south-east Asia and other places were at a technological disadvantage that it was such a danger. No one was worried about American cultural imperialism in Europe, for example.”
That’s the excuse we always make, that the less advanced civilization automatically suffers, but it’s not true. Pre-industrial Europe was less advanced than the Mideast and China when it traded with them over the centuries, but Europe didn’t suffer from the contact. On the contrary, the advanced technologies and knowledge it got from those cultures — stirrups, gunpowder, lateen sails, compasses, printing presses, decimal mathematics, etc. — enabled Europe to thrive and grow and become the dominant civilization in the world.
The reason European contact with less advanced civilizations was harmful to them was because Europe actively tried to eradicate their cultures, to force them to abandon their own religions and customs and convert to the European way of living. By contrast, the cultures of Asia and the Mideast didn’t generally try to force Europeans to give up European culture. Europe was able to interact with more advanced cultures and thrive as a result because it was given the freedom to make its own choices, to adopt outside ideas and inventions on its own terms and use them for its own purposes. But the less advanced cultures that Europe later interacted with suffered because Europeans actively tried to deny them freedom of choice, actively forced them to convert religions and suppressed their indigenous languages and cultures and even engaged in torture or mass slaughter of those populations that didn’t play along. So saying it’s just about relative technological advancement is a copout. It’s a way to absolve European civilization of the blame for its deliberate, centuries-long campaign to subjugate and eradicate other cultures.
“Europe actively tried to eradicate their cultures, to force them to abandon their own religions and customs and convert to the European way of living.”
That’s what Cultural Imperialism is, yes. A power imbalance is part of the definition. But China is and was in no danger from European cultural imperialism in the 1800s, despite the Opium Wars that forced the treaty ports mentioned in the thread, precisely because of its relative technological parity with Europe. On the other hand, I am sure Iberians prior to the Reconquista would beg to differ about whether the Moors were cultural imperialists. Or the Hmong and Tibetans regarding the Han.
In Star Trek, the Klingons and Romulans aren’t vulnerable to cultural imperialism from the Federation because of their technological parity. The Federation can’t force the Klingons to do anything the way they might be able to force other, less advanced societies. Hence the Prime Directive, which is a recognition by Starfleet itself (since General Orders apply to the military and no one else, any applicable Federation law notwithstanding) that Starfleet personnel do not always know best when it comes to foreign/alien cultures.
Bringing it back to the Eminiar, whether Fox, as a Federation representative, is correct or incorrect in pursuing a port treaty with the system, the Prime Directive does not apply for the reason I pointed out above,. He is not a member of Starfleet, and is apparently acting on directives from the Federation equivalent of the State Department. And Kirk is certainly authorized to defend his ship and crew from attack, regardless of the text or meaning of General Order Number One.
@95/rowanblaze: Thank you – that’s what I tried to say about Flint, I just didn’t explain myself very well.
@97/rowanblaze: I’m talking about centuries earlier, when Europe was the backwater interacting with the more powerful and advanced cultures of the East, being exposed to science and technology far beyond its own. China was as technologically advanced in the 11th century as Europe was in the 18th. If it were true that the less technologically advanced culture were automatically ruined by contact, then Europe would’ve been conquered by China or the Islamic world in the 14th or 15th century. Instead, Europe adopted the more advanced technology it got from those cultures and used it to its own advantage, ultimately dominating them instead. Europe itself disproves the Eurocentric myth that the less advanced culture always suffers.
And yes, obviously the “Moors” did rule Iberia for 700 years, but the aggressive European resistance and reconquest of that region is exactly what created their subsequent aggressive intolerance of religious and cultural diversity, prompting the Crusades, the Inquisition, the forcible conversions and tortures committed by Catholic missionaries in the New World, etc. But I’m not talking about the Moroccans of the 8th or 9th centuries. I’m talking about the Mideast of centuries later, which Europe interacted with through both trade and warfare and acquired much knowledge from, including decimal mathematics (which is why we call our number system “Arabic numerals” even though they were invented in India). I’m talking about the centuries after the Reconquista, during which Europe interacted extensively with more technologically advanced civilizations and yet was not destroyed by the mere fact of being less advanced.
I’m not saying that Europe was the only culturally imperialist society in history. What I’m saying is that the damage caused in cross-cultural interaction is because of cultural imperialism instead of mere technological difference. Yes, obviously if the more advanced society is culturally imperialistic, that will turn out badly for the less advanced one. But if the more advanced society does not try to force change, if the less advanced society is free to choose its own path as Europe was, then the mere fact of technological difference will not automatically cause destruction.
95. rowanblaze – Seeing as Flint’s house was built in the style of Rigel VII and that the Kalar weren’t Fedeartion members, I’d say it’s unlikely that Flint purchased the planet from the Federation and he doesn’t strike me as the sort that would be a member anyway. He was looking to get away from people. Why would he allow the Federation to dictate terms to him? It was his planet, regardless who he bought it from. At no point did Kirk say “Under the terms of your purchase, you are required to render any aid requested by the Federation ot Starfleet.” Kirk simply stated that he wanted the Rytalyn and he was willing to kill Flint to get it. he didn’t realize that he was the one at the technological disadvantage until Flint turned the Enterprise into a table centerpiece.
No matter how you try to spin things, a treaty port is inherently imperialistic. It’s “diplomacy” issued at the barrel of a gun. That’s how Hong Kong ended up under British rule for a century. The western powers wanted access to a large Chinese market and they didn’t care what the Chinese thought about it.
The prime directive may not apply to Fedearion citizens (see Angel One) but it would certainty apply to the Federation since they are the ones who came up with it in the first place. The Federation is the one that needs their power (i.e. Starfleet) restrained. But, it’s held up as “our most important law” and “A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.” (The Omega Glory) but in reality it’s just a reason for the Federation to feel superior about themselves.
@100 kkozoriz There are lots of things left unarticulated in TV dialogue, even if the concept behind them is understood by or motivates the writers. That is why we are able to nitpick so many shows in the first place. It is clever, though to recognize the matte painting. However, the architecture also resembles structures from the region of Earth where Flint spent his first few millennia. Whether Flint considered himself a Federation citizen isn’t relevant. Being from Earth, the Prime Directive does not apply to him.
And as far as rules applying to Starfleet that do not apply to the rest of the Federation government, this happens all the time in our world. For example, the U.S. military is extremely limited in how it interacts with U.S. citizens in a law enforcement or information gathering capacity. That does not mean, of course, that other U.S. agencies are barred from doing the same (e.g., the FBI, ATF, etc.) Even National Guard units—used by state governors for crowd control, etc.—can have their law enforcement hands tied if federalized (look up Posse Comitatus).
I haven’t watched the episode recently (something I should rectify, I suppose), so I don’t know if that script you quote reflects what was said on screen. And I will not question your definition of “treaty port.” However, I am inclined to disagree that the writers understood the term in the same way. You don’t send one diplomat with a single starship (no, they were not that powerful) to force open a port in a hostile nation. Boneheaded or otherwise, Fox was there to establish diplomatic relations, not threaten Eminiar. Especially since the moral of the episode is distinctly anti-war.
Chris: I have no formal history studies beyond high school; but isn’t the fact that China and Europe in the 11th century and around interacted only through long distance commerce important? I mean, the Chinese did not travel en masse to Europe and settled there; as the Europeans did with the Americas later. What I’m saying is that maybe the reason the less technologically advanced society didn’t suffer from contact has nothing to do with the technology levels of both civilizations, but with the fact that China did not want to go and conquer them and impose their culture on them?
101. rowanblaze –
KIRK: Code seven-ten means under no circumstances are we to approach that planet. No circumstances what so ever.
FOX: You will disregard that signal, Captain.
KIRK: Mister Fox, it is their planet.
FOX: Captain, in the past twenty years, thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant. Lives that could have been saved if the Federation had a treaty port here. We mean to have that port and I’m here to get it.
KIRK: By disregarding code seven-ten, you might well involve us in an interplanetary war.
FOX: I’m quite prepared to take that risk.
Sounds to me like they had a pretty good idea what they’re talking about. A large, expansionist power seeking to impose their will on a smaller power. And starships ARE that powerful:
KIRK – You heard me give General Order Twenty Four. That means in two hours the Enterprise will destroy Eminiar Seven.
So, yeah. The Federation is totally in the wrong in this case. As Kirk says, “It is their planet.” They even told the Enterprise to stay away. But, since it’s Kirk’s show and not Anan Seven’s, guess who comes out on top?
So, the Prime Directive only applies to Starfleet? What’s preventing Harry Mudd from selling phasers to the natives then? Natives aren’t Federation citizens. As long as it’s not a Starfleet office providing weapons the the Federation is totally cool with it? Doesn’t sound very likely to me. Of course, Starfleet needed a specific general order telling them when they could or could not destroy an entire planet so it does make sense to have some restrictions on the. (Not that anyone is ever really punished for violating the PD).
@103/kkozoriz: “Not that anyone is ever really punished for violating the PD.”
We don’t know that. We never see anyone being punished, but that doesn’t mean much – after all, do we ever see anyone in Starfleet being punished for anything? And yet it surely happens. It just isn’t part of the stories.
@102/lordmagnusen: Yes, that’s exactly the point I’ve been making all along. The less advanced culture doesn’t automatically suffer — it only suffers if the more advanced culture actively tries to force change upon it. If the more advanced culture leaves the other culture free to make its own choices, then the other culture can adapt and thrive. The weaker party in an interaction doesn’t inevitably have to suffer — that only happens if the stronger party chooses to exploit its greater power. If the weaker party is treated with respect and consideration for their freedom of choice, then the interaction can be mutually beneficial.
@55, et al, regarding the female uniform miniskirt/skort: IMHO, the big clue is that there is never a concern over seeing the female’s colored “underwear.” In the U.S., for cheerleading and dance uniforms, that clothing item is referred to as bloomers. On this page alone, the many pictures of Uhura sitting at her station show that the “skirt” rides up in a way that would be unacceptable to 1960’s censors if it were not understood to be a tunic-and-bloomer outfit of some sort.
@@@@@ 103 “What’s preventing Harry Mudd from selling phasers to the natives then?”
We may arguing over semantics here, but, export control laws, which protect the Federation’s national interests as much they do any “natives,” perhaps more. Despite any dissimilarities (e.g., that the governmental bodies seem closer to the U.N.), the Federation is clearly an analog for the United States. We have in our system of laws many things that apply to civilians and others that applty specifically to the military. IMHO, that the Prime Directive itself might apply to anyone other than Starfleet personnel is a fandom interpretation that doesn’t fit the the original premise. Assuming that Starfleet general orders and regulations apply to every Federation citizen is as silly as thinking that your boss can order you around the same way Gomer Pile’s Sergeant did, or that the U.S. legal system runs like “JAG.” There may be laws on the Federation books that cover non-interference, but they are not the Prime Directive as articulated on TOS.
@@@@@105 Something you leave unconsidered (or at least unstated) is the follow-on effect of technology sharing. China was not benign as you suggest, simply uninterested in a backwater thousands of mile away. The benefits of technology for a Europe that was left alone by its Asian “benefactors” were not necessarily passed along to other cultures by the Europeans. For example, they perfected the art of gunpowder warfare and proceeded to aggressively colonize other lands. Some American tribes obtained European guns and slaughtered their neighbors before being displaced themselves by the Europeans. In the south Pacific, the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands were almost extinguished by invading Maori using European technology. Even in Star Trek itself, we have the example of “A Private Little War,” which perhaps I should save until I read the ReWatch. I would argue that the Prime Directive is more about these unintended consequences of cultural contamination than any right of self determination for non-Federation cultures.
ETA: I also wanted to thank you, CLB, for entertaining such debate here in the comments. It’s cool to bounce ideas off someone so well versed in the lore.
We’ve seen people in Starfleet punished, such as Wesley and his squadmates at the Academy, or Worf being held back for promotions after he disobeys orders in DS9 to save Jadzia. But yes, they are usually (except for Locarno, Wes’s squad leader) usually very mild punishments, and none for breaking the PD.
105. ChristopherLBennett
@102/lordmagnusen: Yes, that’s exactly the point I’ve been making all along. The less advanced culture doesn’t automatically suffer — it only suffers if the more advanced culture actively tries to force change upon it.
And yet Into Darkness showed that the simple act of showing the Enterprise to the natives WAS a violation of the Prime Directive. And based on that, they developed what appears to be the beginnings of religion.
In Bread and Circuses, the PD is stated as “”no identification of self or mission; no interference with the social development of said planet; no references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations.””
Nothing about forcing that knowledge upon the natives. Simply offering it freely would be a violation.
And if the PD doesn’t apply to civilians (as Angel One says), then it’s basically a hollow rule. There’s nothing to prevent someone from landing on a planet and using the natives to make yourself king. If the planet is not part of the Federation then, if they don’t have an extradition treaty, people are free to do as they wish there. Now, once they leave the planet and re-enter Federation space would be a different situation.
In VOY False Profits, Janeway even claims that the Ferengi are violating the PD simply because the Federation (not just Starfleet) hosted the Barzan Wormhole negotiations
.Lieutenant Tuvok: Captain, I must remind you that the Ferengi are not members of the Federation. They are not bound by the Prime Directive. Nor would it seem that the Prime Directive would allow us to interfere with the internal affairs of this society, as much as we may disapprove of what the Ferengi are doing.
Captain Kathryn Janeway: The Federation did host the negotiations. And if it weren’t for those negotiations, the Ferengi wouldn’t be here. So one could say – without being unreasonable, I think – that the Federation is partially responsible for what’s happened – and therefore duty-bound to correct this situation.
Makes the case that the PD applies to the Federation and not just Starfleet. However, as stated above, it does NOT apply to individual citizens thereof, just the government and military.
@109/kkozoriz: Citing what a work of fiction claimed about cultural contamination doesn’t refute my point, which is that a lot of the writers of Trek episodes and movies are wrong about how cultural interaction works. Fiction is not reality. Fiction can be based on false beliefs and assumptions, and a lot of Prime Directive episodes are flawed because they’re based on anthropologically and sociologically ignorant assumptions on the part of their writers. When I studied real world history in college, with a specific focus on cross-cultural interactions and first contacts, I discovered that a lot of what Star Trek writers assume about cultural interaction is based on incorrect beliefs and ethnocentric conventional wisdom, and that the reality is a lot more complex and nuanced than most people — including most writers of Prime Directive stories — realize.
And yes, the Nibirans started a religion based on what they saw of the Enterprise, but what of it? As long as Starfleet leaves them alone, they’ll be free to use that religious iconography to serve their own ends and agendas, to reinterpret it within their own cultural and conceptual context. The racist myth of the cargo cult is that “primitive, inferior” societies are passively subservient to the ideas they receive from more advanced cultures, that they blindly and stupidly worship them like sheep. That’s completely wrong. “Primitive” cultures are made of individuals who are just as intelligent, complex, self-possessed, and ambitious as any member of an advanced technological culture. They have their own ideas, goals, and agendas, and they don’t become mindlessly enslaved to outside ideas, but rather they take those ideas and use them to serve their own pre-existing purposes and politics.
Cultures are exposed to outside ideas all the time, ideas they gain from trade with neighboring cultures. It’s normal and natural for a culture to be exposed to outside ideas and incorporate them into its worldview. Indeed, it’s beneficial to be exposed to outside ideas. The most prosperous, dynamic, and successful cultures in Earth history have been the ones that interacted the most with outsiders, that existed in regions that were crossroads of multiple civilizations. That’s why so many important civilizations and religions and innovations have come out of the Mideast and the Fertile Crescent — because that’s one of the great crossroads and melting pots of multiple different cultures. It’s not contamination, it’s dynamism. The idea that a culture needs to remain “pure” and insulated from outside thought to remain healthy is completely backward. It’s the way racists and xenophobes think. The reality is that no culture can truly thrive or advance without exposure to outside ideas. And this is why so many Prime Directive stories are total crap.
The original idea behind the Prime Directive was supposed to be that forcing another culture to do what you wanted was wrong. Later series have missed the point and dumbed it down by buying into the incorrect and corrupt notion that any interaction is somehow unnatural and automatically harmful. Cultures don’t actually work that way, any more than evolution works the way “Threshold” and “Genesis” claimed.
110. ChristopherLBennett 0 The writers would be wrong if they were writing a story based on reality. But, as Uhura says, “This isn’t reality, this is fantasy.” Is Trek wrong when they use faster than light drive, weapons that make things disappear, transporters that turn people into energy or have a science office that’s based on two totally unrelated species? Of course not. What the PD shows us in the shows is how things work in that particular imaginary universe. It’s no more wrong than Syperman is wrong when it has an alien gain super strength and the ability to fly because he’s under a yellow sun. A documentary can be wrong but it’s an entirely different thing when you’re dealing with fiction. Was TWOK wrong when they used genetic engineering instead of selective breeding? By your argument, yes they were. But it’s just a retcon. same as the various ways the PD is adapted by later writers. The PD is a plot device that enables the telling if a particular story. Pen Pals isn’t wrong because we already something similar in The Paradise Syndrome.
The first mention of the Prime Directive was Return of the Archons. In it, we get this exchange –
“Captain, our Prime Directive of non-interference.“
“That refers to a living, growing culture… do you think this one is?“
Nothing there about using force. It even says that you can interfere if a culture is not progressing in a way that our heres see as healthy. Is what Kirk does, deactivating Landru, not forcing a new culture upon an alien species? After all, the Federation did;’r create Lnadru, the Betans did, centuries before there even was a Federation.
By your defintion, people are free to go to a planet, introduce them to all sorts of ideas and then simply walk away and let them work it our for themselves. And yet, you were the one championing the interference on Iotia because a book was left behind. If the people of Nibiru. who don’t know about space travel or aliens, are capable of dealing with interference, why aren’t the Iotians, who are much more advanced and have already had contact with off-worlders?
And yes, evolution does work that way in the Trek universe. We know this because we’re told that it does by characters who would know.
111/kkozoriz: “By your defintion, people are free to go to a planet, introduce them to all sorts of ideas and then simply walk away and let them work it our for themselves. And yet, you were the one championing the interference on Iotia because a book was left behind.”
The point is that respecting people’s freedom of choice does not preclude interacting with them at all. It’s like the difference between a healthy relationship and an abusive one. In an abusive relationship, one partner dominates and controls the other and denies them freedom of choice. But in a healthy relationship, the partners share rather than imposing, and they respect each other’s freedom to make their own choices and have different opinions.
Yes, new ideas can disrupt a culture, but what Trek writers and fans often forget is that a planet is going to have many different cultures on it, not just one. Being exposed to outside ideas is not going to be an unprecedented event for any of its cultures. And yes, there is a responsibility to try to be careful and aware of the risks, but it’s simplistic to reduce that to “Any exposure whatsoever will inevitably ruin them forever.” It’s enormously more complicated and nuanced than that. My problem is with interpretations of the PD that try to reduce it to broad oversimplifications and absolutes. Of course, the reason the PD is often a good idea is because it’s so complicated, and contacts probably shouldn’t be undertaken by people who aren’t expert at considering and managing the potential ramifications. But treating it as a monolithic dogma is doing it wrong, just as the absolute, unthinkingly dogmatic application of any philosophy or doctrine is doing it wrong. Reality is nuanced. Each case is different, and so it doesn’t work to try to apply the exact same rigid approach to every case.
112. ChristopherLBennett – In an abusive relationship, one partner dominates and controls the other and denies them freedom of choice. But in a healthy relationship, the partners share rather than imposing, and they respect each other’s freedom to make their own choices and have different opinions.
Us there any evidence that the Horizon forced The Book on the Iotians? By all indications, it ws left as a sort of parting gift. The Iotians then, of their own free will, adopted it. And yet Kirk then decided that wasn’t right and imposed his own form of government upon them, taking into account the ease with which he could do so. Making them a democracy would be difficult and take time so instead he opted for a dictatorship, with one man at the top. Brilliant.
In A Taste of Armageddon, the Eminians instruct the Enterprise not to approach and Kirk, acting under orders from Fox, ignores their wishes and imposes their presence upon them. He then proceeds to change their society because it’s not to his liking, even going to the point or ordering Scotty to destroy the planet in two hours. And what would have happened if he couldn’t reach a communicator in time or at all? Talk about imposing your will on someone.
The point is that the PD was never meant to be taken as written. It’s a plot point. It’s not a philosophy. It’s a storytelling rule that’s there simply TO BE broken. And yet, we get this in The Omega Glory, written by Roddenberry himself –
“A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”
How often have we seen it broken, been told explicitly that it IS being broken and yet there’s no punishment. No captain gibing up his life or the lives of his crew to keep from breaking it? And why not? Because it’s sole purpose is to be an obstacle for out heroes to overcome, not for them to uohold. If someone writes an episode that says that the PD only applies to human Starfleet captains, then that’s what it would mean, even though it contradicts previous versions of the PD. Why? Because that’s what that particular story requires it to be.
It’s similar to how technology is used. Phasers are only limited by what the plot requires them to do, either in their normal operation or with a bit of tinkering by the science or engineering officer. Need a way to teleport someone 20 feet? Toss in bit of technobabble and, voila! A one use teleporter that would probably never be used again? Just look at the silliness of the long range transporters use in the last two movies. Only used to advance the plot, regardless of the previous range limitations on the transporter.
Need a way to save Kirk’s life after radiation exposure? How about Khan’s magic blood, even though Kahn was originally the product of selective breeding and not genetic alteration. Why? Because the story required it.
If the PD had been written down and applied constantly, forcing the writers to actually use it as intended then the stories we got would have been a lot different. Better or worse would depend on how they turned out but they would not have been the same stories we saw. But TPTB decided to keep it open to give the writers more freedom in applying it. That led to contradictions but that doesn’t make those contradictions wrong.
@113/kkozoriz: Since this discussion is going around in circles, I’ll limit myself to one of your points:
It can be both. Isn’t the combination of philosophical ideas and entertainment a classic Star Trek feature? I think that Friday’s Child, for example, is a reflection on the merits and dangers of interference – Kirk on impulse prevents a pregnant woman from getting killed, then it turns out that killing her was actually part of the customs of her people, and she didn’t want to be saved, then she changes her mind about that, then they have to kill a bunch of her people to protect her and her baby (so how is that any better?), and so on. IMO it doesn’t work entirely, and I’m not sure if the happy ending isn’t a cop-out, but there are some real ideas there.
Also, not all PD stories are about breaking it – Bread and Circuses is about not breaking it.
Kirk’s remark in The Omega Glory is a bit over the top, but really, what isn’t in The Omega Glory?
Concerning long-range transporters and magic blood – that’s not in the TV show, that’s in the new films. I find that the writers of TOS often try to be believable both with regard to political concepts and rules and with regard to technology (albeit not always to the same extent). The same is not true for the films, especially not the new ones. They’re more interested in being flashy.
Quoth kkozoriz: “The point is that the PD was never meant to be taken as written. It’s a plot point.”
Um, that’s not how writing works. In fact, that’s the opposite of how writing works. If it wasn’t meant to be taken as written, it wouldn’t be written that way.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
115. krad 0 what I meant is that there wasn’t a copy of the PD on the wall of the writers office where they could reference it. It was never written down except in the scripts. Each writer had a different idea what it meant and so we got different interpretations of it, many of them contradictory. The PD is written around the plot and not the other way around. It’s not like a cop or lawyer show where there exists lots of background you can refer to. The PD exists to be whatever the writer determines it to mean at that time. Thus we ger Kirk saving Miramanee’s planet and Picard willing to let Sarjenka’s planet die for much the same reason. Same with Worf’s brother or Kirk in Into Darkness.
Dies it apply to natural disasters? If so, why doesn’t Starfleet have an orbital station observing every inhabited planet, ready to save people from floods or fires or disease. Why not stun everyone from orbit and vaccinate them so nobody faces their equivalent of the Black Death? Should they proactively visit planets of tech levels of the Roman Empire and teach them, freely of course, about the dangers of open sewers and lead pipes?
The point being, that there’s not one PD but many, each one subtly different from the others. I’m surprised that anyone in Starfleet even falls for the fiction that it’s “our most important law.” when, as soon as someone mentions it, you just know that they’re going to be breaking it by the next commercial break.
If there were one thing I’d like to see in the new series, is that things like the PD or the transporter be written down, quantified and posted for the writers to see. The best lawyer shows are the ones that actually follow the law, that have limitations that have to be worked around within the system or the consequences dealt with. No more re-writing the PD each week to suit the story. If it really is so important, treat it like it is.
@116: kkozoriz: “As soon as someone mentions it, you just know that they’re going to be breaking it […]”.
Not true. As I mentioned in comment #114, sometimes they go to great lengths to uphold it. Also, as Christopher has mentioned time and again, the 24th century PD is clearly different from and more prohibitive than the 23rd century PD.
Personally, I dislike most 24th century PD stories, and I really like 23rd century PD stories, because they often deal with the fine line between helping and meddling, or between respect and apathy, and that’s a subject I find intriguing (also in real life). Maybe you’re right that it’s handled inconsistently, I’m not sure about that; but in the better stories, it’s certainly more than just a plot point used to tell an entertaining story.
Which is what I tried to say in comment #114.
117. JanaJansen – But Christopher also says that the creators got the PD “wrong” in TNG and others. But the writers can’t get something wrong. In the words of Nomad, “They are the creator”. What they say is what makes up the world of Trek. Yes, travelling at warp 10 turns you into a salamander. Yes, Spock has a half brother that Dorothy Fontana says never existed. And yes, you break the Prime Directive if you work to stop a natural disaster. Why? Because that’s what the people that run the show says it is. Christopher may disagree with their decisions but that doesn’t make them wrong.
And I was exaggerating about people breaking the PD once they mention it but the point still holds. Just like if we see someone using one of the duck blinds on a primitive planet, you just know that something will go wrong and the PD will be broken. If, as Christopher insists, the PD is meant to prevent contamination only by force, why even bother hiding? You’re going to cause a lot more upheaval when the duck bling inevitably fails, not to mention that people won’t appreciate being spied on.
@118/kkozoriz: “The writers can’t get something wrong” – That depends on your point of view.
If you’re interested in the fictional universe as a self-contained world then, sure, the writers are always right because they’re the ones who make up the world – they can only be wrong when they let inconsistencies crop up that can’t be explained away.
If, on the other hand, you’re interested in realism (and it’s totally possible to have unrealistic technology like transporters and warp drives and have realistic societies, people and politics at the same time), then the writers can be wrong by depicting things unrealistically.
And if you’re interested in Star Trek as a commentary on the real world – that whole “utopian” and “morality play” thing – then it makes sense to ask what the original intention of the PD was, and then later writers can be wrong by misunderstanding or misrepresenting the original intention. (Of course it’s also possible that they changed the intention on purpose in order to make a different statement.)
What’s “duck blinds on a primitive planet”?
A “duck blind” is a camouflaged shelter used for duck hunting; they use the same term for the holographically concealed shelters for Federation scientists to observe primitive cultures, like on the TNG episode “Who Watches The Watchers?”.
Oh, that one – right. Thank you!
119. JanaJansen –
“If you’re interested in the fictional universe as a self-contained world then, sure, the writers are always right because they’re the ones who make up the world – they can only be wrong when they let inconsistencies crop up that can’t be explained away.
If, on the other hand, you’re interested in realism (and it’s totally possible to have unrealistic technology like transporters and warp drives and have realistic societies, people and politics at the same time), then the writers can be wrong by depicting things unrealistically.”
How can they depict things unrealistically if they’re making the whole thing up in the first place? If they were doing something based on our history or our present day or near future world, then yes, they can do things unrealistically. However, seeing as we have never had a multi-species, starfareing society, I don’t see how they can be unrealistic. The future is going to look nothing like Star Trek. We won’t be stepping onto an unknown planet wearing noting but a t-shirt and jeans. Our point of meeting alien races will not be to make them think and act in a way that more closely approximates humanity (Which is precisely what happens in this episode, among others).
Space Admirals aren’t going to be evil, megalomaniacs or incompetent paper pushers who take over a ship when they have no idea what they’re doing. Aline space babes aren’t going to be sexually attracted to a human captain any more that we are attracted to an orangutan or a cuttlefish.
Star Trek is many things but realistic isn’t. What it is, however, is believable withing it’s own context. And that context changes with every episode. If the characters believe that travelling at warp 10 turns you into a lizard, then that’s what it is.
@122/kkozoriz: Star Trek has a number of unrealistic assumptions it starts from – FTL travel, a universal translator, transporters, alien planets that are just like Earth, alien beings that are just like humans, energy beings, psychic powers, maybe some others. Within this framework, it can still be more or less realistic. Evil or incompetent space admirals do not belong in your list because human behaviour is one of the things the makers of Star Trek wanted to depict realistically, therefore if they don’t, that’s a valid criticism (and you could justifiably say that they got it wrong :-)).
Are we, maybe, fighting over words? Would you prefer it if I called it “believable” instead of “realistic”? That’s what the makers of Star Trek did, and yes, they wanted the stories to be about the real world. Here’s some quotes from the TOS Writers/Directors Guide which can be found here:
Superman is believable within the confines of the comic books. Movies and TV shows have added some to the mythos but the vast majority of Superman has sprung from the comics. However, introduce the bottle city of Kandor on an episode of Law & Order and it would no longer appear believable. Why? Because law & Order is set in the “real world” or a much closer approximation of one than Superman is. Same with Star Trek. Star Trek is believable in it’s own little world but they wouldn’t do a crossover with Law & Order without making both of them less believable to their viewers.
Law & Order, just as an example, strives to be realistic within the confines of producing a TV drama. Stare Trek strives to be believable within the confines of a TV SciFi action/adventure.
If Star Trek would be realistic, we wouldn’t have warp drive, phasers, transporters, replicators, holodecks, the EMH, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention no half Vulcan/half Human Mr. Spock. The aliens wouldn’t look like humans wearing lots of body paint or having rubber bit glued to their foreheads. We’d spend a whole season just learning the language of an alien race that we met. Not to mention the fact that it would either take centuries to travel from planet to planet so we’d have a new cast each story or the ship would travel near light speed and everyone back on Earth would have grown old and died while our crew stayed young due to time dilation.
Doesn’t sound much like Star Trek, does it?
For an extreme example, look at the Flintstones. They work in the context we’re presented with so it’s believable. However, make it realistic and the whole thing would just fall apart.
That’s my distinction on the difference between believable and realistic. Nice to see that the writers guide seems to agree.
This has got to be the most blatant example of Kirk breaking the Prime Directive. Unlike other occasions, there’s no other outside influence so the damage has already been done (“Friday’s Child”, “A Private Little War”, “A Piece of the Action”), there’s no mad super computer artificially constraining the society (“The Return of the Archons”, “The Apple”). The only outsiders are the Enterprise crew. Even if you’re allowed to break the Prime Directive in self-defence (and episode like “Bread and Circuses” and “Who Watches the Watchers” suggest otherwise), Kirk’s actions here go way beyond self-defence. Kirk destroying a disintegration station and disrupting the planet’s society was not self-defence, he just did it because he found it offensive. Kirk abducting Mea 3 and holding her prisoner to stop her going to the fate her society demanded as she was prepared to do was not self-defence, it was white knight syndrome. At the end, when he has control of the situation, all he needs to do in the name of self-defence is beam up to the Enterprise and warp out of there. Self-defence did not require him to destroy their computers and deliberately throw a spanner in the system that had evolved naturally in that region.
Not saying Kirk was wrong, just that there’s no question that he broke the Prime Directive.
(Incidentally, anyone get the impression this episode is based on the assumption you can beam down when the shields are up? Fox doesn’t tell Scotty to lower the shields to beam him down, he tells him to lower them as a gesture of faith. Scotty’s response appears to be “You risk your neck if you want but I’m not putting the rest of us in danger.” Or else he lowered the shields just long enough to beam Fox down and then put them straight back up before the batteries could open fire again.)
@125/cap-mjb: As I said in comment #9, this was more than self-defense; by attacking the Enterprise, the Eminians had committed an act of war against the UFP, and Kirk was reacting as a soldier behind enemy lines. Destroying the Eminians’ disintegration chambers and battle computers wasn’t about taking a moral stand, it was about impeding the enemy’s ability to carry out their avowed intention to kill his crew.
@126: Well, I guess you could sell it like that, although Kirk seems to be pretending to have higher morals. Of course, you could also argue that the Enterprise deliberately intruded in another world’s sovereign territory and then deliberately flouted local laws once they got there. Whilst they were initially ignorant of the situation, the attack on them was legal under the rules of engagement operating in that system, which the Prime Directive would seem to oblige them to make at least a pretence of following. If you ignore a warning that you’re flying into a war zone, you can’t really claim “They started it” when you end up being shot at. It also doesn’t alter the fact that Kirk deliberately violates local customs by “saving” Mea 3 against her wishes, which seems to be a clear Prime Directive violation.
@127/cap-mjb: Like I think I said before, I doubt Starfleet officers are obliged to apply Prime Directive considerations to a declared enemy in war. I mean, if the Klingons’ cultural values say it’s okay for them to invade Federation planets, should Starfleet be obliged to let them? And nobody seemed concerned about PD considerations on Organia, suggesting that the Directive was suspended during the war.
128. ChristopherLBennett – Except Eminiar VII and Vendikar are NOT Federation planets. The Federation ignored the warning to stay out with the intention of establishing a port, wether the Eminians wanted it or not. That’s the definition of a treaty port which is is expressly called by Ambassador Fox.
The Federation ignore the big “Keep Out. This Means You” sign and got involved in a civil war. Picard stayed out of the Klingon Civil War precisely because it was an internal matter. He only got involved once the Roumulans were found to be backing one side.
And Organia was non-aligned and told Kirk not to get involved.
If the PD is suspended during war, why not just send in a fleet, destroy the planets ability to make war and force a peace upon them?
@128: Except in this case, the Federation people are the aggressors, the invaders. They’re the ones who have invaded someone else’s system against their expressed wishes and threatened to rain down fiery death on them. In short, they’re the ones behaving like the Romulans in “Balance of Terror”, however passive their invasion might be. The Eminians are the ones who are trying to defend their way of life, if not their actual lives, from a bunch of imperialists who seem to want to overturn their culture and install a system of government that will work with them for their own selfish reasons. I doubt if the Prime Directive would allow the Federation to charge into Klingon space without a declaration of war and despite repeated warnings to stay back, and use the Klingons opening fire on them when they refuse to leave as an excuse to overturn their society. Basically, the Eminians are the Gorn from “Arena”, whose position you’ve always defended even though they murdered a Federation colony on a planet they regarded as theirs without even the courtesy of giving them a warning.
@130/cap-mjb: I think that’s a rather inaccurate reading of the sequence of events. Yes, the Enterprise did approach against the Eminians’ express wishes, but they did so without aggressive intent. Anan 7 and the council gave no indication at that point that they perceived the Enterprise as a threat, merely that they had warned it away for its own safety. The war computers then designated the Enterprise a victim of a simulated attack — an attack that did not actually happen — and the Eminians then took the landing party hostage in order to force the crew to report to their deaths, and when that failed, tried to use trickery to lure the crew to their deaths, and finally launched an actual disruptor attack against the ship. It was only in response to that open Eminian aggression that Kirk escalated to the threat of “raining fiery death.” The ship’s original approach may have been intrusive, but there’s no question that the first actual aggressive move — and the second, and the third — was made by Eminiar.
If a Starfleet or UFP board of inquiry investigated the matter, then, they might conclude that Ambassador Fox had acted inappropriately by compelling Kirk to ignore Code 710, but I think they would find that Kirk himself acted only in response to the Eminians’ attacks on the safety of his crew. Once his ship and crew were under attack by an opponent that had declared the unambiguous intention to kill every last one of them, he was entitled to do what he could to interfere with the enemy’s ability to achieve that goal. One could argue that matters escalated quite a bit after that point, but there’s no disputing who threw the first punch.
131. ChristopherLBennett – Once his ship and crew were under attack by an opponent that had declared the unambiguous intention to kill every last one of them, he was entitled to do what he could to interfere with the enemy’s ability to achieve that goal. One could argue that matters escalated quite a bit after that point, but there’s no disputing who threw the first punch.
Or, once he decided that Eminian law didn’t apply to him, regardless of the fact that the Enterprise was there illegally, he decided to threaten the entire population. How exactly is threatening planetary annihilation not forcing your will upon another culture?
Instead of ordering Scotty to follow General Order 24, he could have ordered him to follow General Order One and get the ship and crew out of there. It would have been at the cost of three lives instead of millions or billions.
“A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”. – James T. Kirk, The Omega Glory
@132/kkozoriz: What you propose would have led to real war between Eminiar and Vendikar, because the Eminians were obliged to kill the Enterprise crew.
133. JanaJansen – According to Christopher, they were already involved in a war. Granted, one they stumbled into through no fault but their own. And just to refresh, Peter David wrote a DC comic story that revealed that Kirk’s actions DID turn into a “real” war, so it was a very real possibility. The fact that the Enterprise was targeted is not the fault of Eminiar or Vendikar. It was because the Federation was poking their noses in where it didn’t belong.
“The DC Comics version of Star Trek had a storyline called The Trial of James T. Kirk, written by Peter David, which contained follow-ups to many TOS episodes. It was revealed therein that the peace talks broke down, and a (genuine) nuclear war took place—completely obliterating Vendikar, and rendering a third of Eminiar a radioactive wasteland. This was further stated in some of the stories in the various “Strange New Worlds” anthologies, as well as the William Shatner novel Preserver, although these stories are not considered canon“
Wikipedia -A Taste of Armageddon – Spinoffs
@134/kkozoriz: Kirk’s actions didn’t turn the war into a “real” war. That would have happened anyway. Kirk tried to prevent this outcome by giving them a third option. And Peter David is way too cynical for my taste.
135. JanaJansenn – Kirk & Fox are ones who interfered with the status quo, even after being told specifically to stay away.
“Code 710 means under no circumstances are we to approach that planet — no circumstances what so ever.
You will disregard that signal, Captain.
Mr. Fox, it is their planet.”
Kirk could have fought Fox on the grounds that his order to disregard the 710 was unlawful. The military is not required to follow unlawful orders. That sort of thinking went out of fashion at Nirenberg.
What exactly are people supposed to do if they simply want to be left alone? As it is, Starfleet and the Federation seems to feel it’s their right go go where they want, when they want with no consequences.
And Peter David is many things but I wouldn’t call him cynical. He’s simply pointing out the potential consequences of forcing a confrontation.
Possibly my version of events is somewhat slanted but if the Enterprise hasn’t invaded Eminian space, then at the very least it’s trespassed in it. A military vessel, especially one with the capacity to wipe out a population, intruding in someone’s sovereign territory, taking up orbit around their planet and refusing to leave would generally be considered a legitimate target, even if it hasn’t actually opened fire or threatened to do so. I know that’s not why the Eminians attacked it, but they’re not exactly minding their own business.
In this case, I can’t say I go along with the apocrypha: These people who’ve been fighting a “clean” war using computers are unlikely to suddenly start bombing each other for real. But neither do I see Kirk as a soldier fighting a guerilla war against an implacable enemy. His portrayal here is more that of a gentleman adventurer, who’s stumbled upon a wrong that he feels needs righting and thinks that his moral obligation outweighs the fact that he doesn’t really have the authority to interfere. I think he did the right thing morally speaking and I think it probably did turn out all right, but he does treat the Prime Directive as something to be worked around when it gets in the way of doing what he sees as the right thing and this is the most blatant example of it.
kkozoriz: I’ve known Peter David for more than 26 years, and I would absolutely call him cynical. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
138. krad – OK, he’s cynical but his Trek writing usually isn’t. I can’t speak for him personally. His Trek writings are usually a mix of humour and deep affection for the franchise.
@136/kkozoriz: I already agreed with you that Fox was wrong one year ago (see comments #66 and #78). I’m also positive that the writers of the episode intended Fox to be wrong.
As for Kirk, we don’t know if Fox’ order was unlawful, because we don’t know Federation law. We know the PD, but on the other hand, as Fox stated in the beginning, “in the past twenty years, thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant”. We don’t know how or where exactly this happened – what a “quadrant” is, how much of “star cluster NGC 321” and its neighbourhood were affected by the war, if the people who died trespassed knowingly into Eminian territory or not. It may be a borderline case where Kirk couldn’t tell whether Fox’ actions were covered by Federation law.
But if you like, we can assume that Kirk was wrong when he followed Fox’ order, because that’s not what I was talking about in my recent comments anyway. My recent comments were about his later actions – after he made his initial mistake (if you will), how to judge his attempts to get out of the mess he helped create (if you will).
Concerning Peter David, I don’t know him personally either. I was talking about his take on this episode. This episode is about taking a risk for peace, and it’s constructed in a believable way – this could really work. It’s a hopeful ending. It’s a plea for peace. Turning this into a story about nuclear devastation, yes, I find that cynical.
@137/cap-mjb: “In this case, I can’t say I go along with the apocrypha: These people who’ve been fighting a “clean” war using computers are unlikely to suddenly start bombing each other for real.”
It isn’t apocrypha. It’s what Anan tells Kirk: “You will be responsible for an escalation that will destroy everything. Millions of people horribly killed. Complete destruction of our culture and yes, the culture on Vendikar. Disaster, disease, starvation, horrible, lingering death, pain and anguish! […] We have done away with all that. Now you’re threatening to bring it down on us again.”
And they never stopped using real weapons. Remember the “thousands of lives […] lost” I mentioned above and the attack on the Enterprise. They just don’t use them against each other.
@140/JanaJansen: Okay, fair point. I guess what I meant is I can’t go along with the idea that that’s what actually happened.
@140/Jana: The opening dialogue suggested to me that the Federation wanted a treaty port at Eminiar because of its location — those lives had been lost in the quadrant because the Federation didn’t have a safe port in the area where ships could go for refuge or colonists could call for assistance, so they wanted to establish a Federation presence to make it safer. All they knew about the Eminians’ war was that it had been going on 50 years earlier when the Valiant visited; they didn’t know it was still raging in the present, because of course there was no outward sign of the conflict.
And I agree with cap-mjb about Anan’s warning. Just because Anan believed that would happen, that doesn’t mean he was right. After all, that fear was the reason he and the Vendikans had never tried to end the war, and Kirk’s point — the episode’s point — was that it didn’t have to be that way, that living in perpetual fear was self-defeating.
Ah – that never occurred to me. I always assumed the ships were lost in the war and the Federation just didn’t know what had happened to them.
As for the episode’s point, I agree, of course. That’s why the nuclear war sequel angers me so much.
140. JanaJansen – Crossing the border of a sovereign system when you have been told to keep out, using the Federation’s own code that says you cannot cross it for “no reason whatsoever” had better be illegal or the concept of sovereignty goes out the window. Just because the Enterprise’s mission was peaceful (although the treaty port makes that claim dubious), as Kirk says “It’s their system”. If you don’t have the right to say who can and cannot enter your system and and you cannot enforce your laws because someone more powerful doesn’t agree with them, then any idea of independence is only there by the grace of the Federation. They are determining what your border is, what port facilities you must offer to outsiders and who must follow your laws. That puts the Federation in de facto charge of your system, regardless of how nicely they deny it.
I know that the ending is supposed to be hopeful. It’s just hard for be to justify the reasoning and actions that got to that point. It comes across as “It’ll be OK because Kirk is just so awesome that there couldn’t possibly be a bad ending to this.”. It’s peace achieved by someone on the outside saying “stop fighting or I’ll kill every one of you myself to demonstrate how morally superior I am.”
@144/kkozoriz: Fair enough, let’s assume that there is such a law, and Kirk is wrong when he obeys Fox. I don’t think that it hurts the story, or the message.
“It’s peace achieved by someone on the outside saying ‘stop fighting or I’ll kill every one of you myself to demonstrate how morally superior I am.’ “
I don’t see it like that. For starters, he can help them exactly because he is “on the outside”, which gives him a different perspective. It has nothing to do with being “just so awesome”. Then, he does the exact opposite from claiming moral superiority. He basically tells Anan that he isn’t any better than them, and yet his people have managed to live in peace, meaning that Anan’s people can do the same. As I said in comment #17, I like that speech for its humility.
The Eminians make it clear right from the beginning that they don’t glorify war (unlike many Earth cultures throughout history). They simply think it’s inevitable. “Stop fighting or I’ll kill every one of you” doesn’t work in the long term if people want to fight. But these people don’t want to fight.
145. JanaJansen – But Kirk made them change their minds at the point of a phaser. if He had been a few minutes late, Scotty would have started bombarding the planet.
KIRK: Scotty, General Order Twenty Four. Two hours! In two hours!
And
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.
ANAN: You wouldn’t do this. Hundreds of millions of people.
KIRK: I didn’t start it, Councilman, but I’m liable to finish it.
And
SPOCK: These are the attack computers, Captain. That one’s defence, that one computes the casualties. They’re all tied in with a subspace transmission unit, which keeps them in constant contact with their Vendikan counterparts.
KIRK: Yes, go on.
SPOCK: At the moment contact is broken, it abrogates the agreement between the two warring parties.
SAR: What are you going to do?
SPOCK: This one’s the key. The circuit is now locked. Destroy this one, and they’ll all go.
KIRK: Good. Get him out of here.
SAR: Now wait a minute. Please, please!
(Kirk uses his phaser to destroy the computer.)
KIRK: Let’s go.
The Eminians didn’t end the war because they wanted peace. Kirk gave them no choice. And we didn’t see what the reaction from Vendikar was. For all we know, they make the folks on the Nazi Planet look like Boy Scouts.
If they had eliminated the Code 710 and the talk of the treaty port, it would have been more palatable. The Enterprise then would find themselves in a war where they had no idea that anything was amiss. As it is though, they were warned and their reasons for ignoring the warning were based on an Imperial mindset that allowed them to force someone to provide a port for their use, regardless of how the Eminians felt about it. It’s the more powerful forcing their morals upon someone who can’t defend themselves against it.
This is why I like Kirk. “Hey, aliens, you’re being stupid. Stop being stupid and chill.” I mean, I enjoy gaming as much as the next guy, but when you’re forcing people to die to score points it’s probably time to pull the plug. In this case, it’s a positive Imperial mindset. Yeah, you read that right. Long live the Peacenik Empire!
Kirk didn’t force peace on them, he just made the situation real and left them to deal with it. People were dying anyway and he wanted to make them see that it was a bad thing.
“Death, destruction, disease, horror. That’s what war is all about, Anan. That’s what makes it a thing to be avoided. You’ve made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you’ve had no reason to stop it. And you’ve had it for five hundred years.”
And afterwards:
“Contact Vendikar. I think you’ll find that they’re just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you are, that they’ll do anything to avoid the alternative I’ve given you. Peace or utter destruction. It’s up to you.”
148. cap-mjb – “alternative I’ve given you.”
It’s not his place nor the Federation’s to “give” them anything other than what they’ve chosen for themselves. They’re not Federation members. If the UFP had come in and offered to mediate, that would be OK because then it’s leaving the situation up to them. What happens if Vendikar doesn’t agree to negotiate and the result is an interplanetary war even more destructive than what they were facing already with their computer controlled war?
Is it’s the Federation;s job to patrol the galaxy and force people to change their behaviours if it doesn’t match Federation ideals? Kirk’s solution is “Peace or utter destruction.”, yet Vendikar and Eminiar VII had found a third way. It seems horrible to us but it was working for them.
In Tomorrow Is Yesterday, we find out that the planet Cygnet XIV is a female dominated society. Isn;t the Federation dedicated to equality of the sexes? Why haven’t they forced the Cygnians to change to a more equal society? On Vulcan, ritual combat to the death is still permitted and they don’t even feel it’s necessary to tell a combatant that it’s a fight to the death before they agree. Isn’t that wrong by human standards? Perhaps the Federation should get their own house in order before they go telling the galaxy at large what they;re doing wrong and upsetting a stable situation to make a point to people who didn’t ask for the UFP’s opinion in the first place.
@146/kkozoriz: “If they had eliminated the Code 710 and the talk of the treaty port, it would have been more palatable. […] As it is though, they were warned and their reasons for ignoring the warning were based on an Imperial mindset that allowed them to force someone to provide a port for their use […].”
Yes, I understand that you see the episode as a justification for imperialism. I don’t. I think it is carefully constructed to discourage this very reading, by having Kirk (our viewpoint character) oppose Fox and make all the right arguments, but ultimately back down despite his conviction that Fox is wrong. That isn’t an imperialist society, that’s an overeager, misguided government official and an overobedient military officer.
After the damage was done, Kirk had three options. He could have given in to Anan and allowed his crew to be killed. He could have arranged the Enterprise’s escape and left behind a highly volatile situation – Eminiar hadn’t fulfilled its quota, and Anan was convinced that Vendikar would retaliate. Or he could have forced Anan to see peace as a possibility. The last option had a high probability of success because the Eminians were clearly not bellicose. In all likelihood, the same is true for Vendikar, or the arrangement wouldn’t have been stable for five hundred years.
It’s not about Kirk forcing his morals upon the Eminians. It’s about finding the best way out of a messy situation.
150. JanaJansen – A messy situation that is entirely of the Federation’s making. If they had not entered Eminian space illegally, the planets would have continued along in a system that we may find unacceptable but that they had worked out amongst themselves to be mutually acceptable. And isn’t that what the Prime Directive is supposed to be all about? The Eminians and Vendikans weren’t slaves to their computers. They entered into their “war” knowing exactly what they were doing. Kirk decides that their way of waging war is wrong and that they must fight it the same way as everyone else.
Yes, the system was stable for five hundred years. Until Kirk & Fox decided to change it. And the imperialism comes from Fox, and by extension the Federation, deciding that they needed to establish a treaty port. That is one of the shining examples of imperialism. That’s what led to Hong Kong being British.
Giving Kirk bonus points for potentially defusing a situation that he helped create doesn’t make him a hero in my books.
So again I ask the question, what right does the Federation have to invade and threaten an independent world? Eminiar and Vendikar were not a threat to the Federation. They put up warnings. They told them to stay away. Does claiming that you’re acting with peaceful intentions give you the right to ignore someone’s border and interfere with their society?
@151/kkozoriz: You really want that answered again? Okay, here you are: No.
At some point in this comment thread kkozoris said
Accept the Prime Directive for what it is, a plot device that’s there primarily to be broken.
word. Some people don’t like holodeck episodes. Some people don’t like Wesley episodes. Some people don’t like Mirror Universe episodes. Personally, when I hear the prime directive is going to be part of the plot, I know I’m going to be somewhat annoyed by a decision a character makes, whether it be to follow the prime directive or break it. They always seem to make the decision opposite the one I would make. And that’s annoying. :)
Uh, doesn’t Spock lure Kelinda telepathically (without touching her) in “By Any Other Name”?
@155/Mark Firestone: He tries to do so, with a specific callback to this episode, but it isn’t successful because her mind is more powerful.
Regarding the scene in which Spock appeared to be doing a mind-meld through the wall: I’m not surprised. We all should remember that Vulcans were, and are, a telepathic species—some more adept than others—and although they were, and ae, primarily, touch-telepaths we must remember that performing those mind-melds can be done with or without physical contact (and that includes telepathic hypnosis), although it’s much more difficult without I got quite a kick out of watching our favorite Vulcan do this, and I have seen both varieties in quite a number of episodes. I also remember when he instructed Yeoman Tamura to keep a close watch on Mea 3; he said in no uncertain terms “Knock her down and sit on her if you have to!” And I will never forget Scotty’s outright defiance of Ambassador Fox on the bridge, saying in no uncertain terms “You can do what you want, BUT THE SCREENS STAY UP!”—he really was Captain Kirk’s equal when it came to protecting the Enterprise, and I liked that. Very much. Oh—and when Ambassador Fox finally realized that the usual diplomatic procedures were not going to work in this situation, it reminded me of something Spock had observed in another episode: he said that the purpose of diplomacy was to prolong a crisis (and that was why he demonstrated how to practice a peculiar variety of diplomacy with a fully loaded phaser). In all, an enjoyable and thought-provoking episode.
I just love watching tiny little Yeoman Tamura glare statuesque Mea 3 into submission. I also love that Kirk has no doubt Tamura can handle Mea, he’s basically telling her her she can get as rough as necessary.
@158/Roxana: It’s Spock, not Kirk, but yeah, I love that too. And Tamura is perfectly self-assured and businesslike about it. TOS yeomen definitely could do more than just carry tricorders!
Really? I was uncertain but I decided it had to be Kirk because Spock wouldn’t say sit on her. Or so I thought. I have a very clear memory though of Tamura adopting dominate stance and Mea looking suitably cowed.
@160/Roxana: I had to look it up myself. There’s a website that has transcripts of all Star Trek episodes, although they misspelled “Tamura”.
I still stand by the notion that Tamura was part of security. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@162/krad: No way, she was too competent for that. :)
@162/krad: And I’ll point out again that the title “yeoman” specifically refers to a secretarial/clerical position. Yeoman is not a rank, it is a job title for an enlisted person. An enlisted security officer would be called a master-at-arms.
@@@@@ 163, mean, Jana, but not uncalled for.
@164/Christopher: But nobody in Star Trek is ever called that, so presumably that job title didn’t survive.
@166/Jana: Yeah, most enlisted personnel in Trek are just called things like Crewman, Specialist, or Technician. But a yeoman is specifically a clerical aide. It’s basically the Navy equivalent of Radar & Klinger’s company clerk role in M*A*S*H.
@167/Christopher: Also, Tamura carries a tricorder. Security guards don’t do that.
Maybe she’s also security qualified, people do take on a variety of jobs at times.
You humans and your Earth-logic, ruining a perfectly good speculation with facts….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who still wants to believe Tamura was security, all evidence to the contrary
There’s nothing that says that Security can’t have a yeoman assigned to it. Somebody’s got to prepare all those data slates that Kirk hates being bothered with. Each department probably has a number of Yeomen assigned from a central pool. I’ve always imagined that the head of the Yeomen was the Records Officer as personified as Ben Finney. The Records officer is most likely the one that’s also in charge of the computer since they are the one person other than the Captain and First Officer that would have been able to change the logs in Court Martial.
Someone mentioned earlier that Spock tried to mind-meld with Kelinda in “By Any Other Name” but was unsuccessful because her mind was too powerful, too dynamic. That was not the only time. In “The Paradise Syndrome” he attempted the Vulcan mind-fusion with the amnesic Captain Kirk and, although more successful, he was thrown clear—had to break the connection. Out of breath (Hard to believe, but it happened) he managed to say “His mind…he’s an extremely dynamic individual!” As we can see, there are many different forms of such contact between minds, with or without the physical element, and sometimes they don’t. work. However, performing the mind-meld through the wall did work.
@172/Zita Carno: Making a guard believe his prisoners have escaped is probably easier than undoing full-fledged amnesia.
As krad says, all evidence besides her title (and possibly the tricorder, but it’d make sense for security guards to have one, as in later Trek shows) points to her being security. The title is likely just a script mistake that nobody caught, such as when Picard called the Klingon Empire “The Klingon Imperial Empire”.
@174/MaGnUs: I’d say the evidence argues that Tamura isn’t in security. Her first role in the episode is to hand a data slate to Kirk on the bridge, which is not something a security officer would do but was routinely done by yeomen. She subsequently discussed the slate’s contents with Scott, suggesting it was an engineering report of some kind.
The first thing she does on the planet is a tricorder scan, and it’s part of a yeoman’s job to handle a tricorder to record the events of the mission (and probably the captain’s logs made during a mission). Later, yes, she’s handed a disruptor and ordered to guard Mea, but that’s because the two male guards are needed elsewhere, and because her prisoner is “only” another woman. Spock has to instruct Tamura in how to proceed in that situation; I don’t think a trained security officer would need to be told “Do what you must to protect yourself.”
“The title is likely just a script mistake that nobody caught”
No, because the yeoman title survived through several drafts of the script, from the time when the character was going to be a male yeoman named Manning (which is the version appearing in James Blish’s adaptation). So the character was always meant to be a yeoman.
Don’t go undercutting my Tamura! Presumably non security personnel get self defense training. For all we know Yeoman Tamura is well known aboard as a martial arts hobbyist. Spock is giving her her rules of engagement. There ain’t none. Beat Mea bloody and nobody will say a word. I can see why that would be a problematic instruction if the guard were male.
@176/Roxana: Right, presumably everyone in Starfleet learns how to fight. Just look at the situations they keep getting into.
@176/roxana: How does “not in security” equate to “undercutting?” Security is just a job like any other. It’s not superior to other roles. Indeed, given how high its mortality rate is in TOS, I’d hardly consider it a plum assignment.
As Jana says Tamura is too smart to be security. Sorry I took your post the wrong way.
@175 – Chris: It could still be a security report that needs to be seen by the captain and by the chief engineer. Departments don’t operate in a vacuum, security measures and updates will need work from engineering. As for her recording the mission when she lands… when have we seen a yeoman do that? How many times did landing parties include yeomen? And the title surviving several revisions is no proof that it’s not a mistake. “Klingon Imperial Empire” got to the screen.
@176 – princessroxana: Matter of fact, in a novel (not canon, of course), Tamura trains someone in martial arts. As I haven’t read the book, I don’t know if they mention what department she belongs to.
@180/MaGnUs: Sorry, I just don’t buy it. Reasoning from first principles, if they called a character a yeoman, then they intended that character to be in a clerical position. They didn’t actually show yeomen doing much clerical work because that isn’t interesting to watch in an action-adventure show, but their presence was meant to suggest that role.
And really, now — if the makers of a TOS episode show a woman in a red uniform come onto the bridge and hand Kirk a report to sign, then they obviously intend her to be a yeoman, because that’s what yeomen do in countless other episodes of the show. If they had actually wanted to depict her as a security officer — something that would have been seen by 1960s audiences as extraordinary and surprising for a female character — then they would have undoubtedly included dialogue or action to explicitly establish it in contrast to the viewers’ expectations, rather than specifically showing her going through the standard motions of a yeoman. Modern audiences can look at it and “read between the lines” with the idea that she might be in security because we’ve grown up seeing female characters in security and combat roles and we want to back-project that onto TOS if we can. But 1960s audiences wouldn’t have thought in those terms, so it would’ve had to be spelled out to them if that had been the intent at all.
The novel you’re thinking of is Pawns and Symbols by Majliss Larson. It did portray Tamura as a member of security, but it also mistakenly called her Ensign Tamura.
@181/Christopher: I used to think that all yeomen were ensigns because they wore the same uniform, the one with no sleeve stripes.
@@@@@ 181, I’ve got Pawns and Symbols. Couldn’t Tamura have gotten a promotion?
@183/roxana: I think that going from an enlisted crewmember to an officer would take more than a promotion — it’d take several years at Starfleet Academy.
As we saw in ST09, getting a promotion is more a case of impressing someone in high places. If Kirk can go from cadet to Captain in three years, why can’t a non-com move up to Ensign in a year or two? As a non-com, she’s obviously already had some Starfleet training and from the episode, we know that she has actual experience as well, presumably more than Kirk09’s single mission.
Besides, Tamura might have seen combat and pulled off an incredible act of heroism, much like the aformentioned Kirk09, earning the Starfleet equivalent of a Battlefield Commission.
“A battlefield commission is awarded to enlisted soldiers who are promoted to the rank of commissioned officer for outstanding leadership on the field of battle
The most notable recipient of a battlefield commission was Audie Murphy, who was promoted from Staff Sergeant to Second Lieutenant during World War II.
Battlefield Promotion“
175, there’s a difference between Spock, as an officer, giving her the authority to “do what she must to protect herself” and Tamura having the knowledge what to do.
177, wait, knowing how I’ve seen them fight, I’m not so sure.
@185/kkozoriz: It’s not fair to TOS to admit evidence from ST09.
Strictly speaking as in canon evidence. In universe, Starfleet is known to have promoted a cadet to command rank, even if it is from a different universe. It’s not that different since all the characters are the same (mostly). Much like we know that Spock had a “sister” that he never mentioned, even though she didn’t “exist” until discovery. From an in universe perspective, she was always there. And Harry Mudd was a murderer when we fist saw him in Mudd’s Women.
@188/kkozoriz: I prefer to assume that certain things never happened. It isn’t fair to the earlier stories to view them through the distorting lens of later writers’ bad decisions.
@103/kkozoriz,
“Not that anyone is ever really punished for violating the PD.)”
Umm, I think we can be pretty sure that Captain Ronald Tracy is going to be, at the end of The Omega Glory.
Still, I take your point – it would have been good to see a “Court Martial” episode where someone steps over the line, but not so far that he or she can’t put up the kind of defense that has to at least be considered. Since this would be almost completely focused on a guest star, I guess that would have had to be left for TNG though.
I like the idea of General Order #24 being a bluff, and further General Orders 1 – 23 and possibly more to all be possible bluffs to be used in different situations – worked out by Kirk after having had the experience in the Corbomite Maneuver, and deciding he wanted more tools in his repertoire.
190. Keleborn Telperion – “I like the idea of General Order #24 being a bluff, and further General Orders 1 – 23 and possibly more to all be possible bluffs to be used in different situations”
A lie is a very poor way to say hello.
— Edith Keeler
@191/kkozoriz: What does that say about corbomite, fizzbin, and the starship Lollipop?
@192/ Janajansen,
You neglected to mention:
“All right, Colonel, I’m a little green man from Alpha Centauri, a beautiful place, you oughtta see it.”
:-)
192. JanaJansen – @191/kkozoriz: What does that say about corbomite, fizzbin, and the starship Lollipop?
Corbomite – They were trespassing in First Federation space, having ignored & destroyed the warning buoy.
Fizzbin – They were interfering in a culture that made a decision of their own free will to base their culture on a book.
Lollipop – Dealing with a non-sentient computer system.
@193/keleborn: Ooh, how could I? That’s the scene that made me a Star Trek fan in the first place!
@194/kkozoriz: It was supposed to be a humorous comment, but thanks for answering anyway.
Regarding Tamura – even if her usual task is Yeoman, it’s no surprise that she’d have physical training enough to restrain a civilian at need–not to mention if she trains even more than required as a personal interest. She might even have been selected for the mission because of her additional skills.
I love the idea of her in security too, however. Possibly after this she takes a role in that department?
Regarding Fox beaming down–I think it works actually. They said they’d moved the Enterprise out of Eminiar’s weapon range. If the planetary defenses couldn’t hit them, they didn’t need the main shields up, hence they could use the transporter.
The Prime Directive question has clearly been discussed exhaustively. I’m satisfied with the idea that Kirk, as was often the case with far-flung ship captains of the era, was bending the rules to serve his own principles. His favorite loophole was always the term “natural” in “natural development”. I think it says something about Kirk–he really believes in the idea of the Prime Directive, but he thinks he’s wise enough to know when to be strict about it and when not to be.
@196/tjareth: Since I last posted in this thread, I’ve discovered that the TOS writers’ bible (at least the second-season edition, written subsequently to this episode and perhaps informed by it) actually said that the Prime Directive could be suspended in cases where vital Federation interests are at stake — which could explain Fox’s willingness to disregard Code 710 to establish a vital treaty port. Moreover, the first draft of the TNG writers’ bible actually said that the PD could be suspended in cases where the survival of the ship was at stake — codifying a plot device TOS had used repeatedly, not only in “A Taste of Armageddon” but also “The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “The Gamesters of Triskelion.” Although TNG would later go on to interpret the PD rather more rigidly.
A Taste of Armageddon is a first season episode so changing the PD in the second season is a retcon. Even in The Omega Glory, a second season episode, Kirk says “A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”, apparently retconning the retcon.
The only reason that the ship was in danger was because Fox and Kirk decided to ignore the wishes of the inhabitants of the system and ignore the code 710. The Emenians said “Just as it happened fifty years ago.” when the Enterprise was listed as destroyed. It seems obvious that the ships and lives that Fox says ” Captain, in the past twenty years, thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant.” weren’t lost at the Eminiar system or else the Eminans wouldn’t have mentioned a ship lost 50 years earlier. They would have mentioned some of the more recent ones.
If the Federation needed a port so badly, surely there is an uninhabited planet in a nearby system or they could build a K-7 type space station.
The Federation just won’t take no for an answer.
@198/kkozoriz: “Even in The Omega Glory […] Kirk says ‘A starship captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.’, apparently retconning the retcon.”
There’s so much silliness in “The Omega Glory” that I find it hard to take anything in it seriously.
But if you want to, I’d say Kirk is guilty of hyperbole there. People do that in real life too, they see something detestable and then go totally over the top in their condemnation.
@199/Jana: Naturally, there’s a lot about TOS which is inconsistent and contradictory from episode to episode, as one would expect from ’60s TV. But what was consistent is that, contrary to modern assumptions, Kirk was routinely portrayed as upholding the Prime Directive, not violating it. In episodes where he was shown to intervene, it was assumed that he had the right to do so to eliminate other interference or to save his ship from destruction. In “The Omega Glory,” the assumed rules were different because it was convenient for the story, but Kirk’s portrayal as the one following those rules was consistent.
Although maybe it’s not so inconsistent, because TOS’s definition of the PD wasn’t as inflexible as TNG’s. It wasn’t so much that you could never intervene as that you could only intervene for the right reasons, for the protection of the other culture or to serve an urgent greater need, rather than for personal gain or exploitation. If you destroy an oppressive computer god to save your ship from destruction and incidentally restore a culture’s rightful autonomy, that’s one thing. If you help one side in a local war slaughter its enemies so you can get rich and immortal, that’s something very different. It’s not just about whether you get involved, but how and why, and how it affects the indigenous population.
@200/Christopher: I didn’t mean to imply that Kirk didn’t uphold the Prime Directive. But “a captain will give his entire crew rather than violate the Prime Directive” strikes me as over the top, especially for someone so dedicated to his crew as Kirk. I imagine that he was so appalled at the idea of Tracey’s violating the PD (for completely selfish reasons) that he was groping about for something really big to say, and that’s what came out.
@201/Jana: “I imagine that he was so appalled at the idea of Tracey’s violating the PD (for completely selfish reasons) that he was groping about for something really big to say, and that’s what came out.”
He said it in an official log entry. He wouldn’t be so sloppy or counterfactual in that context, certainly not in speaking about his “most solemn oath” that he and any listener to the log would presumably know by heart.
As I said, I think it boils down to the question of what exactly constitutes a violation of the Prime Directive. In TOS, it didn’t mean any interference, it meant a specific kind of interference. Note that earlier in the same log entry, Kirk refers to Tracey “interfering with the evolution of life on this planet” (although he meant the development of the cultures of the planet rather than their biological evolution). When Kirk intervened, it was usually to free a repressed culture to resume its natural development and evolution. Even when he did intervene to change things, it was as minimal as he could make it and it just set the locals up to solve their own problems going forward, with Federation mediation and advice. What Tracey was doing was far more invasive and disruptive — favoring one side in a war, giving them advanced weapons to slaughter thousands and radically alter the balance of power, condemn an entire people to oppression or extermination, and all for his own personal gain. Kirk intervened with consideration for the natives’ healthy evolution and autonomy, albeit in an activist, Kennedyesque Peace Corps sort of way. Tracey’s actions were more like Leopold II’s atrocities in the Congo, actively slaughtering and oppressing the natives for personal profit.
So there’s a profound difference in intent and impact, and that’s the distinction that mattered where the TOS-era Prime Directive was concerned. The minimum possible intervention to protect a population’s natural, healthy evolution can be excused under the PD, but actively disrupting that natural evolution through conquest, exploitation, or forced conversion cannot be excused. It’s the difference between freeing a bear in the woods from a trap and capturing the bear to train as a circus exhibit.
@202/Christopher: I don’t disagree about the Prime Directive. I just don’t see him sacrificing his entire crew.
@203/Jana: We saw that Kirk was willing to destroy his ship and crew to save lives in “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” “One of Our Planets is Missing,” and ST:TMP, and probably others. They were all willing to give their lives in order to protect others from harm. If Kirk had felt it necessary to sacrifice his crew to protect a pre-contact culture’s freedom to grow and evolve naturally, he probably would’ve done it — though more likely he would’ve found some other alternative first, since of course they’re the stars of the show and have to survive. It’s just that the writers only contrived situations where saving the ship and freeing the locals from oppression were convergent goals instead of conflicting ones.
@204/Christopher: Good point. I remember most vividly the one incident where he was not willing to destroy his ship and crew, in “By Any Other Name”. I watched that one as a kid, and didn’t watch the ones you mentioned until much later, because they weren’t available in Germany back then. So that’s the one that stuck in my mind.
The problem with the PD being used to restore the “natural” status of a planet, is that in Return of the Archons, Landru was constructed by the inhabitants of Beta III. Nothing unnatural about it. It’s something that they decided to do to themselves, presumably without outside interference.
It’s not as clear in the case of The Apple but it was likely a similar situation.
What Kirk does in these cases is turn the society into something that he approves of, based on his value system, not that of the planets inhabitants. Which is pretty much the case in all the PD episodes. Federation (read mid-20th century American) values is shown to be the “right” way to do things, with other societies being shown as needing a good talking to at the very least.
A few times in this episode, the shields are called screens. If I’m not mistaken, the “screens” term is used in a few more episodes and even once very subtly in ST: The Motion Picture. The term is never mentioned in any other Trek show that I recall. I wonder if the writing in this episode was supposed to suggest screens and shields as two different things and that’s why Fox was able to beam down. The shields were dropped, but the screens remained
Theirafhal: No, they just didn’t settle, nor were they consistent, with terminology in the original series.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@208/Krad
Not to say the motion picture was the most definitive source on Trek tech, but screens and shields were mentioned in the same breath in one scene:
I think this shows that there wasn’t 100% clarity on what a screen is or what a shield is. As far as I can recall, screens were never mentioned again in any Star Trek medium.
I have to he honest, the scene in this episode where Fox beams down had me yelling at my TV. It’s just that the writers of the episode seemed to have a notion that screens and shelds were different. Considering theres 2 writing credits, that could possibly explain the confusion.
My attempt to reconcile the two would be that “Screens” represent a lower level of protection, sometimes referred to as “Navigational deflectors”–used more or less all the time, and permeable by transporters. “Shields” would represent the strongest protection, for use in combat or hazard situations, and not permeable by transporters.
@209/thierafhal: Yes, TMP tried to update TOS’s tech by establishing a two-part defense system of skintight, directional area-defense “deflector shields” that could be raised and lowered individually (so you could beam through without dropping all the defenses at once, or divert more shield power to a particular area that needed it) and a single “force field” bubble surrounding the ship, so that it could only be on or off (so you could still use the “we can’t drop the shields to beam you up” story device). The script’s “screens and shields” was an attempt to suggest that same thing, although it differed in the terminology. But that shouldn’t be presumed to back-project onto TOS itself, since of course the TMP ship featured thoroughly upgraded technology. TOS always used “screens” and “shields” interchangeably and synonymously.
210/tjareth: No, the navigational deflector is a different system altogether from the deflector shields/screens. It’s the beam emitted by the ship’s forward dish to push interstellar debris out of the ship’s path — “navigational” because it’s specific to the ship’s flight operations. The deflector shields were generated by the fine grid lines on the ship’s hull.
A couple of things. You mentioned that Spock used his telepathic ability in this episode without physical contact: [Fascinating. Spock can influence someone telepathically without physical contact, a possibility that only exists in this episode.] Not correct. Spock does the same type of “distance” telepathy in By Any Other Name (from a cave holding cell to Barbara Bouchet standing outside), and in The Omega Glory (he “contacts” a woman and “makes a telepathic suggestion” to activate a communicator during the fight between Kirk and Commander Ron Tracy). Secondly, it would have been nice to mention a major scientific glitch in this episode, when the navigator on the Enterprise states that waves of sonic disruptor beams from the planet’s surface fired at the Enterprise “had a decibel power of 1 to the 18th power.” Basic math: 1 to the 18th power equals 1. The guy meant “1 X 10 to the 18th power.”
OK, now back to planet Earth.
@210/BROOM: Your not the first person to comment on Spock’s non-physical telepathic contact with the Yang woman in “The Omega Glory” (see comment #6). As for “By Any Other Name”, the events in this episode (“A Taste of Armageddon”) are actually directly referenced in one of TOS‘s rare callbacks to a previous episode.
Didn’t see it noted above but the computerised war in this episode is also a parallel for the way that US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara was trying to fight the Vietnam War at the time. His methodology was all statistics and kill counts fed in to computers to decide who was winning. Now, I’ve not seen anything saying that that had anything to do with this, but I find it interesting to think about the contemporary circumstances which can feed into the creative process.
Hey, Spock was a pretty powerful telepath for a human-type. We see that he doesn’t need physical contact several times during TOS: He knew immediately when the 400 Vulcans died in Immunity Syndrome. He influenced a non-telepathic girl to open a communicator in Omega Glory. And he did at least tried to influence a Kelvan from Andromeda but “her” mind was just too darn strong. And of course, contact with Vger across light-years. And this doesn’t include the number of mind melds he has done on, well, just about everybody at some time or another including aliens like the Horta, Medusans, alien probes…
@216/Ron: The contact with V’Ger was about the strength of V’Ger’s vast, powerful mind transmitting the signal, not Spock’s sensitivity in receiving it. If a distant sound is loud enough, you don’t need super-hearing to detect it.
@217/CLB:
Hmm, I never thought of it quite like that before. In a way, it kind of brings up Small Universe Syndrome. Obviously, the movie was going to focus on Spock, but I wonder if all human/Vulcan hybrids could “hear” V’ger’s signal. Or was it Spock’s mirroring existential crisis that made him particularly sensitive to V’ger’s thought transmissions.
@218/Thierafhal: According to Roddenberry’s TMP novelization, the Vulcan elders also sensed V’Ger’s mind.
@219/CLB: Ahh, I did have a thought about the elders detecting it too. The movie itself was, at best, unclear on whether they could they sense it or simply discovered it after the lead elder melded with Spock. Or perhaps they became more tuned to it after getting insight into how it was affecting Spock. But, ya, thank you for a look into the novelization.
@217/CLB: Vulcan to Vulcan, what Spock does to a resisting Vulcan mind like Valeris’ in The Undiscovered Country, Peeled her mind and mental defenses like a grape. How many Vulcans have we seen with a combat-type mind? And maybe it was because it was the strength of Spock’s amazing mind that allowed him to recover from having his katra restored during the fal-tor-pan; something the priestess had said hadn’t been done since in ages past… Spock was barely out the door when his memories began to come back. “Your name is Jim…”
@221/Ron: Speculating without evidence is hardly logical. There is no evidence that other Vulcans placed in the same circumstances would not be capable of the things Spock did. As Spock himself might say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
@222/CLB Ketterlin’s Law says that logic is the organized way of being wrong with certainty. We’ve seen other Vulcans before. Funny, how the sons of Sarek– Spock and Sybock– have demonstrated more than your average telepathic abilities. For something that’s supposed to be a rather intimate practice, Sarek himself has also used mind melds pretty freely. How did Sarek find out that Spock was dead? Hmmm… Doubtful a big organization like Star Fleet sent him a “Sorry ambassador, your son is dead” email.
BTW, the absence of evidence can also be evidence itself. Forensics 101.
@223/Ron: To reason competently, you have to consider all the variables before jumping to reckless conclusions about which one makes the difference. Is the difference between Spock and other Vulcans, or between the situations we’ve seen them in? We’ve seen other Vulcans, but we haven’t seen most of them facing the same situations Spock did. Those that have, such as Tuvok and T’Pol, have indeed demonstrated telepathic abilities comparable to Spock’s own.
@215: I’ve always jumped to the conclusion that McNamara and Vietnam were exactly what this episode was responding to.
@224 Well, my reasoning is that there were 400 Vulcans on the Intrpid; surely they must have had the same kind of experiences Spock has being in Starfleet as well. Yet, only Spock has bee actively referred to as “the best officer in the fleet.” Trust me, not all telepaths are created equally. Spock– a guy from a race of touch telepaths– sets the standards for all others, including the few human teeps we have seen.
@226/Ron: It is a complete non sequitur to equate being a good officer with having strong telepathy. The one has nothing to do with the other. After all, most officers have no telepathy at all.
Oh, pul-leeze! Spock was the best officer because he was smarter, more capable, and he used his Vulcan gifts when the need arose. Given the circumstances of Dagger of the Mind, without Spock’s mind meld, would Kirk even be aware of the situation going on planet-side? Or how would Kirk resolve the Horta situation without Sock’s telepathy? And of course, when Kirk went native after being zapped by a memory beam, it was Spock’s mind meld that brought him back. Saved the landing party against Melkotian telepathic illusions… Kirk’s career would have been far less spectacular– or as long– without Spock and his telepathy..
My friend, logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end. It’s a bunch of little flowers that smell baaad… Not accepting the obvious isn’t being logical, that’s just stubbornness. Larry Niven has his well-known “laws.” One of them was that if magic and psi abilities actually existed (and they do) they would be nearly useless. That’s a common misconception, as psi abilities can be very useful on occasion. Very useful..
@228/Ron
Yes, Spock has impressive abilities, but it’s not like he’s the only one contributing to the solution; he’s not Superman. In “The Devil In the Dark”, Kirk made a lot of progress towards the peaceful outcome with the Horta when he didn’t shoot it on sight. Spock was even pleading with Kirk to kill the Horta. If Kirk had listened to Spock, Spock’s meld wouldn’t have happened. Additionally, McCoy likely saved the Horta’s life. Also, if the Horta had died before the meld, it’s not like they couldn’t have found the macguffin part by simply searching for it afterward. Even Worf once said: “My experiences aboard this ship have tought me that most problems have more than one solution!”
@228/Ron: “Given the circumstances of Dagger of the Mind, without Spock’s mind meld, would Kirk even be aware of the situation going on planet-side?”
Yes. Kirk was forced by McCoy to beam down and investigate, because McCoy thought that Adams’ explanation for Van Gelder’s state sounded fishy. After the guided tour he found that the inmates were “a bit blank” and decided to visit the treatment room again. He was caught and tortured by Adams. After that he knew pretty well what was going on planet-side. The mind meld had nothing to do with it.
Most of the actual rescue was done by Noel, by the way. It was a team effort.
@228 You kinda missed my point. The miners had a problem: they were being killed. Typically human, their solution was to look for whatever creature was responsible and kill it. Kirk might have done that thinking it was just a dangerous animal, but Spock’s mind meld proved the Horta to be an intelligent, sentient, species. That mind meld allowed two contentious parties to come to a peaceful conclusion. The Horta learned how to write “No kill I” from that mind meld. If Spock wasn’t there, would there be communication between Kirk and Horta? Or would the Horta have vaporized him and went on its way untill the nasty egg-killing humans was gone? The reasons why the mind meld took place are irrelevant.
@229 Same thing. My point was that Spock’s mind meld allowed Kirk to become aware of that dangerous mind-scrubber before he walked into a dangerous situation not having facts he desperately needed. Or to be more clear: it was Spock’s telepathic abilities that enabled his captain to make informed actions rather than stumble around in the dark. The novel of TMP said Kirk was the only captain who got his ship back intact after a five year mission; hence the reason for his promotion. But as he said in TMP, “Spock! I need you!” Even Kirk realized long before that moment, most of his successes as captain of the Enterprise was due to Spock to a large part. Spock enabled Kirk to forget the pain of losing that robot chick, Rena. His telepathy helped Kirk in so many ways the list would fill a small phone book.
@231/Ron: No, it didn’t. Spock never talked to Kirk after the mind meld, so Kirk did walk into the dangerous situation without the facts he desperately needed. Check the episode. And may I say that I find “that robot chick” just a little bit condescending? Also, you misspelled her name.
I’m not arguing your main point, only some of the specifics.
@232: No, condescending would have been to call her the artificial woman. That episode was truly depressing and there’s no good way to describe any of it. I only remember James Daly (sp?) as Flint because he appears in a couple of spin-off books and Spock’s loyalty to Kirk to go as far as erasing a painful experience from his mind. I guess by this time Kirk has lost so many great loves in his life– Edith Keeler, Miramanee– that Spock figured one more would probably break his captain and friend. I saw this story and thought that the only reason he fell for the “girl” was because he was sick with that virus everybody on the Enterprise had and it made him a bit more… What’s the word? Melancholy… and lonelier than usual. Kirk liked women, but he had no future with an android even if she hadn’t died. Probably sooner or later Kirk would ask himself, “What was I thinking!?” What was he going to do: quit the service to be with “her”? I’m a bit surprised that McCoy was so sympathetic and didn’t point out that Kirk was in love with the latest version of a machine woman. A very bizarre story.
@233/Ron: I think of that episode as a fairy tale. It has been called Star Trek’s Tempest, with Flint as Prospero, and it contains other fairytale tropes too, e.g. the one room in the house that the woman isn’t allowed to enter and that contains the dead bodies of her predecessors. Yes, it’s hard to believe that Kirk would have fallen in love so easily, but it’s normal behaviour for fairytale characters.
As for Rayna being “the latest version of a machine woman”, I’d say the episode rejects that reading. Or at least Kirk does, and I agree with him. I guess you could read it as misguided love when he argues that she has become human, that she is her own person and can make her own decisions, but I prefer to think that he’s right. It’s a turning point in Star Trek’s portrayal of AI. Rayna is the first AI who isn’t a threat. After that the characters could come to a peaceful agreement with the computer in “Once Upon a Planet”, and the latest version of a machine man :) could become a Starfleet officer in TNG.
@231/Ron:
And you’re kinda missing one of my points. @228 you said: “…Spock was the best officer because he was smarter, more capable…” But he was specifically pleading for Kirk to kill the Horta before the whole mind meld situation even took place. Spock is not infoulable and is not always the smartest person in the room, err cavern.
@235/Thierafhal: Of course Spock only wanted to kill the Horta because he was afraid for Kirk. Before he wanted to save it for science, but fear for Kirk clouded his judgment. It’s a complete reversal of attitudes, showing how much Spock cares about Kirk, and Kirk cares about everyone in need.
And as you say, it also shows that Spock isn’t always right, and that they work best as a team.
@235/Thierafhal: The Galileo Seven. Spock tells Scotty that there are “always alternatives.” A short time later as the shuttle craft is about to burn up, Scotty reminds him of what he said. Spock’s reply, “Did I? (pause) I may have been mistaken.”
Yes, Spock has fouled up in truly spectacular ways, but he never said he was perfect. He does the best he can. As Raymond Chandler would say, “He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor — by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” Especially for one who is half-human/half-Vulcan and who often feels like he doesn’t really quite belong in either world.
I have not read this thread in months so please bare with me. Maybe, Spock’s telepathic abilities stem from both his parents. Perhaps, Amanda had some Terran esper genes that combined with Sarek’s Vulcan esper genes?
@238: That’s a possibility… Why else would she hang around on Vulcan, a planet full of touch telepaths? On the other hand, Sybock, Spock’s half-brother, also had unusual telepathic abilities. So maybe most of their immensely strong telepathic abilities came mostly from Sarek and perhaps just a little bit from Amanda?
Sybok is not Amanda’s son, his mother was Vulcan.
Anan7 implies that the Enterprise screens need to lower when Fox beams down (how would he know?), but in Fox’s argument with Scott, lowering the screens is only a sign of good faith and a peaceful status. Maybe Fox had his own vehicle in the shuttlebay, with a built-in transporter and diplomatic plates.
@241/BeeGee: “Anan7 implies that the Enterprise screens need to lower when Fox beams down (how would he know?)”
Why wouldn’t he know? The Eminians are clearly familiar with transporter technology. In their simulated war, the weapons of choice are fusion bombs materialized over their target cities. And Mea’s scanner is able to detect the exact arrival point of the Enterprise‘s transporter beam.
@240: Actually, that was my point. Telepathy and other psi abilities are usually inherited. And in Vulcans, a certain degree of telepathy is built into the species. For a half-Vulcan/half-human hybrid, Spock seems to do extraordinarily well in the telepathy department. It just seems more likely that both Spock and Sybock got much– if not most– of their abilities from Sarek’s side of the family. I was just watching ST:III the other day and I had to wonder how did Sarek know that Spock was dead? The same way Spock knew about Intrepid? After all, human mothers have been known to wake up in the night, knowing that their sons have been killed in some war or another. He also knew about a Vulcan custom that hadn’t been done in ages, “and only in legend.” We know extremely little about Sarek; he might have trained with the same Vulcan masters Spock went to.
In TNG, when Sarek is supposedly dying from Bendii disease, he is broadcasting his thoughts and emotions throughout the entire Enterprise. Spock has xenotelepathy (Devil In The Dark) and Sarek broadcast telepathy– and Sybock’s mind control– aren’t your usual stock and trade in a species that are mostly touch telepaths. For the Melkots, Thasians, Betazoid, and all the other true telepaths those things are easy– Gary Mitchell could do it, too, but only after having his brain fried in the galactic barrier– but for Sarek and sons, that kind of powerful ability in Vulcans seems exceptional .It’s a pity we never hear about Sarek’s parents, and we know next to nothing about Amanda’s family– ignoring Spock’s comment that one of his ancestors was Sherlock Holmes.
Okay, there are a million comments to this episode which indicates it’s popular and/or controversial (I’m guessing more the latter) and eventually I’ll get around to reading them all. But having just watched this episode for at least the second time (I probably last watched it decades ago when I was a kid), I can see why it elicits such strong reaction because I find myself having the same.
Having grown up on TNG-era Trek and Picard’s pretty clear application of the Prime Directive, I’m so utterly appalled at the complete disregard for the directive by Kirk and company in this story. I found myself actively rooting against him, which I knew the writers could not have wanted the audience to react in this way so it made me wonder if my thinking was somehow in the wrong. I really felt as if I was watching the Mirror Universe Kirk and crew imposing the Terran Empire’s will on the Eminians and Vendikans, instead of the usual noble Kirk and the Federation doing the “right thing.” Now I get Kirk wanting to extricate himself and his landing part and the Enterprise from danger but everything beyond that went way too far. First off, the Enterprise shouldn’t have even been there in the first place because of the Eminians’ warning but we can blame that on the ambassador. But Kirk purposefully applying his thinking to stopping the warring planets’ “clean” method of war, destroying property, attacking and killing Eminians and getting Fox’s aide killed (who I felt really bad for), and affecting the interplanetary conflict which was a huge gamble because it could have escalated into an even bigger and messier war. These two alien worlds used to fight wars in a more conventional way, “evolved” into doing it with the disintegrators, and have had to felt it was more preferable if it had lasted for 500 years. Who is Kirk to disapprove of it and force these people to do otherwise. I just found it gross. Also appalling was Kirk’s threat to blow up Eminiar 7. Right, destroy millions of innocent lives to prove some kind of point? Doesn’t exactly paint the Federation in the best light.
There were a few things I liked, mainly the sci-fi premise of the “clean” warfare where people just walked into disintegration chambers instead of having to deal with the massive destruction of infrastructure that comes with conventional warfare and quick presumably painless deaths instead of prolonged suffering. I like the Asian woman officer that either was a security officer or at least acting in that capacity. And Barbara Babcock looked lovely and I thought did a good job of acting her dismay at what Kirk was doing. I really sympathized with her frustration. Also, I loved Scotty being a competent officer in a fraught command situation. When he stood up to Fox about not lowering the shields I felt like clapping.
Now I’ll slowly start to read the other 200+ comments on here!
I’ve always liked Mea’s costume, basically tights and a strategically draped scarf. Personally I found the Eminarian/ Vendikarian no mess warfare with it’s cold blooded murder of thousands horrifying, not least because of the preference for infrastructure over lives. And I adore the competent, aggressive Tamura!
@244 – Kirk should have refused the order based on the Code 710 specifically being defined as “Don not approach under any circumstances whatsoever”. Even today, we do not require our military to follow illegal orders. Nuremberg made that quite clear. “I was just following orders” is not a valid defense.
And let’s stand it on it’s head. Would Kirk threaten to destroy an entire planet if the two factions were at war but fighting it in the conventional sense with bombs?
@246: No, I don’t think Kirk would have threatened to blow up the planet if they were fighting a conventional war. So it just further goes to show that this one man is unilaterally imposing his beliefs and morality on aliens who have been practicing the status quo for half a millennia. I may not like their methods but I’m not going to meddle in their affairs when it’s not asked for.
@247/garreth: I was going to hold off repeating this, since you said you’d be reading the prior comments, but it’s important to remember that Kirk wasn’t acting arbitrarily. The Eminians attacked the Enterprise with the intention of murdering its entire crew. That’s an act of war, which Kirk was defending against by doing whatever he could to shut down the enemy’s operations. Ending their war was not Kirk’s goal in itself, just the means to the end of saving the Enterprise.
TOS repeatedly went to that well, using a threat against the ship as a motivation for Kirk to intervene in situations where he would otherwise leave well enough alone — see also “The Return of the Archons,” “The Apple,” and “The Gamesters of Triskelion.” The first draft of the TNG writers’ bible even made it explicit that the Prime Directive could be suspended when the survival of the ship and crew was at stake. So the tendency to cite cases like these as instances of Kirk’s interventionist mindset is glib and erroneous. The stories were set up to force his hand, to require intervention as the only way to save his crew.
@248/CLB: I had read your previous comment regarding how you think Kirk’s actions were justified but I only agree with it up to a certain point. Again, the Enterprise shouldn’t have even been there in the first place being so considerately warned off by the Eminiarians. But even allowing for that transgression, I get and can support Kirk’s actions to get the Enterprise out of harms way once it’s declared as destroyed by the Eminiar computer. But that should be the extent of Kirk’s interference. We saw how easily it was for the Enterprise to evade Eminiar’s weapons once the ship moved out of range. It can beam Kirk and company up and end of story. Yes, they would have broken the law by not reporting to the disintegration chambers but the Federation has no diplomatic agreement with either Eminiar or Vendikar and perhaps they wouldn’t fret so much about it anyway since the Federation isn’t a party to their inter-planetary war. But what I can’t get past is how Kirk unilaterally decides to involve himself and his personal morality, and by extension the Federation, by then influencing the course of this war between these two planets that doesn’t involve him and he can just up and leave from the battlefield as I mentioned. He was gambling he would stop the war, which he has no right to involve himself in, and could have very well escalated it by going back to conventional warfare meaning destruction of infrastructure, and long drawn out and painful deaths. For all we know, this could have very well happened because of Kirk’s interference.
@249/garreth: “We saw how easily it was for the Enterprise to evade Eminiar’s weapons once the ship moved out of range. It can beam Kirk and company up and end of story.”
That’s not true. You’re overlooking multiple facts. To be sure, the episode was unclear about whether it was possible to use transporters while the shields were up, but it was made quite clear that the ship would be immediately destroyed if it dropped the screens, which other episodes clearly establish it would have to do in order to beam anyone up. Even if we disregard the shield issue, they couldn’t beam up the landing party without their communicators to lock onto, and the Eminians had confiscated their communicators. Moreover, Anan was holding Ambassador Fox and his party hostage at that point as leverage to force the crew to beam down. Presumably their communicators were taken as well, so there was no way to locate them for beamup. Kirk couldn’t just leave, because that would mean condemning Fox and his aides to death.
It’s disingenous to claim there was an easy way out, because it should be immediately obvious that no writer of a work of fiction would put the characters in a crisis that had an easy way out. Obviously the intent was that Kirk had no choice. In fact, they literally had him say that in as many words: “Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew and my ship, I’m going to end [the war] for you, one way or another.”
@245/Roxana: I agree with everything you say. TOS had such beautiful dresses.
@249/garreth: If Kirk had just left, the Eminians would still have been in trouble because they couldn’t produce the required Enterprise casualties. It would have been the easy way out. And deeply callous.
This is a hopeful story with the message that war can be overcome, and I love it for that. I miss this conviction in later incarnations of Trek.
Jana, it did indeed! Personally I’ve always considered Droxine’s gown in The Cloud Minders and Carolyn Palamas’ greecian gown in Who Mourns for Adonais the best of the best.
@250/CLB: Even if Kirk couldn’t extricate himself and the landing party from the conflict, his priority is to his ship which was clearly shown to have gotten itself out of harms way. His landing party consisted of 5 people, 7 if you count the addition of the ambassador and his aide. The roughly 430 people on the Enterprise are safe. If I were Kirk, I would have ordered Scotty that if the latter couldn’t effect a rescue then to leave immediately, alert the Federation, and declare the Eminiar star system off limits. I wouldn’t order Scotty to destroy the planet (how abhorrent!) nor would I destroy the civilization’s method for conducting warfare against its sworn enemy, possibly leading to an escalation of the conflict that could cause the mutual annihilation of both planets’ civilizations. The loss of the 7 Federation people is a small price to pay against the potential loss of millions of lives. Captain Picard would never have taken the actions seen in this episode.
@251/JanaJansen: I don’t buy that argument because either way, Kirk and his officers aren’t reporting to the disintegration chambers whether they just left the planet or they stopped the planets from warring with each other. If Kirk had just left, sure the Eminians might have been in trouble but probably not as much trouble for completely forgoing their agreement with the Vendikans and dismantling their mutually agreed upon method for warfare. My whole point is that Kirk shouldn’t be meddling to that extent in the affairs of both of these planets that involve millions of lives. I get what the message of this episode is which is noble, I’m just appalled by the ways in which Kirk is written to justify his actions. If these people are willingly disintegrating themselves that is their business and their right. We can’t impose our human morality on their way of life and possibly make things even worse by interfering.
@253/garreth: “Even if Kirk couldn’t extricate himself and the landing party from the conflict, his priority is to his ship which was clearly shown to have gotten itself out of harms way.”
He also has a responsibility to protect the Federation ambassadorial party aboard his ship. It is not standard practice to walk away and let hostages be killed, and it’s shocking that you’d endorse such a thing.
If a society would rather play video games and commit suicide when they lose a level rather than talking to their neighbors and working things out, that’s a society that needs an intervention. Too often people hide stupidity and callousness behind the words “culture” and “freedom,” or stiffly hide behind laws and look the other way as they do in TNG, and it’s good this episode bluntly points this out.
@252/Roxana: My favourites are Rayna Kapec’s and Nancy Hedford’s, if the latter counts as a dress.
@253/garreth: And I understand your point of view, I just don’t agree with it. Suffering is universal. This goes beyond “human morality”. The Eminians and the Vendikans had trapped themselves in a horrible situation because they mistakenly believed it was the best possible solution. They needed an outsider to show them the way out.
You said in comment #244 that you grew up on TNG. I grew up on TOS, and I often find the TNG characters too complacent.
@254/CLB: (1) The ambassador and his party could have been safely beamed back to the ship without the ship being in danger because they were beamed down and nothing happened to the ship. (2) Even if this were not the case, as I said, if a rescue could not be affected, then hell yes, 7 lives is a small sacrifice to pay against plunging the civilizations of two worlds into utter chaos and the possible annihilation of millions of innocent lives, which Kirk threatened to do anyway by using the Enterprise to destroy whole cities. It’s shocking that you’d condone such behavior.
I always find these revisionist attempts to argue that the heroes were “actually” villainous or predatory to be ridiculous, because obviously that wasn’t the intent of the storytellers. Within the narrative, the heroes are making the right, necessary, justified choice. If you disagree with how the episode portrayed it, that doesn’t mean the heroes are actually evil, it just means the writers constructed the story in a flawed way. It’s the writers’ motives and judgment that should be criticized, not the characters’.
The narrative intent was not that Kirk was a renegade going around imposing his imperialistic will on other cultures. The intent was that he respected the Prime Directive, which was why so many episodes were structured to force his hand, to leave intervention as his only choice for saving his ship. You can claim there was a way out that the writers failed to think of, but that doesn’t mean Kirk was a monster, it just means the story was imperfectly plotted.
In this case, the episode went to considerable lengths to leave Kirk no easy way to escape — the ship was under attack, the communicators were taken, the ambassadors were held hostage. If the writers’ intent had just been for Kirk to be some imperialist aggressor forcing his will on the culture, then obviously they wouldn’t have bothered to create those situations that forced his hand; they would’ve just had him go ahead and do it anyway. So of course that wasn’t what this story was supposed to be saying. The premise was that the only way out was through, that the only way to escape the system was to shut it down altogether. One can argue that the episode didn’t convincingly sell that premise, but it’s invalid to argue that it wasn’t the intended premise at all.
As a viewer of the program, on my initial viewing (as an adult), I’m not analyzing the intent of the writers, I’m reacting to the events of the story as they are unfolding and having a visceral gut reaction to what I am seeing. I know Kirk and crew to be honorable people and have a general understanding of the Prime Directive as I’ve seen it employed throughout the canon of Star Trek. That’s why I so immediately find the actions as carried out in this episode to be contradictory to what I’ve witnessed and understood prior.
@256, Jana: I love the way Rayna’s gown swirls around her, movement is one of the things I love about Droxine’s gown too. Commissioner Hedford’s travelling costume is nice. I’ve always liked Amanda’s traveling outfit with the Dracula collar too.
The Vendikar-Eminiar War was killing off from one million to three million Eminiarians per year and an equal number of Vendikarians per year for over five hundred years. That’s a grand total of between one billion and six billion deaths! I think Kirk took a very utilitarian (greatest good for the greatest number) approach when he intervened in the Vendikar-Eminiar War.
@248 – No, the Eminians weren’t going to murder the entire crew. They were going to enforce the laws of THEIR planet, Laws that were broken by Fox & Kirk ignoring the Code 710. Much like in Justice, Being a member of a Starfleet crew doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to ignore the laws of a sovereign planet. Don’t ignore the 710, the ship is not put in danger, is not reported legally destroyed. End of that particular problem.
And in regards to @250 – “Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew and my ship, I’m going to end [the war] for you, one way or another.”
Uh, the ship and crew were already safe. They had moved beyond the range of the Eminian weapons. So Kirk was simply concerned with saving himself, Spock & Fox, since Fox’s aide was already dead. Let’s see, the lives of three people who deliberately put themselves into a dangerous situation that they wee specifically told to to get involved in versus the lives of hundreds of millions. Yeah, tough call.
And how do you know that the transporter couldn’t recognize them? Soick would be the only Vulcan on the planet. That’s a gimmie. And since the Eminians aren’t human, seeing as they’re not from Earth, Kirk & Fox should also stand out as the only humans. There you go, problem solved.
And all this because the Federation was too lazy to look for another place to put their port facilities. In the entire “quadrant”, Eminiar was the one and only possible place to build them. Yeah, I don’t believe that either.
Forgive me if this has already been discussed upstream. The Eminiarians and Vendikarians must have been spacefaring species at least 200 years before we Terrans. After all, they started their “real” war over 500 years before the Enterprise arrived. Also, the Eminiarians had a planetary defense system with offense capabilities, which I assume was put in place to protect Eminiar from the predations of potential real* enemies other than the Vendikarians.
*Enemies that wage actual physical war.
@263/Paladin: Yes, they were definitely at least equal in advancement to the Federation, which was why they were no pushovers. They just weren’t interested in space travel.
“Also, the Eminiarians had a planetary defense system with offense capabilities, which I assume was put in place to protect Eminiar from the predations of potential real* enemies other than the Vendikarians.”
No, the weapons were meant for Vendikar, and Vendikar’s weapons for Eminiar. The reason the two planets agreed to the “clean” computerized war was because both sides had real weapons that could devastate the other’s planet entirely. It would never have worked without a genuine, physical threat of mutually assured destruction to give both planets an incentive to stick to the agreement. So both sides no doubt had to maintain their actual weapons systems in good condition as a deterrent — just like the US and Soviet nuclear stockpiles in the Cold War that this was an allegory for.
@264/CLB: That makes a lot of sense.
@264/CLB: Although your comparison of the Vendikar-Eminiar War to the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War has great merit, I don’t think it’s a perfect fit. The U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War was also a series of hot proxy wars that were fought mostly in countries (1) other than the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Most of the casualties from those proxy wars were not from the either the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. and were not direct casualties from either the U.S.’s or U.S.S.R.’s civilian populations like the casualties were in the Vendikar-Eminiar War. Yes, in our cold war, civilians from the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were drafted by their respective governments but those civilian-soldiers did not fight and die on their own home fronts. For the most part, those hot wars were not brought home. Eminiar and Vendikar are killing off (2) portions of their own civilian populations on their own home fronts. All done to maintain their planets’ cultures and infrastructures. Otherwise, I think your MAD comparison is spot on!
1. For example, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan(?).
2. By voluntary suicide through death by disintegration.
@266/Paladin: Of course it’s not an exact, one-to-one fit; I never claimed it was. A fictional allegory that maps exactly onto real life is lazy and badly written. The goal is to suggest the real thing you’re alluding to, not just duplicate it exactly and change the names.
I mean, come on — the episode was made in 1966-7, the height of the Cold War, so of course it was an allegory for the Cold War. That would have been obvious to every viewer at the time. TOS is full of allegories for different aspects of the Cold War — this is about MAD, “A Private Little War” is about proxy wars, “The Enterprise Incident” is about espionage, etc.
@258: “I always find these revisionist attempts to argue that the heroes were “actually” villainous or predatory to be ridiculous, because obviously that wasn’t the intent of the storytellers.”
Yeah, that’s one of the more frustrating trends in contemporary storytelling, along with this fixation about villain origin stories that only succeed in undermining their mystique and making them into less compelling adversaries. Far too many writers these days seem to think the best thing to do when your audience is emotionally invested is to punish them for it, usually in the name of “subverting expectations” or propping up their Replacement Scrappies, so it’s no surprise that someone’s trying to paint Kirk as an imperialist monster here in defiance of all reason.
Because at the end of the day, Kirk made all the right choices here. Getting involved in the conflict was not his choice, but a result of Ambassador Fox’s arm-twisting, but once he was caught up in it, he made the right calls, both for the future of the warring worlds and for the safety of his crew. And he did it all without bloodshed either. Even when he had the right to let loose in order to safeguard the lives of those under his command, he was able to resolve the crisis without actually killing anyone, and come to a solution based on diplomacy, understanding and a willingness to trust. How is that not living up to the Federation’s ideals?
@262: “No, the Eminians weren’t going to murder the entire crew. They were going to enforce the laws of THEIR planet”
Laws that demanded they murder the crew of the Enterprise. Call me old-fashioned, but forcing his crew to literally march off to their deaths and all for a pointless reason is not the stuff heroes are made off, and certainly not James T. Kirk. And just because it’s the law doesn’t make it right either.
@268/Devin Smith: “Yeah, that’s one of the more frustrating trends in contemporary storytelling, along with this fixation about villain origin stories that only succeed in undermining their mystique and making them into less compelling adversaries. Far too many writers these days seem to think the best thing to do when your audience is emotionally invested is to punish them for it, usually in the name of “subverting expectations” or propping up their Replacement Scrappies, so it’s no surprise that someone’s trying to paint Kirk as an imperialist monster here in defiance of all reason.”
I’m not talking about writers telling new stories. I’m talking about fan theories, or at least a certain class of them — the kind of theories that come from people who think it’s clever and edgy to reinterpret an existing story and say it was “really” darker than it appeared. That sort of theory strikes me as being essentially just about shock value or contrariness for its own sake, which is not as clever as its practitioners want to believe.
@269: “I’m not talking about writers telling new stories. I’m talking about fan theories, or at least a certain class of them — the kind of theories that come from people who think it’s clever and edgy to reinterpret an existing story and say it was “really” darker than it appeared.”
Ehh, it’s six of one, half-dozen of the other. Whether it’s coming from a fan forum or from someone in Hollywood getting paid to do it, it’s still the same nonsense, and I think my previous comment equally applies in both circumstances.
“That sort of theory strikes me as being essentially just about shock value or contrariness for its own sake, which is not as clever as its practitioners want to believe.”
Seriously, that sentence is basically The Last Jedi/Star Trek: Picard/Dragon Age: Inquisition/The Last of Us Part II in a nutshell, the guiding force behind so many narrative failures over the past decade. Again, my previous comment stands.
@270/Devin Smith: That is not at all what I intended to imply, and I disagree entirely with your interpretation of The Last Jedi and Picard (I have no familiarity with the other two). Nor do I accept the validity of the blanket generalization that recent works are inferior to older works. People have been claiming that for literally thousands of years, and it’s just kneejerk fear of the new. It has nothing to do with the point I’m making.
@268 – But they’re not OUR (read Federation) laws. They’re the laws of the Eminians and Vendikar. And they totally have the right to have those laws in place. That’s supposedly what the Prime Directive is all about. Not sending in a starship and deciding that since the inhabitants of a planet aren’t living the way that the Federation would, then you’re totally right to give an order that will kill everyone on a planet. The laws of the Eminian war were agreed to by the people of both planets and are still supported by them. The Federation finds them distasteful but, it’s none of their business. If the PD is going to mean anything then respecting the laws made by the people on their own planets has to be part of it. And since Fox ordered Kirk to ignore the 710 and Kirk just went “Okey-doke”, then they put themselves under the laws of Eminiar.
Vulcan betrothes children at the age of seven to marry each other. The only way out of it is a fight to the death (see below). Where’s the outrage on the part of the Federation that finds child marriage and forced marriage abhorrent? And even a hundred years later, Betazed still has arraigned marriages. Apparently it’s nothing that the Federation is concerned with.
On Vulcan, Kirk was put into a fight to the death with Spock and wasn’t told of the conditions until he agreed. Would Kirk be justified in calling down a GO 24 on Vulcan?. Surely most reasonable people would agree that’s an unacceptable situation. On Iotia, Kirk & Spock at are taken prisoner by the Iotians. Kirk decides that because the Iotians made a decision of their own free will to base their society on a book that was left by a crew before the PD went into effect, that Kirk had the right to change their entire civilization. And what does he do? Creates a dictatorship with one man at the top and the threat of Federation intervention if they don’t follow his orders.
When I studied jurisprudence in law school over 30 years ago, we spent much time on defining justice.* I was taught that there were three major theories of justice: 1. natural rights (laws and their enforcement must respect the fundamental rights of all individuals within a society); 2. social good (laws and their enforcement must promote the general welfare and happiness of all individuals within a society); and 3. positivism (laws must be enacted in response to changes in the human condition within a society, e.g., technological advances, natural disasters and war). Most governments (especially those of western democracies) use a balanced combination of the above-mentioned theories of justice when enacting and enforcing laws. No one theory of justice should take precedence over any other theory. So, is Vendikar and Eminiar’s computer war just according to any combination of the above-mentioned theories of justice?
*Other than defining justice as “getting what one deserves”.
Those are HUMAN theories. Emiminar and Vendikar are not populated by humans. And what they consider to be justice is up to them to decide.
If what you say is true for all species, why doesn’t the Federation try to change the Klingon Empire by force? Instead, they ally with them, even though the Klingons really haven’t changed much in the intervening centuries. It’s because the Federation couldn’t change the Klingons and Eminiar is in no position to stand up to even a single starship.
It sounds to me that you’re advocating for the sort of treatment that the Europeans used on the Natives of the Americas. Declare that your system is superior to that of a weaker society and then do everything in your power, up to and including genocide, to get them to fit into your society.
“It sounds to me that you’re advocating for the sort of treatment that the Europeans used on the Natives of the Americas. Declare that your system is superior to that of a weaker society and then do everything in your power, up to and including genocide, to get them to fit into your society.”
Actually, I am not advocating any such thing. What some Europeans did to some indigenous peoples of the Americas was wrong. Those Europeans, who committed atrocities, did not respect the individual rights of those indigenous persons.
I am a moral objectivist. Some behaviors are always wrong (murder/slavery/theft). Some behaviors are always right (treating other sapient creatures with dignity and respect). Some behaviors are neither (I eat ice cream; you don’t).
Also, even if I believe a behavior is wrong, it doesn’t mean I believe it should be legally prohibited. For instance, I believe irresponsible drug use is wrong. Do I think the drinking of alcohol ought be prohibited? No.
@275 – Yet you’re advocating imposing human morality upon being that are not human, have no wish to be human and simply want to be left alone by outsiders.
If the Eminians were going from planet to planet and forcing people into disintegration booths, I’d agree with you. However, they have a different value system than humans do and the only place they seek to enforce that morality is in their own star system where the Federation has no business being, They were specifically told to stay out. But the Federation wants a treaty port. Are you aware that that doesn’t mean they want a treaty that gives them a port? It’s a treaty that’s imposed on a weaker civilization by a stronger one while having their civilization threatened by superior military force. Check out Hong Kong for one example. Read up on the opium wars. This is not a good thing and treats the weaker civilization with nothing approaching respect.
Why is the Federation not invading the Klingons or the Romulans? Neither of them are paragons of human virtue.
Federation members the Cygnians are said to be a female dominated society. Where’s the equality? Send in the fleet.
Vulcan practices arraigned marriages involving children.
Oh right, those last two are Federation members so it’s all cool.
Also, we ourselves, living in the real world of 2021, don’t have a Prime Directive which is called the Federations highest law and it says that they will not interfere in the natural development of other species. It also says that a Captain is willing to sacrifice himself, his crew and his ship rather than violate it. But somehow Kirk comes down on the moral side of the equation by coming within minutes of killing hundred of millions of people.
@275/KK: No, I am applying a universal morality and ethic that ought hold for all sentient, sapient beings.
Also, you keep writing that the Eminiarians are not human* and, therefore, do not have the same values as humans. Yet, the episode is replete with evidence that demonstrates the Eminiarians value many of the ideas and things that humans do. For example: 1. the Eminiarians value duty (they will willingly commit suicide to honor their computer war treaty with Vendikar to prevent an actual war); 2. the Eminiarians value tradition (the computer war has been prosecuted for over 500 years and no reason for the war’s genesis is given other than Vendikar is a “ruthless” enemy); 3. the Eminiarians value their families and friends (Anon 7 tells Kirk & Co. that he lost his beloved wife in a recent computer attack); and 4. the Eminiarians value their planetary high standard of living and their culture (the main reasons they are fighting a computer war with Vendikar).
If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck and quacks like duck, it’s probably a duck.
Also, you appear to be advocating that the Prime Directive ought be enforced universally in favor of all sentient and sapient beings regardless of their particular circumstances. That makes you a moral objectivists (at least with regard to the PD).
I believe mass murder is wrong, period. Whether it’s Stalin murdering his own people for the supposed greater good of Mother Russia (the Holodomor) or Hitler murdering non-Aryan Germans (the Holocaust) for the supposed greater good of Aryan Germans.
*”Terran” might be a better term.
No, the proper term is “aren’t human” because they did not evolve on Earth. They are not transplants or colonists. They have no connection to Earth. And Terran is generally used these days to refer to human from the mirror universe.
Ant it may superficially look, sound and walk like a duck, being from another plant, it’s not actually a duck.
I’d just like to see Star Trek actually have someone live up to what they claim the PD stands for. None of this weaselling around. If they say that other cultures have the right to live their lives without interference, then let’s se what that actually looks like. If someone refuses Federation help, then ;et’s see the Federation actually respect that.
If the Federation, in your eyes, is morally responsible for ending wars, then you’d better be prepared for long periods of occupation of various planets. And at what point does the Federation decide that it’s a local matter? Do they only step in in interplanetary wars? What about wars between nations on a planet? Would the Federation stop World War II? World War I.? Korea? Vietnam? The Falklands? The American Revolution? The War of the Roses? Would they stop the colonization of the Americas if they could predict the outcome based on what they’ve seen on other planets? Where would you draw the line for intervention?
@277/KK: I hold that intervening in a half-millennium, interminable computer war that kills millions of sentient and sapient beings yearly is a right action. Do I believe that the Federation should intervene in all the wars it encounters? No. That kind of intervention must be done case by case and only if that intervention is a lesser evil for all the parties concerned.
Also, I believe that some behaviors are always wrong. I hold that the mass murder of sentient and sapient beings is always wrong no matter the perpetrator or the motives. There might be a bona fide and rational excuse for such mass murder. For example, murdering 49% of a population to feed the other 51%. But that does not make the mass murder itself any less wrong.
But you are not governed by the Prime Directive. Starfleet is.
“A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.” – James T. Kirk – The Omega Glory
SPOCK: Then the Prime Directive is in full force, Captain?
KIRK: No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet.
– Bread and Circuses
Do I agree with the way the Eminians run their war? No, I do not. Do I believe that I have the right to tell them what the “correct” way to run their planet is? Again, no, I do not.
Maybe Starfleet should take it upon themselves to simply go from planet to planet and disarm them of anything deadlier than a pointed stick. You can advance in any technology except warfare. And if you violate it, we’ll show up and go all General Order 24 on your ass just to show you how peaceful we are.
@280/KK: I agree that as a general rule, the Federation ought not interfere in the natural development of a technologically less advanced species of beings. Nor ought the Federation interfere in the affairs of an equally advanced species unless asked to do so. The Prime Directive is a just rule that ought be followed strictly in most cases. But I hold that the Federation ought interfere when millions or billions of sapient lives are at stake. For example, when an exceptionally virulent disease or a war is killing hundreds of millions of sapient beings planetwide. Sometimes (very rarely) justice must be tempered with mercy. Those cases are the tough ones.
“Spock can influence someone telepathically without physical contact, a possibility that only exists in this episode.”
I thought he did it again in Omega Glory.
@284/Brett: Already addressed in comment #6.
Kirk definitely broke the Prime Directive, but not until the end of the episode. It seems pretty sketchy for the Federation to just shoulder their way onto the planet, but having done that, it’s insane to argue they should simply be expected to report for disintegration, so Kirk was within his rights to defend himself and his crew, and whatever mayhem he caused in pursuit of those ends is fine as far as I’m concerned.
But by the time he destroyed the computer, he was in total command of the situation, and his ship was no longer in danger. By that point they could have just left, but Kirk chose to totally upend two civilizations because he didn’t like the way they lived.
That being said. I loved this episode other than the inconsistency of having the Ambassador beam down to the planet through the shields. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a plot hole, though, because his being there didn’t have any meaningful impact on the plot. It seemed more like a way to let him get some comeuppance for being a tool for most of the story.
@@@@@ 287 – “it’s insane to argue they should simply be expected to report for disintegration, so Kirk was within his rights to defend himself and his crew, and whatever mayhem he caused in pursuit of those ends is fine as far as I’m concerned.”
Kirk himself and the Prime Directive disagree with you.
“A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.”
– James T. Kirk, The Omega Glory
Just a bit of trivia: The real NGC321 is a galaxy, not a star cluster. The Enterprise crew would have been long dead by the time they reached it even at Wearp7. Unless they used a wormhole, tesseract or whatever.
So, if the Prime Directive applies, the crew is in violation almost immediately. Opening diplomatic relations is identying self and mission. Kirk should have refused his orders and if Kirk didn’t, Spock should have overruled him. Or perhaps the Prime Directive does not apply to this planet and Kirk’s actions in overthrowing the government are merely incredibly high-handed but not in violation of the PD.
@290/AndyLove: The “No identification of self” part applies to pre-spaceflight societies that aren’t yet aware of alien life. As Spock explains early in the episode, Eminiar VII has had spaceflight for centuries and was first contacted (implicitly by the Federation) more than 50 years before. Obviously the PD doesn’t ban identifying yourself to people who already know you exist.
It’s not clear where the line is for “interfering” is, though – any kind of open contact could be considered interference. Are there two tiers to the PD, only one of which applies to Enimiar, or is there one tier and Enimiar is past it (so Kirk is “merely” responsible for a massive diplomatic incident and potentially wrecked relations with Enimiar, but not a PD violation).
@292/Andy Love: I encourage you to read the comments in this thread, since I and others have addressed your questions extensively already.
Will so.