The Prime Directive

[Neo]

Sure is there.... They start to develop the Prime Directive in one of the episodes after a something happens

[Tabitha]

I have been wondering about this recently. Am I right in thinking that the Prime Directive refers to civilisations that are pre-warp, but once a world achieves warp technology it no longer applies?

Is there unlimited sharing of technologies once a world reaches this level?
The Vulcans did not follow this after first contact, but of course that was pre-Federation. However, as members of the Federation they likely would have to adopt any policies regarding the sharing of technologies that were voted in.

[Shaun]

I've wondered about this too. I think they would have to make a decision about how the planet and culture would cope with all the new technologies. Would they immediately abandon all research in favour of the Federations? Their culture might be lost in favour of Federation standards, just becoming another planet instead of a different and unique race.
I think they just use the first warp test as a bare minimum.

[Dave]

Nothing is canonical. There hasn't even been a definition of the Prime Directive on screen, all the definitions people use are from non-canon books, and fans websites, or RPG.

'First Contact' made it seem like Warp Technology was important, and many non-'trek' SF books see FTL space travel as a very significant technological advance, but we don't know what is written in the actual Starfleet General Order Number One.

I would hope that 'Enterprise' might resolve this issue.

[ray gower]

The Prime Directive was quoted by Captain Janeway in a several episodes. Can't remember what she said in any of them. But the first was in relation to the Caretaker.

However I think we can piece together the gist of it from the various shows.

The requirement for the new race to own the technology to blunder off of their own planet has been stated in every version of Trek.
I think it was TOS that implied a race should be ready to explore/colonise a planet. Certainly the requirement for some form of interstellar contact, initiated by the 'primitives'. Which again suggests stellar if not interstellar abilities.
TNG stated a requirement for warp power. And this was certainly the reasoning used for First Contact with the Vulcans.
This was repeated in the first episode of Enterprise. So it was obviously a clause the Vulcans inserted.

From this we have a post industrial culture.
To launch a space vessel even hopefully capable of interstellar travel, the sciences must have surpassed alcohol and oxygen as a propulsion medium. So we are looking post-nuclear age as well.
If it is a Vulcan rule, then perhaps we can assume a certain requirement to the dedication to science rather than conquest?
After that we are looking at politics, there things become very variable.

[Tabitha]

I didn't realise that the Prime Directive hadn't been specifically stated in one of the series' - obviously some confusion over the matter is justified!

[Dave]

We know from TOS that the Prime Directive or Starfleet General Order Number One prohibits Starfleet personnel and spacecraft from interfering in the normal development of any society, and mandates that any Starfleet vessel or crewmember is expendable to prevent violation of this rule. But that is about all that was said.

"Time and Again" VOY also seems to suggest that it applies only to pre-Warp civilizations.

It has often been violated if the threat to the alien species or the Federation itself was imminent. The threat to the galaxy posed by the existence of the Omega molecule was believed to be so great that the Prime Directive could be disregarded if necessary to carry out the Omega Directive.

[Dave]

Role-playing a Cardassian, as I do on another website, can give you as strange viewpoint on the galaxy.

My colleagues are all Starfleet officers. People who believe totally in the Federation doctrine of 'Non-Interference', or the 'Prime Directive' as they call it. They have even given to uphold it with their lives, when they became a Starfleet officers.

I have always had my reservations about whether 'General Order Number One' could work as a philosophy in practice, but after doing some research I'm sure of it.

First thing I found was a Christian website, sorry lost the URL, but it had many criticisms of the 'Prime Directive'. One of it's discussion points that it threw up was that, wasn't an example of 'non-interference' by government on Earth, a system called Apartheid?

Secondly, I've been reading a lot of Iain M Banks. His 'Culture' is a society that loves to meddle in the affairs of other planets. In the book 'Excession' he writes about the 'Outside Context Problem'. To expand on his idea, it goes like this:

Think, if you will, of an island continent on an M-class planet populated by humans. After your isolated hunter-gatherer tribe have farmed the fertile land, domesticated the native animals, and invented a little technology like the wheel, numbers and writing, your neighbours have either co-operated with you, or else have been enslaved by you. You begin to raise temples to yourselves, have so much excess productive capacity that you are in a position of total and complete power, and you are able to turn your hand to more artistic pursuits.

Now, imagine one day, a more aggressive people from a distant, industrialized land across the sea arrive with gunpowder, metal armour, shooting sticks and infectious diseases. They speak an alien language, have very strange customs, and announce that you have been discovered, and are now subjects of their own Emperor. They plant alien cash crops on your lands, they interbreed with your women, and cause the extinction of your native animal species. Then they introduce the new concept of Tax, their nobility impose upon you a new system of government, while their priests impose upon you a new religion. That is a classic 'Outside Context Problem'; something you don't even have a context for understanding, aliens with powers beyond your ability to comprehend.

I decided that my Cardassian friend would love this. I could name hundreds of non-aligned low-tech worlds within Federation space ruined by their own 'Outside Context Problems', 'Star Trek' history is littered with examples. And the doctrine of 'Non-Interference' has been of no help to them at all, in fact, it has even exasperated the problem in most instances, because the Federation refuses to get involved. Surely, it is not only the right, but the duty of a major galactic power like the Federation to actively get involved, to bring order to the chaos of these worlds, rather than to stand back and wring it's hands? I would even go as far as to challenge you to name any system that has developed normally in both it's culture and society, in spite of the 'Prime Directive' being in force at the time.

In every world that Kirk visited after being tainted by outside influences, Kirk himself, had to break the 'Prime Directive' to solve the problem. Picard was a 'hand-wringer', always wanting to do some more, but tied down by the 'Prime Directive'. Janeway led some mid-way path, but this makes it difficult to understand her convictions.

Anyhow, anyone still believe the 'Prime Directive' would work?

[Jax]

Something I've always wondered about. Is there only one directive or is it a set of directives ?

More to the point, does anyone know specifically what they are ?

Are they written anywhere ?

[ray gower]

The Prime Directive is the summation of all the Star Fleet Rules and Regulations into a short and easily digestable format.

Like all such rules, it carries a vast number of clauses, sub-clauses, quid-pro-quo's and get out of jail tweaks. As was ably displayed by Janeway when she started to go through the rules and regs to find a way of breaking the rules legally, whilst Voyager was lost in one of the frequent Delta Quadrant voids.

[Dave]

Originally posted by Jax
Are they written anywhere ?

Many fan web sites have it written down, but they aren't Canon, just fan fiction.

There are other General Orders or directives mentioned in Star Trek (The Prime Directive is also known as General Order #1). There are at least 24 General Orders -- #24 was mentioned in 'A Taste of Armageddon ' TOS. That is a sizeable rulebook and it must have increased in size further by the time of Janeway.

[Jax]

I guess I'd always thought of the Prime directive as the rules layed down by the Federation, seperate from the Starfleet regs.

I suppose , in theory, it is the Vulcan idea of waiting till a species has warp capabilities before initiating first contact. (eg the film first contact)

Because of this, it certainly seems like the Vulcans had a large say in the Prime directive. Perhaps it was a condition the Vulcans imposed on Starfleet before helping to create a Federation.

[Dave]

Jax, I've merged these threads together since a lot of what you ask has already been discussed.

I think that the idea is one that Starfleet got from the Vulcans, (and maybe they did insist upon it on the formation of the UFP) but 'Enterprise' was showing Archer to be a fan of the idea during seasons 1 & 2 (before he became possessed by George Bush-like tendancies to beat any aliens they meet into submission.)

The Original Series is also littered with examples of societies destroyed or ruined by not applying a Prime Directive which would suggest that it didn't come into existence until a while after Starfleet had been contaminating new worlds.

'When does the Prime Directive not apply?' is still not answered. I think that 'Warp Drive' in Star Trek is seen as an example of a general level of technology that would allow admission to the UFP (and therefore the Prime Directive ceases to exist) rather than a measure in itself. But that is my personal view.

The Vulcan ship in 'First Contact' was not just passing by, by accident. 'Enterprise' has revealed that the Vulcans have been secretly monitoring Earth for centuries.

But, there are other SF stories where the actual ability for interstellar travel is the crucial factor. I'm thinking particularly of the novel 'King David's Spaceship' by Jerry Pournell. There are several different kinds of Member Kingdoms within the Empire. Class 1 worlds have inter-stellar travel, while Class 2 worlds have only inter-planetary travel. Non-atomic technologies cannot be admitted to the Empire but simply become colonies. King David must build a Spaceship to prevent his world becoming a colony.

I think that they also needed a 'Unified Planetary Government' in that story to become a Member Kingdom. This is something that Star Trek also needs if you are to become a UFP member, though they frequently deal with worlds that are 'Balkanised'. In fact, you don't need to be a citizen of the UFP to join Starfleet i.e. Bajorans, Turkana IV (which is strange though not ususual on Earth historically.)

[Jax]

Originally posted by Dave
Jax, I've merged these threads together since a lot of what you ask has already been discussed.

He he, thanks Dave, I guess I should look before I post.

[Dave]

No problems. It's difficult to find them, but I knew it was there because I've been here so long. Sometimes it's good to start a new thread on a subject anyway, but in this case I'd be repeating what others have already said.

I was wondering, most ideas aren't knew, and I'm sure that Gene Roddenberry didn't invent the SF idea of non-interference in primitive societies. Some writer must have looked at the mess the 18th and 19th Century colonial powers did to the world and thought -- in the future we shouldn't be doing that. Does anyone know of earlier examples?

According to the OED the earliest example of the 'Prime Directive' being cited is a 1947 cite from Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands" but they are looking for earlier examples.