What do you think of the prime directive?

[Epikur]

 

 

[AnthonyR]

“The Prime Directive” (PD) is just a fancy term that is mostly never adhered to in the Star Trek Universe.  While Picard was more stringent on following the PD- other Star Trek Captains like Captain Janeway from the Voyager series always interfered - Interference produced more interesting episodes IMO

However there is one episode I recall from ST Enterprise series *** SPOILER ALERT *** where all married couples on a certain planet use a especially fertile Being to procreate.  This Being is not treated quite as fairly as other normal Beings.  They do not receive any education or freedoms enjoyed by the Elite, who are allowed to Procreate using these fertile Beings as a surrogate.  In this episode this one couple brings along their potential surrogate with them aboard the Starship and it’s clear that the couple simply treats this surrogate like a fly on the wall.  One of the crew members notices this and decides to interfere (breaking the PD rules) and converse with and educate the surrogate in private resulting in some interesting dialogue and implications for the couple.  Without giving too much away, let’s just say the ending of the episode does not end well of either the couple, the surrogate and the crew member that interferes.

In my opinion when walking the PD bridge, you have to thread carefully.  You cannot dive in with radical new ideas and opinions that are completely alien to a given individual, culture, society, nation or planet, this will usually always be disastrous.  Perhaps your guidance / interference needs to be a small step up from the level on which they stand.  In other words don’t introduce Yellow spiral values to a predominantly Blue or Orange culture.  

And who’s to say that perhaps another extra-terrestrial species is not currently interfering in our own affairs? Screwing up sometimes and sometimes offering some valuable guidance.  Time will tell.