Stupidest Thing About the Prime Directive

I don't see how that's the "stupidest thing" about it; the members of Starfleet and citizens of the Federation dedicated to upholding it aren't gods, there are limitations to what they can do. They have a law in effect meant for the long term benefit of the less developed cultures they encounter, and the best they can do to enforce it to the fullest extent that they can. What else can you do? Have them say, " *beep* it, we can't ensure this rule is absolutely followed by everyone, so there's no point in anyone doing it"? That would be stupid.

To that end, by some account there are instances where it extends beyond the Federation, at least to some degree. In the TOS episode "A Private Little War," when Kirk visited Tyree's planet, Kirk and McCoy worked to collect evidence of Klingon involvement, that they could take back to Starfleet. There was at least the general concept that the Klingons were helping the some of the people to develop their advanced weapons in secret, rather than being overt about it, because they weren't allowed to - officially, at any rate.
I could be mistaken, but I can't think off hand of any other instances where the Federation abided other galactic powers to flagrantly influence less developed cultures. The closest might be Cardassia's occupation of Bajor, but Bajor wasn't that under-developed; and by some of the description of the relationship between the Occupation-era Cardassian government and the Federation, they were not on the best of terms during at least a large portion of that time, if not all of it. In many ways it seemed to mirror the Cold War-era relations between Russia and the US, with some heated conflicts.


“He lied to us through song! I hate when people do that."

'helping them' has been tried numerous times, and often lead to catastrophic failure. This is why the prime directive was introduced. No if only they'd decide if it's a law or a guideline, because star trek captains seem to only follow it when they feel like it.

"He's dusted, busted and disgusted, but he's ok"

I mean, there's so MANY different alien races in Star Trek it's amazing that any planet gets millennia to develop on its own. Um ... is it ? There are at least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. Theres about a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, too. I dont think its far fetched that most civilizations would be left alone.

Whats far fetched is rather Klingons, Ferengi etc themselves. Why would a space faring civilization be warlike, or businesslike ? At the time they have FTL, they should have had all the ressources they ever possibly wanted.

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A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

Whats far fetched is rather Klingons, Ferengi etc themselves. Why would a space faring civilization be warlike, or businesslike ? At the time they have FTL, they should have had all the ressources they ever possibly wanted.
there's a video i posted "is star trek racist?" which suggests it is because all aliens are depicted as mono-cultured stereotypes.
look it up on youtube if you are interested.

"He's dusted, busted and disgusted, but he's ok"

Link would be nice n easy.
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"Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell"
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i think you're confusing me for someone who's not lazy...

"He's dusted, busted and disgusted, but he's ok"

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"Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell"
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You make a good point. But the whole prime directive was more of a political message about letting other countries develop with out being corrupted. It's like when a kid goes threw a trauma that they are not ready for and their development is messed up. They are scarred for life and they are damaged. No offence to these victims/survivors. We've all gone threw stuff, but obviously when you are a kid it's 1000x worse.

IMO Trek was about moral lessons not really scifi. But yeah it would be nice if for example the US would go into developing nations and help them advance so that they don't fall into the hands of something worse (extreme religion/terrorists/etc....)

I mean we all 'stand on the shoulders of giants' we are as advanced as we are only because of what people did before us. Would be nice if we could bring other people up to speed. BUT there are problems going 0 to 60 is risky. Would be better if they let people develop naturally. I mean by all means go undercover and find the few souls that are WAY ahead of their time (Socrates/ancient scientists/etc.). I'm sure that they will easily assimilate to advanced things.

But in reality these people are few and far between. I mean look even now....people are still racist/sexist/discriminatory/anti-Semitic/anti-foreigner/etc....we can barely get some men to see women as human beings.....we have a long way to go.....