THE PRIME DIRECTIVE

MAIN DISCUSSION

VIEWPOINT WITHOUT 'SUSPENSE OF DISBELIEF'

'Suspense of disbelief' is the term used by literary critics or film critics to describe the way a reader or viewer ignores the real-life surroundings and believes in the fictional world created by the book or film. Sometimes this is done by more of a conscious effort than normal by the reader or viewer, depending on how plausible or how well the fictional world is portrayed. When we watch Star Trek, we believe, let ourselves believe, make ourselves believe, that we are really out there in the Star Trek universe, and we become emotionally involved in the situations depicted.

A problem with the Prime Directive is that Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry formulated the non-interference principle (though it is actually Gene L. Coon who is credited with the idea) which is the fundamental basis of the Prime Directive, so that Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise crew had to abide by it. It is not a tenet that any executive producer wanting to stay true to Roddenberry's vision could even consider abandoning or even ignoring. The 'do not get involved with pre-warp civilisations' tenet had not been incorporated in the Prime Directive in the [TOS] era, the series over which Roddenberry exercised strongest control over, but it is implicit. (He also exercised overall control of [TNG] until his death, in which era non-interference applied to any society.) Whether or not the Prime Directive is even implicitly acknowledged, whenever a landing party (it was known as that, not as an "away team" until [TNG]) visits an alien pre-warp planet, it sure is fortunate (in real life implausible) that the aliens are so humanoid that only sometimes does the question of their extra-terrestrial origin arise (as the aliens would see it), and in particular the half-Vulcan officer Spock should always be omitted from such an away team as he is much more obviously an alien (the aliens would view Enterprise crew as aliens). We need to suspend our disbelief to an enormous extent and work sometimes quite hard to view the Prime Directive as being as plausible as possible. That we do so, of course, is testament to Roddenberry's vision, to the many and myriad cast and staff who usually succeed in making everything as believeable as possible, and it is also testament to the fans who want to believe and keep faith. It has become second nature, on a par with tv and film viewers accepting that sound can be heard in space when we know it cannot be or that spaceships always travel one way up when we know they need not do so.

Having a series with the [Voyager] premise of the hero starship and crew being cut off from Starfleet (some long-distance contact is carried out in Seasons 6 and 7) means that the Prime Directive can be brought out, dusted off and given a new lease of life as regards being a dramatic speaking and not be considered unwelcome. But the essential dilemma inherent in the Prime Directive (should one intervene for humanitarian or other 'good' reasons?) remains the same, so the stories regarding the Prime Directive are enjoyable and involving mainly because of Voyager's unique situation compared to the starships Enterprise and Deep Space 9 stationary station all of whom are almost all the time in contact with Starfleet. Fortunately, in Star Trek (or even in science-fiction and fiction generally) all one often needs is one good variation on a theme in order to produce fresh and original work. There is a huge variety of subjects that can be covered, possibly even an infinite variety, but the variety is usually the same, and it tends to be hard to tell what is original and what is not, or which earlier story contributed which element, so much so that it is often best not to try or else one easily gets past caring. In [Voyager], the twists on previous Prime Directive-related stories are different enough, and diverse enough, and the scenery arresting enough (new aliens, stranded starship, different crew, new planets, etc.), that these are amply all that are needed to produce new (or almost new) and wonderful stories.