THE PRIME DIRECTIVE

MAIN DISCUSSION

WHAT DOES "WARP-CAPABLE" REALLY MEAN?

The Prime Directive relates to all species or civilisations or societies, regardless of whether they are Federation members, all of whom are warp-capable civilisations.

At first the Prime Directive, in terms of non-interference in the natural evolution of a society, applies essentially to pre-warp civilisations, and that remains the case throughout the evolution of the Prime Directive. (This article does not describe how warp engines work, for which see relevant parts of the SHIP USS VOYAGER section.) It should be noted that "spacefaring" and "warp-capable" are distinct. "Spacefaring" can include sublight space travel, whilst the former automatically means faster-than-light. (I use the term "sublight" instead of "space-normal" to describe slower-than-light travel i.e. non-warp speed, as the latter is used only in Star Trek once, if I recall correctly, in [TOS: The Galileo Seven] [not the same as "normal space"], whereas the term "sublight" is heard in [#89 The Omega Directive] when Paris says of the Alpha Quadrant's Lantaru Sector: "It's impossible to create a stable warp field there. You can only fly through it at sublight speeds.".) It means difficulty because sometimes starship captains confuse the definition with "warp-capable". The Federation and its non-Federation peers tend to take "warp-capable" as meaning faster-than-light travel which allows comparatively rapid travel in what one might loosely call 'real time' (days to reach somewhere rather than years or decades at sublight speed). "warp-capable" presumably also includes species who have developed alternate technologies but which provide similar or better, for instance:

1. the Sikarian spatial trajector, ref. [#10 Prime Factors]
2. Species 116's quantum slipstream drive, ref. [#94 Hope And Fear]
3. coaxial warp drive, ref. [#88 Vis à Vis]
4. subspace corridors, ref. [#127 Dragon's Teeth]
5. arguably, the enhanced warp drive utilised by the USS Equinox crew, ref. [#120 and #121 Equinox], which if someone were permitted could be enhanced further
6. transwarp

It may not be long before the Federation develops similar technologies, particularly transwarp which it is already exploring - see inset note below. In addition, "warp-capable" also infers the possession of rapid communications; it would be impractical to accept into the community of "warp-capable" species those who have messages that travel at the speed of, say, the distress call sent by conventional radio by the USS Horizon when it visited the planet Sigma Iotia II in 2168 which took a hundred years to reach Federation space.

TRANSWARP: The Borg possess transwarp technology, and have done so since at least 2369, allowing their vessels to travel at least 20 times faster than normal warp-powered ships and using transwarp conduits can reach Federation space with little or no advance warning, ref. [TNG: Descent] (in which Starfleet personnel devised a means to activate Borg transwarp conduits and used them to pursue a Borg ship) and ref. [TNG: The Best Of Both Worlds], and with regard to transwarp hubs ref. [#171 and #172 Endgame]. How Borg ships survive the stresses of transwarp conduits is briefly explained by Seven in [#152 Inside Man]. But the Borg is not the only species to possess transwarp technology. (This is making the assumption for speed of description that the Borg Collective forms a "species" of itself.) The Federation was experimenting with transwarp as far back as the 2280s with the launch in 2284 of the USS Excelsior NX-2000 under Captain Styles, ref. [Star Trek III: The Search For Spock]. Encyclopaedia says: "Although this was never made clear on film, it is generally assumed that the transwarp drive being tested in [Star Trek III: The Search For Spock] was a failure, and that the ship was later outfitted with a more conventional warp drive." It is possible that one day Tom Paris' historic transwarp flight might be repeated by Federation Starfleet but without the de-evolving results that he and Janeway experienced, ref. [#31 Threshold].

"Warp-capable" would thus embrace species who are capable of travelling at warp factor 1, only the speed of light (using Federation Starfleet's scale, which seems to be used by other species in [Enterprise] or perhaps it is simply instantly converted and translated by the Universal Translator). ("Warp factor" is the unit of measure for faster-than-light warp velocities generated by warp drive. Warp factor one is c, the speed of light, while higher speeds are computed geometrically under one of two different formulae, one for [TOS] and one introduced starting with [TNG] when, by the 24th century, a new warp-factor scale was in use that employed an asymptotic curve, placing warp 10 as an infinite value.) The range of "warp-capable" is therefore wide, since USS Voyager's specification is for a cruising speed of warp factor 6 and a maximum speed of warp factor 9.975. Someone capable of travelling at warp factor 9 has technologically superiority over those capable of travelling at only warp 1. And warp factor 9 refers only to Starfleet. The Starfleet vessel USS Enterprise NCC-1701 achieved far faster speeds, due to the Kelvans in [TOS: By Any Other Name], though it is noted as warp 11 under the scale in use before [TNG]; and in 2268, in [TOS: That Which Survives] Losira sabotages the Enterprise NCC-1701's engines so that it reached warp 14.1.

Starfleet's limitation to warp-capable societies assumes not only that there are intelligent species in the universe but also that they are numerous and amenable to contact. Whatever the arguments about the wisdom of warp-capable species engaging in contact with pre-warp societies, the number of warp-capable societies would seem to be enormous despite real-life indications to the contrary at least for the Sol solar system. Having a large number of warp-capable (and sociable) civilisations would provide ample scope for interstellar communication and commerce etc. The idea of a galactic community is a fundamental concept in Star Trek. The fact that the galaxy is so heavily populated with alien civilisations (whether a planet's dominant species is pre-warp or warp-capable) is attributable to the assumption that the Drake Equation is true. (Rather than "pre-warp", "non-warp" would be technically more correct; it is not a given that all societies will reach warp capability, either at all or whether they will develop another technology or shun it.) Gene Roddenberry believed in the validity of the Drake Equation, and Star Trek is predicated on it being not just valid but true. The Drake Equation, which is the 20th century Earth scientific concept for estimating the number of technologically-sophisticated civilisations in the galaxy, was postulated by Earth astronomer Frank Drake, before Earth's First Contact with explorers from planet Vulcan in 2063, and is based on estimates of the total number of stars in the galaxy, the fraction of those stars that have planetary systems, the fraction of those planets that could support life, and so on. The Drake Equation (or rather, Roddenberry's version of it) appears on the wall of astronomer Rain Robinson's laboratory in [#50 and #51 Future's End].

Contact need not be limited to warp-capable species, however. In [Enterprise: Dear Doctor], Captain Archer checks with T'Pol about having contact with the pre-warp Valakians, and receives the response that it is acceptable because the Valakians have already had contact with warp-capable species; this occurs before the Prime Directive is formally drawn up by the Federation. Captain Kirk in several [TOS] stories, e.g. [TOS: A Private Little War] and [TOS: A Piece Of The Action], has more than a passing contact with indigenous inhabitants not yet capable of splitting the atom let alone building a warp engine (I use splitting the atom as that is the example used by Captain Archer in [Enterprise: The Communicator]); this is in the period before the mid-2360s by which time (the [TNG]-era), the Prime Directive's definition and scope have evolved. In [TNG: Justice], we should presumably take it that the apparently primitive Edo are warp-capable since the crew of USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D accept the invitation to take shore leave with them, which otherwise would breach the Prime Directive (in which case rendering Picard's dilemma about Wesley less powerful as the Prime Directive would already have been breached). However, the Edo might simply be capable of space travel but without warp capability, or a species that chooses not to use their technology.

This gives rise to another issue. In [#127 Dragon's Teeth], albeit that Seven disobeys away mission protocols by waking the Vaadwaur male named Gedrin from 892 years of stasis, Janeway then allows him to waken fully without putting him back into stasis, takes him back to Voyager and then agrees to help his people rebuild, whereas at the time of Gedrin's discovery Janeway should have realised that she was faced with a society that is no longer warp-capable. For the alliance of species that brought about the Vaadwaur's downfall had ensured the destruction of their technological capabilities (they were unaware of the Vaadwaur's last battalion). Should Janeway restore warp capability to them (and we must remember that at the time she found Gedrin she did not know of the existence of the last battalion and their spacecraft)? Should Gedrin not be considered as a pre-warp individual or representative of a pre-warp society? Or should any civilisation which has once had warp drive be extended facilities by the Federation to rebuild? If yes, why does Janeway not offer these facilities to the Caatati (assuming they restrained themselves from exhibiting hostility and ingratitude)? or Arturis' species Species 116? etc. It seems this issue is either not contemplated and covered by the Prime Directive or other Starfleet regulation. If it is so covered, no information is available as to what the directive would be. It would seem to come under the remit of the Prime Directive, in which case Janeway compounds her breach thereof (the breach wherein she agrees to help the Vaadwaur rebuild their civilisation and making an alliance with them against the Turei, and does so without bothering to investigate the Vaadwaur's history; Neelix does that on his own initiative).

Essentially, therefore, the validity of using "warp-capable" as a definition in the Prime Directive is at issue. It is difficult to find a better alternative, however. "warp-capable" is fairly easy to use as an absolute definition, for it is wise to have within the philosophy of the Prime Directive as many straightforward or even absolute definitions as possible to avoid complicating matters too far. But "warp-capable" brings its own problems, discussed in the section MAIN DISCUSSION: IMPLICATIONS OF THE WARP 5 SPEED LIMIT.