THE PRIME DIRECTIVE

MAIN DISCUSSION

UPHOLDING THE PRIME DIRECTIVE AND
MINIMISING PRIME DIRECTIVE VIOLATIONS

When the Federation does interfere, regardless of the circumstances that prompted such actions, Starfleet usually attempts to minimise any possible cultural contamination. In [TOS: The Paradise Syndrome], the Enterprise NCC-1701 attempts to save a pre-industrial planet by moving an asteroid that was on a collision course with it. In [TNG: Homeward] and [Star Trek IX: Insurrection], in which the pre-industrial (or rather apparently pre-industrial) Ba'ku civilisation is scheduled to be secretly relocated, the Starfleet plan is to use holodeck simulations of their home planets during transit. In [TNG: Pen Pals], Captain Picard rectifies contact with Sarjenka, an inhabitant of a pre-warp planet, by ordering her memory wiped. When contamination became too serious to be repaired by memory wipes, Captain Picard decides to make direct contact with a civilisation's leaders in [TNG: Who Watches the Watchers] and [TNG: First Contact]. In [#47 False Profits], the Voyager crew take elaborate measures to avoid upsetting the belief system of the primitive Takarians. These measures include surgically altering Neelix to enable him to masquerade as a Ferengi and having Voyager simulate a religious event (three "stars" which appear as per the holy Song Of The Sages). In [#168 Natural Law], the Voyager crew take measures to ensure the protected isolation of a primitive people, even from a more advanced civilisation who share the same planet, regardless of whether eventually under natural evolution these two peoples will interact and maybe even amalgamate.

However, it is likely that upon interference or intervention, some contamination will occur. In [Enterprise: The Communicator], in 2152, the NX-01 Enterprise crew mostly observe Prime Directive protocols even though the directive has not yet been formally drafted, and one of them accidentally leaves behind his communicator during an away mission of covert observation of a pre-warp planet. The same occurs later in [TOS: A Piece Of The Action], in 2268, in which Dr McCoy inadvertently leaves his communicator behind on the pre-warp planet Sigma Iotia II. (In fact, the former episode is an inference to the latter episode. The former was filmed long after the latter.) The Enterprise NCC-1701 crew do not retrieve McCoy's communicator, even though they believe the bright and imitative Iotians will take it apart and make a cultural leap forward as they discover the workings of the transtator technology of the 23rd century. But the NX-01 Enterprise crew do decide to return to the planet to retrieve the communicator for fear of cultural contamination, but in doing so they worsen the contamination since the inhabitants become aware during the retrieval mission of more technology than just the communicator. Worse still, the result may be an alteration in the balance of power since there are two factions on the brink of war and one faction ends up believing the other possesses superior weapons. Therefore, interference by the Federation in any circumstances is fraught with the risk of unpredictable consequences, which makes it rather surprising that (here ignoring official ones) unofficial breaches of the non-interference directive are not punished severely, not least by any offending starship captain being ejected from Starfleet.