Comments on SFDebris "Prime Directive / Dear Doctor" Videos

PRIME DIRECTIVE REVIEW

DEAR DOCTOR REVIEW

SFDebris; or Chuck Sonnonberg is the Ebert and Siskel of Youtube Star Trek reviews. His insights to the series and his witty critiques of the various shows are really second to none. That odd looking lad blubbing about Britney Spears this ain't. Watch his videos now, get your friends to watch them, get your family to watch them as well, even your pets. Even if you haven't seen Star Trek watch them! They may not mean much in that context but hey. Now back to the crux of this post. SFDebris nails on the head exactly how a well intentioned and well known key philosophy of Star Trek lore went from a sound philosophical reaction to the mistakes made in our world to a hideous parody of its original self that ended up on occasions matching and suppressing the evil it was supposed to combat. That is the Prime Directive, Star Treks Federations non-interference directive. I want to see how this code that was supposed to portray an enlightened attempt to alleviate suffering actually resulted in suffering from inaction on several occasions by analysing SFDebris videos and commentary with some of my own thrown in. Intrigued? - well read on.

Anyone familiar with Chucks work will know that the Enterprise episode "Dear Doctor" is one of his most well known written reviews, and was one of the most requested Youtube reviews. Everyone has their "Yikes" moment with a Prime Directive story (well especially in the later ones) when the directive was taken to such extremes you just had to question the face value assumptions of the infallible "rightness" of the PD. I crossed the Rubicon with the TNG episode "Homeward" where some made up science caused a planet to lose it's atmosphere thus killing the pre -industrial population, (don't worry some get rescued) which under the PD would have to happen lest their culture be contaminated. Now you might have thought that these guys may have had bigger fish to fry, than someone dicking about with their culture, when - oh- THEIR FUCKING PLANETS ATMOSPHERE HAS VANISHED INTO THIN AI...., I MEAN; SPACE!" That's a level of philosophical devotion I find hard to relate to (to put it mildly). However in SFDebris case he highlights the ENT episode "Dear Doctor" as a prime example of all that went wrong with the application of the PD.

In summary "Dear Doctor" is about a bunch of pre -warp aliens called the Valakians who are dying of a genetic disease. The Enterprise crew discover a second sentient species on the planet called the Menk, they are less intelligent and are not afflicted. The ships doctor, Phlox discovers firstly that the genetic disease will render the Valakians extinct in 200 years, and in addition the Menk are on the verge of an evolutionary leap in intellectual growth.* Saving the Valakians (who are on an evolutionary path to extinction) may disrupt this leap. In the end Captain Archer and Phlox withhold the cure so nature can take its cause. Chuck objects to this episode on two fronts, the first being that for all Phlox and Archer protest about not playing god, they are doing just that! Withholding a vaccine to a people who are destined to die in some evolutionary grand plan anyway, and secondly that the episode treats evolution as something with a grand conscious plan for us all, and not just a blind process by which natural environmental processes alter gene frequencies. Let us be clear about this, Phlox has all but signed the Valakians death warrant on the basis of raw speculation about how things may turn out, and by applying pseudoscientific theories of evolutionary predestination into the bargain also! Sorry Valakians you are the weakest link. Goodbyeeee!

Like SFDebris I agree that the P D is in principle a good idea. As he said it probably arose from a mix of revulsion to the extremes of the Truman doctrine, when even the most vile of tinpot barbarians could get a load of cash and weapons if they got themselves called "anti - communist" , and how the conquest of the American continent was carried out. There are many instances where something like the PD would be both moral and enlightened a thing for explorers to heed. A non interference directive. Not unnecessarily dicking about with less advanced cultures, interfering in wars that don't concern them, not giving less advanced peoples technology they can't handle. These are sensible rules that both benefit explorer and explored. The problem with the application of the PD, which snowballed towards the VOY/ENT end of the franchise, was that it mutated from an enlightened philosophy grounded in pragmatism to theological dogma, and from that evil flows.

The latter examples of the PD gone awry are a textbook example of sensible rules being corrupted by rigidity and dogma. Like Chuck says, the PD must be enforced no matter what, no mitigating circumstances. The PD is good and just, because it is the PD, general order one! No involvement that [they] might cause harm, in any circumstances at all! This kind of mentality is why religious dogmas can be so harmful, when you apply absolutist rules to an arbitrary world. To quote SFDebris:

"this kind of thinking assumes that the Prime Directive was a divine being or something, that it has a plan, and who are mere mortals like Janeway and Paris to question it? It is, in fact, merely a rule created by human beings. Not to say that it isn't an important rule, since there is much justification for it (such as preventing exploitation of undeveloped systems). But that doesn't make it an absolute, that there's never a reason to ignore it."

We see this mentality in some religious dogmas today. I'll highlight one of them as an example. The refusal by Jehovah's Witnesses to give blood. In antiquity this aversion to "misuse" of blood was likely based on a misunderstanding of what blood was on the part of people who had no knowledge of advanced biology. Think of all the purity and hereditory metaphors associated with blood. They must have seen blood as some magic life giving fluid that when spilt from the body (a lot of violent death back then) is responsible for supping the god given life energy and death.This is wholly inaccurate but we can give them the benefit of the doubt. It was seen as wise back then not to handle blood willy nilly. However society has changed since then and this view of bloods properties is pretty inaccurate, however still JW's ignore this and insist on denying the effectiveness of blood transfusions, and worse still may allow someone to actually die than have a transfusion. This is when a law written by man is taken to such ludicrous extremes that an absolutist law is upheld even to the extent that it is based on an obsolete understanding that bares no resemblance to reality -just because it is a law, that is always virtuous, because by virtue it always is!

The second failing of the PD is summed up as:

"The biggest excuse, and the one Janeway trots out here, is that you don't know what the consequences would be. You could make things worse. Granted, going in and stopping a war could be a really sticky problem, but using this as a justification for allowing millions or billions to be incinerated alive? With that kind of logic, you should never get involved in anything. If a person is trapped under a piece of fallen masonry in an alley and calls for help, ignore them. After all, if you save them they could go on to marry and have children, and one of those children could wind up growing up and joining a group of whack-jobs and helps them plant a nuclear warhead in a major city, killing tens of millions of people. Or maybe they'll just live a long and happy life. You don't know, but under the reasoning of the Prime Directive disciples, it's better not to take that chance"

To take another real life analogy. If the Haiti earthquake had happened in the Star Trek universe and if we took the PD to the standards applied above, then there would have been no relief effort at all on the part of Starfleet. I mean what happens if this was a turning point in history? What if the poor people of Haiti, standing in the smoke and rubble of their homeland, are spurned on by adversity and the fact that an earthquake devastated them - to transform their island into a industrial powerhouse, then a global empire, then a natural disaster stopping galactic federation rapid response squad? Lest anyone anywhere ever suffers from geological disasters. Thus by helping them their destiny is screwed. In reality of course we know no-one seriously would take that point of view. How do you know any of that will happen? That is sheer speculation. Like Chuck says we would be paralysed be fear to do anything at all if we took the attitude above. We are humans who can only see the here and now, we don't have the prescience to take the stance above, and to think otherwise would be the height of hubris as Riker says. We have to be motivated by compassion and pragmatism and in reaction to current events, what else can we go by?

Chucks videos show how the PD became more zealously applied as the franchise progressed. As we see; both Kirk and Spock agree that telling the Yonadas they live on a fake looking asteroid is a lesser evil than letting them all be wiped out. Spock says it is logical to do so. It was certainly the moral thing to do. The Yonadas are a sentient people with hopes and dreams, and are irreplaceable if they are rendered extinct, being told they live on an asteroid may be upsetting, but it's better than being dead. Likewise when the original crew warned the (ostensibly) primitive Organians about the dangers of Klingon occupation, and how the Feds would help them to develop their society by providing schools and improved farming techniques, in exchange for joining an anti-Klingon alliance. It could be argued that this was chauvinistic and patronising, but it was [from their point and ours] preferable to slavery and brutal occupation under Klingon rule. Society is ephemeral and situations can change and this reflected that. Things are already going downhill when Picard and his crew have that hideous straw man argument about saving the doomed society, Riker's "height of hubris" comment is comically circular reasoning. Then we get Janeway and Archer taking the PD to its fundamentalist, absolutist conclusion. The logical end point of a law being so rigidly applied, it actually causes more harm than what it was set up to prevent. Man cannot (IMHO) proclaim to have an insight on this destiny / nature / the greater scheme of things / the cosmic plan - circle the appropriate one, indeed I'm personally doubtful there is any great plan at all (but that's just me and another topic entirely). In fact I do wonder did someone like Stalin think that "greater destiny" called for the Kulaks to disappear when he was lying awake in bed at night?

It's actually kind of ironic that such a rigorous interpretation of the Prime Directive actually goes against the spirit of exploration in Trek. If your going to seek out new civilisations on a manned ship you are going to have to interact with them at some point. I would have thought Starfleet would have taken a similar view to this as the puritanical Lady Whiteadder in Blackadder II did to parties. "Where there are people, there are people to fornicate with!" What about colonising or exploring planets? A disrupted bit of bacteria could be a civilisation in the making that has been snuffed out. If your going to take this kind of rigorous attitude, I'd really stay at home and hide!

We never learned what happened to the Valakians. I don't know if Chuck is right and they became the Breen, and the Menk the Pakleds. But I do remember Tacitus (well obviously not personally remember!) commenting on so called "civilised" people not putting their money where their mouth was, when he proclaimed that the Romans made a desert and called it peace. I wonder if a philosopher from those last remaining Valakians thought similar of Starfleet. "They let us go extinct and called it high mindedness"