The Prime Directive in "For the World Is Hollow ..."

According to my interpretation of the Prime Directive the Enterprise could alter the course of the asteroid without it being a violation, especially since the asteroid was artificial. They didn't realize the asteroid was inhabited until they actually beamed over. At that point it's captain's discretion of how to precede, and Kirk never seemed to strictly adhere to the Prime Directive. The whole moral dilemma of this episode could have been avoided with a simple distress call from Daran V.

Considering that the Fabrini haven't seen outsiders for 10,000 years or more I agree with you about their reaction to aliens. It's possible that their reliance on the Oracle is so great that seeing non-Fabrini wouldn't phase them.

"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer

I've been under the impression that once a race of beings achieves space travel, the prime directive no longer applies.

McCoy was dying. Obviously, Kirk smelled some alien pssy and decided it was time to hand one off to his buddy.

That's Next Gen era Thinking. In TOS, thee PD was moreof a guidelien to not interfere with their politics or natural social develop,ent, not to stand idly by and let them all die.


In fact, every argument yoy made applies to any situation, even he Federation tuself. Let's assume for a moment thatTranswarp is perfected, allowign The Federation to go 100 Times Faster than they use to. But, that Tech can be used for nefariosu purposes so...well we can't use it. Peopel wpuld think that's stupid. Sure, new discoveries can be used for ill purposes but that doens't mean we don't advance. Nor do we let a woman get murdered in a back ally just because if we don't she might give birth to a Future Hitler.


RThe Prime Irective in Moern Trek is more of a monstrocity than an ENlightened Ideal.

Such worries are what I call "Fireflying".

I quote from TNG "A Matter of Time":

RASMUSSEN: Let me put it to you this way. If I were to tell you that none of those people died, you'd easily conclude that you tried your solution and it succeeded. So, you'd confidently try again. No harm in that. But what if I were to tell you they all died? What then? Obviously, you'd decide not to make the same mistake twice. Now, what if one of those people grew up
PICARD: Yes, Professor, I know. What if one of those lives I save down there is a child who grows up to be the next Adolf Hitler or Khan Singh? Every first year philosophy student have been asked that question ever since the earliest wormholes were discovered. But this is not a class in temporal logic. It's not theoretical, it's not hypothetical, it's real. Surely you see that?

So you are not the first person to think that way about such problems.

I say that they know that Yonada will strike Daran V and kill 3,000,000,000 people in 396 days unless something is done.

So diverting Yonada will make 3,000,000,000 people more alive on day 397 than they would have been, and on day 398, day 399, day 400, and so on for years and decades. It will add decades to the lives of billions of persons. It makes no sense to avoid doing all that good for fear of the slight probability than in the future someone might be another Genghis Khan, or Tamerlane, or Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, and kill a measly few tens of millions of persons.

That would be like Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup, waiting to apologize to Ambassador Trentino and prevent a war, and wondering if Trentino will refuse to accept the apology, and getting so angry at that hypothetical possibility that when Trentino arrives he insults Trentino again and starts the war.

I accuse everyone who worries that way, about the possible minor bad results of doing major good, of "Fireflying".

The group makig those excellent eps on You Tube have crafted an interesting looking sequel to this one. The girl playing Natira looks like a clone, I swear. She looks EXACTLY like her. But CBS threw a temper tantrum and got it pulled.

The original "Trek" writers considered the Prime Directive to be a pain in their asses, and we're always looking for ways to get around it or ignore it.

Which I can understand, as that ruled out a little of potential stories... but it's a law a just galactic Federation ought to have in place.