The Prime Directive: Why Even Bother?

In the world of Star Trek, the governing body of the United Federation of Planets has one rule above all. This rule is known as the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive in its simplest interpretation states that Starfleet will not interfere with the internal matters of any alien species government, nor will they interfere with non-warp capable species (that is to say, any species that has not developed a level of technology equal to the existing Federation worlds). Every single Starfleet Officer has sworn an oath to uphold this rule. And yet, throughout the four Star Trek series (Enterprise not included since it takes place before the founding of the Federation), the various crews of the many shows are constantly breaking this rule.

In contemporary human society you could equate the Prime Directive to the First Amendment. When the Founding Fathers drafted the constitution they felt that the right of Free Speech was the most important value to put down on paper. Likewise we must assume that the framers of the Prime Directive (one of whom we must assume was Captain Archer based on the ending of Enterprise) felt that non-interference with other cultures must be the most important value for the newly formed Federation.

But if this rule, this commandment of the future if you will, is so important then why are all these Starfleet officers always breaking it? Sometimes the Prime Directive is broken by accident and perhaps those incidents could be forgiven but there are many instances in the 23^rd and 24^th Century where the Prime Directive is broken maliciously and deliberately.

"Can't we talk about this?"

In reality though, the Prime Directive is a rule that seems to cause more problems than it solves. Many episodes of the Next Generation depicted one or more crew members being threatened with death because Captain Picard was forced to abide by the rules of a much more primitive society. Why should a culture that has abolished the death penalty respect the use of corporal punishment by another society? Both Tasha Yar (in “Code of Honor”) and Wesley Crusher (in “Justice”) were threatened with death by a primitive culture who still embraced the idea of capital punishment for minor crimes. For all Picard’s pontifications about the Prime Directive both these instances caused him to have to break that rule.

As bad as Picard’s instances of defying the prime directive were, the crew of the Starship Voyager violated it even more. Being stranded in the Delta Quadrant (some 60,000 light years away from Earth) the crew is bound by no overseeing Starfleet to keep them from breaking the rules. While there are Warp capable species in the Delta Quadrant most societies encountered by the crew appear to be rather primitive. So arguably just the very act of them encountering these societies could be considered a violation of the Prime Directive.

It seems like an unfair rule for the Federation to live by. The Klingons don’t have a Prime Directive. The Romulans don’t have a Prime Directive. The Ferengi DEFINETELY don’t have a Prime Directive as can be seen in both the Voyager Episode “False Profits” and the Deep Space Nine Episode “Little Green Men” where both instances show them willing to completely exploit the innocence and naiveté of more primitive cultures. Only the Federation has these rules. Now as the history of our own culture shows, humans have no problem screwing with the members of more primitive cultures. So it seems unusual that in the 23^rd Century we would suddenly be so concerned with our behavior.