Star Trek: The Next Generation : Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

I love Star Trek TNG and also the show as aged reasonably well. It's still a kind of deeper level of sci-fi ideas than anything today. Sure it's cheesy and there is ensign superkid, but it's still an amazing show!

When they discussed intervening in the catastrophe or not, I just thought about that philosophical question a few days before. What I really missed is that they didn't make a point that there is a big difference between intervening in a natural catastrophe that destroy their culture completely and intervening in a war or oppressive government.

The former is simply a random event that they can't influence. A culture would be lost through no ones fault and something would be subtracted from the universe. They can intervene without them knowing or changing their culture.

A war is something that they can influence, that is created by them and that most likely is part of their cultural evolution. Humanity has learned from history and the atrocities we have committed. Interfering would be wrong and might help a genocidal culture survive to warp capability.

What do you think?

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

TNG cheesy? Have you ever seen TOS?

RIP Gene Wilder. One of the funniest people of all time. RIP Robert Vaughn

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

I have discussed the situation here on this thread many times, but I'll go over some issues here that wasn't at all brought up in this particular episode, Pen Pals.

For one, the Prime Directive is a rather bad MacGuffin in that it's a General Order, which, in military parlance, means that if you violate that, that's the same as disobeying an order from a General Officer (generals or admirals), and that ought to end your career in the service. We never see anyone court-martialed for this. To make it more realistic, they should've made it a policy order, meaning that interference in more primitive cultures could be done under an order from a general officer, or, at the least, reviewed in accordance to regulations after the fact.

Because the Prime Directive does have one practical application: The Admiralty does not want Starfleet ship commanders utilizing their assets for something that might waste resources and time they do not have that could be used in protecting the Federation, among other things. This was never brought up. Someone at that unofficial meeting should've raised this point.

"What if we go to this world, and we try to help, only that we find it will take more than one ship to successfully handle the problem?" Because that should've really been first and foremost on their minds, especially weighing on Captain Picard.

Fortunately it was a good thing that everything worked out right the first time. Right? They come to this world, lob a volley of torpedoes armed with harmonic resonators to break up the crystals causing all the tectonic stresses of this world, and everything's just hunky-dorry. That's very convenient. Especially since we're dealing with a very natural phenomena (a rather unusual one), and natural phenomena have a way of thwarting whatever you may attempt to do to mitigate the effects of it.

Had it not worked out right the first time, second, third, fourth, and so on, and Picard was faced with having to call for help from Starfleet, the jig would've been up. What would he have done? If he called for help, whatever happens, he's facing a court-martial charge, potentially the loss of his whole career, along with the other officers in his senior staff. Would he sacrifice his career for a people he knows nothing about, for a situation that clearly has no direct interest for the Federation? Given what we would eventually see in TNG Tapestry, the answer to that is an emphatic no. Why? Because Picard loves being a starship captain so much that he threw away what life he was given by Q in his alternate interpretation of Picard's life so he could be a Captain, not some lowly lieutenant. If given a choice here, he's got one really easy way out of it all, and that is not to call for help, and let Sarjenka's world break up and wipe out this civilization. It was going to be gone anyway, he'd surely rationalize, and likely there wouldn't have been much more that additional starships would've been able to do. If he felt sorry for Sarjenka, maybe he could take her and maybe a few other people off the planet, keep them sedated, and transplant them to another world to repopulate their species. That's yet another violation of Starfleet Prime Directive, but they would be alive. And if he keeps it quiet, he may save his seat.

That is, so long as there aren't any pesky whistleblowers aboard.

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

Cheers for the elaborate response. That's an interesting point about general order. I guess they assume correctly that most people simply won't know what exactly that means for an officer :)

And yeah lol it would have gotten much more embarrassing if Picard had to call for help to rescue the civilization.


Would he sacrifice his career for a people he knows nothing about?


Oh he definitely might. While he threw away his own life, he would never betray his "principles". So if he's convinced it's the right thing to do, he would do it. And in this case his officers were split, so if in doubt you should avoid the irreversible outcome. You can always nuke them from orbit later ;)


Having read up on the memory alpha wiki about the prime directive, it strikes me that it's really a lot about avoiding responsibility and also about surrendering to know what is best. If you do something well intentioned now, you don't know what ultimately will come of it. What is interesting about this is that it explains why Data is so comfortable crossing the prime directive.

Data doesn't care much about guild or how he is viewed in history for an action he done in good faith. He also has more faith in his ability to do the correct thing and estimate all the variables that could influence the outcome in the future, or to intervene later again to correct unforeseen consequences. He doesn't care much about the principles but more about the consequences of an action, and trusts that continually doing the thing that will result the best outcome is the best course of action. He has no qualms about "playing god".

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive


Oh he definitely might. While he threw away his own life, he would never betray his "principles". So if he's convinced it's the right thing to do, he would do it. And in this case his officers were split, so if in doubt you should avoid the irreversible outcome. You can always nuke them from orbit later ;)


What "principles" are you referring to? See, there is only one thing that Picard cares about more than anything else, and that's his command. Tapestry showed that he is such a snob that he never even bothers to examine his life as a Lieutenant to see if he's accomplished anything, such as having a family, making new discoveries, teaching classes, etc. Nope. He immediately, without examination, judges it to be inferior, and would rather die. In light of this, how do you think he looks at everyone in that position? He probably doesn't think of them at all.

Going back to principles, in the TNG episode Journey's End, Picard is ordered to relocate a bunch of Federation citizens off of a planet, and they happen to be Native Americans. And he's determined to do it. The people there decide to stay and live under the rule of the Cardassians. He doesn't think relocation here is wrong.

But, in Insurrection, he thinks relocating about 350 people away from a planet that has rejuvenating rays coming from its rings is wrong, probably because they have a woman he wants to sleep with. If but only the Native Americans had a sexy lady for Picard's interest, he might've sided with them. I'd believe he might've learned from his previous experience in Journey's End if he had mentioned it in the movie, but he doesn't, so I have to consider his loins to have motivated his decisions. So, I have trouble discerning just what principles he believes in.

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

He follows the Prime Directive of "Little Picard"

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

I think there has probably been actual wars fought due to some guy's little brain taking over, so why should Picard be any different.
No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive


I think there has probably been actual wars fought due to some guy's little brain taking over, so why should Picard be any different.


Presumably the Trojan War was. Admit it, though, ladies love that kind of thing.

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

I agree Wylde the TNG movies made Picard look like an idiot and hypocrite. It's a pity Wesley wasn't part of the crew during Insurrection he could have called out Picard for his hypocrisy when he was lecturing Wesley for doing the same thing.and let's not forget the episode Homeward where Picard is lecturing Worf's foster brother Nikolai on breaking the PD with his actions to save the Boraal.

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

Homeward is an excellent episode. Paul Sorvino is tremendous.

RIP Gene Wilder. One of the funniest people of all time. RIP Robert Vaughn

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

Nikolai could be said to have bent the PD, given how loosely the franchise has interpreted it. However, he did commit an act of Piracy, by sandbagging the Enterprise to do his bidding or risk being in violation of the PD as well. That's like forcing a US Navy warship to go somewhere that it wasn't meant to go against their orders.

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

But Nikolai wasn't part of Star fleet anyway so he has no Prime Directive.

No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

Excellent point, Nak. Still a little shady.

RIP Gene Wilder. One of the funniest people of all time. RIP Robert Vaughn

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive


Nikolai could be said to have bent the PD, given how loosely the franchise has interpreted it. However, he did commit an act of Piracy, by sandbagging the Enterprise to do his bidding or risk being in violation of the PD as well. That's like forcing a US Navy warship to go somewhere that it wasn't meant to go against their orders.


But let me ask you this was Picard's mission in Insurrection to assist Starfleet and the Son'a to relocate the Ba'ku? Because to my knowledge the Enterprise had no business being there in the first place other than to pick up the "malfunctioning" Data and another silly thing is that since Data was part of the observation team I can't escape the thought that being a part of the team Data must have known what purpose of that mission was.Or was it just dumb of Starfleet to think that an android who is smarter than most humans won't find out their plan or the holodeck ship?

(The more I analyse Insurrection the more stupid it gets even beyond The Final Frontier stupid)

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

So don't analyze it.

RIP Gene Wilder. One of the funniest people of all time. RIP Robert Vaughn

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

I've often found that the Prime Directive was more of a guideline than a general order because the Prime Directive had been tossed in the shredder so many times that seasons 2-7 of this series should have been renamed Prisoners of Cell Block H. Now, General Order 7 was a real General Order with some real implications(death).

Re: Rewatching TNG - S2E15 Pen Pals - the prime directive

Don't analyze it, Rock. I'm sick and tired of people complaining about TNG.

RIP Gene Wilder. One of the funniest people of all time. RIP Robert Vaughn
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