I'm not a huge fan of the Prime Directive. I'm sure that in some situations it can be useful, but not so much in others.
Take for instance, the "hook" of Into Darkness. The Enterprise was engaged in an ethical mission: attempting to prevent a natural disaster from devastating an indigenous population that could do nothing about it. The mission went wrong and Spock became trapped in the volcano, but because of the Prime Directive, was not allowed to move the Enterprise into position to rescue him (nevermind how they got it there in the first place without being noticed).
The natives, seeing the Enterprise, turned to worshiping it. Was this necessarily a bad thing? It changed the course of their culture, but who's to say that one of the aliens who would have been killed in the volcano didn't later grow up to be an alien Plato? If the religion persists, some anthropologist in a later age might realize "oh my gosh, that wasn't a god, it was an alien space craft!" This might turn the aliens to a state of xenophobic paranoia, or they might say "Hey, there's aliens out there. We'd better make ourselves presentable," and turn their entire culture around like humans did after first contact.
Another example, going back to the very roots of the Prime Directive: The NX's mission where they came up with a cure to a plague that was driving a species extinct, but didn't reveal it because said species was holding its sister species in a state of slavery and preventing it from advancing. Wouldn't it be better to advocate for equality? Who's to say that some of the people who then died from the plague wouldn't do just that? Did they really have to doom one species to extinction to help the other?
tl;dr: The Prime Directive can stop people who have the power to prevent suffering, death, or even extinction to do so.
I suspect that, out of universe, the only reason the Prime Directive exists is because the Star Trek writers needed a way to explain why no spacefaring civilization had ever contacted Earth in real life.
Into darkness is actually a perfect example of why the prime directive exists. Who's to say that the endangered race wouldn't become a race of Hitlers? Waging war on every other species just because they can? Saving this species, and disobeying the PD, would lead to the genocide of hundreds of worlds. Interfering in the natural evolution of a species has unforeseeable consequences, for good or bad. The exception is making first contact. Only done with warp capable civilizations, and only cause they will eventually run across another species, might as well be a friendly one who can help them along and guide them (pakleds excluded).
You mean you wouldnt wanna make there ship go? At least offer em a new rubberband
EDIT: Something else came to mind about controlling people, hitler used fear and military/economic control to subdue territory and lives. But there are more means to conquering and controlling , just like Cleopatra used on the men she took advantage of. Orions! The kind of alien encounters that seek you out!
That is exactly what it is. It is an illogical, impractical, malleable thing that pays lip service to a reality that simply can not exist.
It is the same illogical nonsense as why genetic augmentation is banned in the Federation. There is no logic behind it -- the idea of 'Khan' and his superhuman buddies not being the 'norm' in the Federation simply can not be reconciled. Man is something to be overcome. Khan represents what 'modern' humans would have become in Kirk's time. The 'Eugenics Wars' is a silly plot device to explain that there are somehow 'normal' humans instead of genetically-superior humans as a result of science advancement, something Kirk and the Enterprise and the Federation is all about. Except when it comes to that.
There's plenty of reason to prohibit the creation of "elites" such as Khan who would eventually try to take over (so in other words, DON'T let them be brought up believing themselves to be more deserving than others), but more people like Bashir would not necessarily be so bad. Genetic augmentation should be an "available for everybody" thing rather than a "make elite super-soldiers" thing. Pretty much, economics and logistics permitting, augmentation should be available for anybody who applies to have their not-yet-conceived offspring augmented, and the only non-augmented people would be those whose parents either chose not to have their children augmented, or who lived on frontier worlds lacking the medical infrastructure necessary.
Genetic augmentation should be an "available for everybody" thing rather than a "make elite super-soldiers" thing. Pretty much, economics and logistics permitting, augmentation should be available for anybody who applies to have their not-yet-conceived offspring augmented, and the only non-augmented people would be those whose parents either chose not to have their children augmented, or who lived on frontier worlds lacking the medical infrastructure necessary.
But then everybody would feel pressured to be augmented to keep up with everyone else?
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
Into darkness is actually a perfect example of why the prime directive exists. Who's to say that the endangered race wouldn't become a race of Hitlers? Waging war on every other species just because they can? Saving this species, and disobeying the PD, would lead to the genocide of hundreds of worlds. Interfering in the natural evolution of a species has unforeseeable consequences, for good or bad. The exception is making first contact. Only done with warp capable civilizations, and only cause they will eventually run across another species, might as well be a friendly one who can help them along and guide them (pakleds excluded).
That's bull**** and you know it. The future is by definition unknowable so worrying about what could possibly happen with a species thousands of years down the road is ridiculous. You have to make your decision based on facts and hard data. Fact: There is a species about to be wiped out by a disaster not of their making. Fact: You have the capability to save them without their knowing. Do you hem and haw about high-minded morals or do you pull the damn trigger?
If you let someone die when you could have saved them, you are guilty of something called negligent homicide. I'm going to go with "negligent genocide" to describe letting an intelligent species go extinct when you could've stopped it without their knowing.*
* Barring cases like Kirk being a complete imbecile in STID's opening. I mean, what the **** was the point of parking the ship underwater when he could've done it from orbit and not have had to worry about being seen by the Aliens of the Week?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
But then everybody would feel pressured to be augmented to keep up with everyone else?
In RL yes, as most people these days have such a lack of self esteem, they feel they need that advantage to be special among others, and shut themselves off until they can find something to make em stand out before they emerge from the cave. If I feel I would need more then what and who I am in life to complete me, I will simply find a kind hearted and loving wife. But in the show, the only one i remember with enhancements was Georgi and that was so he could see. Its a state of mind we will never see in our lifetimes on that show, Star Wars mind sets fits reality better then trek in every way, absolute greed, backstabbing, lust on a higher level then even the Orions are portrayed and the politics resemble RL too, one side lives for their passions and freewill to live their desires forgain and power without question, no matter how it affects anyone else...the other side cries for justice and morality but lack the backbone or organisation to be of any use to their culture...just like the Sith and Republic. lol
The set values and lack of action from time to time in Trek does show their strength and weaknesses in the culture they define, but they do at least show a seasoned organisation and in most cases self restraint, to observe and react with wisdom and a sense of professionalism, that people in RL tend to lack. The laid back logic of Trek is more entertaining to me then the wild hack and slash of Star Wars. (dont get me wrong I enjoy saber battles too ^^)
Even my main toon, CatStar, uses a confident and deep voiced British accent to portray an inspiring and stead fast leader for his crew. But aside from his swashbuckling demeanor on the battlefeild, I always tried to make him Picard like in the fact of having his first approach be compassion and diplomatic reason.
I think in the fundamentals of the Prime Directive is, essentially.. the same as a Preservation directive. To study the universe from a distance without interfering with the natural order of things, for good or for ill. Now.. in canon, that has been greatly subjective and "interpretative" by various captains as well as stretched but I blame the writing for some of the reasoning in how things are played out but I also think it's based on perception. Consider this. There are still isolated/remote tribes, some found as recent as 2010 that have no contact and various governments agreed to keep them isolated and prevent contact from the outside world. In fact, one was threatened by a logging company and the loggers were forced away by the government. In a sense, depending on your interpretation, they either interfered with the "natural" order by preventing contact with a lost people or kept an isolated culture from being contaminated. The same can be interpreted within the parameters of the Prime Directive and as such, can be considered overall, subjective.
That's bull**** and you know it. The future is by definition unknowable so worrying about what could possibly happen with a species thousands of years down the road is ridiculous. You have to make your decision based on facts and hard data. Fact: There is a species about to be wiped out by a disaster not of their making. Fact: You have the capability to save them without their knowing. Do you hem and haw about high-minded morals or do you pull the damn trigger?
If you let someone die when you could have saved them, you are guilty of something called negligent homicide. I'm going to go with "negligent genocide" to describe letting an intelligent species go extinct when you could've stopped it without their knowing.*
* Barring cases like Kirk being a complete imbecile in STID's opening. I mean, what the **** was the point of parking the ship underwater when he could've done it from orbit and not have had to worry about being seen by the Aliens of the Week?
The key point there is to keep the locals from noticing you. You should be able to stop the volcano, or the asteroid, or whatever, but it's the part where the natives start worshiping the giant skyship or the man who raises the dead to life or shoots fire from his hand that is where it all goes to pot.
The key point there is to keep the locals from noticing you. You should be able to stop the volcano, or the asteroid, or whatever, but it's the part where the natives start worshiping the giant skyship or the man who raises the dead to life or shoots fire from his hand that is where it all goes to pot.
Which is why they quite rightly took the Enterprise away from Alt!Kirk (in addition to his falsifying reports). He could've easily pulled off the rescue without violating the PD if he'd stayed in orbit. But for some bizarre reason he felt like taking the Enterprise for a swim. :rolleyes: Frankly, I think it was almost the demonstrated incompetence more than the PD violation that got him canned.
It doesn't hurt that the scene's sense of scale is as bad as everywhere else in JJtrek. Unless we are to accept that the volcano would cause a nuclear winter (and it wasn't nearly big enough for that ... in my decidedly non-vulcanologist opinion), that couldn't have been the entire species anyway because it's not big enough to be a sustainable population.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Which is why they quite rightly took the Enterprise away from Alt!Kirk (in addition to his falsifying reports). He could've easily pulled off the rescue without violating the PD if he'd stayed in orbit. But for some bizarre reason he felt like taking the Enterprise for a swim. :rolleyes: Frankly, I think it was almost the demonstrated incompetence more than the PD violation that got him canned.
It doesn't hurt that the scene's sense of scale is as bad as everywhere else in JJtrek. Unless we are to accept that the volcano would cause a nuclear winter (and it wasn't nearly big enough for that ... in my decidedly non-vulcanologist opinion), that couldn't have been the entire species anyway because it's not big enough to be a sustainable population.
I have this thing where I need for movies to make sense, even if it isn't part of the plot itself so I came up with two things. First, it's possible the planets magnetosphere didn't allow ship to planet transportation from orbit and due to no cloaking ability and needing to stay out of the indigenous populace way, they decided to put it under water on a fluke. Hence the shuttle as well. As for the Volcano, why they couldn't just drop a cold fusion bomb.. *shrugs* I kind of just went with precision. As for the indigenous people, it's possible that there were a great many more people off camera that were in danger overall. If it were TNG, obviously they would just shuttle from space, data would do something scientific and that would be it but being the movies.. you just kind of have to take it as a really really stretched sub-par plot and attempt to make it work for you.
I forgot to mention, the Prime Directive also probably has a more interesting aspect than the goofy "liberal guilt" one.
It's also probably a nod to a famous question posed by a famous scientist (can't remember the name atm) who asked something like this: if, as the Drake equation suggests (even more so with recent discoveries of lots of planets around other suns), advanced civilizations are probably fairly common, why haven't we seen evidence of them yet, or why haven't they visited us yet?
Enter the Prime Directive: if there are advanced civilizations, they're probably "leaving us to our own evolution" till we develop warp drives, or whatever.
Also, in parallel, the "saucer" element of Fed starships is probably a nod to UFO phenomenon of the 50s and 60s.
i.e., one of the cute things about Star Trek when TOS came out, was always the conceptual reversal you could make "what if there's something like the Federation or Vulcans out there already?" Then you'd have them following the Prime Directive, so no "official "contact allowed yet; but sometimes people might catch glimpses of them or there might be rumours of them (UFOs).
That's bull**** and you know it. The future is by definition unknowable so worrying about what could possibly happen with a species thousands of years down the road is ridiculous. You have to make your decision based on facts and hard data. Fact: There is a species about to be wiped out by a disaster not of their making. Fact: You have the capability to save them without their knowing. Do you hem and haw about high-minded morals or do you pull the damn trigger?
If you let someone die when you could have saved them, you are guilty of something called negligent homicide. I'm going to go with "negligent genocide" to describe letting an intelligent species go extinct when you could've stopped it without their knowing.*
* Barring cases like Kirk being a complete imbecile in STID's opening. I mean, what the **** was the point of parking the ship underwater when he could've done it from orbit and not have had to worry about being seen by the Aliens of the Week?
In the Doctor Who episode Fires of Pompei, it was revealed that the Doctor was responsible for the triggering of the volcano, weighed against his knowledge as a Time Lord that the volcano had to erupt, because it was a fixed point in time (not like Jack, but one of those historical events which simply Had To Happen) Just a moral point to consider...
Now with regard the Nibirans, who's to say they were the only example of their species on the planet? In the Willard Price novel Cannibal Adventure, this kind of primitive species and culture is examined, and it is said that such communities only really have knowledge of what is within their territory. 'Over the Mountain' is a New World... To be exiled from a tribe would be seen as a death sentence by both the tribal elders and the exile, but, once the exile makes it across the mountains, and finds a new community, hey, they get a fresh start :cool:
So I view the volcano situation in Nibiru as a Pompei event (not that it had to happen because the Doctor says so, but because the Prime Directive forbids the prevention of it) but as something which would only have trashed a village, not necessarily wiped out the species... Pompei didn't wipe out the human race...
I have this thing where I need for movies to make sense, even if it isn't part of the plot itself so I came up with two things. First, it's possible the planets magnetosphere didn't allow ship to planet transportation from orbit and due to no cloaking ability and needing to stay out of the indigenous populace way, they decided to put it under water on a fluke. Hence the shuttle as well. As for the Volcano, why they couldn't just drop a cold fusion bomb.. *shrugs* I kind of just went with precision. As for the indigenous people, it's possible that there were a great many more people off camera that were in danger overall. If it were TNG, obviously they would just shuttle from space, data would do something scientific and that would be it but being the movies.. you just kind of have to take it as a really really stretched sub-par plot and attempt to make it work for you.
What was shown in ID is so far away from what cold fusion actually is (or at least currently theorised to be) is laughable at how it highlights the ignorance of the writers. They are just 'saying stuff' which the writers think 'sounds cool', but is absolute nonsense (even more so than regular technobabble)
According to our current overlords, cold fusion is an impossibility, because god forbid we as a species move away from fossil fuels... But an example of what it would be like, is Tony Stark's palladium-fuelled arc reactors :cool:
Now with regard the Nibirans, who's to say they were the only example of their species on the planet? In the Willard Price novel Cannibal Adventure, this kind of primitive species and culture is examined, and it is said that such communities only really have knowledge of what is within their territory. 'Over the Mountain' is a New World... To be exiled from a tribe would be seen as a death sentence by both the tribal elders and the exile, but, once the exile makes it across the mountains, and finds a new community, hey, they get a fresh start :cool:
So I view the volcano situation in Nibiru as a Pompei event (not that it had to happen because the Doctor says so, but because the Prime Directive forbids the prevention of it) but as something which would only have trashed a village, not necessarily wiped out the species... Pompei didn't wipe out the human race...
Frankly, that makes a lot more sense than what they actually wrote, which was that the volcano was a planetary extinction-level event (hence my opinion that Kirk was justified in taking action, but ur doin it wrong). Like I said, JJ's scriptwriters have a terrible sense of scale. I mean, hell, even if the Yellowstone supervolcano blew its top tomorrow it wouldn't be enough to wipe out all life on the planet.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Frankly, that makes a lot more sense than what they actually wrote, which was that the volcano was a planetary extinction-level event (hence my opinion that Kirk was justified in taking action, but ur doin it wrong). Like I said, JJ's scriptwriters have a terrible sense of scale. I mean, hell, even if the Yellowstone supervolcano blew its top tomorrow it wouldn't be enough to wipe out all life on the planet.
Yeah, they just see things in terms of EPIC, FratBoy hijinks and dreary monologues to force the plot forward (when realistically, they do the reverse... ie Kirk's "Starfleet can't go after him, but I can!" And all the mad s**t Marcus ranted aboard the Vengeance... :roll eyes: ) The whole Nibiru mission pretty much summed up just how useless they really are as writers...
What was shown in ID is so far away from what cold fusion actually is (or at least currently theorised to be) is laughable at how it highlights the ignorance of the writers. They are just 'saying stuff' which the writers think 'sounds cool', but is absolute nonsense (even more so than regular technobabble)
According to our current overlords, cold fusion is an impossibility, because god forbid we as a species move away from fossil fuels... But an example of what it would be like, is Tony Stark's palladium-fuelled arc reactors :cool:
I think the writers these days are trying to show that you can act wild and crazy (spring break) without any real consequences for your actions, because your well intentioned :rolleyes: in your motivation through the noise of you being unleashed without any sort of discipline on the world, you will succeed in your endeavors, because you are creative and special...are you sure the JJ universe isnt the mirror one??
Cold fusion is possible, the joint space venture between the US and Russia are still testing lithium and other sorts of energy production for the use of powering machines and devices, and I imagine the nuke they detonated on the moon for weapons testing that (both countrys where ok with) was probably them experimenting with advancing their weapons with a fussion bomb....what? you thought they where testing seeds and and earthworms for our scientific advancement?? No, they are testing animals, plants and seeds to see if they would survive should they use a fussion bomb and energy on the environment...easier to test away from the earth! There is still money to be made in coal and oil, so dont look for the governments to allow tech to replace their cash cows anytime soon....we will just have to look to old trek shows for our Utopia.
I think the writers these days are trying to show that you can act wild and crazy (spring break) without any real consequences for your actions, because your well intentioned :rolleyes:
This is not a recent thing in cinema.
... I imagine the nuke they detonated on the moon for weapons testing that (both countrys where ok with) was probably them experimenting with advancing their weapons with a fussion bomb....what? you thought they where testing seeds and and earthworms for our scientific advancement??
Yes, thank you for that. WTF are you smoking, CatStar?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I think the writers these days are trying to show that you can act wild and crazy (spring break) without any real consequences for your actions, because your well intentioned :rolleyes: in your motivation through the noise of you being unleashed without any sort of discipline on the world, you will succeed in your endeavors, because you are creative and special...are you sure the JJ universe isnt the mirror one??
I think the problem, is they are trying to emulating Joss Wheden's style of nonchalant writing, and just missing the target completely...
Absolutely, I believe it was first achieved in the mid eighties, but the research was dismissed, and the scientific community closed ranks in dismissing the idea (so the Oil Barons wouldn't get their boxers in a bunch) But as above, cold fusion is how the palladium arc reactors would work, not a way of freezing a load of magma
As for the rest, I'll quote one of my favorite lines in Coming to America:
"You want to keep working here, stay off the drugs..."
"Cold" fusion is cold in comparison to the ten million degree plus temperature inside of stars or in a hydrogen bomb explosion, but it still generates enough heat that we would be using it to boil water to turn steam turbines as we do with fission reactors, but we're talking hundreds of degrees, not millions. In nuclear physics parlance, "cold" protons and neutrons are any that are moving too slowly to induce fission in fissile materials--it does not mean "cold' in the sense of always being at or below room temperature.
"Cold" fusion is cold in comparison to the ten million degree plus temperature inside of stars or in a hydrogen bomb explosion, but it still generates enough heat that we would be using it to boil water to turn steam turbines as we do with fission reactors, but we're talking hundreds of degrees, not millions. In nuclear physics parlance, "cold" protons and neutrons are any that are moving too slowly to induce fission in fissile materials--it does not mean "cold' in the sense of always being at or below room temperature.
Cold fusion is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature, compared with temperatures in the millions of degrees that are required for "hot" fusion. It was proposed to explain reports of anomalously high energy generation under certain specific laboratory conditions. The original experimental results which were touted as evidence for cold fusion were not replicated consistently and reliably, and there is no accepted theoretical model of cold fusion.
Now not just that example issue, but any other that came up in a Star Trek episode, and you feel needed an alternate resolution, feel free to share. This thread is for debate and discussion on the Prime Directive.
Well for starters, ST:ID should have been a movie concentrated around the issues regarding the Prime Directive. Not some Klingon-Tribble-Khan-Praxis-CptSulu-Mudd-Chapel-Marcus hybrid.
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Well for starters, ST:ID should have been a movie concentrated around the issues regarding the Prime Directive. Not some Klingon-Tribble-Khan-Praxis-CptSulu-Mudd-Chapel-Marcus hybrid.
we have role players, we have fiction writers and we have filmers with youtube accounts. Perhaps its time for the fans to get together and make an STO movie showing the prime directive in action, and instead of a mass a battle or liberation...try exploration as the plot. The games engine and art, will allow for this given good direction and editors. If you need voice actors, just advertise for them on this forum, foundry can be used to build sets as well.
Its something I had been wanting to start myself, but ...I dont think I could lead this, it would have to come from someone popular to rally their cast. I guess the writers could pick the era, I just hope it isnt the rubber shirts, baggy pants and big leather boots (epic none trek!) the npcs running around ESD use...that would be generic, and defeat the whole purpose of bringing back fans to the Roddenberry vision!
Comments
Into darkness is actually a perfect example of why the prime directive exists. Who's to say that the endangered race wouldn't become a race of Hitlers? Waging war on every other species just because they can? Saving this species, and disobeying the PD, would lead to the genocide of hundreds of worlds. Interfering in the natural evolution of a species has unforeseeable consequences, for good or bad. The exception is making first contact. Only done with warp capable civilizations, and only cause they will eventually run across another species, might as well be a friendly one who can help them along and guide them (pakleds excluded).
You mean you wouldnt wanna make there ship go? At least offer em a new rubberband
EDIT: Something else came to mind about controlling people, hitler used fear and military/economic control to subdue territory and lives. But there are more means to conquering and controlling , just like Cleopatra used on the men she took advantage of. Orions! The kind of alien encounters that seek you out!
There's plenty of reason to prohibit the creation of "elites" such as Khan who would eventually try to take over (so in other words, DON'T let them be brought up believing themselves to be more deserving than others), but more people like Bashir would not necessarily be so bad. Genetic augmentation should be an "available for everybody" thing rather than a "make elite super-soldiers" thing. Pretty much, economics and logistics permitting, augmentation should be available for anybody who applies to have their not-yet-conceived offspring augmented, and the only non-augmented people would be those whose parents either chose not to have their children augmented, or who lived on frontier worlds lacking the medical infrastructure necessary.
But then everybody would feel pressured to be augmented to keep up with everyone else?
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
That's bull**** and you know it. The future is by definition unknowable so worrying about what could possibly happen with a species thousands of years down the road is ridiculous. You have to make your decision based on facts and hard data. Fact: There is a species about to be wiped out by a disaster not of their making. Fact: You have the capability to save them without their knowing. Do you hem and haw about high-minded morals or do you pull the damn trigger?
If you let someone die when you could have saved them, you are guilty of something called negligent homicide. I'm going to go with "negligent genocide" to describe letting an intelligent species go extinct when you could've stopped it without their knowing.*
* Barring cases like Kirk being a complete imbecile in STID's opening. I mean, what the **** was the point of parking the ship underwater when he could've done it from orbit and not have had to worry about being seen by the Aliens of the Week?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
In RL yes, as most people these days have such a lack of self esteem, they feel they need that advantage to be special among others, and shut themselves off until they can find something to make em stand out before they emerge from the cave. If I feel I would need more then what and who I am in life to complete me, I will simply find a kind hearted and loving wife. But in the show, the only one i remember with enhancements was Georgi and that was so he could see. Its a state of mind we will never see in our lifetimes on that show, Star Wars mind sets fits reality better then trek in every way, absolute greed, backstabbing, lust on a higher level then even the Orions are portrayed and the politics resemble RL too, one side lives for their passions and freewill to live their desires forgain and power without question, no matter how it affects anyone else...the other side cries for justice and morality but lack the backbone or organisation to be of any use to their culture...just like the Sith and Republic. lol
The set values and lack of action from time to time in Trek does show their strength and weaknesses in the culture they define, but they do at least show a seasoned organisation and in most cases self restraint, to observe and react with wisdom and a sense of professionalism, that people in RL tend to lack. The laid back logic of Trek is more entertaining to me then the wild hack and slash of Star Wars. (dont get me wrong I enjoy saber battles too ^^)
Even my main toon, CatStar, uses a confident and deep voiced British accent to portray an inspiring and stead fast leader for his crew. But aside from his swashbuckling demeanor on the battlefeild, I always tried to make him Picard like in the fact of having his first approach be compassion and diplomatic reason.
The key point there is to keep the locals from noticing you. You should be able to stop the volcano, or the asteroid, or whatever, but it's the part where the natives start worshiping the giant skyship or the man who raises the dead to life or shoots fire from his hand that is where it all goes to pot.
It doesn't hurt that the scene's sense of scale is as bad as everywhere else in JJtrek. Unless we are to accept that the volcano would cause a nuclear winter (and it wasn't nearly big enough for that ... in my decidedly non-vulcanologist opinion), that couldn't have been the entire species anyway because it's not big enough to be a sustainable population.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I have this thing where I need for movies to make sense, even if it isn't part of the plot itself so I came up with two things. First, it's possible the planets magnetosphere didn't allow ship to planet transportation from orbit and due to no cloaking ability and needing to stay out of the indigenous populace way, they decided to put it under water on a fluke. Hence the shuttle as well. As for the Volcano, why they couldn't just drop a cold fusion bomb.. *shrugs* I kind of just went with precision. As for the indigenous people, it's possible that there were a great many more people off camera that were in danger overall. If it were TNG, obviously they would just shuttle from space, data would do something scientific and that would be it but being the movies.. you just kind of have to take it as a really really stretched sub-par plot and attempt to make it work for you.
Sweet Jesus! How are you able to wake up every morning?
It's also probably a nod to a famous question posed by a famous scientist (can't remember the name atm) who asked something like this: if, as the Drake equation suggests (even more so with recent discoveries of lots of planets around other suns), advanced civilizations are probably fairly common, why haven't we seen evidence of them yet, or why haven't they visited us yet?
Enter the Prime Directive: if there are advanced civilizations, they're probably "leaving us to our own evolution" till we develop warp drives, or whatever.
Also, in parallel, the "saucer" element of Fed starships is probably a nod to UFO phenomenon of the 50s and 60s.
i.e., one of the cute things about Star Trek when TOS came out, was always the conceptual reversal you could make "what if there's something like the Federation or Vulcans out there already?" Then you'd have them following the Prime Directive, so no "official "contact allowed yet; but sometimes people might catch glimpses of them or there might be rumours of them (UFOs).
In the Doctor Who episode Fires of Pompei, it was revealed that the Doctor was responsible for the triggering of the volcano, weighed against his knowledge as a Time Lord that the volcano had to erupt, because it was a fixed point in time (not like Jack, but one of those historical events which simply Had To Happen) Just a moral point to consider...
Now with regard the Nibirans, who's to say they were the only example of their species on the planet? In the Willard Price novel Cannibal Adventure, this kind of primitive species and culture is examined, and it is said that such communities only really have knowledge of what is within their territory. 'Over the Mountain' is a New World... To be exiled from a tribe would be seen as a death sentence by both the tribal elders and the exile, but, once the exile makes it across the mountains, and finds a new community, hey, they get a fresh start :cool:
So I view the volcano situation in Nibiru as a Pompei event (not that it had to happen because the Doctor says so, but because the Prime Directive forbids the prevention of it) but as something which would only have trashed a village, not necessarily wiped out the species... Pompei didn't wipe out the human race...
What was shown in ID is so far away from what cold fusion actually is (or at least currently theorised to be) is laughable at how it highlights the ignorance of the writers. They are just 'saying stuff' which the writers think 'sounds cool', but is absolute nonsense (even more so than regular technobabble)
According to our current overlords, cold fusion is an impossibility, because god forbid we as a species move away from fossil fuels... But an example of what it would be like, is Tony Stark's palladium-fuelled arc reactors :cool:
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Yeah, they just see things in terms of EPIC, FratBoy hijinks and dreary monologues to force the plot forward (when realistically, they do the reverse... ie Kirk's "Starfleet can't go after him, but I can!" And all the mad s**t Marcus ranted aboard the Vengeance... :roll eyes: ) The whole Nibiru mission pretty much summed up just how useless they really are as writers...
I think the writers these days are trying to show that you can act wild and crazy (spring break) without any real consequences for your actions, because your well intentioned :rolleyes: in your motivation through the noise of you being unleashed without any sort of discipline on the world, you will succeed in your endeavors, because you are creative and special...are you sure the JJ universe isnt the mirror one??
Cold fusion is possible, the joint space venture between the US and Russia are still testing lithium and other sorts of energy production for the use of powering machines and devices, and I imagine the nuke they detonated on the moon for weapons testing that (both countrys where ok with) was probably them experimenting with advancing their weapons with a fussion bomb....what? you thought they where testing seeds and and earthworms for our scientific advancement?? No, they are testing animals, plants and seeds to see if they would survive should they use a fussion bomb and energy on the environment...easier to test away from the earth! There is still money to be made in coal and oil, so dont look for the governments to allow tech to replace their cash cows anytime soon....we will just have to look to old trek shows for our Utopia.
This is not a recent thing in cinema.
This never happened.
Yes, thank you for that. WTF are you smoking, CatStar?
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
This is how I imagine him writing that post.
I remember hearing about it on the news a couple years ago and was reminded of this
Im permitted a little Nepeta now and again!
Absolutely, I believe it was first achieved in the mid eighties, but the research was dismissed, and the scientific community closed ranks in dismissing the idea (so the Oil Barons wouldn't get their boxers in a bunch) But as above, cold fusion is how the palladium arc reactors would work, not a way of freezing a load of magma
As for the rest, I'll quote one of my favorite lines in Coming to America:
"You want to keep working here, stay off the drugs..."
Uh, yes, it means exactly that...
Well for starters, ST:ID should have been a movie concentrated around the issues regarding the Prime Directive. Not some Klingon-Tribble-Khan-Praxis-CptSulu-Mudd-Chapel-Marcus hybrid.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
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My character Tsin'xing
we have role players, we have fiction writers and we have filmers with youtube accounts. Perhaps its time for the fans to get together and make an STO movie showing the prime directive in action, and instead of a mass a battle or liberation...try exploration as the plot. The games engine and art, will allow for this given good direction and editors. If you need voice actors, just advertise for them on this forum, foundry can be used to build sets as well.
Its something I had been wanting to start myself, but ...I dont think I could lead this, it would have to come from someone popular to rally their cast. I guess the writers could pick the era, I just hope it isnt the rubber shirts, baggy pants and big leather boots (epic none trek!) the npcs running around ESD use...that would be generic, and defeat the whole purpose of bringing back fans to the Roddenberry vision!