A number of years ago I read a movie script where the heroes were a couple of naïve space aliens who came to earth to play Major League baseball because it was “the most beautiful game in the universe.” Tension in the script came from an alien travel agent who pursued them because helping the Cubs win the World Series would change the course of Earth history and violate the “Prime Directive”. Like many others who grew up in the 60’s (or watching Star Trek reruns in the 70s and 80s), the author of this script was so influenced by Star Trek that he apparently thought the “Prime Directive” was either something like gravity or the Code of Hammurabi. It existed on its own and had for all time outside the Star Trek copyrights.
For those that missed the series or the movies, the Prime Directive is the guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive, prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations particularly those not advanced enough to have developed warp-drive interstellar technology.
While the Prime Directive worked well as a plot device and may have been a commentary on European colonization or American Manifest Destiny, it seems, to me, to be wrong-headed as a philosophy. First, how did the United Federation of Planets come to be if no planet could interfere in the development of the next. I know, the story was told in Star Trek: Enterprise years after Kirk punched out his first Klingon but I come from the perspective of an originalist. (I never watched those other series. To me, the Borg is the trophy given to the winner of the Indy 500.) I mean, if your civilization is so great that there is no discrimination, no hardship, no money (really) and you can scoot around the galaxy, wouldn’t you want to share that with “pre-warp” peoples? Or is it better to let them suffer from plagues, kill each other in wars, and enslave their planet-mates until someone on the rock stumbles across dilithium crystals. The Prime Directive speaks to me of a certain lack of pride in what humanoid civilization has accomplished. If you come across a planet populated only by Horta, by all means, leave them be. But if you find people, even green ones, give them the benefit of the doubt.
I write this today because it seems to me that the EU fancies itself to be a United Federation of Planets. It is global, benign, tolerant, and powerful. And yet, this vast force for good, refuses to assert its benevolent influence over a certain group of people who practice discrimination, gender-oppression (I don’t believe I wrote that), and genital mutilation, but lack warp-drive technology.
The way I see it, you can join the Federation when you stop cutting off heads. And you can leave the Federation if it won’t stand up against such barbarity. The UK just did.
