The Stupid Prime Directive
March 12, 2008
Don’t get me wrong — I’m a Star Trek fan, especially since I married a hard-core Trekkie. I really loved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, although that was admittedly because that show (more than any other Trek series) really tried to make the Federation into something more realistic, as opposed to this utopian paradise with seemingly no internal corruption or difficulties. DS9 added real grit to Gene Roddenberry’s perfect world, and tore at its seams a bit. And for that (and other reasons) it was, in this blogger’s opinion, the best damn Trek show ever made.
(For similar reasons, I rather enjoyed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.)
At any rate, Mark Shea has an excellent two-part takedown of the “Prime Directive” — the first law, if you will, of the Federation of Trek fame. It’s a bit of a pointless thing, criticizing a belief held by characters of a television show. But at the same time, the same thinking that underpins the Prime Directive underpins a lot of the post-modern assumptions of our society, and the effects of that will be every bit as dangerous as the Prime Directive proved to be in those shows and Trek novels where it was at issue.
Update: Welcome, Five Feet of Fury readers! Nothing like a link from the Shaidle to blast a blog post’s view count through the roof! And since Kathy is right to point out the lack of money in the Trek universe, let me add one more thing about DS9 that I liked — gold-pressed latinum.
