Picard Causes Mass Fatalities

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ArcticFox
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So I've been watching a lot of Star Trek episodes recently, and I just realized that in one of them, Captain Picard triggers the near genocide of a planet.

In the First Season episode "Symbiosis" The Enterprise is in contact with two alien races; the Ornarans and the Brekkians. As is explained in the episode, the Brekkians have exactly one industry: The production of Felicium, a drug the Ornarans are addicted to. The Ornarans produce everything else, which they trade to the Brekkians for the Felicium.

Pause here and consider: The Ornarans produce absolutely everything the Ornarans need. That means food, medicine, clothing, energy, tools, vehicles, etc. Absolutely everything. This becomes important later.

The Ornarans believe they have a plague on their world, and that the Felicium is a necessary drug to allow them to live. They don't realize it's simply a narcotic and the Brekkians are nothing but drug dealers.

Picard won't tell them the truth, because it would violate the Prime Directive. It's a moral conundrum, but that's the choice he makes. No problem. All is well, right?

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The Ornarans no longer have the ability to maintain their space ships. (Reason not given.) So as their vessels break down, their ability to trade with the Brekkians will eventually fail completely. Picard had initially agreed to help them repair their ships, but changes his mind. Officially it's because of the Prime Directive, but the real reason is that the Ornarans will eventually be unable to obtain more Felicium and will thus lose their addiction, freeing them. Good for them... but...

Well, what happens to the Brekkians? Remember, they have no industry whatsoever, other than the production of Felicium. They don't grow their own food, make their own clothing, produce their own energy. They are utterly dependent upon the Ornarans. What happens when the Ornarans, critically low on Felicium, start breaking their addiction and realize they don't need Felicium after all? Even if, for humanitarian reasons, they agree to keep sending food and supplies to the Brekkians, that will only continue as long as their ships are able to make the trip. As they deteriorate... The supplies would stop. (No, the Brekkians do not have their own space fleet.)

This would force the Brekkians to start converting their industry over to their own needs, but this is not a quick process, and would require skills and knowledge that the Brekkians almost certainly do not posses on their own. Because Picard is leaving the system with no intention of returning, the Federation will therefore be standing by and doing nothing while billions of Brekkians starve to death as the planet struggles to shift to self sufficiency.

Certainly some will survive, and the exact number of survivors will depend largely upon how much food they have already stored and how quickly they can convert to agriculture. They may well gave considerable storage, we don't know... But we do know they aren't likely to know much about farming, nor will they have much capacity to do so anyway, being unable to farm using any kind of modern farming equipment because they just don't have it.

If I were to write a follow-up story, it would involve the Brekkians sending out some kind of planetary distress signal,which the Federation would respond to. (Picard should have provided the technical resources to help the Ornarans repair their fleet, but Season 1 Jean-Luc Picard is kind of a self-righteous jerk a lot... I liked him better in later seasons.) This is not a Prime Directive issue. The Prime Directive is about non-interference, but does not apply when assistance is requested directly. Also, these people are well aware of the Federation so it's not like there would be cultural contamination.

So Picard makes a decision that will result in the death of billions, but it's okay because they were drug dealers, apparently.
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ArchAngel
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I read about half way down, but stopped because I haven't seen the episode, so I don't know if I should go further.

But from what I got, this is what I love about Star Trek. While the technology is often flawed, the philosophical questions they ask are wonderful, regardless on whether you agree with how they did things on the show or not.
Pew Pew Pew. Science.

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ArcticFox
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True, they do pose good moral/philosophical questions sometimes. Good sci fi always makes you think.
"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool."
—Brigham Young

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus."
—Christopher Hitchens
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Uh...not to be that guy, but all it made me think was that the Federation are jerks. :P

I consistently have this problem with Star Trek. There are no morals, or at least a severe dichotomy. To a Federation captain, losing one crewmember is a devastation beyond compare, but an entire alien species? Pssh. Let 'em burn. They're nothing but a scientific curiosity. Penguins, to the collective NatGeo.

Unless, that is, they have inherent technological value. Then, you save them at all cost. That's a superiority complex, if ever there was one.

Later, Picard actually makes the choice to let an entire species die out; nevermind that the Federation had been studying them for years and could easily save the remnants of their society; they were an undeveloped race, so the "right" thing was to let them suffocate without interfering. If it were Romulans or any of the other space faring civilizations though, heaven's no. Save them, or die trying.

Cappan Archer does the same thing at a (technically) much earlier point in history to another prewarp society. Instead of saving a race from certain death, he chooses to "let nature take its course" and let them die by plague. Yet he happily rescues two people (from a warp civilization) at nearly the cost of his and several crew members' lives.

The more I watch Star Trek, the less I see the Federation as the good guys. They're sort of like the Imperium of man in 40K.
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ArcticFox
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I agree with everything you said. I did want to bring something up though...

Especially in the first season, Gene Roddenberry was really pushing the "Humans/Federation are super-enlightened" thing and it made the characters come across as self righteous snobs a LOT. Especially Picard. Things mellowed out after Season 1, and especially later after Roddenberry's death, and that's why later seasons of TNG and all of DS9 are pretty good. Picard actually becomes fairly humble later on, in a way.

But yeah, in the beginning, it always felt like the Prime Directive was more of a license to stand in judgement of others, rather than a policy for protecting people... and the natural inconsistency that comes from a format like Star Trek meant that it seemed very, very arbitrary.
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—Brigham Young

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—Christopher Hitchens
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That was TNG season 7 though. :P

I do agree with you in principle, but it seems like it didn't leave, just sort of became assumed.

DS9 though, is my favorite SciFi, so I'm not complaining too much.
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ArcticFox
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Ahhh ok you're right, I guess it never really went away for TNG.

There was a Season 2 episode that I thought made a good point on this... It was a planet that, as is so often the case, was going to have some kind of nature phenomenon that was going to kill all life on the planet. Picard had, as usual, decided that the Enterprise would sit in orbit and watch a few billion people die (FOR SCIENCE!) but not help because of the Prime Directive.

Well, later in the episode, a few of the main characters are gathered in a room to debate the issue. One or two characters felt like the Federation should do something to save the people, because they had the power to do so and lives would be saved. Picard asks "What if it were a war that was going to kill these people? Would we be right to interfere then?" And everybody looked kind of uncomfortable.

It was a good point, and I wish they'd have explored that more in later episodes. The Prime Directive was originally introduced as a way of protecting new races from having their development interfered with by the Federation. That's great, but I never understood how saving a populated planet, which would suffer a 100% casualty rate anyway, was somehow worse than letting them die to avoid a "contaminated" state. In fact, in the episode I Was just describing, the Enterprise did wind up saving the planet in a way that the locals never had any idea what happened. Billions saved, no cultural contamination, sounds like win/win to me...
"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool."
—Brigham Young

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus."
—Christopher Hitchens
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