Summary
- Star Trek: Discovery season 5 shows the Prime Directive creates more harm than good due to outdated societal norms.
- Almost always, Starfleet captains break the Prime Directive to favor compassion and help others.
- In the 32nd century, the Prime Directive is deemed outdated and unnecessary for Starfleet's exploration.
Star Trek: Discovery season 5 proves that Star Trek's Prime Directive is essentially useless. In Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 6, "Whistlespeak", written by Kenneth Lin and Brandon Schultz, and directed by Chris Byrne, the hunt for the Progenitors' technology brings Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Lieutenant Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) to the planet Halem'no, where Denobulan scientist Hitoroshi Kreel installed five weather stations to help Halem'no's naturally arid climate flourish. Due to lack of regular maintenance by the pre-warp Halem'nites, only one station remains operational, so Burnham and Tilly must retrieve the clue and fix the station without breaking the Prime Directive.
By dictating a policy of non-interference with species that haven't discovered warp drive, Star Trek's Prime Directive stories ask Starfleet captains to choose between law and compassion, and compassion almost always wins. For example, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' series premiere, Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) eschews the Prime Directive entirely to save the planet Kiley 279 from a nuclear holocaust by revealing their similarities to Earth's own troubled past. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) respects the Prime Directive, but in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 2, episode 15, "Pen Pals", a young girl's plea for help convinces Picard to save an entire planet.
Star Trek's Prime Directive Exists To Be Broken
Burnham makes the same call as previous Star Trek captains.
Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 6, "Whistlespeak", follows the patterns of Picard, Pike, and previous Prime Directive Star Trek episodes when Starfleet captains listened to their consciences, as Captain Michael Burnham proves that the Prime Directive actually does more harm than good. Kreel meant well by installing the Halem'no weather stations, but the Prime Directive prevented explaining how they worked, so after the stations failed, the Halem'nites doubled down on sacrificing their own people to appease their gods. Burnham explains the technology that brings rain to Halem'no requires maintenance, and puts a stop to needless living sacrifices -- including Lieutenant Tilly.
There doesn't need to be any conflict between Starfleet's rules and Star Trek 's own humanitarian message
Star Trek's Prime Directive only exists to create narrative tension, and almost always winds up broken, because Star Trek's moral stance favors helping others over strict adherence to the rules. The Prime Directive implies that knowledge of advanced technology will affect a society's natural evolution negatively, but there's little evidence that the implication is actually true. Most pre-warp societies in Prime Directive stories actually benefit from outside influences, when advanced technology solves relatively simple problems for alien societies in earlier stages of development. There doesn't need to be any conflict between Starfleet's rules and Star Trek's own humanitarian message. The answer is always the same: help people.
The Prime Directive Is Outdated in Star Trek's 32nd Century
Starfleet should abolish the 900-year-old "non-interference" rule.
In Star Trek: Discovery's 32nd century, the Prime Directive doesn't hold up as a guiding principle for Starfleet's exploration of space. Although ostensibly invented to protect fledgling alien societies, the Prime Directive also served to protect Starfleet itself in a time when Starfleet was still learning about the worlds they came in contact with. 900 years later, the galaxy is very different, with more charted worlds and less need for hand-holding from outdated guidelines. Starfleet could trust its leaders to decide individually, and in each circumstance, whether to intervene, creating more interesting stories that rely on characters' inner values, and not on law vs. morals to determine what's right.
Defining societies' technological capabilities is also more difficult in a galaxy that survived the Burn, which rendered warp-capable ships useless, and saw that post-warp societies reverted to earlier means of survival, looking a lot like the pre-warp civilizations that the Prime Directive tried to protect. As the Federation tries to rebuild in the 32nd century, sources for new perspectives shouldn't be overlooked. After all, Star Trek: Discovery's Ambassador Saru (Doug Jones) came from pre-warp Kaminar and proved to be a valuable Starfleet officer. With centuries of wisdom earned after the Prime Directive's inception, Star Trek: Discovery proves that Starfleet could easily do away with a useless Prime Directive.
