Star Trek’s Biggest Prime Directive Violation Hiding In Plain Sight?

By Chris Snellgrove
| Revealed 16 seconds in the past

One of many stranger and extra memorable early episodes of Star Trek: The Subsequent Era is “Samaritan Snare,” wherein the Enterprise-D crew learns that no good deed goes unpunished. They assist the comparatively primitive Pakled aliens with their ship solely to comprehend that these slow-witted aliens are dangerously nefarious after they kidnap the ship’s chief engineer. There’s rather a lot happening on this wild episode, a lot that you simply may not discover one thing bizarre: your complete plot is predicated round a big violation of the Prime Directive involving serving to the primitive Pakled aliens.

Violating The Prime Directive In Samaritan Snare

“Samaritan Snare” seemingly explains that the Pakleds are so primitive because of them being a pre-warp civilization. Nonetheless, later episodes and movies (together with the superb First Contact film) emphasize that the Federation tries to keep away from contact with alien cultures till they develop warp expertise, successfully making them a part of the galactic community.

Due to this fact, any communication with the Pakleds could be a violation of the Prime Directive, and the Enterprise crew arguably makes issues worse by fixing their ship and even offering them with superior expertise.

Because the Enterprise crew discovers in “Samaritan Snare,” the Pakleds are successfully harmful scavengers, utilizing their obvious helplessness (they sound extraordinarily dim every time they attempt to talk) to safe help from different alien cultures.

On this case, the aliens kidnap George La Forge, who was initially despatched to their vessel to assist make some fundamental repairs. They attempt to coerce him into constructing weapons for them, and we uncover that the aliens at all times do that with others they encounter, stealing expertise to make themselves stronger like some type of backward Borg wannabes.

As a result of they’re each very intelligent boys, Riker and La Forge work out some intelligent bluffs to defeat the Pakleds and save the day. The issue, nevertheless, is that the majority of those occasions in “Samaritan Snare” might have been prevented by the Starfleet officers following their very own Prime Directive. The Pakleds are a pre-warp civilization, and whereas it’s by no means solely clear how this explicit group obtained to area within the first place, Federation rules make it clear that such primitive aliens needs to be prevented for fears of tradition air pollution.

The Prime Directive Modifications In Star Trek

Now, the obvious reply as to why this big Prime Directive violation stays within the completed episode is that Star Trek’s writers and producers had been nonetheless navigating precisely how that directive labored and will have modified since Kirk’s time. They had been nonetheless figuring fairly a number of issues out by season 2 of The Next Generation, which is why Wesley Crusher infamously mentions the Klingons becoming a member of the Federation in “Samaritan Snare,” a historic occasion later revealed to have by no means really occurred. 

Unhealthy Writing

The opposite doubtless motive for this Prime Directive error is that (as Trek author Dennis Russell Baile later identified) virtually all the things in “Samaritan Snare” is pushed by “fool plotting.” It makes little sense for the Enterprise to ship their chief engineer to repair galactic automotive issues, and it makes even much less sense for Riker to outright ignore Troi’s warnings that La Forge is in peril.

Picard can be in search of coronary heart surgical procedure from a Starbase the place, as Bailey stated, “nobody was certified to deal with the operation if it went in any respect improper,” so the Prime Directive violation is only a drop within the stupidity bucket.

This was hardly Star Trek’s first large Prime Directive violation, and it most actually wasn’t the final. However “Samaritan Snare” is such a goofy enjoyable episode that it’s simple for informal followers to miss its evident plot issues. Not us, although…because the Pakleds may say, “we search for plot holes to make us go!”