I never got how past TOS every Star Trek writer seems to treat the Prime Directive as some sort of sacred edict rather than the anti imperialist screed it actually is. TOS was made in the Cold War where Russia, the USA, and other countries were basically playing tug of war with smaller countries to their detriment, so writer Gene L. Coon came up with the idea that Starfleet should not do that, that civilizations should be allowed to develop on their own without being used as catspaws by more powerful entities.
The problem is that somewhere along the line this got lost and it turned into “these people are all going to die but saving them would violate the Prime Directive”. Like yeah you should save people from dying, just don’t do it in a way that makes them your client state!
There's a critical bit of context that a lot of contemporary discussions of Star Trek's Prime Directive are missing: at the time The Next Generation was being written, there was this popular notion in white leftist circles – and, in particular, in white leftist science fiction – that colonialism was the more or less automatic product of contact between "primitive" and "advanced" civilisations. It wasn't something intentional, it wasn't even really anybody's fault; that the "primitive" civilisation would be subsumed, and ultimately destroyed, by the "advanced" one was framed as something that just sort of happened.
Consequently, the idea that ethical spacefaring civilisations would need to have strict rules about who they were and were not allowed to contact in order to avoid accidentally Doing A Colonialism was seen as an unquestioned truth in a lot of mainstream science fiction from that era. Star Trek didn't originate the idea – the Prime Directive is just Star Trek's particular spin on it. To its small credit, Star Trek does back away from the more nakedly racist iterations of the trope by tying it to the development of a specific, fictional technology (i.e., the warp drive) rather than pop-anthropological notions of "primitiveness", but it's not really challenging the basic premise.
The entire notion is, of course, complete bullshit, but I think it's necessary to understand the context it's coming from if you want to properly appreciate exactly how much bullshit it is.
Gamma quadrant wormhole more like prime directive loophole
I swear I love Picard as much as the next guy, but something about Sisko's nonchalant approach to Starfleet rules and regulations is very appealing to me
There are no cisgender men on the entire planet who would actually be harmed by people mistakenly thinking he is an egg.
Zero.
That is not a structural oppression that exists.
If you think it is in any way a “bad” thing for cis men to be considered maybe a trans woman and offered help by trans women, then you are just a conservative bigot who believes being mistaken for a woman is the worst thing that could happen to a cis man.
What people call “the egg prime directive” is literally just transmisogyny in a trenchcoat. Stop your bullshitting.
I would rather every single cis man on the planet be mistaken for a trans woman (gasp oh no!!) before i would ever prefer a trans woman never hearing about being transgender, never knowing it was something she was allowed to do.
Cis men can fuck off and snivel in a corner somewhere. Trans women’s right to existence is worth multiple magnitudes more than the utter refusal of the queer “community” to ever even accidentally call a cis man a girl.
I recently rewatched Equinox, and I like to joke that Janeway is never wrong but in Equinox it’s very clear that the episode is telling the audience that Janeway has gone too far.
As I was rewatching the episode looking for the things that I would have done differently if I was Janeway, I realised that I actually genuinely thought she was right in these episodes.
Let’s start with the first criticism of her, that she pulls rank on Captain Ransom and is hypocritical towards him. That’s some good ol’ sexist bull if you ask me because she is very kind and welcoming towards the Equinox crew at first, calling them new family. She only pulls rank as a last resort when Captain Ransom makes a decision that’s genuinely nonsensical.
If you could only save one ship from unknown lethal alien attacks, then you would save the ship that is superior in every way. Why should she spare the ego of one man if it means that they could all be killed? Janeway would leave Voyager behind if the roles were reversed, in fact she would probably volunteer to blow up her ship for good measure.
Before that, when Janeway’s on the Equinox, Ransom asks her if she’s ever broken the prime directive, to which she responds that she never has but that she’s bent it a bit. This answer makes a lot of people accuse her of being hypocritical, but as far as she’s concerned she’s never broken the spirit of the Prime Directive. When Ransom responds that he’s toed the line, she responds with compassion and admiration for him and his crew instead of judgment.
During Janeway’s confrontation with Ransom, when she learns about the murders of the nucleogenic life forms and the future murders that the Equinox crew plan on doing to get home, some people point out the hypocrisy of Janeway being so angry at Ransom when she herself has caused a lot more deaths. Whilst this is technically true, this argument ignores the context of the whole show basically.
Voyager is in the Delta quadrant because Janeway chose to sacrifice their way home in order to save an alien society. The most questionable action that Janeway took, which resulted in countless lives lost, was the creation of the biological weapon that killed species 8472. The action itself is immoral, but these aliens were threatening to wipe out all life in the galaxy so this action had justifiable moral motive beyond the personal gain of getting home. Also, whilst aiding one side in a war does make you responsible, it’s very different from starting a war. Equinox started a war without any provocation or reason that wasn’t purely selfish.
The nucleogenic life forms were no threat to the Equinox crew, and for all Ransom’s talk of accidentally killing one when they summoned and captured it, why did they trade for a summoning device from the Ankari and create technology to capture the nucleogenic life forms in the first place if the intent wasn’t to coerce the nucleogenic life forms somehow?
I can only conclude that Ransom’s intention was always to sample some of the nugleogenic alien’s tissue somehow, even if he didn’t think it would result in the murder of these aliens. I love that Ransom was a famous exobiologist, because he’s definitely the sort of scientist who only asks if he could, and not if he should. His background of dispassionate examinations of aliens has literally caused him to dehumanise them, and the murders of these aliens are only done for the personal gain of getting back home.
When the Equinox escapes, Janeway is intent on finding the ship and it’s framed like an obsession. This annoys me because it’s genuinely the only course of action that makes sense when you consider the fact that Janeway not only wants to bring this crew to justice but also wants to prevent future murders. Of course, there are the murders of the nucleogenic life forms that the Equinox will carry out to get back to Earth, but then there are also all the lives that will be lost if the Equinox brings an interdimensional war back to Earth.
Chakotay is framed as being the reasonable one, because he wants Voyager to contact the Ankari instead of chasing the Equinox, but he’s motivated by wanting to keep Voyager safe. Janeway is framed as having this personal agenda and being selfish for pursuing the Equinox but she’s actually being selfless by putting their safety second to the safety of the nucleogenic life forms and also basically everyone on Earth.
Imagine if Voyager had turned around and gone back to the Ankari homeworld like Chakotay suggested. Then the Equinox could have had the chance to cause all this death and destruction. Contacting the Ankari is correct, and when Chakotay finds out that there’s an Ankari ship nearby Janeway agrees to contact them. Janeway does not agree to go 50 light years in the wrong direction because it makes NO SENSE and is a bad suggestion. The episode doesn’t mention it, but it’s a journey that would take Voyager at least one month to make.
The action that I find most wrong is Janeway’s method of extorting information from Noah Lessing. Note that I wrote most wrong, because I do not think this action is wrong in context. Janeway needs this information to prevent countless deaths, and Lessing is refusing to give it to her. Even if you forget that he’s done nothing to stop the previous murders his crew committed, he’s now enabling future murders and acting like it’s the righteous thing to do because he’s loyal to his captain.
Nazis were loyal to Hitler, but that’s not treated like some virtue yet Chakotay THE MAQUIS defends Lessing for being loyal to his Captain. Umm ok, that doesn’t make any sense. It makes even less sense because then he’s disloyal to his own Captain by refusing her direct orders which is just infuriating. What about the loyalty that you cared so much about moments ago Chakotay?
As Janeway says, if Lessing does not help put a stop to these murders then he will face poetic justice. These nucleogenic aliens have every right to want Lessing and his crew dead and simply not stopping the aliens from justifiably killing him isn’t wrong. Protecting Lessing and anyone else from the Equinox when they committed these murders and put the whole Voyager crew in danger, is generous but it’s not the moral thing to do. If Chakotay thinks it is, then why was he a Maquis in the first place? He’s obviously used questionable means to fight for justice before, so why is he such a moral absolutist now?
Chakotay steps in and saves Lessing, going directly against Janeway’s orders, but I think a very important fact to note is that she doesn’t relieve him of duty here when any other Captain would have relieved an officer for openly defying orders. Janeway only relieves Chakotay of duty when he makes it very clear in her ready room that he will continue defying her orders, and at that point what would you have Captain Janeway do? He’s already potentially jeopardised their mission once.
When Janeway threatens to relieve Tuvok of duty, it’s meant to be a sign to the audience that she has truly lost it, but she’s doing it because Tuvok is contradicting her in the middle of a very important deal being made with these nucleogenic aliens. He seems to believe that the aliens should accept the penal system of the federation, but why should they? It’s completely illogical, and also it goes against the Prime Directive because the crimes that Starfleet officers commit against other alien cultures should be tried by the alien culture’s penal system.
Captain Picard clearly believes that Starfleet officers should face the penal systems of the cultures where they commit crimes, and why should Captain Janeway have a different opinion in this case? If the nucleogenic aliens want to kill the Equinox crew as punishment for murder in accordance with their laws, it’s well within their right to enact this capital punishment according to federation law. This is not me condoning capital punishment by the way, but Janeway doesn’t have the right to decide how these nucleogenic life forms enact justice and she knows it. Tuvok, however, apparently needed a reminder…
Anyway, Janeway is only in the wrong from a moral perspective if you don’t value the nucleogenic life forms as much as humanoid life forms, which makes no sense because the episode makes it very clear that they are sentient life forms too. Also that opinion isn’t compatible with Star Trek’s philosophy but I digress. I feel like the discussions about this episode would be very different if these aliens looked more like humanoids. If Janeway was murdering Occampa and using their blood to fuel Voyager’s journey home that would clearly be evil and wrong, and no one would be defending her like some people defend Ransom.
Janeway is only in the wrong from a tactical perspective if she had known that the Equinox EMH was onboard and that vital information about Voyager has been stolen by the Equinox crew. No one on Voyager knew about this, so from their point of view tracking and capturing the Equinox should have been easy and not something that would put the whole ship at risk. The fact that it wasn’t easy, and the fact that Voyager gets so damaged in the process of trying to capture the Equinox, doesn’t make Janeway any less right about how important it was to capture the Equinox.
I love this two parter episode because there’s so much to talk about in it, but it’s annoying when it’s so clear that the writers want me to see Janeway as someone who’s in the wrong when the facts of the episodes actually show that she’s right and also the most principled person onboard. Chakotay and Tuvok are presented as reasonable but they don’t actually have very good arguments to back up their oppositions to Janeway’s actions.
I wish the episodes had brought up the risk of bringing this interdimensional war to the alpha quadrant, and I wish Chakotay had better arguments or wasn’t framed as the voice of reason in these episodes, but at the end of the day it doesn’t ruin the episodes for me. Also, I almost forgot about this but why does Chakotay not give a damn about rescuing Seven? Pursuing the Equinox just to rescue Seven would be justifiable in and of itself, and it would also be 100% in character for Captain Janeway.
Captain Janeway did nothing wrong in Equinox. I rest my case.
I added some pictures because this is such a long and dense text post.
