#Prime directive rpg pc races tv#
History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes … no matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."Įntrenching such a philosophy in a mainstream American TV series, and in the midst of the biggest escalation of the Vietnam War, was a bold move. Kirk, "a starship captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive." To which his successor, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, adds: "The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules it is a philosophy … and a very correct one. It is, in fact, quite drastic: Starfleet personnel must respect it even if it costs them their lives. The Prime Directive bans the deployment of superior technology (military or otherwise) for the purposes of interfering with any community, any people, or any sentient species. The beauty of the Prime Directive is that it cuts through this labyrinth of confusion and deception: the invader's motives, good or bad, matter not one iota. It dramatizes brilliantly the manner in which top-down high-tech invasions planned in advance to save an "inferior" people from themselves can only lead inexorably to the nauseating lies, crimes, and cover-ups of the sort we encounter in the Pentagon Papers or Wikileaks. For example, were the US invasions of Vietnam or Afghanistan motivated by good intentions, whether containing totalitarianism or saving women from radical Islamists? Or were those intentions invoked to provide political cover for cynical economic or strategic motives? Were they wrong because the US forces were defeated? Or would they have been wrong even in victory? Military escapades always entail a variety of separate issues, making it hard to have a rational debate about their merits.
#Prime directive rpg pc races series#
Having remained central to the Star Trek series to this day, the Prime Directive is even more pertinent now. Johnson was sending another 100,000 troops into Vietnam, the Prime Directive constituted a direct, though well-camouflaged, ideological challenge to what the US government was up to. Entitled " The Return of the Archons," the episode marks the debut of the Prime Directive – the supreme law of the fictional United Federation of Planets, and its Starfleet, banning any and all purposeful interference with alien people, civilizations, and cultures. On February 9, 1967, hours after the US Air Force pounded Haiphong Harbor and several Vietnamese airfields, NBC television screened a politically momentous episode of Star Trek.