Given that they all generally seem to get away with it, I wonder if it's actually more of a frequently bent or broken guideline than a strictly enforced law. Do we know if non-protagonist federation starship captains act and get away with similar?
Ehhh not really, it's a good policy to have for most cases, but it IS way too restrictive and there absolutely should be more flexibility.
For example, if a pre-warp civilization about to go extinct because of a giant ass asteroid. Not a whole lot of good protecting their culture is going to do when they're extinct.
But just giving a random pre-warp civilization replicator tech for funsies would be devastating. Just think, what would happen if aliens came and gave replicator tech to our current governments? They'd fucking replicator weapons or some shit.
if you could alleviate a large amout of suffering and death for a sentient species at little to no cost to yourself, would you?
If you can do that so trivially that it has no negative impact on you, and you do not do it, are you acting ethically?
The answers will be yes and no for most people. To me that makes it clear that neither the Prime Directive nor any kind of all-powerful deity can be moral, at least not humanly moral.
Amoral, maybe. I know it's dealt with in the lore, but I'd like to think someone at Starfleet read Roadside Picnic and thought, "well, we don't want that."
It's been a long ... time .. since I saw ENT, and I couldn't recall that episode, so I went and read a plot summary and still had a hard time recalling it.
The plot summary makes it seem, to me at least, like a very specific and constructed scenario to try to justify it ex-post-facto in canon.
My major issue with the directive is how general and unnuanced it is. Of course there are cases where you would not want to intervene because of some unique issue. To avoid helping for fear of potential futures is cowardly and unjustified, however.
When someone lies about helping, that's not what I am talking about.
This is a thought experiment based on a hyper advanced society capable of easily solving many problems. We don't have that and never have on this planet.