Remove ads

To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

Linked contents
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
Reader mode
I am confused by Captain Kith th'Risrath's actions. Did he intervene between two different factions of the same species or were the two groups different species? I could understand if it was two different species but not if it was the same species but different factions.
 
Anime_Fan35 said:
I am confused by Captain Kith th'Risrath's actions. Did he intervene between two different factions of the same species or were the two groups different species? I could understand if it was two different species but not if it was the same species but different factions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Different species, what with the physical differences and one being active only at night.
 
Anime_Fan35 said:
I am confused by Captain Kith th'Risrath's actions. Did he intervene between two different factions of the same species or were the two groups different species? I could understand if it was two different species but not if it was the same species but different factions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Two species on the same planet.

Which is what makes it an edge case for the Prime Directive.
 
So... can we get an "imminent existential threat" exemption to the PD yet?

The weakest point of the PD has always been the claim that we must, for their own sake, protect a species' right to develop themselves to extinction.

Few indeed are the loving parents who, desiring their child to grow up strong and self-reliant, would let their toddler be run over by a car. --E. Yudkowsky, Beyond the Reach of God
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Last edited:
The PD violation story was a great read! Thanks for the interesting perspective.

Is the speaker's race extraordinarily short lived? Seems like they went through several generations in one quarter, or else this story is actually being told quite a way into the future.
 
FeepingCreature said:
So... can we get an "imminent existential threat" exemption to the PD yet?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It implicitely already exists - that's when the mandatory board of inquiry comes to the conclusion that the violation was justified. Not putting it explicitely in the PD serves to stop misuse - as it is now, violating the PD will result in an inquiry, and then your reasoning will be judged.
 
It makes sense to make the PD an absolute rule with the understanding that there are mitigating circumstances... But they better be good and you will answer to a jury to prove it. Enumerating them could open up the door to true breaches.
 
MTB said:
It implicitely already exists - that's when the mandatory board of inquiry comes to the conclusion that the violation was justified. Not putting it explicitely in the PD serves to stop misuse - as it is now, violating the PD will result in an inquiry, and then your reasoning will be judged.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Forgothrax said:
It makes sense to make the PD an absolute rule with the understanding that there are mitigating circumstances... But they better be good and you will answer to a jury to prove it. Enumerating them could open up the door to true breaches.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I disagree with this. The point of laws is to formalize the lines of justice. Can you imagine any situation where a jury would justly decide that a species should have been allowed to get killed by an external imminent threat? I cannot. Since I can't, I don't see any reason to even permit this possibility. I think canon shows that it's quite conceivable for people to make monstrously wrong choices on the matter of the PD without legal guidance. If we don't want to let species to get killed by asteroids, especially given the viewpoint and skill diversity in captaincy we have, we should probably not keep a law on the books explicitly forbidding saving them.

Individual bravery and sane judgments are good stopgaps for bad laws, but they are not a substitute for good laws. If you keep having to break a law to make the right things happen, that's a sign that the law is broken.

And in any case, you can just convene a board of inquiry regardless. You can make a law saying that any PD situation will result in an inquiry without, de jure, outlawing species-saving from the get-go. All jokes about Kirk aside, the PD is not meant to just be a rough guideline, and if we can bring it in line with an evolved understanding of moral constraints, we should do that before a more insecure captain decides to stand by and permit genocide.
 
Last edited:
If you look back through the captains' logs history, you'll see that the TBGverse Prime Directive does indeed permit intervention to save prewarp species from outside threats. Usually, this can be done without interacting with them directly (any natural disaster of planetary scale is going to probably need an orbitally deployed solution anyway, etc), but not always. Extinction by warfare, on the other hand, is a trickier prospect for intervention.

Prewarps that are wiping themselves out through warfare, the Federation won't get involved.

Prewarps being wiped out by a warp-capable species, the PD doesn't apply since they're already effectively contacted. As you've seen a couple of times with the Hishmeri, Starfleet can and will intervene.

This case was an unusual one, since the genocidal war was between two pre-warp species and about to come to an end within the foreseeable future. There simply wasn't a clause in the PD to adress this, because it's not a situation Starfleet had run into until now.
 
Last edited:
Sarek log is interesting in that it's yet another reference to the mysterious mega-structures in that area of space. Can't help but feel there's a long term exploration plot with those things; someday we'll learn their significance.
 
Fair.
And no matter how well you might think that all alternatives have been covered, the universe is vaster still.

Also I think that part of the Federation tendency is to try not to write rules for situations that haven't come up yet. This allows a chance to learn from someone who has should such a group be met and then avoiding at least the same mistakes as another group.

Not all of them, progress is iterative, but at least some of the repeats.
 
FeepingCreature said:
I disagree with this. The point of laws is to formalize the lines of justice. Can you imagine any situation where a jury would justly decide that a species should have been allowed to get killed by an external imminent threat?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's why it's not a jury, but a committee of some kind. This is literally their job. Also, as I pointed out in another thread:
Gravitas Hunt said:
[T]here is evidence that it is possible to justify interference under some circumstances:
Article:
According to Rear Admiral Norah Satie on stardate 44769.2, Jean-Luc Picard had violated the Prime Directive a total of nine times since taking command of the USS Enterprise-D three and a half years prior, with Picard countering the argument by stating that, every time he had taken action to violate the Prime Directive, it had been done with careful thought and certainty that this was the right thing for him to do, also noting that he had provided Starfleet with full reports on his reasoning for taking that action after the fact.

Picard apparently has nine violations on record after three and a half years as captain of the Enterprise, but stays on for another 4, and gets given command of the E-E.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We've never seen the full text of the Prime Directive anyway. That could easily have qualifiers.
 
Leila Hann said:
We are to be the first Federation vessel invited to the Vermillion Connectivity homeworld, a planet whose name is best translated as "Spectrum."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Interesting! Feels like we've known them for a while for us to just be seeing their homeworld now.
Leila Hann said:
The Loop consists entirely of elderly, highly educated individuals who adhere to a philosophy of risk-averse conservativism.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh, great. Looking forward to dealing with that.
Leila Hann said:
This may be a faultline within Vermillion society that we will have to take into consideration during future interactions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It does sound like one.
Leila Hann said:
He had a pair of horns, as you see, and his skin was blue as the morning sky, his head-hair white like snow.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ah, an Andorian. Interesting.
Leila Hann said:
As if they came from a land with one hundred peoples
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As if indeed!
Leila Hann said:
[Gain +10 pp, Captain Kith th'Risrath of the USS Thirishar will face a mandatory board of inquiry for violation of the Prime Directive]
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sounds fair.
Leila Hann said:
My apologies to Captain Sorek for the deception from Theater Command.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Unfortunate, but probably necessary.
 
Forgothrax said:
It makes sense to make the PD an absolute rule with the understanding that there are mitigating circumstances... But they better be good and you will answer to a jury to prove it. Enumerating them could open up the door to true breaches.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's also worth pointing out that habitable planets don't grow on trees, so it's a big deal to gift one to a species/polity. (Well, we haven't found any planets that grow on trees yet.) :p
 
I have to admit, if that Vermillion Loop organization had done the same stunt with two ships from the Harmony of Horizon then they would have had a good chance to uncovering some of the mind control going on. There is a reason that the Harmony has been so wary of telepathic species.

It was pretty rough, but I can't say the paranoia and way they sprang this on us was unjustified.
 
Leila Hann said:
[+50 progress on Obsolete Technology tag with Vermillions]
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is a curious tag to improve the numbers on. A more paranoid meta-take is that the Vermillions used their touch-telepathy to learn ways to improve their technologies through the memories of touched crew.

A great bit of misdirection at the intel work. Too good a trick to not use again but also too good to be revealed by overuse.
 
Leila Hann said:
"He told us that he had been watching that land, from his own, and that though his fellow demons had forbid him to intervene, the suffering of our people had been too much. He took us to this place, where there was no one against whom we would have to fight for our existence, while the Lenk were left to prowl forever the caves we'd left behind, never to find us and finish their bloodthirsty work.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm not crying, you're crying.
Lovely and moving piece, this one.
 
Derpmind said:
It's the only tag the Vermillions have. They're 300/300 in generic diplomacy, so all progress goes to their tag. besides, we're actively improving their technology and stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I just assumed it was representative of one of the most major blocks of resistance to the massive societal and technological changes stepping aside.
 
Gravitas Hunt said:
That's why it's not a jury, but a committee of some kind. This is literally their job. Also, as I pointed out in another thread:

We've never seen the full text of the Prime Directive anyway. That could easily have qualifiers.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Also in all cases theres a reason you need a committee to vet PD violations: Laws are bad at accounting for edge cases, and PD violations are almost always edge cases. Fixed exceptions encourage people to warp the situation to fit the fixed exception.

The committee allows for a nuanced judgement, where not just the Why, but the How matters:
-Wholly justified - E.g. Prime Directive violated in the process of stopping a warp capable species from using a prewarp planet as a slave pinata, accomplished without being observed.
Captain gets off clean, may have a meritorious note.

-Justified, but improper execution - E.g. Prime Directive violated in the process of stopping a warp capable species from using a prewarp planet as a slave pinata, however, leading to an open firefight on the planet and significantly deviating the native culture.
Captain is censured, not because they did wrong, but because it needs to be made clear to take all possible efforts not to impact local culture.

-Weak justification, but executed well - E.g. Two prewarp sophont species engaged in a war of annihilation. Action taken to avoid extinction, defeated party evacuated from the planet and settled onto another.
What we have here. The justification is really problematic here, because aside from genetic differences the situation is pretty much identical to a species committed genocide on a subspecies/subrace of itself, and THAT is expressedly forbidden to intervene in.

I expect captain to keep his hat and chair, but be censured.
 
So, what are the odds the Akkley Consortium made an economic model based on the data we gave them, and decided to show up now while they were still in a relatively strong economic position? I imagine hearing about the 14 new ships rolling off the line turned a few heads even then.

Also, with the Federation actively hostile, the Ked Paddah serve as a block between the HoH and the Bolians/Morshadd Commune/Arcadian Empire, with Dreamer space being the only way to get to them directly without passing through Federation or Breen Space. Even then, the corridor is pretty narrow after getting past the Dreamers.
 
Last edited:
ilbgar123 said:
I imagine hearing about the 14 new ships rolling off the line turned a few heads even then.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Strictly speaking those Comets haven't rolled off the line yet; that'll happen in 12 months. Your point still stands, though.

The most alarming thing may be that we have entire navies worth of starships under construction, and it's still not enough for our needs.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top