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.

The mega-structure was almost certainly an attempt to divert the solar flares ejected by the Liseade-514 star away from the 7th planet. Not sure if there is a long term plot, but based on the evidence, the significance is clear:

Captain's Log, Stardate 24355.1, USS Sarek, Captain Jeanette Devereaux
(EC Excelsior, Corewards of ISC/Felis)

It's sad that a survey mission like this is seen as a break by much of the crew. We're orbiting the seventh planet of the Liseade-514 system. There's an M-class world here, but not one anyone would think to colonize. Liseade-514 flares too frequently, leading a horrible cycle of extinction on an otherwise pristine alpine world.

...

The "megastructure" is actually debris from a structure that used to orbit this system's sun tens of thousands of years ago.

...

The odds of this fragment falling into the seventh planet's atmosphere are astronomically low...

Likely the structure diverted the solar flares away from the planet, and so this action slowly pushed the failing structure towards the planet, as a result.
 
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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 can imagine that, in this case for example, the inquiry might come to the conclusion that intervention was justified, but that efforts should have been taken to reduce the cultural contamination.

Perhaps the relocated species could have all been rendered unconscious for travel.

Failing that, they could have been relocated by a volunteer surgically altered to look like one of their own (assuming holo- technology of 2326 isn't up to the task of supplying an appropriate image) to avoid providing explicit imagery of helpful alien intercession. (This might seem pointless, but consider what would happen if this species were to now or at some point later be stumbled upon by a slaver species like the Hishmeri; with a bit of observation to hear about this myth they could fake being a return of Kitroth's people to more easily entice the relocated species into slavery.)

Failing that, just asking them to leave out details from the story that they pass on through the generations could achieve the same result (assuming they complied).

An inquiry into a prime directive violation doesn't have to be about whether or not intervention was appropriate. It could also be about the methods employed and the degree that the immediacy of the danger was balanced against minimizing cultural contamination.

Which is not to say that this intervention was mishandled, or that Captain th'Risrath necessarily did anything wrong. Maybe relocating this species in a way that didn't carry this story would have created a cultural crisis of its own and this was really the best way. Or maybe the threat was more immediate than this retelling makes it seem; and the attack on their last holdout was imminent. Or maybe they were getting close to the minimum genetic diversity threshold for long term survival and the Captain judged an open intervention as a more likely means to rescue a diverse enough population to be sustainable after being relocated. Or maybe some other factor(s) were at play.

I think an inquiry is relevant here (and in other cases where a non-intervention would result in genocide) to ask whether there was enough time to try to find a better way, and whether a better way existed to be found.
 
I can imagine that, in this case for example, the inquiry might come to the conclusion that intervention was justified, but that efforts should have been taken to reduce the cultural contamination.

Perhaps the relocated species could have all been rendered unconscious for travel.

Failing that, they could have been relocated by a volunteer surgically altered to look like one of their own (assuming holo- technology of 2326 isn't up to the task of supplying an appropriate image) to avoid providing explicit imagery of helpful alien intercession. (This might seem pointless, but consider what would happen if this species were to now or at some point later be stumbled upon by a slaver species like the Hishmeri; with a bit of observation to hear about this myth they could fake being a return of Kitroth's people to more easily entice the relocated species into slavery.)

Failing that, just asking them to leave out details from the story that they pass on through the generations could achieve the same result (assuming they complied).

An inquiry into a prime directive violation doesn't have to be about whether or not intervention was appropriate. It could also be about the methods employed and the degree that the immediacy of the danger was balanced against minimizing cultural contamination.

Which is not to say that this intervention was mishandled, or that Captain th'Risrath necessarily did anything wrong. Maybe relocating this species in a way that didn't carry this story would have created a cultural crisis of its own and this was really the best way. Or maybe the threat was more immediate than this retelling makes it seem; and the attack on their last holdout was imminent. Or maybe they were getting close to the minimum genetic diversity threshold for long term survival and the Captain judged an open intervention as a more likely means to rescue a diverse enough population to be sustainable after being relocated. Or maybe some other factor(s) were at play.

I think an inquiry is relevant here (and in other cases where a non-intervention would result in genocide) to ask whether there was enough time to try to find a better way, and whether a better way existed to be found.
I also think an inquiry is relevant. I'm just saying, the board shouldn't have to keep saying "you breaking the law was justified.' That's a sign of a bad law.
 
As someone pointed out earlier, we actually have 20 Comets under construction - the 14 being crewed are those being built at Sol with the industry bonuses - there are 6 more at other yards that will be drawing crew in a few months ...

Edit:
I went through and totaled up what we have in the shipyards currently. (totaling was done by taking a copy of column from the online spreadsheet into excel then sorting)
In addition to the Comets:
8 Ambassadors
8 Rennie-A
11 Rennie-A refits
6 Envoy refits
3 Miranda-A refits (though 2 of them are at member yards)

plus what any minor power would consider as an entire fleet of non-combat vessels

Does any minor power even have 8 explorers? Are any of the known major powers actually able to build 8 new explorers at once?
Plus 19 cruisers being refitted and 8 new units.
 
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I also think an inquiry is relevant. I'm just saying, the board shouldn't have to keep saying "you breaking the law was justified.' That's a sign of a bad law.
Uh...thats not how inquiry committees WORK.
Inquiry committees factor in if a crime was committed.

Take a more mundane case:
-Event: Dude shot an intruder to death
-Charge: Murder
-Counterargument: Home defense scenario. Intruder was masked and environment was dark.
-Complicating factor: Intruder was unarmed burglar and had a feud with the accused

In which case the inquiry is to find out if there was actually a murder, if it was excused by the home defense scenario, and if they could have been construed to have lured the intruder in for the express purpose of killing them.
If not premediated murder there are still applicable lesser charges

Prime Direction violations are never straightforward, unless a starship literally flew in front of a prewarp telescope, theres a lot of complex factors to judge before you can determine if a crime was committed, and if it was, the level of offense could be anything from disciplinary action to dishonorable discharge.
 
Some people may remember the post that started the evil-Vulcan temporal incursion, where the Commander on the scene orders a Priority One signal to come to earth's aid and reflects that he was in for a mandatory board of inquiry, and Chekhov basically tells him you get used it.

What we are going with is a system where it is considered commensurate to the awesome powers invested in these officers that they be willing and able to justify the actions they undertake.
 
And I fully agree with that. I'm sorry if that was unclear. I'm not saying this shouldn't go before a board of inquiry.

I'm saying that, since I haven't seen any sign of it, I'm presuming the PD operates as in source canon, and I think we have collected enough cases of "PD violated, violation marked as justified by board" that I'd like to see an option to push towards adjusting the law regardless, even without dropping the inquiry requirement.
 
How without opening a can of worms?

Yeah changing the PD would be a major undertaking considering how enshrined it is and how murky the whole subject is. At the end of the day the PD, beyond the whole protecting/respecting others thing, from a practical and realist standpoint prevents captians from going off and basically turning prewarp civs into fiefs/subjects intentionally or not, for good or ill, and to help prevent the federation getting stuck investing in every prewarp it encounters in the name of good intentions. The federation is powerfull but not powerfull enough to pull that off to its own high standards. The best we should strive for is that captians recognize the PD is made to be broken and there are times where it should be broken , if it wasnt then the review board wouldnt exist at all and violators would just be punished according to law.
 
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My issue with the PD as currently written is that, if you have a captain that isn't willing to break it, then you get a species dying when they could have been saved. Janeway, for instance, would have left the nocturnal species to their death.
 
My issue with the PD is frankly I think the Federation gets way too antsy about "being seen". Strange shit in the night sky and odd stories about weird visitors are just par for the course in cultural development. Even if an industrial age society sees a starship with their telescope it's probably not *that* big a deal.

Just don't leave them a book about the Chicago mafia.

EDIT: To expand.

Cultural contamination is interacting and telling them things and trying to trade ideas with them in ways that might change them.

"There are aliens out there with FTL spaceships" is just letting them gather accurate knowledge about the universe with their astronomical instruments. One might say that them knowing there are advanced alien spaceships occasionally seen around is in the same vein as successfully seeing that quasars exist- it's just a fact about the universe that they deserve to be able to consider and come to their own conclusions about.
 
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The PD [...] from a practical and realist standpoint prevents captians from going off and basically turning prewarp civs into fiefs/subjects intentionally or not
It seems to me the mandatory review board part would do that just as well.

My issue with the PD as currently written is that, if you have a captain that isn't willing to break it, then you get a species dying when they could have been saved. Janeway, for instance, would have left the nocturnal species to their death.
That is my contention also. This is why I'd like to have at least an explicit exception for intervention against imminent external existential threats. That should cover asteroids and asteroid-like things without being too expansive.
 
The Federation more or less leaves contact to the point that people have to start thinking about their own take on the Prime Directive. (I'm not really convinced by the idea it's the point where it'd be too hard to maintain the illusion because you could make exclusion zones and use various stealth tricks to make it last longer.) Anything reachable by sublight, even by generation ship, can be reasonably well observed and it can be determined if something's over there; you have time to learn and make decisions on a case by case basis from what you learn because everything happens so slowly. Warp changes that, and you have to think about what your general stance on finding pre-warp cultures is going to be. "We left you alone, because we are no more perfect than you, and not fit to make such decisions for you or take such risks with you. We ask you in turn, should you find others, to leave them alone."
 
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I wonder if we're going to meet a non-humanoide race again soon. Maybe giant spiders that are actually very friendly once you figure out the infrasound that makes up half their language, just for the sheer 'Oh god why?!' most humans would have going on in their heads.
 
I wonder if we're going to meet a non-humanoide race again soon. Maybe giant spiders that are actually very friendly once you figure out the infrasound that makes up half their language, just for the sheer 'Oh god why?!' most humans would have going on in their heads.

We already met the undead.

No literally we did.
 
Strange shit in the night sky and odd stories about weird visitors are just par for the course in cultural development.

Says the Human. It's pretty much Trek canon that humans had a bunch of extra-terrestrial and extra-temporal visitors screwing around all throughout history. :p

Joking aside, I do agree with you. In terms of IRL comparison, cargo cults aren't good in any measure but they haven't nearly had the immense historical impact of, for example, introducing Smallpox and other diseases to the western hemisphere. Prime Directive related ethics should be more concerned with preventing genocide and occupation than preventing cultural contamination. (Not to downplay the evils of the latter, but that usually comes after a lot of people died first...)
It's funny you should say that...

Giant alien spiders are no joke! /FTL
 
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Yeah, I remember the Reborn, but I want a more mundane horrifying race that's perfectly friendly.

I want a mundane horrifying race that's aggressive and unpredictable, setting off every fear instinct humans have as they careen around, and even after you get to know them the thought of having to deal with them causes well-deserved dread.

No more sweet and nice monsters!
 
I want a mundane horrifying race that's aggressive and unpredictable, setting off every fear instinct humans have as they careen around, and even after you get to know them the thought of having to deal with them causes well-deserved dread.

No more sweet and nice monsters!

So, Orks. They're bigger than you, stronger than you, faster than you, tougher than you, and if you reattach their head after it gets cut off, they'll be no worse for wear, they'll rip your arms off because they're honestly curious what sound you'll make, and they'll wage war on everyone just because they literally can't conceive of anything else.
 
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