io9
The cardinal rule in the Star Trek universe is the Prime Directive, which forbids the super-advanced Federation from interfering with the development of less-advanced cultures. Of course every crew breaks it regularly, but some crews have broken it more than others. Since Star Trek often tries to make reference to current U.S. politics, we decided to see if there was a relationship between these imaginary violations and what the US was doing in the world. Click through for a comparison of U.S. overseas troop levels and Star Trek's meddling, which may surprise you.
As you can see, Trek's crews have always treated the Prime Directive like a speed limit on the Interstate. But the high point of Prime Directive violations was the late 1990s, which surpassed even the late 1960s of Kirk's cowboy-ism.
At the same time, the United States was reducing its troop presence around the world. Why did Starfleet start interfering more, even as America was throwing less of its weight around? The late 1990s was an era of military spending cutbacks and base closures, when the U.S. seemed to be less influential without the threat of the Soviet Union to rally our own citizens, let alone our allies.
I know what you're going to say: It's all down to Star Trek: Voyager's Captain Janeway and her "anything goes" approach. But first of all, Janeway's not the only culprit. Ben Sisko on Deep Space Nine also played fast and loose with the Directive more in the late 1990s than in its earlier seasons. And the Federation also threw its non-interference principles out the window, in different ways, in both 1998's Star Trek: Insurrection and 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis.
But also, consider that Voyager is a metaphor for the U.S.' more confusing situation after the Cold War. Instead of being one superpower facing another (like the Klingons, Romulan or Borg) suddenly the Voyager is isolated in a quadrant full of independent players, each of whom has its own agenda. Just as the Soviets were replaced with Bosnians, Serbs and Kosovans and the U.S. had to form alliances to deal with messy situations, Voyager faces a bunch of warring races and Janeway has to strike deals with different races to escape in one piece.
All of which makes us wonder: If Star Trek were on the air as a television show now, and it took place during an era where the Directive applied, would we see fewer violations? After all, U.S. troop levels in other countries have rebounded, and we're once again involved in a massive confrontation overseas. Would a 24th century Trek step more lightly around the galaxy, to counterbalance the United States' greater use of force?
Illustration by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.
Comments
Oh, wait! I know this one!
*clears throat*
Yes.
oh, man. Star Wars on spyke tonight!!!!, oh wait, (re-reads article) oh, yeah I guess star trek is cool. maybe
If Trek really reflected the US Political situation, it'd be a Mirror Universe series with the Terran Empire bogged down in an attempt to conquer and occupy Cardasia and everyone else in the Galaxy finding ways to take advantage of the power vacuum. The Romulans would be supplying the Terran Empire with money for the war, anticipating that when the Empire falls, they can move in and clean up. Meanwhile the Klingons point and laugh, while picking off colonies along the Neutral zone. And the Andorians and Vulcans would be withdrawing all of their ill-advised support for the Empire and looking to matters at home, as waves of Cardasian emigrants and refugees sweep across the galaxy, makign a mess of Bajor in the process.
@Gyrus: Wait, I thought the Klingons would be reluctantly allied with us, saying things like "Well even though we support the Terrans generally we don't really like what they're doing on Cardassia -- let's have another meeting of the Federation of Planets where we condemn their activities."
@Gyrus: Wow... That'd make a great movie!
@Gyrus: So Vulcans = The British? Hm.
I love these infographics.
The question is, is the Federation ruled by a not so secret cabal of corrupt monopolists who will use the military to achieve a state of "non-interference"?
You see, it would be very easy to argue that the Federation as the "unbiased and fair" ruling body is obligated to make the universe safe for emerging civilizations. It's their duty to ensure that no other forces seek to exploit the people of less technologically advanced worlds, even if it requires military action. (as it has in many cases).
...And if Federation leaders should profit form these actions, only a treacherous cynic would insinuate that that was the goal all along.
...And should the directive be violated, one must look at the larger picture. After all, it's the Federations job to ensure that civilizations are allowed to prosper in an ethical environment. We can't focus on the small things, such as the price of dylithium crystals or inter-species bonding rights...
That is a cool graphic, but all it shows is a lack of correlation between star trek prime directives violations and troops over seas.
The troops graph looks like a downward sloping line...
The prime directive graph looks like a u shape.
Now geopolitical instability and danger correlates fairly well with that plot of prime directive violations. Which is what the article talks about..
The Prime Directive is more of a guideline, anyways.
@B:
heh. "And just remember this as the day you ALL MOST vaporized CAPTAIN...James T. Kirk!"
Hmm... I think I may see some correlation (though I doubt it's statistically significant. But like many such graphs (e.g. hemlines vs. stocks) it's only a correlation. To see it as cause and effect is definitely magical thinking.
Very nice graphic, Stephanie. Any way to show which Captain is involved in the violations of a particular year? I think there's more information buried in their (captains with hair vs. without hair?).
@B: Maybe it should be renamed "The Prime Suggestion". Lovely graphic.
@foolish-rain: So this correlation you see it is what? The highest level of violation was in a year when there were 1.4 Mil troops over seas.
The closest thing to a correlation would be attempting to show that decrease of troops has an effect, except that the 60s points don't support that or do the points after say 1999 (allowing for some lagging effect) in 2000 we have the second highest rate of violations and troop levels have been flat for 5 years...
Plus the biggest single year drop .2 Mil (1991-92) has no violations.
@foolish-rain: Thanks, glad you like the graphic!
"Any way to show which Captain is involved in the violations of a particular year? I think there's more information buried in their (captains with hair vs. without hair?)."
So, Janeway vs. all the other captains?
@Annalee Newitz: Depends on which era. TOS era Klingons were more opportunistic and underhanded. TNG era Klingons would have gone in, guns blazing but after five years, decided that it wasn't worth it and would be pulling out to pursue other, more honorable fights.
@Ed Grabianowski: The Vulcans would have advised The Terran Empire in sober terms not to go in the first place and then refused to help us out when things got bad. They would be like France or Germany. Or Poland or Sweden or the Canary Islands. Anyone, really.
This graph shows a correlation between the number of prime directive violations and the number of Star Trek shows on the air at the same time.
@Stephanie A Fox: Ah, but she changed her hairdo--long then short, no?
@DocGratis, @DanteDiablo: Shush, this is a science fiction blog.
@DanteDiablo: Actually, there were two ST shows on the air in the early 90s: DS9 and TNG. And there were almost no violations around that time.
I would just like to point out that the United Nations issues GUIDELINES not laws . . . oh wait I mean the United Federation of Planets . . . sigh
I'm not sure the correlation is a good one. I don't think it's the number of troops abroad that counts so much as what those troops are engaged in, in other words, the percentage in combat situations.
@Charlie Jane Anders: Nah, you'd want to reevaluate it, so it's like, average number of violations for all concurrent shows.
@Stephanie A Fox: Now that would be testosterone level, with Janeway at the high end and Archer at the low end.
Comment on Do Real-World Politics Affect Star Trek's Prime Directive? Nice piece. Rather than on total troop levels abroad (most of whom are usually in non-combat roles even during Vietnam), it may also be illustrative to plot Star Trek Prime Directive violations with years of *increasing* combat/war-zone activity. I'd have to research our activities in Somalia & Bosnia during the 90s but I'm reasonably sure that the late 60s saw much greater combat troop build-up in Vietnam than the overall military personnel number abroad would suggest.
@DocGratis:Invoking the well-known Kirk is an outlier rule, I would say that generally fewer troops abroad = increased prime directive violations (although it only has an r = 0.045 when I rough it out, so not major significance).
@Annalee Newitz: Your analogy breaks down there, because the UFP actually is a Federal government that makes binding laws, and can enforce them. The Articles of Federation are much more akin the the Constitution than the UN Charter.
Assuming a relationship, it would be interesting if there were a hypothetical control, so that we could see what the "default" amount of interference was.
Then we could tell whether it is that we are more interested in interfering in SF (even generally) when it seems less dangerous (or more adventurous because we aren't doing it in the real world) or whether it is that we are less interested in interfering when we see the dangers of interfering in the real world....or both.
All it would require is Star Trek episodes written by and consumed exclusively by people who have no interaction with and are therefore in no way influenced by the real world....wait a minute...
/runs off to graph internet Star Trek fan fiction
It's sci-fi. I'm not going to cite examples so take it as you will, but sci-fi has long made thinly-veiled political commentary, shielded from censorship and criticism by being "fantasy."
Given that, this is not really surprising, but it is cool to see it put into a graph.
The Prime Directive only applies to pre-warp native civilizations, so there was no violation in Star Trek: Insurrection, since the people on the planet weren't native to it, and had warp capability (and just chose not to use it).
Man, I'm a geek.
Number of troops abroad is a bad metric, as the US military moved away from direct soldiering in favour of bombing from a safe distance during that period.
Starfleet had protocols. The UFoP had laws.
Well, considering that Iraq is the ultimate lesson in the wisdom of a non-interference policy, any contemporary starship captain would probably be pretty strict about it.
On the other hand, Iraq has coincided with a general loss of American influence in the world, economically and militarily and culturally. If Prime Directive violations reflect a bit of wishful thinking nostalgia for a golden age of American influence, then maybe it would be the exact opposite. Guess we'll just have to get Trek back on the air to find out!
My Trekkie/history buff father suggests that the best way to do this may be to graph the number of troops in combat, as many of the troops we had stationed abroad weren't engaged in any combat activities. I didn't think of that. We'd probably see an increase in the '60s, with our Vietnam involvement stepping up.
@Nivair: I really think that just having troops stationed in a country, even if they're not actively fighting, is a sign of American power. The troops are making a statement by being there, and they're having all sorts of effects on the local political/strategic situation. Back when we were first invading Iraq, there was a rash of articles and books about the American Empire and how it was a good thing. One of the points ppl. made was that the Roman Empire mostly consisted of Roman garrisons, all over Europe and bits of Africa, keeping order and imposing Pax Romana. Even if the soldiers weren't fighting, they were having an effect.
@shadownode: I meant to respond to this earlier... it's true that the shape of warfare changed to favor air strikes during this time. But it's also true there were massive cutbacks and base closures. And troops on the ground in a foreign country have their own impact beyond just actual fighting (see comment above.)
The other fundamental problem with this chart is that the Prime Directive was always being redefined. I remember almost throwing things at the set during a TNG episode where the Enterprise was ordered to let a civilization die (due to its sun going nova or some such thing) rather than rescue anyone, because that would be violating the Prime Directive. (Of course, someone -- Riker, I think -- did it anyway, and the traditional hijinx ensued.) No one ever could explain to me how letting an entire planet full of people die was better than "interfering" by saving some of them.
And clearly I'm taking this waaaaay too seriously... When are we going to see the chart showing how Star Trek predicts the winner of the World Series?
@inconstant_reader: If you and I are thinking of the same episode (Homeward), it was Worf's brother Nikolai who interfered, not Riker.
I probably can't offer you an explanation of letting a planet die out instead of saving it, either. But if someone could examine the planning, manpower and resources needed to relocate the Borallans without their knowledge, and extrapolate the data to reflect an entire planet's population instead of a small village, I believe the results would show that undertaking missions like this on a regular basis would be an noticeable strain on the Federation's resources.
Sure, to cut down on that strain they could just transport small populations instead of entire planets. But then again, there are only so many planets in the charted universe, and only a small fraction of those which can support life (unless the Genesis Project is revived and the matrix stabilized, which would require more manpower and development to bring to fruition). Additional resources would have to be allocated to exploration and cataloging new planets capable of supporting life, and figuring out the quickest way to get a population from point A to point B.
And I'm pretty sure that "doubling up", or subdividing planets to allow multiple populations would be nixed from the get-go, out of fear of contamination of each group's individual culture should they cross the border into another group's territory (or, worst case scenario, different groups not getting along and going to war with each other, killing themselves off and making the entire move pointless).
In short, the Federation realizes that becoming the galaxy's moving company is simply too big a task for them to undertake. And though it's not the way they would like it to be, they have to step back and let the universe "take its course" with regards to pre-warp civilizations dying out before they can realize their full potential.
Comment on this post
Reply by EmailLogin with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?