Honestly the episode Dear Doctor shoots that prospect straight out the airlock for me. Condemning a whole species to extinction because it, let me check the notes here, “wouldn’t be ethical”. Now the living conditions between the Valakians and the Menk are sure as shit not anywhere close to good, that much I can agree with. But let’s even get into how the episode states that wouldn’t be ethical to cure the Valakians of a genetic disease that they somehow evolved into, the reason given is that the Menk are about to have a ‘evolutionary leap’ but will only have it if the Valakians go extinct. Yes a straight up appeal to letting nature/god sort it out, and that interfering in a alleged cosmic plan would be oh so horrible a sin to commit. Good god I hate this episode, and I hate how it’s the origin story for the prime directive.
If it wasn’t any indication, I hate Prime Directive episodes from TNG onwards, especially the ones that seem to make the high ranking characters of the shows all of a sudden afraid of consequences from out of nowhere for no discernible reason.
Honestly the episode Dear Doctor shoots that prospect straight out the airlock for me. Condemning a whole species to extinction because it, let me check the notes here, “wouldn’t be ethical”. Now the living conditions between the Valakians and the Menk are sure as shit not anywhere close to good, that much I can agree with. But let’s even get into how the episode states that wouldn’t be ethical to cure the Valakians of a genetic disease that they somehow evolved into, the reason given is that the Menk are about to have a ‘evolutionary leap’ but will only have it if the Valakians go extinct. Yes a straight up appeal to letting nature/god sort it out, and that interfering in a alleged cosmic plan would be oh so horrible a sin to commit. Good god I hate this episode, and I hate how it’s the origin story for the prime directive.
If it wasn’t any indication, I hate Prime Directive episodes from TNG onwards, especially the ones that seem to make the high ranking characters of the shows all of a sudden afraid of consequences from out of nowhere for no discernible reason.