TAS s1e8 “The Magicks of Megas-tu” and the sadly not real Star Trek: Voyager - The Animated Series
Kirk knows as well as any command officer, it’s more a vague recommendation.
TAS s1e8 “The Magicks of Megas-tu” and the sadly not real Star Trek: Voyager - The Animated Series
Kirk knows as well as any command officer, it’s more a vague recommendation.
Kirk didn’t give a shit about it, either.
See: a private little war.
Pretty sure the only captain who actually tried to follow the prime directive was Picard. And I’m also pretty sure that’s why he was sprained. If the enterprise and basically the face of Star fleet- including all the uh, recruiting materials… known as “the next generation”….
(Wait. I shouldn’t say that. It might give the army ideas.)
The first panel is a direct quote from that episode. Of course, it was said in order to show humanity had improved itself and prevent the crew from being executed. Dude’s got 17 temporal violations alone and who knows how many standard.
As for Picard, he may believe in the Prime Directive more than the others, but he’s just as much of a rebel. Admiral Satie in “The Drumhead” had some choice words:
In TOS, Kirk really didn’t hesitate all. They saw the Klingons were providing muskets and decided to just do it, ostensibly maintain social balance between two groups.
Why Klingons would provide earth-developed weapons is beyond me, but whatever. Kirk has zero coniptions about it- even if he does recognize that it’s wrong (“a hundred serpents for the garden.”)
As for Picard… I would suggest that the prime directive is bullshit, anyhow. Like the non-intervention and no-tech-sharing stuff. It seems more likely to be designed to prevent federation tech from getting into the wrong hands.
Or at least the good stuff likely to be on a feddie warship.