Star Trek:TNG "Symbiosis" (S1E23)

Oh, geez. I forgot about this episode until now. Welcome to the 80's, ladies and gentlemen, and the peak of the War On Drugs. All we needed in this episode was Nancy Regan appearing as some alien diplomat to deliver a "Just Say No" speech.

I did love the opening bit with Picard trying to communicate with the alien ship. From beginning to end, it reminded me of 90% of the calls I have to take while working the IT Help Desk at work. I might have to go back and watch that section over again.

As with the last episode, their allegorical message was delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer upside the head. The drug dealers were pimped out in the finest in 80's silver and gold lamé; the druggies were in their finest homeless apparel. The episode reached its zenith with that painful PSA that masqueraded as a scene on the bridge, with Wesley being all doe-eyed and innocent, and Tasha the world-weary expert on drug addiction. It's only too bad Wil hasn't written the "Memories of the Future Part II" book yet, because I'd love to hear his thoughts on this scene.

I did kind of like that in TOS, Kirk would've probably said to hell with the prime directive, but here, Picard not only stayed solidly in line with it, he even used it to the advantage of the druggies.

Bryanmc said:

I'm finally caught up with you guys. The entire Prime Directive direction that Next Gen takes really bugs me. I think in the novels it's particularly clear that the Prime Directive applies to pre-warp societies (with First Contact being forbidden before warp as well). But in several Next Gen episodes they seem to not be able to help anyone, except for the times when they break it of course.

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1. The novels aren't canon and I don't know why you'd get that impression from that.

2. Yes, Kirk played fast and loose with it but there are hints in TOS that it doesn't apply just to Pre-Warp cultures.
While Capellans of Friday's Child may or may not have been Pre-Warp (certainly they knew about advanced civilizations), there were concerns expressed about interfering with their local customs and taboos (not that it stopped Kirk).

And in the Cloud Minders, Plasus threatened Kirk with reporting him for violating the Prime Directive on Ardana, a full member of the Federation.

(David Gerrold tells an interesting story on how his solution to the problem was originally written.
He had Kirk take a phaser, point it at the two opposing leaders and go,
"You, sit there."
"You, sit there."
"Now talk."
The point being that he didn't solve their problem for them, he just got them on the road to solving their problem.)

It would seem to me that it would have to apply to FTL cultures as well, otherwise Starfleet could endorse Spock's brother in his bid for Vulcan Congress (if he had a brother, of course).

doom1701 said:

It seems that the big "Prime Directive" talk diminishes after the first season. I think that was another one of those Roddenberry things.

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How soon you forget their Non-interference in the Klingon Civil War.

Their walking away from the Super Soldier incident on Angosia III.

The incident of Ambassador Kell and leaving him to Governor Vagh (heck, they were there to show they were not violating the Prime Directive by supplying arms to the rebels).

Their letting the Borallans die when their atmosphere was destroyed even though they could have saved them.
(That one really bothered me.)