Worf killing Gow'ron (who did nothing wrong) was a Starfleet color revolution.
Now that I think about it, Worf killed two Klingon leaders and their deaths resulted in governments favorable to Federation interests. If I lived in the future of Star Trek, I'd think he was some kind of Federation CIA asset.
But even if that's the case, it's really the stupid Klingons' fault for having a governmental system where the head of state can be killed in a fucking duel. If it's that easy, they really have regime change coming to them. The Klingons are too dumb to have a space empire tbh.
The Klingons are too dumb to have a space empire tbh.
I think Chancellor K'mpec knew this, which is why he chose Picard as the arbiter of succession. Shit was getting too real and they needed an actual adult to facilitate some version of a smooth transition of power. Left to their own devices, the Klingons would happily beat the shit out of one another until they ran out of blood wine.
The Prime Directive is dumb anyway. It's a good narrative device, and it helps avoid the complexity around how to handle the massive power discrepancies between a spacefaring civilization and a more primitive one, but it's hardly a given that all contact with more primitive civilizations would need to be avoided as literally the number one overarching priority. That, and they violate it all the time when it's appropriate and necessary, so why not just have a set of reasonable protocols around dealing with non-spacefaring civilizations and call it good? Why this dramatic fixation on avoiding contact at all costs?
As for Worf kiling Gow'ron being a color revolution, that would be analogous to Norway staging a coup in Russia. Like, okay, good for them if they pull it off, but it's been shown time and again that the Klingon Empire could crush the Federation in a matter of months if they felt like it. I'm pretty sure the Klingons are playing along because they're powerful enough to have their silly little interstellar feudal society. If they were less powerful, they'd have to take themselves way more seriously.
It was also introduced at a time when the Vietnam war was in full swing, it was about that
The Prime Directive isn't "no contact at all". It was never explicitly spelled out but I think the general idea is not interfering with a society's development, however you might define that. I did just watch a TOS episode where not respecting the legal authority of a planet by beaming out prisoners on death row was considered a violation.
It's pretty broad in scope. From Memory Alpha:
a high-level summary was "no identification of self or mission; no interference with the social development of said planet; no references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations."
So yeah, if you don't mention who you are, where you're from, or how you got there, and you don't interfere in any way with the cultural or technological development of a pre-warp species, you could technically make contact without violating the directive. You could disguise yourself as a local and go on vacation, that's about it.
I did just watch a TOS episode where not respecting the legal authority of a planet by beaming out prisoners on death row was considered a violation.
This seems like standard even for peer civilizations. The Federation is pretty good about abiding by the laws of the jurisdiction they're in, regardless of circumstances. I don't know that the Prime Directive even needs to be invoked here.
I don’t know that the Prime Directive even needs to be invoked here.
Well it was - that's the thing. The original series prime directive when it's referenced doesn't line up with that Memory Alpha definition, and I don't think canon Star Trek ever actually laid it out. They reference it in a wide range of situations that don't neatly fall under one rule.
There's a lot about the original show that isn't internally consistent.
TOS is riddled with inconsistencies, to the extent that it's more of an anthology than a coherent narrative. That's one of the charms of Star Trek, imo. It's more like a comic book series than a rigid canon. The characters and universe and events are all sort of consistent, but with so much time and so many writers there's a bit of drift (which is better for actual storytelling, imo).
