The unspoken thing about the Prime Directive is that a Federation Captain's most solemn duty is deciding when to ignore it, and the same goes for the Temporal Prime Directive.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
26 points (100.0% liked)
Daystrom Institute
3470 readers
4 users here now
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.
Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
3. Be diplomatic.
Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.
4. Assume good faith.
Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”
5. Tag spoilers.
Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.
6. Stay on-topic.
Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.
Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Sure, but what about random crewmen, like in my example? Are they expected to make such a decision?
They should take it to their captain
As far as I know, the directive mainly applies to officers who are sent back in time and/or given the opportunity to change established history. I don't think it would prevent someone from making an arrest in their "proper" time.
At most, it might limit their ability to interrogate the prisoner, if they can verify that the intruder is from the future and possesses knowledge that the contemporary officers can't have.
I guess I assumed a sort of corollary.
Starfleet personnel ends up back in time on a Starfleet vessel. We both serve the same organization. My duty is to protect the timeline I come from. Your duty seems, implicitly, to aid a fellow Starfleet officer in their mission (to protect the aforementioned timeline).
It seems like Starfleet should have a dedicated Temporal Security crew on every starship and starbase for such an occasion. You find a supposed time traveler, you immediately call this team. They sequester the intruder and go through a careful interview to verify their claim as cleanly as possible, then render what aid is needed to secure the timeline and get them home (or, barring that possibility, get them somewhere isolated where they can't contaminate the timeline). Then, maybe memory wipe the Temporal Security team (and possibly anyone else who interacted with the traveler). On the flipside, if you end up back in time, it's expected you should immediately attempt to contact the local Temporal Security crew.
Chakotay once used the TPD as an excuse to not answer a question from Janeway.
And she just accepted it.
Now you’ve paused, thinking any action could cause a temporal paradox, or damage to the future timeline.
You can also arrest them anyway. Logically, it would fit into the timeline, since if they're from the future, they should have accounted for those circusmtances, including their arrest in their future timeline. And a scan would show a fair few forms of time travel, which you can use to verify, or any connections that you might have with other temporal entities. Time travel is a bit convenient like that, until everything goes horribly wrong.
But ultimately, nothing actually prevents someone from just out and out lying. They could easily say "oh, sorry, can't say, Starfleet Intelligence business", or "I'm here on Captain/Engineering's orders", and you'd have that delay in either case to verify the story. The Temporal Prime Directive doesn't really factor into it.