When did Star Trek ever *not* violate the Prime Directive?

The thing with TOS episodes like “The Apple” (incidentally, one of the guys in that picture is David Soul, aka Hutch from Starsky and Hutch) is that it displays the conflict between two of Gene Roddenberry’s favorite hobby horses: one, that cultures should be able to determine how and to what extent they develop, even if they find a way to create a static society and stay that way forever; and two, that there’s somehow something intrinsically wrong with that option, that beings were meant to continue evolving until, presumably, they become gods, or the Q, if you will. Thus, you have plots where the Enterprise intends to obey the Prime Directive, but then Vaal or Landru or those peace pollen plants on the planet where Spock hooks up with his old girlfriend or whomever starts something, which gives Kirk & Co. an excuse to shut the operation down and introduce the hapless natives to Civilization, Federation Style. (Of course, by the next century, when not only has poverty and money been eliminated but replicators and holodecks are common, it’s arguable that the Federation itself is such a society. But anyway.)

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The exceptional reality is a hard, ingrained reality that everyone has to contend with.

The human mind is surrounded by boring things that it just ignores, and tends to focus, then bias it’s attention, towards the exceptional.

You could write the entire history of the various systemic problems in society, and find they come about neatly because of focus of the exception cases.

Eh, as I remember, The Next Generation used the Prime Directive for a lot of stuff: I think because they couldn’t have conflict among the crew, they used Prime Directive as a quick “Add Drama to this episode!” event. For example, “Pen Pals”; a planet that was going to be destroyed by an asteroid couldn’t be saved due to the Prime Directive, even though they wouldn’t know that they had been saved (Data broke the rules because he had a pen pal on the planet).

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They could have sent a shuttle, but NO! they had to sent the enterprise!

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His response should have just been “Ha ha! Let me introduce you to his annoying guy I know named Q…”

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