8 thoughts on “A Question For The Trekkies”

  2. he Temporal Prime Directive is a fundamental principle guiding Starfleet. The regulation states that all Starfleet officers are forbidden to directly interfere with history and thus alter the timeline. Unlike the Prime Directive, however, Starfleet time travelers are further charged with a duty to maintain the current timeline and prevent history from being altered.

    For example: If person A travels back in time 300 years, and encounters person B, who history records as having lived beyond that encounter, and A kills B, this will alter the timeline, since now, the deceased B will be unable to influence events after that point, i.e., all future descendants of B may never be born.

    On the other hand, if the time traveller, A, encounters person C, a person who history records as having died shortly after their meeting point, and A prevents C from dying, this will also alter the timestream since now, C will be able to influence events after they were supposed to die.

    http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Temporal_Prime_Directive

    Google doesn’t work for you?

  4. The concept (but not the name) may have been introduced in TOS in the Gary 7 episode with Teri Garr. I think it was called “Assignment: Earth” or something.

    I remember the Temporal Prime Directive especially from Deep Space 9, when one of the characters said of Kirk, “The man was a menace!” when it came to violations. Kirk had like 17 violations.

  5. It was perhaps intimated in Harlan Ellison’s The City on The Edge of Forever (perhaps the best ST TV episode ever, and featuring the somewhat young and hot Joan Collins), and the second season’s Assignment: Earth (a feeble ep., but featuring the very young and hot Teri Garr). But I think the definitive answer is at our own dear Timmer’s Memory Alpha ref:

    It is unclear exactly when the TPD came into effect.The first mention of a TPD was by Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 2368.(TNG:”A Matter of Time“) Picard postulated that the existence of such a directive might be what was preventing a traveler from the future from aiding him avert the destruction of Penthara IV. It was clear that Picard was unaware of any formal Starfleet equivelant to a TPD at this date. In VOY:”Shattered“, Janeway seemed to be aware of the directive’s existence in 2371, long before “Future’s End, Part I“, which seemed to imply that the TPD was not only a 29th century regulation. Julian Bashir referred to the similar ‘Starfleet’s temporal displacement policy’, in “Past Tense, Part I“, something taught at Starfleet Academy. The existence of Starfleet Regulation 157, Section 3, Paragraph 18 (quoted in DS9: “Trials and Tribble-ations“), further complicates matters.

    As with all other things Trek, it would seem as though the Temporal Prime Directive comes and goes at the writer’s whim.

  6. You know, I always thought that Janeway’s explanation for their time travelling hoo-ha at the end of Voyager should have been “Kirk did it”. Very believable.

    That or they should have had the universe de-actualize when they got back to Earth. Make a point that there actually is some danger involved in time travel. But that’s just me.

  7. When? As soon as it was plot-convenient for someone to make it up.

    Just like every god damn thing in Star Trek.

  8. Hi -

    It’s a *temporal* prime directive.

    It never was written, it always was, will be, and has been.

    Sort of like that knife in the short story that was found in a museum by a time traveler to the future whose children set up a museum in which to house the knife…

    John