Enterprise: Dear Doctor, evolution, and ethics

A species called the Valakians send some people in a sublight ship out into the interstellar lanes of travel to try to find more advanced civilizations that can help them. The Valakians are battling a disease that is threatening to wipe out their species and it is making each successive generation smaller. Enterprise finds the Valakians and brings them back to their planet. Archer orders Phlox to try to figure out what is causing the disease. Along the way the Enterprise crew discover that another humanoid species called the Menk is working under the Valakians. The Menk are showing signs of evolving to a higher level (how? what are the selective pressures that is causing this evolution?).

Phlox discovers that the Valakians have a genetic disease that is causing their genomes to degenerate. Phlox eventually discovers a cure. Archer agonizes over supposed moral dilemma of whether to give the cure to the Valakians. Archer eventually orders Phlox to keep the cure secret from the Valakians so that the natural evolution of the Valakians and Menk is not disturbed.

The scientific premise of the episode is absurd. The ethical premise is abhorrent.

Well, first of all natural selection isn't going to select for a genetic disease that will cause all of a species to gradually get sick and die. No way, no how. Why would a harmful mutation propagate throughout an entire species? Why wouldn't those who didn't have the mutation have more progeny than those who did have the mutation? A species can go extinct because its environmental niche shrinks or because a predator develops a better way to hunt it. It is conceivable that a species could go extinct because a pathogen mutates into an extremely lethal and virulent form or a pathogen that the species has never encountered before jumps into it from another environment. But a species doesn't just up and mutate itself into oblivion.

Enterprise is supposed to be a science fiction show. Its writers therefore should try to choose plausible scientific premises. Were the writers aware of the flaw in their premise? Did they believe that the morality play the premise made possible was more important than the flaw? The motive for the pseudoscientific premise in this episode is unclear. Are the writers arguing for the environmentalist Precautionary Principle? (which seems like an enormous dogmatic extension of the Hippocratic Oath's "First Do No Harm" - which wasn't really in the Hippocratic Oath anyway).

The writers appear to want to argue that if we fail to respect what the process of evolution produces we may create a worse outcome by intervening. The writers seem to be trying to invoke evolution in order to bolster a very politically correct argument for respecting nature. But by creating a premise that is inconsistent with how natural selection works (and evolution works by natural selection after all) the writers have ended up undermining their own argument. Surely there are many viewers who do not understand evolution by natural selection and so for them the story still works. But come on guys, enough viewers do understand enough about natural selection to recognize the absurdity of this story's scientific premise.

In what is supposed to be representative of the early thinking that eventually led to the formation of the Prime Directive Archer decides that the use of more advanced science to improve the health of a less advanced civilization could cause more harm than good. In a nutshell we are supposed to accept that since the Valakians are not advanced enough to build a Warp Drive they should be disqualified from being saved from extinction by a more advanced civlization that is capable of faster than light travel. Lets apply this to planet Earth in the 21st century. Some countries are capable of launching people into space and others are not. Some are capable of building aircraft that can travel between continents and some are not. Some are capable of building a complex industrialized economy and some (so far) are not. So then should the more advanced countries decide to implement a Prime Directive not to interfere in the economies and health care of less developed countries? Should international agencies be banned from bringing First World vaccines, antibiotics, and medical textbooks to Third World countries?

The Prime Directive is dogma. Its a one-size-fit-all rule that attempts to allow people to escape from having to examine the ethical pros and cons for making decisions in each situation. There are certainly reasons why some technologies shouldn't be allowed to fall into some hands in some situations. But it simply is unethical to elevate this concern into a simple rule that is as all-encompassing as the Prime Directive. It precludes sentient beings from voluntarily helping other sentient beings in situations where the net long term effects of the assistance can scarcely be guessed at while the short term benefits for the recipients of the help are easy to understand.

Enterprise in theory takes place before the original Star Trek series. But it has a sensibility that makes it feel like it comes after the original series. Jonathan Archer is infected with the same lack of moral confidence that afflicts left-liberalism in our present era. By contrast, James Tiberius Kirk was the living embodiment of confidence whether moral, political, sexual, or as a leader. Perhaps it is inevitable and unavoidable that any science fiction show set in the future will still reflect the intellectual currents of the time period in which it is made. But I think a greater effort could be made to portray the moral and philosophical assumptions of a future civilization as being more different from that of our own.

Posted by Randall Parker at September 04, 2002 11:29 PM